The original pin setters in bowling alleys were hand operated by a paid work force.  Usually the workforce was male and they would be at the end of each ally to clear the pins and reset them.

I often wondered how safe it was since sometimes the bowling pins could really fly.  The pin setters also had to send the bowling ball back to the head of the alley.

I set up the electrical work for the first automatic bowling alley pin setter in Havre, Montana (way back when).  It saved the bowling alley money as they no longer had to hire pin setters.  That bowling alley was all the rage in Havre.  Of course for a long time, it was the only bowling alley in Havre.

Then one day we were called back because the bowling alley was getting all new pin setting machines.  They set the old machines outside in the sun, rain and snow.  I asked the proprietor if the setters shouldn’t be protected from the weather.  He told me it was the machine owner’s responsibility.

Thereafter I got the whole story.

The proprietor had signed a contract with the machine manufacturing company.  They would supply the machines, install them and maintain them.  The proprietor would pay a monthly fee.  However, half of the time the machines were broken down.

Finally the bowling alley proprietor told the pin setting Machine Company that he was going to take them out and install a different brand.  He told them he was going to sit the old machines outside for them to pick up.

Apparently the new machines worked much better because in the thirteen years I lived and worked in Havre I never heard of any more trouble.

Other technology that has intrigued me includes bicycles.  The first bicycles were made entirely out of wood.  And they had no brakes.  The pedals were fastened directly to the driving wheel.

The first motorcycle was built by fastening a motor onto a bicycle.

That must have been a lot of fun.

People keep all kinds of pets these days.  When you work in their homes you have to be prepared for just about any kind of pet.  I have seen rats, birds, dogs, cats, reptiles, and I have heard of others.

The wildest one I ever saw was a pig.

One of the jobs I was on was at the home of a lady who lived alone but had a pig for a pet.  The pig had its own room.  It was not a little pig, but a full sized pig.  The room was not just a little place, but a full sized bedroom.

The lady had a garden gate attached to the door of the bedroom and a crib sized bed with a mattress for the pig to sleep on.  I wondered why the place didn’t smell like a barn.

Twice a day she would take the pig out in the back yard to eliminate waste.  Pigs can be quite clean animals.  Part of my work was in the pig’s bedroom.  I was pretty cautious as I knew that pigs’ appetites could include human flesh and bone.

The lady had to go downtown for something while we were there.  When she came back she stepped in the door and said; “Oh my goodness!  Has he been a naughty boy?”  She immediately sent the pig outside and began to clean the pigsty (whoops – pig’s bedroom).

I have had pets myself, but usually I kept them outside, except for one cat.  When my wife and I were first married we bought a small mobile home.  Since we had mice in the home we kept a cat inside.  It was a two room mobile home – a bedroom and a kitchen/living room area.  No bathroom.

In the middle of the night I heard a ruckus.  I told my wife; “Oh boy!  He caught it.”  I jumped up and ran into the living area.  A mouse ran across the floor in front of me.  The front door was wide open and the cat was gone.

Apparently he had been so frightened at the sight of the mouse that he opened the door and scrammed.

Now we keep our pets outside in a doghouse or barn.

More difficult than working under a mobile home, in muddy and wet conditions, in the cold, on rocky ground, is working in a hot attic.  I have never taken the temperature of an attic I was working in, but I know they are always several degrees hotter than the outside ambient air temperature, and in the summer that means Extremely Hot.  The sun bakes down on the roof, there is no air movement, and (usually) no insulation under the roof.

On top of that (literally), attic insulation is blown in.  Some are blown in insulation is very bad.  And all of the various kinds of insulation stick to you when you are working in an attic.

One job I had to do in an attic, in warm weather, involved a building where the access hole to the attic was about 60 feet (as the electrician crawls) from the panel.  The access (or “scuttle”) hole was located in a new addition that I was wiring.  The panel was located in the original building structure.  To get to the area above the panel I had to crawl about 15 feet through the addition attic, then take a 90 degree left turn and go another (approximately) 30 feet through the gable structure of the original building, and finally take a 90 degree right turn for another 15 feet to get over the panel.

Both attics (old and new) had blown in insulation all the way, and blown in insulation packs when you put weight on it.  Packed blown in insulation loses insulating value.

I crawled into the scuttle hole with a hammer, staples, the end of a long run of NMB 10/3 wire, one end of an extension cord, an electric drill (battery powered drills were still in the future) with a wood bit, a light, and a wooden paddle.  I believe I added 50% to my body weight.  I crawled through the attic moving insulation out of my way as I went.  My helper (this time it was my wife Becky) fed the cord and cable through the scuttle hole to me.

When I got to the place above the panel I hung the light near me, cleaned the insulation off the top plate of the wall, and drilled a hole through the plate.  I dropped a fish chain through the hole.  It was attached to the 10/3 NMB and the NMB had a cable connector on it.  Becky caught the fish chain and pulled it and the cable connector into the panel.

As I backed my way out of the attics, I stapled the 10/3 to the exposed trusses and covered it up with the insulation, using the paddle to make a proper “blown in” effect.  By the time I exited the scuttle hole with my tools, light, drill, extension cord, etc., I was covered with sweat, insulation, and dust.

I drove home, took a shower, changed into clean clothes and then went back to the job.

Attics are inconvenient, uncomfortable, difficult, … and HOT!