One of the jobs I had the privilege of working on was a chip mill at St. Maries, Idaho.  The wood chips were made of scrap logs out of the woods.  The logs would be ground into chips.  Then the chips were sent through a shaker that would shake out all the rotten, worthless wood.

The remaining wood chips were sent to Rathdrum, Idaho where they were made into 4×8 sheets of chip board.  It was a good deal as it cleaned out the poor wood that is left in the forest, thus decreasing the fuel for forest fires.

My previous job had been in a large hospital where I had been connecting 100 Horse Power motors.  These motors were about 3 feet high and five feet long.  At St Maries they said we would be hooking up a 1500 Horse Power motor.  I expected the motor would be large; maybe as large as an automobile.

At that size and power, they were likely to tear themselves apart starting up, or start so slow they would burn up before getting up to speed.  A motor draws about seven times as much power to get up to speed as it uses to continue running.

I noticed we were hooking up heat banks.  The heat banks would go through heating elements that cut the voltage down.  This allowed the motor to start slow and then when it got to a certain speed an element would cut out thus increasing the voltage as the speed increased.  This all made sense.

Then they brought in the motor on a flatbed trailer.  I went out to look at it.  Here it was only about a 2 foot cube.  I wondered how they could get that much power out of such a small motor.  Then I found out that instead of operating at 240 or 480 volts, this motor operated at 13,000 volts.

That’s how they got so much power out of a small motor, and why there was the need for the heat banks.

When the chipper was first turned on, it made my hair stand on end.  If a man fell into those chippers, he wouldn’t last long enough to scream.  That machine would grind up a log 2 feet across and 20 feet long in less than five minutes.

Our company also had work at the chipboard plant in Rathdrum.  The plant was highly automated.  On the manufacturing floor there was one man who ran a bull dozer and loaded the chips into a huge hopper.

Two men sat at two controllers.  About three other men loaded the finished chip board into stacks as they came off of the machine.  There was also one man running a fork lift to haul the stacks away to store them.

The building was so large I never did see the storage area, or for that matter, a lot of other areas in it.  In fact the building was large enough that when we did work in the middle of the winter, a separate building – within the main building – was built, insulated, and heated so that we could have a warm place to eat our lunch.

While I was there doing electrical work, an engineer from our office came to visit the jobsite and see how we were doing.  He asked me how I had enjoyed the job at the chip mill in St. Maries.  I told him I was amazed by such a powerful motor and how the higher voltage increased the efficiency.

He told me; “That is nothing.  We just finished hooking up a 5,000 Horse Power electric motor for the air conditioning at the Beasley Auditorium in Pullman, Washington.”

I never saw the motor at Beasley, although I did a lot of work on the college campus.

I also did a job on the Coulee Dam in Washington, and was able to see the huge generators there.  I began to realize that there are huge motors running at various institutions around the world that taxes the imagination.

One of the fellows I worked with had quite a reputation.  Oh, but some of the tricks he used to play on co-workers just for laughs!  Our lunch boxes used to be metal.  The top of the box was rounded and just the right size to put in a thermos.  (You may have seen pictures of them at the Smithsonian.)

This guy had a hand large enough to span the two snap locks on the side of the box.  As we were walking along he would surreptitiously reach over and snap the two latches open at the same time.  Of course everything in your lunch box would spill out on the ground.  This served to do two things, other than make you mad.  It would cause your thermos to break.  And it would disclose any items in your box you were trying to steal.

Another trick he had was if your hard hat fell off, he would reach over into the wire lube can and slap a handful of wire gel into the inside of your hard hat.  You soon learned to watch for him if your hat became misplaced.  It was also a habit to check the inside of your hard hat before putting it on.

On one job a crew from another trade was on the job-site.  They were using a brand new roll of vinyl rope.  He asked them if he could have about 10 feet of rope.  When they said yes, he walked to the center of the rope and acted like he was going to cut his 10 feet out of the middle.

It was necessary to keep your eyes open and watch for his tricks.

He was a strong husky man and was very valuable when it came to lifting or pulling.  I suppose that is why he could get away with his stunts.  (I never did hear that he got shot or stabbed.)

There was another old-timer who knew all the tricks.  He had the habit of kicking a hard hat like a football, clear out of sight, if it fell off someone’s head when they were working.  Working with men like that made you very cautious.  When you opened your lunch box you never knew what you would find.

And finally another guy I worked with fixed up his lunch box to have hot meals on the job.  He attached a short electrical appliance cord and plug to a heating element from an old electric iron, put a metal plate over it, and installed it in his lunch box.  He would put his sandwiches and whatever on top of it.  He would plug the cord into a live outlet about 15 minutes before lunch time.

He would eat a hot meal while the rest of us ate cold sandwiches.  I have heard that someone has now invented a lunchbox that heats in the summer and cools in the summer.

I have never seen one.

Years ago I was working on a job at a college campus.  We were wiring an addition to the auditorium.  Part of the building was below ground on one side.  The part we were working on was about ground level.

There was one door that led off into the lower level, and the door to it was locked.  The door had a small window in it and someone had attached a dark cloth over the window on our side.  Of course my curiosity got the better of me.  I just had to see what was behind the door.  I wondered who it was that didn’t want what we were doing to be seen.

When I peeked in the window I saw some indoor tennis courts.  I wondered what the big deal was.  I didn’t think it was that out of the normal to have indoor tennis courts for use in bad weather.  Someone else must have had the same curiosity.

Construction workers have always had the reputation of being crude, rude, and even somewhat misogynistic.  I should have picked up on it when one of the guys was pretty insistent, saying; “Adrian, you ought o go look in that window.”

I replied; “I have.  It’s just some tennis courts.”

He said; “Yes, but go look now.”

I returned to the curtained window and on the other side were some college age girls playing tennis; in their skimpy tennis court attire.  Aha!  Now I knew what they were so captivated by.  I thought to myself that the curtain was on the wrong side of the door.

About the time I moved to the Spokane area changes had occurred in the traditional construction workforce.  More and more women were showing up on the job.  At first, most of the women on a construction crew weren’t sure how to assimilate.  As a result there were a few that just paraded around the job site and talked like they knew something about what was being done.  As time went by they began to realize they actually had to be workers, not just exhibitionists.

One of the best workers I ever came across was a woman.  She could out-work any man I ever worked with.  She had no ulterior motives, but was anxious to be a good electrician.

Times changed.

And that was a good thing.