I worked on a lot of projects at Riverfront Park in Spokane.  There are a lot of stories to be told about the experiences I had there.

One time I had to dig ditches all across the park in order to put in lighting for the park.  I rented a ditcher to do the job.  It was of the type that looks like a long chain-saw arm that goes down into the ground and digs about 2 feet deep, bringing the dirt up to pile alongside the ditch on one side.

As I was working my way through the park I encountered some old street car tracks; about 18 inches below the surface.  Had I “encountered” them straight on, at a 90 degree angle, I would have ruined the ditcher.  In fact the fact that I didn’t ruin the ditcher can be attributed to the fact that I “encountered” the tracks at a lesser degree angle.  The ditching spikes would slide along the rail and skip across.

For that part of my ditch I had to get out the shovel and hand-dig the ditch under the street-car tracks.

For awhile I was driving an old telephone repair truck.  The truck had very little room to carry heavy equipment.  Of course I was using pipe cutters, pipe threaders, etc.  When I got to the job I had to unload and set up all the equipment.  Every night when I left the job, I had to load (pile) the equipment on top of the back of the truck.  It made the vehicle somewhat top heavy.

There were times that I stretched every minute out of a work day and, with re-loading the truck, wound up getting back to the shop late.  I also wound up stretching the speed limits (a little) and the safe turning speed at corners (a little).  When I turned corners the truck would tip enough so that the tires rubbed under the fenders.

The guys in the office told me that they could always tell when I was coming in – by the smoke signals coming from my tires.

I wonder why I was always given the least desirable truck in the yard.  However, the experience did have an impact on the vehicles I supplied for my employees when I ran my own business.  I made it a practice to supply properly running, maintained, and fit vehicles.  A man with a good truck that is easy to work out of will stay on the job longer.

I guess you could say that some men drive a truck for years and never have a wreck; while others drive a wreck for years and never have a truck.

I was working alone one time on a job requiring quite large wire.  Here came a husky young fellow the shop had sent out to help me.

I had the conduit run and was ready to pull in the wire.  When we measured the wire, instead of using a string to measure, I counted up the lengths of pipe.  We went back to the shop and cut the wire.

We returned to the job and proceeded to pull in the wire.  The husky young guy was on the pulling end and I was on the pushing end.

Actually the man feeding the wire in (the pushing end) has to do it just right.  He can make the job easy or impossible.

It is necessary to leave a certain length of wire at each end, outside the conduit, to land the wire.  When there was just enough wire to land it on the feeding end, I hollered to the young guy; “That’s all you can have.”

He said; “The wire is just barely to the edge of the pipe.”

I couldn’t believe it!  I went to the pulling end and sure enough, the wire was ten feet short.  I had miscounted the lengths of pipe by one pipe.  We pulled the wire back out.  With that size and length of wire, it was a pretty spendy mistake.

It was the end of the day.  All night I worried about telling the boss in the morning.  Should I tell the truth and take the heat?  It was my mistake.  I drove to work the next morning with a heavy heart.  I was met at the door by the estimator and the first words out of his mouth was; “Cut the wire too short, huh?”  (How did he know?)

I admitted I had miscounted the sticks of pipe.  He told me to; “Put the lengths of wire on the shelf and cut new ones.  We can always use it somewhere else.”  (Whew!)

Later on I found out that the tall husky apprentice was the boss’s son.

Lesson learned – it’s always better to be out front with everything.