Through the years, some of the most unforgettable friends you make are exceptional characters.  One character that sticks out in my mind was a man who was an engineer on the local radio station.

He came from down in the Ozarks.  My! How that man could play the fiddle.  He started playing fiddle music for dances when he was five years old.  When he was older, he would walk to town, bare footed, to play for a dance and play all night.  He was so shy, that when he played, he would turn his back to the audience.  In later years when he was old enough to drink alcohol, he would gradually turn his chair around, a little at a time, drink by drink, until he was finally facing the audience – fully loaded.  One of the boys who he played with when we knew him said that those guys that think they play better when they have been drinking only think so.

Eventually this man was given the opportunity to return to the Ozarks to set up a radio station; towers and all.  He had bought an old washer and dryer set that was broken down.  He had been intending to repair them for use.  I asked what he was going to do with the old appliances sitting there un-fixed.

He replied that the company that had hired him to build the radio station was paying him moving expenses.  He was just going to take the broken appliances with him when he moved, hoping to find the time to repair them at his new location.  We listened to him play one last time thinking we would probably never see him again, and said our good-byes.

Low and behold, five years later he came back to work for the local station again, having completed the construction of the station in the Ozarks.  The local station had paid for all his moving expenses, … Including the broken down washer and dryer and his fiddle.  We were very happy to have all of them back again.

Sometime later I asked him if he had ever got his washer and dryer repaired.  He said he had finally had time to take them apart and found the washer tub was leaking, … so he hauled them both to the dump.

I have done some work repairing appliances and rewiring and repairing electrical motors.  I found you really have to know what you’re doing, because it costs more than a new machine or motor.

The only real value in an old washer or dryer is if you keep them long enough for them to become antiques.  And that may be something of a characterization.

One time I was wiring a house out in the country.  Several of the trades were there.  We went to take a coffee break in the living room area.  We were sitting on the floor with our backs to the wall.

When break time was over we got up to go back to work.  The plumber remained seated on the floor.  One of the guys asked him if he was alright.  He replied “I can’t stand up.”

In those days there were no cell phones.  He was quickly loaded into a car and driven to the hospital as fast as they could go.  We heard the next day he had died before reaching the hospital.  I don’t recall if we ever heard what caused his quick illness and death.  It always seems strange to me that one could die so quickly.

During the time I was working on government work in the wilds of Montana, all of the work crews were provided fans to keep the air moving in the deep recesses where we were working.

One of the welders was careless about his fan, claiming he didn’t need it, even though some of his welding occurred 60 to 70 feet down in the ground.

One morning he didn’t wake up.

Though you don’t want to give up on life, sometimes going quickly seems advantageous compared to a lingering, ailment filled span of months or years.  In any case it is good to remember that we could go at anytime.

It also reminds us that Safety Precautions on the job are there for our protection.  It is not a good idea to ignore them.

Remember, babies and electricity do not mix.

When our oldest son was about two years old he climbed up on the couch.  He pulled a reading lamp into his lap.  Our backs were turned for a moment.  He unscrewed the bulb and was putting his finger in the socket.

Fortunately the switch was off.

Today’s light bulbs do not put out as much heat.  Therefore there is no inherent preventative to detach a hot bulb and put a finger in a light socket.

Other appliances can be dangerous to youngsters too.  Our neighbor’s child picked up the cord to the sewing machine while the mother was sewing, put the cord into his mouth, and bit into it.  The resulting shock injured the child’s mouth so badly, reconstructive surgery was needed later.

The Northern Montana College in Havre, Montana decided to build additional structures, … in the dead of winter.  (Havre, in the dead of winter, gets very cold.)  The building was to be made of block walls.  Block walls have to have a minimum amount of heat in order for the mortar to set correctly.  In order to protect the mortar the project leaders tarped the whole building and ran heaters inside.

It didn’t work.

Later on I was there to install wiring, and noticed that you could scrape the mortar from between the blocks because it had frozen before it set.  Apparently the decision was made to leave it as is, because years later I noticed a large crack in the block wall where the bad mortar had been used.

The auditorium on campus had a large dome for the roof/ceiling.  In order to install lighting fixtures in a straight line we had to drill holes and set the boxes from the top side of the dome (outside).  We were working through the roof to accomplish our purpose.  The top layer of lights was easy to set.  As we worked our way down the sides of the dome it became more difficult to maintain a straight course on the fixtures due to the circular nature of the dome.

We drilled our holes and set our boxes and ran conduit across the top of the domed roof.  Later insulation and roofing materials were layered over our conduit and boxes.  To finish the job inside we used scaffolding in the auditorium to reach the ceiling.

It was then that I noticed that we had missed with one box.  It was one foot out of line.  However from the floor this misalignment could not be seen because of the extreme height.

On that job we had a great deal of underground electrical conduit runs.  The plumbers too had buried piping.  Later on the plumbers were going to connect two plumbing piping systems.  They dug up a pipe, a welder cut a round hole in it, and prepared to tap a second pipe into it.  The welder reached into the hole and pulled out a chunk of rubber.

He had cut into one of the main high voltage lines.

They called us up there in a hurry.  We had the power company shut down the power.  We pulled out the wire, patched the hole, patched the damaged insulation and got the power back on before night.

It was an expensive mistake, but the welder lived to see another day.

And as for expensive mistakes……

On another job, one contractor had us use large wire with the wrong type of insulation for the purpose for which that particular run was intended.  The electrical inspector caught the error and we had to pull all that large expensive wire out, and pull in the correct wire.

The incorrect wire was of the type that is normally used for welder leads.

I wound up making a good set of jumper cables out of a portion of it.