Bank Jobs

Montana weather usually can mean a work shut down in winter months.  Generally we planned for it by stocking up on basic necessities and food, as well as paying ahead on loans.

The 1^st National Bank was a plus for us all.  The boss told us that he had bid the job at bare cost just to keep us working.  We really appreciated that, and we were determined to make it come out ahead.  We were going to work extra hard.

When the light fixtures came in, which he had ordered, he assisted us in stacking them in an empty room.  When he looked at the invoice that had come with the fixtures he said; “Oh!  This is great!  They threw the light bulbs in free.  That gives us about $400.00 profit on the job.”

When we finished and all the numbers had been run, he told us he had come out with about a 10% profit.  Everyone felt good about that.   I don’t know how the other contractors did, but I do know there were some surprises on the job.

In the banks I have worked on there are two vaults.  One is a cash vault and one is a paper vault.  Each vault has about 18” thick concrete walls enclosing them.  They are outfitted with breathing tubes so that if someone gets accidently locked in the vault they won’t suffocate.  These tubes are placed on an upward angle out of the vault so that someone inside cannot toss items out the tube to someone else outside.

In this bank the two vaults had been placed side by side for many years.  There was a partition wall between the two vaults, and the store located in the same building.  The store had moved and the bank was taking over its space.  The decision to expand the bank also included a renovation on the vaults.  The two existing vaults were to be combined into one, and a new vault installed a distance away in the new portion of the bank.

The plan was to pour concrete to fill in the existing vault doors and cut a new door on the side of the vault that had abutted the partition wall.  Two men were going to jack hammer the opening in the vault for the new door.  The job was going to take two men and a rope suspension for the jack hammer to get the new opening in the vault wall.  It was, after all, an 18” thick wall, the jack hammer was heavy, and the door was going to exceed six feet in height.

When the two men started the jack hammer it practically fell through the wall.  When they showed the bank president, he got as pale as a sheet.  The wall had been constructed out of clay tile, not 18” thick concrete.  It had been that way since the bank had been built.  Anyone could have hid in the adjoining store over night and broke into the vault with an ordinary home owner’s claw hammer.

Making the door and taking out the partition was not a big problem.  However a whole new 18” thick concrete wall had to be built.

If you attempt to break into a bank vault, make sure it is very, very old and has been built by a contractor that cuts corners.

The 1^st National Bank

Glasgow, Montana was and still is a small town.  In a small town you get to know at least half of the people fairly closely.  As a family we knew the First National Bank President, Vice-president, and the Farm Home Loan officer.  My wife had gone to school with some of the tellers.

One winter the bank did a remodel and the shop I worked for had the electrical contract.  Inside the bank, scaffolding was erected over the entire bank floor.  We did all of our work over the top of the ongoing banking operations.

The General Contractor Company was out of Minnesota and the job foreman, a great big Swede, came with the job.  He was quite a character.  When it was time for him to saw a board, he would look around for the girl with the big black up-do on her head.  Then he would saw the board so that the sawdust drifted down onto her head.

I don’t know if she ever caught on to what he was doing but I heard her and another teller talking once.  The girl with the up-do said she had to wash her hair every night; “It is so messy.”

One time I was cutting off a length of conduit and I made the comment “Shoot!  I cut it off twice and it’s still too short.”

The big Swede was standing there.  He looked at me in a stunned way and said; “Of course it’s too short.  Did you think it would get longer?”

He walked over to one of his crew and said; “That crazy electrician cut off a conduit twice and says it is still too short.”  No wonder they do terrible work.”

I just let it go.  Some people don’t understand a joke.

Two other electricians were working with me on the job.  Somehow, though there was no official word on the subject, I seemed to be the one running the job.  A  point in the job came when we were all on the roof.  We were working on the air conditioning and heating units.  The other two men were standing and counseling together discussing how we would hook up all the equipment together.

I walked over and laid out the plan; “First we will do this (indicating one portion of the job), then we will do that (another portion), and then we will do that, and it will all work.”

They looked at me and asked; “How did you figure that out so fast?”

I told them; “Well there must be some reason why the boss put me in charge of this job.”

What I didn’t tell them was that I had been going over the job in my mind for some weeks.  (No time for singing on this one.)  I rarely bragged about anything as I had found it can have pretty bad repercussions.  However, it felt pretty good to be able to excel in this instance, as these two guys had been a little critical of me at times

Not so much after that.

A Song Bird I Ain’t

I have always enjoyed music.  If I hadn’t taken up electrical work, I might well have been a musician.  But, you can’t do justice to two jobs at the same time.  And I enjoyed the electrical trade.

It has variety (unlike being a washer crammer in a shock absorber factory), interest, feelings of accomplishment, and constant “improvement.”  I also enjoyed the different challenges affiliated with being an electrician.  If I saw something wrong on a job, I just had to fix it.

As a consequence, unless I really had to concentrate on a particular problem or repair, I would sing as I worked.  One day when I thought I was all alone on a job and was enjoying the various challenges and variety, I was singing as I worked.  A voice from behind me said; “Can you sing tenor?”

I was surprised and a little embarrassed and questioned him; “What is tenor?”  He responded; “Ten or twelve blocks away from here.”  I realized that there were some people in the world who did not appreciate my beautiful singing.

Another time I was singing on the job and one of the people that heard me said that I should be on the stage.  I thought; “This sounds better.”  So I asked; “Do you really think so?”  He said: “Yes, the first one out of town.”  So I thought to myself that perhaps my singing was not as good as I thought it was.

One day my sister Kay told me; “Adrian, you should sing solo.”    I replied that I thought I had been doing so.  She said; “I meant – ‘So low no one can hear you.’”

Well, … I can still whistle while I work.

Then the day came when I was working on a job and whistling away.  Two other guys were working in the same room.  One of them also started to whistle as he worked.  I was unable to tell if he thought he could improve my whistling or was trying to harmonize.

Soon we both paused at the same time to catch our breath.  In the silence the third guy piped up and said; “I need to cut back on you guys’ bird seed.”

After that I just concentrated on the electrical work.

Besides, my whistler doesn’t work anymore.

Sorry, Mom.