Show Biz

One of the jobs I worked on in Glasgow, Montana was an old theater in town that had been shut down for quite some time.  We were re-wiring it.  I was working on removing the old copper wiring and putting in new wiring.  I had a pile of old copper wire about 3 feet high and 5 feet across.  I was intending to get the owner’s permission to take it to the local Pacific, Hide and Fur and recycle it for cash.  I was waiting until I had the job completed before I approached the owner.

About the time we were concluding the job I went on vacation.  When I got back one of the other guys told me I had missed a great opportunity.  The owner had told him to go down in the basement and haul that pile of copper wire to Pacific, Hide and Fur.  He told me that they had gotten $60.00 for it.  That was in 1953.

The boss had taken them all to dinner at a nice restaurant.

Rats.  Foiled again.

A number of years later they built a new theater in town.  “The Survant.”  It was built by a California contractor who apparently had no idea of how cold it could get in Glasgow in the winter.

It was built with minimum insulation.  The local heating contractor knew about Montana winters.  He put in a bank of four 200,000 BTU furnaces.  Winter was coming on so they had the furnaces running to keep it warm.  Every once in a while we would hear a big WHUMP!  The whole building would seem to shudder.  We didn’t know if it was an earth quake or someone running into the building.  We looked around for the cause.  Everything seemed to be working fine.  No damages anywhere we could see.

One day the California contractor’s foreman went up stairs to the projection room where the furnaces were located.  Shortly afterward I had to go up stairs to check something or other.  I had my head just about level with the floor and could see the foreman leaning down looking at something on the furnaces.   All of a sudden there came that WHUMP!

Fire came out of the furnace, covered the whole floor almost to where my head was at floor level.

The foreman was dancing around to an unheard tune and to an unknown beat trying to evade the fire.  When it was all under control we determined that furnace system had a faulty control.

One of the units would fail to ignite and gas would spread across the floor.  Another unit would come on and ignite the gas that had come from the first unit.  Hence, the shudder and Whump.

I have notice in recent years that The Survant is no longer in operation.

Sorry.  Nobody got into the movies.

We didn’t even make the news.

My First Tester

When I first started working as an electrician we didn’t need much for tools.  A screwdriver, hammer, hacksaw and pliers comprised a pretty full tool selection.  The pliers, of course, must be able to also cut wire.

I remember the first time I bought a tester.  It was to test voltage as to whether it was 120 or 240 volts.  It had the capability to test voltage up to 550 volts, but we never needed anything that high.

I had wanted one for a long time and boy was I proud of that tool!  We called it a “Wiggy.”  I bought it at Markles in Glasgow, Montana.  I used it for about 60 years and still have it and it works just fine today.  It does have a few battle scars.

When you have more tools you have to remember to pick them all up when you leave a job.  I couldn’t possibly count all the tools I have lost, but somehow I always kept the Wiggy.  Sometimes customers would call me and tell me I had left a tool there.  That was really nice.  One time, when I went back on a job a number of years later, the customers told me that I had left a tool and they had saved it for me.  By that time, of course, I had replaced it.

One job I had was at a motel that had a wooden fence along one side of the parking lot.  When I was picking up my tools I could not find my Wiggy.  I couldn’t imagine where I had left it.  A year later I went back to that same motel and my Wiggy was hanging across the fence.  It had been there through rain, sleet, ice, snow, hot sun, below zero weather, no one had bothered it, it had not disappeared, and it still worked fine.

Attitudes have changed since then.  Years later I was working on the Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, Washington.  I went to a restroom where there were stalls already installed.  (I always carried my tools in my pockets, and had learned years before that when you dropped your trousers the tools would fall out and scatter around the floor.  Some would, at times, even take a bath.)  This time I took my tools out of my pocket and laid them on a shelf outside the stall.

While I was in the stall I heard someone enter and leave rather quickly.  When I exited the stall my tools were gone.  I realized that working men had lost their respect for another man’s tools.

Going Back For Tools

One of the shops I worked for in Havre, Montana supplied us with our own pick-up trucks.  At the time, locks were not a general consideration for vehicles and these pick-ups were not equipped with locks.  I supplied my own tools, but without locks on the vehicles, and with the vehicles parked out back of the shop, I either left my tools in the shop at night, or, if I had work to do at home, I would take them with me when I went home.

The pinch would come when I went to work the next morning.  My tools were just one more item to remember.  A few times I would be on my way to work and remember that I had left my tools at home.  Since we lived about 5 miles out of town, turning around, going back to get them, and then heading back to town, was a situation that did not lend itself to getting to work on time.

There was a time that I was sent to a job on a farm about 20 miles out of town.  When I got to the job site the first thing I did was look the job over and make a material list.  When I started doing the actual labor I realized that I had left my tools back at the shop.

I tore back to town, went in the back door of the shop, and grabbed my tools.  Then I tore back to the farm.  I wasn’t noticed when I grabbed my tools, nor when I was burning up pavement from one place to another.

Sometime later I was telling another guy at the shop what had happened.  He laughed and said one other guy had done the same thing.  The difference was that it was well past noon when he missed his tools.  When he came back to get them he got caught!  How can you work for five hours without tools?

I learned to always remember my tools.