Over in Eastern Montana they built the largest (at the time – and maybe still) earth constructed dam.  The Fort Peck Dam is, coincidently enough, located near Fort Peck, Montana.  Fort Peck is located near Wheeler, Montana which is named after one of my wife’s relatives.  However that’s not the point of the story.

Outside Wheeler, Montana was a sign that read; “The best Dam town by a Dam site.”

Many years later, I bid, and was awarded, the work on a job at the Grand Coulee Dam.  It was one of the most interesting jobs I had ever had, “by a Dam site.”

I got to see the generators in action.  It is dumb-founding to see the size of them.  If you have ever had to use a stand-by generator for your residence, you may have noticed the lights flickering a bit.  Yet the electricity from the huge generators on the dam does not flicker at all.  The electricity is steady as can be.

If you have seen the control module on a Boeing 727 you probably feel, as do I, that the controls are mind-boggling; with dials, knobs, levers, lights, etc.  Multiply that control board by 10 or 20 (it’s not an exact mathematical equation), and you will see how many controls there are for one of these large generators.

At the time I was doing the job on the Grand Coulee Dam the controls were monitored, adjusted, and checked on night and day.  I suppose by now they are controlled by computers.

When I worked on the university campus in Pullman, Washington, I would drive the 2 hour trip back and forth each day.  However the job at Grand Coulee was more distance than I wanted to travel on a daily basis.  I rented a small “bachelor pad” in someone’s basement and would come home on weekends.

Every so often Becky would come up and stay with me to make sure I was well fed and that the cleaning got done.  It was the first time in forty years that I had batched.  She wasn’t able to do it often because of family obligations.  One of the bonuses was that we got to see the light show that the Dam would put on every year.

One weekend when I got home from Grand Coulee, I didn’t have my wallet with my driver’s license, electrical licenses, credit cards and insurance cards.  I looked everywhere and worried.  I had to get a copy of my driver’s license, cancel the credit cards, call the insurance company, etc.

The next week when I went back on the job I searched everywhere.  I couldn’t find the wallet anywhere.

Before I came home the next weekend I was sitting on the bed changing my clothes.  I slipped my hand down between the mattress and the foot of the bed and there it was.  Now I had two licenses!  I thought; “this could be handy in case I lost it again.”  I found out that wasn’t legal.

I guess my short term memory was slipping even then.  By a Dam site.

The Sacred Heart Hospital building project involved using cranes on the inside of the building as it went up.  The building had concrete floors.  There was a slight conflict involved with pouring concrete where the crane was set up.  The project used a procedure that I found interesting.

A square hole in the concrete floor was left open where the crane was set up.  The crane was used to hoist concrete up to each floor.  When about three floors had been completed, the crane would lift itself up and reset itself on an unfinished floor.  The square openings in the lower floors would be poured using wheel barrows and then the process would start all over again.

(Just to be clear, when I say that the “crane would lift itself up and reset itself on an unfinished floor”, I don’t mean to imply that the piece of machinery was self-aware.  It’s just simpler than describing all that the operators did to accomplish the feat.)

As the project proceeded, I wondered what the plan was when the building crane reached the roof top.  How would it be removed when all of the access holes were filled with concrete?

One weekend I went by the job site just out of curiosity and found that a huge crane had been transported in and was lying in an ally next to the project.  That crane was so large that it took up a whole block in the ally.  That crane was just lying there waiting for someone to build it.

The next week the newest crane was assembled and used to lift the building crane off the top of the building and down to the street.

It made sense that the larger crane was transported in a disassembled state.  Sometimes when you see large construction sites in a large city you will see a forest of cranes.  In the past, crane operators and ground personnel would use hand signals to communicate.  Often times a crane operator would sit for long stretches of time waiting for his next lift.

I heard the story of one crane operator that took the National Electric Code book with him up in his crane cab.  He studied it during his wait times.  He completely read the book, took and passed the required testing, and became a licensed Electrical Administrator.  And he knew practically nothing about hands on electrical work.

Cranes are fascinating pieces of equipment.  There are many configurations of cranes.  There are mobile cranes on large haulers; stationary cranes for putting up skyscrapers; small portable cranes for miscellaneous work; and traveling cranes located inside manufacturing facilities – just to name a few options.

Recently I have read where some cranes have been tipped over.  One broke in half in a storm.  You can find pictures of cranes in accidents on the internet.  When no one is hurt it is entertaining to look at them.

I have seen cranes used for advertising.  A company will use a crane to lift something significant, such as an automobile, in the air and just leave it there.  Apparently the rent on the crane is less than the cost of T.V. or journalism advertising.

One of the wildest experiences I had working around, or in spite of, cranes was at the Kaiser Aluminum plant.

We were installing light fixtures near the ceiling, above the bottom of the open truss work.  There were cranes in use that were of the traveling variety.  The cranes were on a horizontal beam configuration that rested on wheels and overhead tracks on each side of the work bay.  As items were lifted they could be moved lengthwise along the bay and then sat down for the next operation.

We were working off of a mobile lift boom unit within the traveling area of the crane.  (Ladders would have been imprudent, given the circumstances.)  I was a little nervous at the start of the job.  I thought that the facility would shut the crane down while we were working there, but that was not what happened.

Instead, each crane would honk as it approached where we worked.  We then had to stop what we were doing and descend with our lift boom then travel out of the way of the crane load.  If the crane was on a quick trip we would wait till it came back before we could go back up to our project.  If the crane was on an extended trip we would go back up immediately.

It was quite a game of up and down and over and past and around.  I was constantly concerned about things like; “Is that guy running the crane awake?”  Does he look in all directions as he is traveling the crane?”  “Does he give himself plenty of room?”  “Are his breaks good?”  One mistake on the operators part and we would be in oblivion.  But those guys were pretty good operators.  They never made one slip.

I don’t know how they figured the time on the job when it was bid, but we didn’t get our job done very quickly.

I was very happy when the job was finished!

Besides, there was no day dreaming on that project.