After I finished my work at the South Hill Safeway store, I was in the shop at a desk making out the final “actuals” list of material used on the job.  The boss walked over and asked me; “Adrian, How do you read a blueprint?”

“Uh-oh” – I thought to myself.  Here it comes.  I wonder if I can find another job as good as this one has been.  I had thoroughly enjoyed working for this shop.  I sat there thinking; “How do you answer a question like that?”

“Very thoroughly” ???

“”Nonchalantly” ???

Is he asking me to blame someone for something?

Without waiting for me to formulate my reply, he continued; “Both (his son) and (the shop lead man) have run conduit on two big jobs and didn’t use the compression conduit fittings called out on the print.”  (Further vituperative expository explanation followed.)  The upshot of it was that these two large jobs downtown had to have all the set screw fittings changed out to compression fittings.  I was sent to assist.

The first assignment I received was to put together some recessed lighting fixtures.  I say “some” because if I remember correctly there were about 400 of them.  They were going to be installed throughout the building.  The last step in assembling each fixture was to snap a piece into position.  It was a hard “snap” to get it in place.  The procedure required a very hard pressure with both thumbs at the same time.

I think the first day I completed 75 fixtures.  I thought to myself; “I can do 100 of these in one day if I work at it.”

The next day I applied myself and completed 90.  The next day I was able to get 95 completed.  The next day I was closer, completing 98.

The next day I ran out of fixtures to assemble way before I got to 100.

Boy, were the muscles on my thumbs sore!  It was a good thing we ran out of fixtures to put together.

The next task I was given was to install the lighting fixtures over the escalators.  The ceilings were finished, but at each of the landings for the escalators there was an access hole.  I would crawl in the access hole and fish the wiring up and down inside the ceilings.  Then I would cut an opening for the fixture from below and install the fixture through the opening.

I made some interesting discoveries.

On the top of each landing, below the lowest point of each escalator, there was a hoard of coins.  Pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.  Apparently the coins had been dropped by people as they rode the escalators.  All the quarters were bent at about a 30 degree angle.  They were the largest and not quite small enough to slip through the openings before the escalator turned the corner.  I took a rubber mallet and straightened out all the quarters.  If I remember correctly, it was about $5.00 worth.

There was also another profitable discovery.  I found two pipe wrenches which had, I suspected, been left by the original installation crew for the sprinkler system.

It didn’t surprise me.  After all, I believe I have left enough tools behind on jobs that they could have equipped a crew of electricians.

For years the term for a mobile home has varied.  First they were trailer houses.  (Often that term was shortened to “trailer.”)  Then they were “mobile homes.”    Now we refer to them as Manufactured Homes.

As far back as the early 1900s Sears, Roebuck, and Co. had a mail order house.  It came shipped in sections on a railroad flat car.  My father bought one and set it on his homestead.  That building is still being used.

For awhile there was a home built locally which was another form of manufactured home.  It was a pre-built structure.  These pre-built structures were completely furnished and came in two sections and sat on a foundation.

Because they were being transported, they had extra bracing in the attic.  As the electrical contractor we had to install a service when they were set up on the site.  The pre-built company would install junction boxes in the attic so that the wiring for the two sections could be spliced.

Sometimes there was extra work involved because the houses would be set with the wrong end toward the electrical service supply pole.  If the home owner also wanted a garage, then there would be more work in wiring the garage after it was added to the home.

For awhile these homes would be shipped in from Canada.  Since Canada and Washington State have different electrical codes, there were times when the home would sit at the border while changes were made to the wiring so that it could be imported into Washington.  Sometimes the delay was several days.

On one of the locations where a pre-built structure was being set up, there were already a number of buildings on site.  We had to make adjustments in the wiring for the entire site.

Installing what I refer to as mobile homes, I personally did the work on about 400 homes; about half of them I did alone.  Doing so called for good co-operation between the owners, the haulers, the other crafts and the inspectors.

I don’t think I ever did two that were alike.

Thirty-five or Forty years ago, I worked on a Safeway store on the South Hill.  It was constructed on a slope, so one end of the building had a 4 foot high foundation wall.  I decided I would run my entrance conduit on that end so that I wouldn’t have to dig it in.  However the General Contractor started leveling the ground with a small “Cat”, and since I was using PVC conduit, I had to leave it out until he was done so that it wouldn’t become damaged.  That job was a loser from the start.  I wound up having to hand dig a 3 foot deep ditch to get my conduit installed.

There was a large steel beam running from one side of the building to the other.  It had been installed and the block workers had laid their block to cover the ends of the beam.  We were late into September by then and there was no heat in the building.  One Monday we came to work to find that the beam had contracted enough from the cold that it had pulled the block covering the ends, into the wall area and had busted up the block.  It became necessary to re-design the block layout to account for the expansion and shrinkage of the beam.

Another morning we came to work and found that someone had broken in and stolen some of the contractor’s tools.  Some of our electrical tools were stacked by the back door.  The thieves had apparently been scared off and did not take the electrical tools, either through anxiety or because of forgetting them in the dark.

On Christmas day that year, thieves had broken into the clothing store located at one end of the building.  They had taken a large stack of clothing off the racks.  The owner of the clothing store said that they apparently knew what they were doing, since they had taken only the most expensive items.

In the spring, when the job was nearly finished, water poured into the site and soaked some of the larger gauge wire.  I had to get the wire out in the sun and let the water drain out and dry so that it could be used.

Apparently the inspector missed it or I would never have gotten away with it.  (It has worked fine for these 35 or 40 years!)

I was disappointed in the way the job went.  I did not want my first decent sized job to be a loser.  For that reason, the last week I worked on that job I didn’t turn in any time.