I worked on the Sacred Heart Hospital while it was being built.  I had the privilege of working with a crew of about 50 electricians.  The building was constructed out of poured concrete.  They used small cranes for several floors.  An opening was left in the center of the building in each floor.  The crane would lift itself up to the next floor and the hole would be poured shut.

For a long time I worked on the temporary lighting.  I would take a long string of wire cable and install a series of lights on it.  Each light string would be installed on a particular floor so that light was available until the permanent lighting was installed.  Then we would take the temporary light string down, make repairs and go to the next floor.

To have room to make up the temporary lighting, as well as repair it, I would stretch out the temporary light string in the yard about shoulder height.  From there I would install the fixtures or make repairs, then take the string inside the building and install it.  Every so often someone would inquire about what I was doing out in the yard.  My response was; “I’m building a fence – our cows have long legs.”

When the building project was fairly well along, there was no more need for temporary lighting.  I was assigned to installing permanent fixtures in the building.  While the finish carpenters were installing cabinetry, I was assigned to work on one of the floors down at the end of a hallway.  I can’t remember what it was now, but whatever needed to be worked on had been changed or had been left incomplete.

As I walked down the hallway I came across a finish carpenter.  I talked to him briefly and continued down to where I was to work.  As I was working, I heard the carpenter say; “Hey, come here!”  I thought to myself: “That was sure a strange thing to call out.”  What did he want?  He didn’t sound desperate and I was anxious to get my work done.  The second time he called out, I decided to go see what was up.

I came down off my ladder and was about to go down the hallway when I heard voices talking with him.  At least two other people.  I thought he had help if he needed it so I went back to work.  At the end of the day I was walking down the hallway, he was in one of the rooms working.  As I passed he said; “You wouldn’t come and help a guy when he was in trouble.”

He told me he was trying to fit a cabinet into a corner and it didn’t quite fit.  So he had leaned the cabinet over to walk behind it.  It reached almost to the opposite wall.  He caught his finger between the cabinet and the wall.  He was stuck there until someone came along to help.

It seemed a strange way to call for help.  Maybe he didn’t like to use the word “Help.” Or maybe he was too embarrassed.

I think he should have used “May Day!”, or just “Help!  Help!”

Kaiser Aluminum Corporation had two plants in the Spokane area.  They were built in the early days of World War II because there was a need for sheet aluminum for aircraft.  Some portions of the facility had been built quite rapidly.

Like a transfer sub-station built right next to the building.  It had been built out of wood.

Eventually the time came when the sub-station needed to be replaced with a steel frame work.  The replacement building work could not be done by shutting down the plant.  This meant working on “live” electricity.  Since aluminum processing, casting, molding, etc requires a large amount of electricity, the amount of “live” electricity was very high.  Very Very High.

There were two men on the crew who had extensive knowledge about working with high voltage.  We paid very close attention to their instructions.  We used a large supply of rubber mats.  When transferring the wires from the old wooden structure supports, we only moved one at a time, and used rubber gloves while doing so.  Take note: these are not the rubber gloves Playtex used to sell for washing dishes by hand.  They are specially manufactured to protect the user in the case of  inadvertent contact with live electricity.

Temporary support poles and beams had been built and supplied for this job.  We would remove one wire from where it was fastened to a post or beam and attach it to the temporary post or beam.  When all the wires fastened to the old post or beam had been removed, the old post or beam was taken out and replaced with a new steel post or beam.  Then, one wire at a time, we would refasten all the wires back onto the new steel post or beam.

For the purpose of this job, they could not use anyone who didn’t or couldn’t listen to instructions.  It was a long, slow job.

Some of the conductors were copper pipes and rods.  As we were changing the structure, we would clean all the copper with muriatic acid.  That function was one I did not understand, as I had learned that copper oxide was a better conductor of electricity than clean copper.  But they sure looked nice, shining brightly in the sun.

No electricians died or were harmed during the course of that job.  The plant was in operation continually.  It seemed to me it would have been more cost effective to have prebuilt the structure, then shut off the power, take the existing structure out, put in the new one, re-attach the wiring to its supports, and then turn the electricity back on.

But then a layman is never aware of all the reasons and is rarely consulted.  “Ours not to reason why, ours just to do and die.”

For quite some time I was tasked to work at the airport.  I had to learn my way around the various “secret” passages.

I would be working in one building wing and have to go to another building wing.  There were some doors that you could use for egress, but they wouldn’t allow ingress.  Other doors were strictly ingress but no egress.  Once I learned where all the hallways, stairways, doorways, etc went, I was able to come and go where and when I wanted quite freely.

The airport was very adamant concerning any extra or unauthorized personnel on the runway.  They didn’t want any of that while the planes were taxiing in and out.  Generally they pretty much ignored me if I acted like I knew where I was and what I was doing.  Looking back I suspect they knew more about me, where I was, and what I was doing than I ever realized.

I did a lot of work in the area of the building’s steam boiler.  As time went along, it became more and more difficult to know which doors to enter and which to exit.

In one of the buildings there was a lounge and a restaurant with cooking facilities.  The back way into the bar was a fairly long straight stairway.  It was possible to look down the stairway, straight into the rear of the bar.

One day when another electrician and I were working on the back side of the bar, we knocked over a bottle of liquid that was bright red.  Hurriedly we tried to mop it up before the bartender came.

Suddenly we heard a scream.  We glanced up the stairs in time to see a woman disappearing through the door.  We continued cleaning up the mess.  Soon a number of security people came to check on us asking who had been hurt.  We had to explain that we had knocked the bottle off the shelf and were cleaning up the contents and the glass.

I was never allowed behind the bar again.  Then again, they never charged us for the lost drink ingredient either.

The airport had a cart that was wheeled off the plane into the kitchen area.  It was plugged into a D.C. power source to keep it hot.  When an airplane was ready to go, they would wheel it out and plug it into the D.C. power on the plane to have hot food to serve.

At one point I had to install a transformer from A.C. to D.C. in the attic space above the kitchen.  I had to brace my knee against the edge of the opening and boost myself up in the attic space.  One of those times when I was boosting myself up, I heard a sharp “pop” in one of my knees.  That knee hurt for many months afterward.

But there wasn’t any telltale red signs to signify anyone got hurt.

The pain gradually went away.

I imagine the airport has changed significantly since those days.