Once more I was sent to a bank to work on a Banking On Line installation.  On this particular job I needed to drill a hole through a concrete wall from a hallway into a room with a plethora of file cabinets.

We didn’t want to move all the file cabinets, and the drill we were using required water cooling.  The hallway did not have sufficient room to set up the drill, so we covered the cabinets with visqueen and set up a hose with running water to cool the bit.

I was told that the wall was filled with rebar made of steel, not iron.  Whereas we would have been able to cut through iron, the steel rebar would perhaps ruin the bit.  I got a blueprint of where the rebar had been placed in the wall.  There was no reference point inside the room with the file cabinets to determine where the rebar was.  It was necessary to determine the location from the hallway area.

In the hallway I carefully measured to an exact point where the rebar was located and marked an “X” in a location as the place I wanted to be sure to miss.  I then calculated the distance from that spot to the floor, measured 30 feet along the floor (a sloping floor), then I turned and measured down two steps and 8 feet laterally, then I turned again and measured up a step and into the file cabinet room 20 feet, then I turned and measured behind the file cabinets, and finally I measured back up the wall and put a dot on the wall where we would be drilling.

The “we” in this instance was a young apprentice that was helping me do all the measuring and marking and would be assisting in the drilling procedure.  I could tell he was doubtful that this method was going to work.  I didn’t tell him, but I was also doubtful.

We got on top of the file cabinets.  One of us would handle the water hose and the bucket to catch the water.  We took turns handling the drill and hose and bucket.  The drill bit was actually a hole-saw that cut a core out of the cement.  We would drill a while, pull the drill out and break out a piece of the core and drill again.  When we finally broke through we pulled out the drill and the last of the core.  There, right in the center of the core was the “X” I had made on the hallway wall.  The spot I had intended to miss.

I said to my apprentice, jokingly, “See how close we measured?”  We cleaned up our mess and I looked in the hole.  We had just skimmed the edge of one of the rebars.

The apprentice was called to another job our company was doing downtown and I finished up at the bank.  Then I was also sent to the same job he had been sent to.  The guys on that job said the apprentice had told them of measuring down the hallway across the room and up the wall and hitting the spot right on the mark.

I tried to explain to the other guys that it was the spot I had intended to miss.  Somehow they wouldn’t believe me.  I guess I had built up a reputation by that time.

One of the banks I worked on in the Spokane area was installing outlets for the B.O.L. system.  (Banking On-Line)  At the time, this was a new and innovative idea.  For instance, a person could work in Seattle, get paid, deposit their check at a bank in Seattle, and their spouse could go to the branch in Spokane and withdraw the money from the account.  Today that sounds pretty common place, but back then it was a new feature.

The installation process required that I have access to all areas of the bank.  That in turn required that I have a set of keys to every room in the bank.  I was given a large ring with numerous keys on it.  It made me very nervous.  I would take those keys home with me and never let them out of my sight.  If money turned up missing from the bank, as a key holder I could be under suspicion.  I did not like being in that position at all.

There was only one room to which I did not have a key.  It was the check counting room.  To enter that room I had to knock on a little window about 18 inches square.  The lady would look over, and if she recognized the individual, she would let them in.  The custodian told me that the glass in the square window could not be broken with a sledge hammer.

I needed to drill holes in various rooms, through concrete walls and in concrete floors, to install the outlets in the needed locations.  The custodian informed me that there were vibration sensors in all the floors and walls.  Therefore, before I started to drill a hole I would inform the custodian and he would turn off the sensors.  When I was done I would once again inform the custodian and he would turn the sensors back on.

Besides the vibration sensors, one room also had very sensitive equipment that could not have dust in the room.  I laid a large sheet of visqueen over the floor where I had to drill.  Then I got under the sheet with the drill in my hand and the visqueen draped over my back.  I crawled under the plastic to the location on the floor where I needed to drill the holes. I got the holes drilled in the floor…and nearly choked to death from the dust before I crawled out from under the visqueen.  Those kinds of tasks have taken a pretty heavy toll on my lungs.

I always tried to ignore what was going on around me as I worked.  I didn’t want to learn what was none of my business.  However, I couldn’t help but notice one often repeated phone conversation as I was crawling around the floor of one particular room.  It went something like this –

“Is this the accountant for (business X)?”

“What does your deposit of (a specific) date show to be the amount?”

There were three people at three desks making these calls.  Apparently, from what I gathered the bank was trying to locate a couple hundred thousand dollars.
I was very careful not to stand up when I finished an outlet and say; “Aye Gollies, I did it.”

I never did find out if they found their money – nor did I want to know.

More later.

The Davenport Hotel had a parapet around the whole hotel roof, about 18 inches high, with a concrete cap on it.  Around the perimeter, pipes stuck up out of the cap.  The pipes were about 4 inches across and six foot high.  On top of each pipe was a light fixture, looking over the parapet about 8 stories to the sidewalk below.

The lights had been out for years and the decision was made to get them lit.  The fixtures had originally been wired in conduit coming up through the pipe in the parapet with lead coated cable inside the pipe.  After a number of years the lead had adhered to the pipe and it was impossible to remove.

We ran conduit across the roof to each pole.  In each pole we would drill a hole, tap a ½” thread, and run a wire through the conduit, through the hole, and then to the light fixture on the top of the tall pipe.

We would strap ourselves to the pipe, stand on the parapet, and rewire each fixture.  While we were drilling the pipe and tapping it we had a rope fastened from the drill to the center of the building roof.  We didn’t want to lose the drill and have it fall to the street below on someone’s head!  We must have worked a week on the project, as there were at least a dozen fixtures.

When we finished the job the other guys and I stood there admiring our work.  There were three more poles sticking up between that building and another building next to us.  The roof on the adjoining building was about 3 stories lower than the roof of the Davenport.

As we were standing there I reached over and bumped a pole with the palm of my hand.  (I wondered why they didn’t want these three fixtures lit.)  The pole broke off at the concrete edge.

We managed to catch the pole before it went over the edge, and laid it down inside the parapet.  We all got quiet.  I felt rather sick.  How we had been hanging off those poles for a week, wiring them!  We picked up our tools and left the job rather quickly.  None of us wanted to go back and disconnect all those poles because they might have been a danger.

Even now, after many years, I still feel a little bit of a shudder.