Rich or Poor

I remember meeting many interesting individuals in my years as an electrician.  One gentleman I knew owned a delicatessen across the street from the Post Office in Havre, Montana.  He attracted a great many customers because of his food.

His commercial advantage was due to the fact that he owned several feed lots around the town and could fatten up his meat stock before butchering it for his own deli.  He also had some large ovens for making his own pastries.

I was frequently called down to the deli for maintenance work and to add wiring for additional appliances.

The deli had a high ceiling and frequently I would work over the heads of the staff.  One day I was working on a light fixture on the high ceiling.  The fixture was about 4 feet long and had some of the early fluorescent light tubes as bulbs.  The tube in this particular fixture was almost 2 inches in diameter.

Below me was one of the deli employees, a young girl, either putting something into, or taking something out of, one of the ovens.  At that point I accidentally dropped the fluorescent bulb I was working with.  It landed flat on the floor, right beside the young lady, … and exploded.

The sound was akin to a bomb going off.

The young lady moved like she had been shot.  I’m amazed she didn’t have a heart attack or faint.  Today something like that would get you sued.  As she took time to recover I apologized profusely while I cleaned up the mess.

Some time later I noticed that the deli was no longer in business.  I was worried that I might have been responsible in some way.

After time had passed I was sent to do wiring on a house in the midst of a remodel.  When I arrived I saw that it was owned by the man that had operated the deli.  The carpenter on the job was talking to the home owner and we found out that the home owner, who had owned the deli, had inherited a large fortune.  He had sold his deli and feed lots and retired.

The carpenter inquired of him how it felt to have all the money you want.  The reply from the home owner was that; “It had taken all of the fun out of life.”

He told us that before, when he had wanted to buy something, he saved in anticipation of the purchase.  Then when he finally had the money, he would go buy it.  Now when he wanted something he just went and bought it.

As he put it, it was ‘like buying a box of rocks.”

I thought to myself “how observant.”  The Bible tells us “Untruth and the lying word put far away from me.  Give me neither poverty nor riches.  Let me devour the food prescribed for me, that I man not become satisfied and actually deny you and say ‘Who is Jehovah?’ and that I may not come to poverty and I actually steal and assail the name of my God.” – Prov. 30:8

When I started my own company, that scripture was posted on a wall in our office.

As long as I am still in contact with the earth, I don’t mind airplane rides.  Because of various forms of necessity, I have had to learn to use airplanes as an optional means of transportation.

When I was a youngster if we heard an airplane overhead, everyone ran outside to look at it.  It was a rare occurrence.

The first electrician I worked for loved to fly.  He said he never felt good until he was up in the air.  Many mornings before he went to work he took his brother’s plane and flew around a bit.  One morning he offered to take me for a ride.  It was my first experience up in the air.

(To me it is a feeling similar to climbing a pole or ladder or being in a lift.  I am apprehensive all the while I’m up there.  But I swallow my fear and get the work done.  It is such a relief when I get back down on the ground.)

I asked my pilot boss what it feels like when there is rough weather.  (If you have a tendency towards air sickness this is a question best asked while on the ground.)  He said; “Like this.”  He then proceeded to make up and down waves, with the plane, in the air, while flying,  that resembled sine waves.

(For the sake of description, a sine wave depiction is used when drawing a representation of sound waves.  Now visualize the plane you are in performing a maneuver that looks like that.)

About the second time he finished his second “wave” I told him; “That’s enough!  I get it!  You can stop now!”

The next time I was airborne, I was working for a contractor with jobs all over eastern Montana.  Each of us electricians had a pick-up with radio communication.  One day I got a call saying there was a problem where I was needed about 40 miles away.  I was told to pull off onto an approach, grab my tools and I would be picked up by the company pilot.

The pilot landed on the gravel road and taxied over to my pick-up.  I got in and he took off.  This guy was an excellent pilot.  He had flown a fighter plane in W.W. II.  I think he could have landed on a rock pile.  I was completely relaxed while he was flying.  He was like an expert driver driving a wheeled vehicle down a well maintained road.

When we got to the job he landed in a cow pasture.  Our foreman came while I was working on the job so the pilot took off.  The foreman would get me back to my pick-up.

As the pilot left the pasture I watched him go.  He had to get enough lift to clear a fence at the end of the pasture.  As he flew away I called him on the radio.  I told him; “You had lots of room.  You cleared that fence by at least a foot.”

That was not my last airplane ride.

One time when I was working with another fellow, he received a visit from one of his friends while we were on the job.  This friend told him he was leaving town.  After he left the job, my partner told me what was happening.

His friend had checked his bank account and he had way too much money in it.  He drew it all out in cash and was leaving town before the bank caught the mistake.

I asked my partner if he was sure the money hadn’t come out of his own account.  For the rest of the day he looked a little worried.  He must have gone right to the bank after work to check.  The next morning he told me he had checked his bank account and he was O.K.

My wife and I had a similar thing happen, but it had a different ending.

We would get paid on Friday.  The banks were closed on Saturday and Sunday.  The bank had arranged for us to have prepared deposit slips and envelopes so that we could take the Friday paycheck, endorse it, place it in an envelope with the deposit slip, and deposit it in a night depository.  Then we could write checks on the money all weekend as we needed to.  At the time, small town banks were very cooperative in matters like this.

One day we received a bank statement with way too much money in our account.  It wasn’t a round number difference either.  We couldn’t imagine who would deposit money into our account.  My wife, Becky, went down to the bank to see what was going on.

While the bank people were tracking it down, a Native American woman was pacing the floor and loudly declaiming about cheaters and crooks.  She had deposited her husband’s paycheck in the night depository and never received credit for it.

Apparently the bank had given her deposit slips and envelopes with our name and account number on it.  She had not noticed the wrong name and account number.

The bank managed to straighten it out.  I do think we saved a couple of bank employees from getting a very bad hair cut that day.