Mosquitoes

One time when we were camping in Quebec, Canada I observed some Canadian mosquitoes walking on the top of our sleeping bag.  They were trying to “drill down” and find flesh underneath.

One of the boys that were with us had a sleeping bag that was of lighter weight.  To avoid the mosquitoes he moved into the car for the night.  He left the window down about an inch for air.  The next morning we asked him if the mosquitoes didn’t come in during the night.  He replied: “No, their bills were too long.”

On another occasion I was working on a job requiring the installation of wiring, circuitry, etc. for an X-ray machine in a clinic.  The crew that does the actual installation of the X-ray machine is made up of specialists.  They will travel from one job site to another as employees of the X-ray machine company, solely working on X-ray machine installations.

Though mosquitoes can be problematic at certain times of the year when doing electrical work on poles, signs, outdoor lighting and the like, they are certainly no problem when installing an X-ray machine.

The two boys installing the machine were from Minnesota.  (I had lived in Minnesota for a short period of time.)  These boys were complaining about the flat prairie in Montana.  They said that Minnesota had rivers and lakes and trees.  I told them that they had plenty of something else in Minnesota, too.  They asked; “What?”

I said: “Mosquitoes.”

At that they said; “We don’t have mosquitoes in Minnesota.”

I replied (sarcastically); “No, you don’t have mosquitoes in Minnesota.”  As I was about to go into some detail about my experiences with mosquitoes in Minnesota, one of them cut in quickly and said; “Last year I only saw two mosquitoes in Minnesota.  They were flying overhead with a calf between them.  One said to the other one; ‘When we get done with this one, let’s go back and get the big one.’ ”

I was just about ready to believe them.

At the very least, I couldn’t top that story.

Storms

One of the contractors who employed me had a contract with the sign company in Great Falls, Montana to maintain a large number of neon signs in Havre, Montana.  At one point we had a real vicious hail storm in Havre.

The day of the hail storm I was driving home into the teeth of the storm.  I pulled over to the side of the road.  I was sure it was going to break out my windshield.  It held.

The windows in our neighbor’s house were broken and the rain blew in damaging their sofa.  The side of our mobile home located toward the storm didn’t have any windows, but it made dents in the aluminum siding.

The storm occurred in August and our garden was demolished, except for the vine plants.  The wind had “rolled up” the vine plants (cukes, squash, and pumpkins) like a rug.  When I unrolled them they had protected themselves.  We had a good crop of vine vegetables a month later in September.

I have heard where hail storms have damaged 100% of cars on a car sales lot; a total loss on the vehicles there.

The hailstorm that month and year required that we go around to most of the signs in town to determine which ones needed repair.  It was nearly every sign in town.

The next day the company in Great Falls sent up a flat bed truck loaded with neon tubing.  Apparently the contract did not allow much down time on these signs.  We worked day and night to replace all that tubing that had been broken.

I learned quite a bit about neon signs on that occasion.

Sometimes in the bright light you could not see if the sign was lighting or not.  I discovered that by running my finger and thumb along a tubing, I could tell if it was working or not.

The work came at a good time as the shop was low on work.  It gave everyone a bit of income.  Later on another electrician and I were talking about the neon tubing being thoroughly broken and he told me what he had heard from another electrician.

This third party individual would go out at night, when work was slow, and throw old fan belts up into the sign tubing, breaking it.  He called it “making work.”

This practice is more widespread and widely used than most would imagine; and it isn’t limited to electrical signage.

But that’s another storm.

Quake Lake

Some time back, while I was living in Montana, there was a large earthquake centered near Yellowstone Park.  The earthquake was so severe that it stopped the flow of the Madison River.  Where the river was dammed up later became known as Quake Lake.

The night the earthquake happened, miles and miles away from the quake center, kitty corner across the state, in a dog kennel about ¼ mile away from our house, the dogs began to howl terribly.

Meanwhile, that night, my wife Becky had gone to bed and I was sitting up late reading.  Our mobile home began to rock back and forth from side to side.  I thought it was some cow rubbing herself on the side of the mobile home.  I got up and opened the front door.  The door opened outward, and the first thing I noticed was the bright full moon.  The second thing I noticed was that the outer edge of the open door bottom was almost touching the ground with each rocking motion.

I heard a sound from our next door neighbor’s house.  It was the wife laughing hysterically.  I called out; “Mildred, what’s the matter?”

She said her husband, a foreman on a lineman crew, was rolling back and forth across the bed, but remained sound asleep.  He didn’t wake up, and didn’t know about the earthquake until morning.

The next morning when I went to work, the fellow I worked with told me that his father who owned a tire shop had been holding a late night meeting with some local business men.  After the quake they closed the meeting.  He went home, got his shot gun, and patrolled the street for some time.  I don’t know who or what he planned to shoot, but it is interesting to see how some people will panic.

One of the neighbors had a house built on a cement slab floor.  The slab had been badly cracked from the upheaval.

Later, a more familiar weather phenomenon for Montana – a hail storm, came through town with high winds.  It did much more damage than the quake.