I have replaced many poles for electrical reasons.  Most of the time, it took more than one person to do the job.  We would remove the meter, wiring, light fixture, grounding, etc. from the pole.  Then a crane would come in to lift the old pole out and drop in a new pole in the existing hole.  Then the meter, wiring, fixture, and all the rest would be reattached.

This was usually a whole day job for two men and a crane operator.

One time I was sent to replace a pole by myself.  I transported the new pole on my ’48 Ford flatbed pickup truck.  The large end was at the back of the pickup bed and the top end of the pole was angled up over the cab of the pickup.  Allow me to interject here, a short description of my pickup.  Along the back of the cab and sticking up over it I had a rack with round “stakes”.  These stakes were spaced along the length of the back of the pickup cab, about 1 foot apart.

Therefore, as I traveled with the pole on the pickup, it was held in place by one of the round stakes on each side of the pole.

When I got to the job, the old pole was out already.  I cleaned out the hole and angled a flat board into the hole as a skid plate down into the hole.  I slowly backed my pickup toward the hole, lowering the large end into the hole.

About this time I realized that as the large end went down, the smaller, top end of the pole would rise off of the rack of the pickup and would reach a state of uncontrollable activity.  It could roll sideways or twist and fall, or any other number of catastrophic eventualities.  If it did so while I was in the cab, … ooops!

Just down the hill there was a parked car – directly in reach of the pole should it go that direction.  I realized that I should have provided a guide of some kind at the back end of the pick up to prevent any such occurrence.

My procedure became one of back up a little, check the pole, back a little, check, back a little, check, etc. etc. etc.  Eventually the pole was high enough and the larger end was far enough into the hole that I could manipulate the pole by hand.

After I had the pole up I sat down on the back of the pickup and rested until my heart had slowed down to a normal speed.

I contemplated how I would build the needed guide for the next time I needed to plant a pole singlehandedly.

I never had to do a pole like that again.

Also, I never built the guide.

Sometimes it’s better not to work alone.

On a commercial job in Spokane, Washington, we had a man come up from California to work with us.  At that time the Union allowed one man to work in our area or on our job from out of state.  The man that we had was made our foreman/superintendent.

At the time the electrical regulations in California were not as strict as the ones in Washington, and this man had done mostly residential work in California.  With all that being said, and looking back on the experience, I developed a bit of a pre-judgment about him.

From my perspective he seemed a bit shy of the necessary knowledge needed for a commercial job.  This to me was especially evident in the way he wanted the heating wired and installed.  I felt that his experience in the warmer climes of California was skewing his requirements for heating in Washington.

Then I found out, realized, had pointed out to me; that the facility we were wiring was to be a manufacturing plant for electronics.  The heat generated by the manufacturing process was being re-allocated for use as building heat.

I realized that the knowledge deficiency had been my own.

I should have given the California guy a little leeway.

This particular job had a feeder ran in three 4” conduits with Number 4/0 wire.  There was a junction box in the ground on each of the conduit runs.

When you run parallel runs of wire feeder, each individual wire is required to be of the exact same length, insulation, and size.  Some electrical inspectors are very strict about this requirement.  When we came to make up the wires in the bottom of the 600 Amp panel, it was impossible to keep the wires the same length as we landed them in the terminals.

I made some objections about the circumstance, but no one objected to changing the length of the parallel wires.

I learned that this rule had a lot of leeway.

My bad.

When I first started working and carrying a lunch, the current available lunch carrier was either a paper bag or a metal box.  The metal boxes had a round top where a small thermos could be carried.  The thermos would hold hot or cold liquid.  (It was not wise to put both in at the same time.)

Many workmen became very imaginative about the use and design of their lunch box.  For instance one of the first innovations I saw was a change in the thermos carrying portion of a metal lunch box.  The thermos size wasn’t large enough for some guys.  They would open up the end of one side of the box so that it would accommodate a longer thermos inside.

I mentioned previously about the guy that installed a “hot-plate” in his lunch box.  He took the heating element out of a clothes iron and installed it in his box.  He put a metal plate on top of it and fed the plug and cord outside the box.  He would put a cup of soup and a sandwich on it and fifteen minutes before lunch his box-lunch would get plugged in.  I wondered what he would do with his fruit or metal eating utensils, but it worked for him.  At lunch time, he had a hot meal.

I expect an electrician could have added a thermostat to the arrangement, but I never heard that anyone did.

When I first started hiring employees, I encouraged them to bring a lunch and not go out to a fast food place.  My feeling was that a healthier lunch helps you think more clearly, and promotes continued high production for the full 8 hour day.

After a few years you couldn’t buy a metal lunch box anymore.  Now they are all made of “melt-able” materials.  However with new technology you can get a lunch box that will keep your food warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

I have also seen the next iteration of that old “heated” lunch box.  You can now purchase a lunch box that works off of a 12 volt system to provide heating or cooling.

I wanted to buy one for each of my men, … but they weren’t inexpensive enough.