The human condition has deteriorated to the point that honest workmen are no longer just “expected.”  That is what I found when I was sent to some large jobs.  Theft was everywhere and on every job.  I have seen men walk off the job carrying fluorescent tubes, and/or new parts and pieces.  You’ve probably heard the song by Johnny Cash – “One Piece at a Time.”  There is a lot of truth in that song.

One of the Government jobs I was on was using a type of oil that cost $70.00 per quart.  It was not usable for any residential application.  At all.  But just because it wasn’t usable at home did not prevent many of the men from emptying their coffee thermos and filling it with the oil and walking off the job with it.  It ruined their thermos and was not usable, but Hey!, it was expensive.

I wonder how many residential garages still have a quart of that oil that nobody knows how to use or what it is for.

One time I was driving a truck for an electrical contractor and parked it on the street at the job.  The spare tire was mounted in front of the radiator.  One of the times I came out of the building to my truck the tire and wheel were gone.   I immediately called the shop.  They were to report it to the authorities and I had to return to the shop without a spare.

A couple days later, one of the men in the office approached me a asked what I got for the tire.  I asked; “What tire?”

“The one that was a spare on your truck.”

I remembered the saying “I thinketh the gentlemen protesteth too much!”, so I said; “Not enough to risk my job over.”

Years ago I heard a story about a man who left his job every day with a wheel barrow full of straw.  Everyone knew he was stealing, but they couldn’t tell what he was stealing.  The guards at the shack would search diligently every day and find nothing except straw.

Some time later, one of the guards was on another job with this man, though he wasn’t working as a guard this time.  The Ex-guard asked the worker confidentially; “I knew you were stealing something and I never could understand what.”

The guy answered; “Wheel barrows.”

Before we left Montana to move to Spokane, my father and mother had established themselves in the Spokane area.  My father had done some preliminary investigation by going down to the Electrical Union Hall to enquire about work and wages.

The Union people told him that electrical work in Spokane was good and that the wages were $6.01 an hour.  My father said; “I don’t know what the 1 cent is for; maybe postage.”

By the time we moved my father had passed away.  When we arrived in Spokane the wages were about 30% higher than they had been in Montana.  Within a week of moving to Spokane, I had been called to work.  Right away I was in on some of the large construction jobs in the Spokane area.  One of the jobs required someone to install light fixtures on a large commercial building.  It was around late October/early November – early winter, so many of the guys were reluctant to do the job.  I gladly volunteered to do it as it was a cinch compared to 40 degrees below zero in Montana.

The other guys stood inside and watched me work.  I believe they thought that at some point I would freeze and they would have to come pry me off the ladder, bring me inside, and thaw me out.  That was never necessary.

However the situation reminded me of a story I heard about construction in New York City.  The office workers were looking out the window watching the construction workers outside in the cold.  They made a sign which the hung in the window for the men outside to read.  It said; “It is 75 degrees in here.”

The workers outside promptly made a sign and put it up for the inside office workers to read.  It said; “$12.00 per hour out here.”

It is pretty common that office workers get a significantly smaller pay rate than construction workers, hot or cold.  Even in the mild temperatures here in Spokane that is true.

On the other hand (there are 5 more fingers), it is also true that office workers work more steady than construction workers.  In Montana we always counted on a slowdown in work in the winter months.

One of the new electrical things I learned after moving to Washington was running electricity into a mobile home.  (That was back in the ‘70s.  Today, the politically correct way of talking about them is to call them “Manufactured Homes.”)  The only mobile home I had looked up in Montana was my own.

I have installed the electrical service for some 300 or more manufactured homes since then.  Oh how the National Electric Code has changed in that time.  For many years now it has changed every 3 years.  Today’s rulings could apply to a shop, a garage, a manufactured home or a stick framed house.

When I first started hooking up the electrical power to manufactured homes I was working alone, so I devised some short cuts and simplified wiring methods so that I could do the job quickly.  In some mobile courts (or manufacture home parks) I have hooked up as many as three in one day.

In the early days, all of the homes were set above ground.  Later a “pit-set” came into practice.  The difference being that a pit-set home was set into the ground so that it was not so high off the ground.  It was fastened to concrete footings and gave a finished appearance of a stick framed house.

For homes that were set without a pit-set, you could find varying degrees of height under the home.  Some of those variations called for interesting if not challenging installations.  For example one of the mobile homes was set so close to the ground that in order to connect the electrical feeder to the home, and make the under-home connections I had to slide in on my back, head first.  For that job I was doing a change over from propane to an electric furnace.

As I worked under the home making the electrical connections I kept bumping my head against something.  I couldn’t figure out what it was and it didn’t seem to be overly bothersome.  The soil was very sandy.  When I completed the connections, I had to scoot myself out feet first.  Once again outside, I stood up and felt my head.  There was a significant lump on the outside of my cap.  It was sand mixed with blood.

I looked under the home and could see a board on the ground where I had been working with nails poking up out of it.  To take off my cap I had to remove the lump from my cap.  Then, of course, I needed to wash my hair.  It was a minor wound that quickly healed.

One of the worst circumstances to work in was if the set up crew had already skirted the manufactured home before I got there to do the electrical.  Add to that, if the access hole is on the opposite end of the home from where the electrical has to be connected to the home, it could call for extensive crawling and cramped working conditions.

You know, the electrical inspectors are aggravated by that practice also.  One of those times the electrical inspector refused to crawl under the home to check my work.  He kneeled down and peeked through the access hatch.  Then he asked me how I had done the work.  Then he passed the job.

Eventually nearly all the inspectors came to know my work.  For many years now they have trusted my word on what I have done…..