Working away from home never was an enjoyable way to make a living.  But sometimes you have to do whatever is necessary to keep food on the table.  When I found out how difficult it was, I had a carpenter friend of mine help me build a little camper on a small two wheeled trailer.

It had a bed, a camp stove, and a small cupboard.  I brought food from home each week.  Not having a fridge, somethings didn’t keep well.  One week, about Tuesday, I fried up some potatoes, putting a couple of eggs in the middle of the spuds and sat down to a delicious “home cooked” meal.

I was never so sick in my life.  I have no idea what caused it.  It could have been the eggs, the potatoes, the grease in the pan, or my coffee!  (Many years later we bought a real motor home.  It was self contained with a bathroom, generator, refrigerator, and propane stove.  You could park wherever you wanted! – Truly a home on wheels.  What an improvement.)

One year when the family took a vacation, my wife and children met me in Wyoming.  She had the family car and I drove my old beat up pick-up.  When it came time to go home, she and the children took the car back to Northern Montana and a friend and I drove my pick-up to the job.  It took all night.

I got to the shop just in time to go to work.  The foreman and the crew were already out but he had left me a note.  “We serviced your pick-up over the weekend.  The key is on the hook in the office, go to site “so and so.”

I took the key and went looking for the pick-up.  I walked around the whole building twice.  No pick-up.  I thought that perhaps they had not yet gotten it back from the shop where it was serviced.  However I couldn’t call the foreman because my radio was in the pick-up that had been serviced and was currently lost.

I started around the building a third time, this time taking a slightly different path.  All of a sudden I tripped on something and landed flat on my face in the grass.  I looked at what I had tripped over.  It was a small pipe extending out of the ground about ½”.   I realized if I couldn’t raise my feet more than ½” above the ground, I was more tired than I realized.

When I looked up, there was my pick-up right in front of me.  I had passed it twice.  This had been the third time past this particular point.  So I picked myself up and went to work.  I drank a lot of coffee that day.

That night I didn’t bother eating.  I went straight to bed after I got off work.

One hospital in a small town was a two story building, but only the first floor had been completed.  The hospital controllers wanted to finish the upper floor and I was given the job of wiring it.

When the lower floor was constructed and completed, part of the conduit for the upper floor had been installed, mostly up and down the stairwells, so as to provide wiring access to the lower floor.  However I encountered a problem with the conduit, because some of it was too small for the wiring I had to do.

It was about this time that advancements in wire manufacturing changed the type of insulation used on wiring.  I was able to put more wire in a space than previously, but I still had to stretch the code to the limit to get it all wired.

On this job a brick wall had been built as a decorative statement in the entry area.  When it was completed the building inspector said it was not a good job and that it had to be torn down to the floor and redone.  When it was rebuilt the inspector came again and stated that it was still not good enough and must be torn down and rebuilt yet again.  By this time the bricklayers were getting a little angry.

I only remember something like that happening to electricians one time.  The architect of a project had called for “exposed conduit” wiring.  When the job was completed she didn’t like the look and wanted changes made.

You will always find people in the trades that do rough work, or disrespect the work area or customer.  For instance while working on a job in an Elk’s Lodge building we had to work in an office occupied by a couple of lawyers.  The office was being remodeled, so while we were working in their office they moved out temporarily

A couple of plumbers were doing ceiling work in the office.  Instead of moving the desks out of the way and using ladders, they stood on the desks.  Boy!  Some words flew when the lawyers came back in the office.

I suspect that those plumbers didn’t like lawyers very much.

I do know some lawyers who didn’t like plumbers after that.

Ladders are a wonderful invention.  They are probably as old as man.  They are also a very dangerous tool.  A purely non-scientific and mostly anecdotal conclusion I have reached is that ladders probably cause more injuries than any other piece of equipment in existence.

I imagine there are many books of rules regarding ladder safety.  Each ladder manufacturer has a set of rules.  Probably each individual state safety agency has a set of rules.  There is the national occupational safety organization.   And I suppose even testing organizations have their books of rules.

One of the rules I see often that still puzzles me to this day, is the one that says you are not to stand one rung less than two feet from the top of the ladder.  –  How do you use a two foot ladder?

There is an expression that used to puzzle me; “chicken ladder.”  Then came the time I used a chicken ladder.  It was a ladder nailed down to a roof.  I could see where the expression came from.  It is built like a chicken roost; the term is not to imply that you’re afraid to use it.

Of course the look of a chicken ladder reminded me of an old story about Native Americans on a hill overlooking the building of the first transcontinental railroad.  Their comment was, “Crazy White Man, build ladder on ground.”

I recall hearing of a man that was using a ladder while working on a high sign.  He fell off and landed on the cement sidewalk.  He survived but was crippled the rest of his life.

I had one bad experience with a ladder.  I was working in an area where the cement floor had been “cured” using an oil, making the floor less abrasive than normal.  A lean-to ladder is supposed to be tied off top and bottom.  Foolishly I had failed to do this.  I was in a hurry.

The ladder slipped away from the wall it was leaning on and I fell.  I managed to land on my feet on the concrete floor.  Fortunately, no bones were broken but both of my ankles were sprained.  They were sore for a month.

My father was an expert “ladder faller offer.”  When he was picking fruit in an orchard, with constant use of ladders, if he fell he would roll up tight like a ball as he left the ladder.

Of late, my son David has acquired the name of “Ladder Rider.”  One time he was up on an extension ladder removing and relocating an overhead service.  The service was attached to a 6×6 treated post.  In the midst of the job, while he was at the top of the post, the post broke about 5 feet high out of the ground.  The upper part of the post came down.  The ladder came down.  And David came down.  Fortunately the top part of the post went one direction and the ladder, with David on it, went another.  Neither contacted the sharp end of the post coming out of the ground.  He landed with his feet on the side rails of the ladder, spanning a ditch, jumped off and looked at me like “see there?”

I think the same principle must apply to speed skaters when they fall.  Speed skaters don’t get broken bones as often as you would expect.  When you are moving fast you don’t hit the bottom hard.  You actually skid along.

Personally I have decided that using a bucket truck lift is safer and quicker.