Ewald and I kept working together for about a year. Then North Dakota passed a law that all electricians had to be licensed. Since neither of us were licensed that ended our endeavor. While Ewald went to southern North Dakota and became manager of a local R.E.A. district, I drifted around the country for some time, mostly working as itinerant farm help.

In 1951 I got married and needed steady employment. I went to work for an electrical contractor in Glasgow, Montana. The criteria for employment were “Have you done electrical work before?”  “Yes.”  “O.K. You’re hired.”

The first thing the contractor told me was to “get 100 feet of ½ inch conduit (EMT) and 50 feet of ¾” conduit.” I went across the street to the warehouse. I had never seen conduit before. I took out my ruler and measured across the diameter of the conduit. The sticks in one stack measured slightly less than 1 inch across the opening. The sticks in the other stack (there were only two sizes) measured slightly less than ¾.” I confidently went back to the boss and told him, “I found 100 feet of ½ inch, but only 30 feet of ¾ inch.”

He said, “O.K., put them in the pickup and follow me.”

So, I was introduced to commercial wiring.

I worked for four years in Glasgow, gaining experience in residential, commercial, and industrial wiring methods. One time I was sent to a small shack on the north side of town. The power company had ordered the homeowner to have his house rewired or they would shut off his power.

From the meter to the house there were two individual #12 wires poked though a knot hole to the first light. There was no dis-connecting means. I put on a new service and rewired the entire building. All the while the homeowner (a rather large, robust man – about two sheets to the wind) was loudly complaining it cost too much, and he could do his own work just fine. When I turned the power on, he stopped in his tracks in the middle of the room and said: “Hey, the lights are brighter now.”

I learned a good lesson about resistance.

During this time, an official from the State of Montana came around and wanted us to register as trainees. After four years I received my license as a journeyman and master electrician. I was now an official “Electrician.”

Adrian’s Blog

An Old Farmer Learns A New Trick

After my “no win” with the wind charger I ran tractors for a number of years for various farmers until the time when, about 1948, the R.E.A. (Rural Electrical Association) came into our area. My friend Ewald was helping neighboring farmers switch from home electricity generation to R.E.A. He had broken his foot and could not climb poles. Since I wasn’t working at the time I offered to help.

The first day on the job Ewald strapped a pair of climbing spikes and a safety belt onto me and sent me up the pole. Ewald perched himself on a barrel in the yard and called instructions up to me.

“See that black wire there?”

“Yeah”

“See that other black wire there?”

“Yeah”

“O.K. Put them together. Now, see that white wire there?”

“Yeah”

“See that other white wire there?”

“Yeah”

“O.K. Put them together.”

Thus, I became involved in the electrical trade.

One farmer had built an addition on his house. When we had finished wiring the addition and turned on the power, strange things began to happen. By activating a switch, the incorrect light would come on. Some receptacles would work, and some would not. My friend Ewald and the farmer stood and discussed what could be wrong. While they occupied themselves with their discussion I walked through the rooms and looked at the j-boxes in the ceiling where we had made our splices.

Finally, I got to one j-box, and something didn’t look correct from my vantage point at floor level.  I called them over and said, “Should not that (color) wire be connected to that (color) wire, and not to that (color) wire?” Ewald brought a ladder over, climbed up to the j-box and looked into it. He said; “You may be right.” He changed the connection, and everything worked perfectly.

So, I learned circuiting.

In 1935, I was a barefoot North Dakota farm boy, one of ten kids. We had no such thing as electricity on the farm. The buildings in town, like the schoolhouse and some of the wealthier residences, had electricity. One of my school chums lived in one of the expensive houses. We were playing in the finished basement of his home and started playing “flip the switch” with a couple of 3-way switches. I was totally fascinated by the switch; “How could this thing possibly work?”

A few years later, about 1941 my Uncle Ben died, and we inherited his wind charger. We hauled it out to the farm and set it up on a knoll near the house. To set the head and blades on the top of the tower we rigged a rope and pulley system. It worked well except for getting it up the last three feet. We just couldn’t seem to get the equipment up the last distance to drop the main pin into the socket. We didn’t have any safety straps or equipment that climbers would use. My brother yelled up at me to “Reach over and grab that sky hook.” I nearly did so. There was no “sky hook” and I nearly took the fast way down off the tower. After descending, slowly, from the top of the tower I wouldn’t go up anymore.

We enticed a neighbor to come over and help us out. He put the generator head and blades on his shoulder, climbed the tower, wrapped his legs around the tower, used both arms and lifted the unit above his head and dropped it into the socket. Nothing to it! We had electricity in the house.

We kept the batteries in the storeroom. The storeroom also housed gallon jars of distilled water for the batteries, as well as gallon jars of kerosene. We had one light in the living room, so it was rather dark in the storeroom. One time I went to add water to the batteries and grabbed the wrong jug.

We went back to kerosene lamps and never got electric lights on the farm.