What’s That Red There?
For quite some time I was tasked to work at the airport. I had to learn my way around the various “secret” passages.
I would be working in one building wing and have to go to another building wing. There were some doors that you could use for egress, but they wouldn’t allow ingress. Other doors were strictly ingress but no egress. Once I learned where all the hallways, stairways, doorways, etc went, I was able to come and go where and when I wanted quite freely.
The airport was very adamant concerning any extra or unauthorized personnel on the runway. They didn’t want any of that while the planes were taxiing in and out. Generally they pretty much ignored me if I acted like I knew where I was and what I was doing. Looking back I suspect they knew more about me, where I was, and what I was doing than I ever realized.
I did a lot of work in the area of the building’s steam boiler. As time went along, it became more and more difficult to know which doors to enter and which to exit.
In one of the buildings there was a lounge and a restaurant with cooking facilities. The back way into the bar was a fairly long straight stairway. It was possible to look down the stairway, straight into the rear of the bar.
One day when another electrician and I were working on the back side of the bar, we knocked over a bottle of liquid that was bright red. Hurriedly we tried to mop it up before the bartender came.
Suddenly we heard a scream. We glanced up the stairs in time to see a woman disappearing through the door. We continued cleaning up the mess. Soon a number of security people came to check on us asking who had been hurt. We had to explain that we had knocked the bottle off the shelf and were cleaning up the contents and the glass.
I was never allowed behind the bar again. Then again, they never charged us for the lost drink ingredient either.
The airport had a cart that was wheeled off the plane into the kitchen area. It was plugged into a D.C. power source to keep it hot. When an airplane was ready to go, they would wheel it out and plug it into the D.C. power on the plane to have hot food to serve.
At one point I had to install a transformer from A.C. to D.C. in the attic space above the kitchen. I had to brace my knee against the edge of the opening and boost myself up in the attic space. One of those times when I was boosting myself up, I heard a sharp “pop” in one of my knees. That knee hurt for many months afterward.
But there wasn’t any telltale red signs to signify anyone got hurt.
The pain gradually went away.
I imagine the airport has changed significantly since those days.