Power Plant Weir Boxes and other Beautiful Sites

“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”  A line from the movie Apocalypse Now, may come to mind when reading the title stating that the Power Plant has sites of beauty.  Especially the Coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma.  What could you find of beauty at a Power plant with a coal pile, and large metal structures?

The answer is found almost everywhere you look.  I have mentioned before that the plant property is largely a wildlife preserve.  A large man-made lake was constructed on a hill to provide cooling water for the plant condenser.  In the process a veritable Shangri-La was created where wildlife could live in peace and comfort protected by the Power Plant Humans that maintained the grounds.

The second and third summers that I worked at the plant as a summer help, in 1980 and 1981, in order to go to work each day, I left my parent’s house from the back door each morning.  From there, I walked behind three houses, where I climbed over a barbed wire fence into a field.  I crossed the field and came out onto the dead end of a dead end road, where I walked over to Lakeview Drive.  From there I walked about a quarter mile to the corner of Washington where I would catch a ride with whoever I was carpooling with at the time.

During the summer of 1980, when I began working the 12 hour shifts 7 days a week to do the irrigation for the new grass we were trying to grow (see the post When Power Plant Men Talk… It Pays To Listen).  When I needed to be at work at 6 am each morning, when I walked through the field at 5:15, the sky would just be at the point where you could vaguely see.  I didn’t bring a flashlight so the first few weeks were more like feeling my way through the dark, looking for any clues to help guide me to the road and back to civilization.  Luckily the cow (or bull) in the field didn’t seem to pay me any mind.

As the summer progressed, my trek to the corner was a little lighter each day. until I could comfortably see where I was walking.  I bring this up because on one particular morning I came across something that I have never forgotten, and I’m sure I will never see again.  After climbing over the barbed wire fence and turning to go down toward the road, I found myself at the edge of a field of Queen Anne’s lace that was left over from the year before.  That is, the dead stalks of Queen Anne’s Lace (very similar to Hemlock).

I’m sure you have all seen Queen Anne’s Lace at one time or other if you have ever been in a field in the summer, as it is found everywhere in the United States.

Queen Anne’s Lace in a field

The Queen Anne’s Lace I saw was all dead, so the field was full of stalks that looked like this:

Dead Queen Anne’s Lace picture found at: http://weebeasty.deviantart.com/art/Queen-Anne-s-Lace-is-Dead-191471006

The ground was literally covered with these stalks, so that it blanketed the entire section of the field.  Across the top of every one of the thousands of stalks where the head of the plant formed a kind of bowl shape, a spider had weaved a blanket of web on each plant.  The webs were all highlighted with morning dew as the sun had just enough light to brighten the dew on the webs so that the field appeared as if it had a magic blanket of silk laid across the top of it.

When I came to the edge of the field of Queen Anne’s stalks all covered with dew covered webs I just stood there in amazement.  I knew that I was going to be the only person to ever view this beautiful site.  So, I tried to absorb as much of it into my brain as I could.  I realized that God had the thousands of tiny spiders work through the night weaving these webs and that He had materialized the dew softly across the field.

Similar to this, but the webs were finer making them look like little blanket on each plant

I knew I couldn’t remain there all morning and there was no way around the quilt of webs, so I finally had to bring myself to walk through the masterpiece.  I mention this moment in my Power Plant life because you never know where something of great beauty is going to show up.

This brings us back to the plant where there are hidden places around the lake called Weir Boxes.  Those who regularly work with Weir Boxes use them to measure the water flow through an irrigation system.  The plant used weir boxes to measure the amount of leakage from the various dams around the main lake and an auxiliary lake used as a holding pond for water before being released to the lake once it is tested for purity.

The plant Weir Boxes look a lot like this

The flow rate can be measured by the amount of water flowing through the V shaped notch.  When the lake was first built it was important to monitor the 6 weir boxes located around the lake to make sure the dams were stable and were not leaking.  The water that leaked through the dam was generally routed through the weir boxes that were placed at the foot of the dry side of the dam by the use of a kind of “french drains” that were put in place when the dam was built.

As a summer help, when it came time each month for the weir boxes to be checked, we would get in a pickup with some industrial sized Weed Eaters in the back and head for a trip around the lake.  We would locate each weir box, and clean out any weeds or brush around them.  Then we would mow a path through the weeds from the road to the weir boxes so the person coming by to inspect the weir box wouldn’t have to walk through the high brush to the box, possibly stepping on snakes and other native scary creatures.

When we did this task, it was usually the first thing we did in the morning.  I know to Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, he loved the smell of Napalm in the morning, but I was more partial to the smell of freshly shredded weeds and grass.  It was the only cool part of the day.  It was only going to get hotter and sticker from there.  So, I have always had a pleasant memory of doing Weir Box detail.

This reminds me of a trick that Stanley Elmore, the foreman over the summer helps, taught me.  Since we would spend days on end going down a roadside with either a heavy duty weed wacker

Weed Chopper

Or an Industrial Weed Eater strapped onto a shoulder harness chopping weeds all day:

One with two handles like this one

Stanley told me that in order to keep the mosquitoes away, you eat a banana in the morning before you leave the shop.  For some reason by eating the banana, the mosquitoes would leave you alone.  I worked like a charm, and I made sure that my mom had a stock of bananas in the house for my lunch each morning.  It wasn’t until I was in the electric shop that it was discovered that Avon had a skin oil product that repelled mosquitoes while leaving your skin soft and plush and nice smelling at the same time.  It is called:  “Skin So Soft”.

So now the secret is out why the Big Brawny He-man Power Plant Men smell so good and have such Beautiful Skin (no.  I’m just kidding.  They don’t really have beautiful skin — believe me!).  It later became marketed as an insect repellent.  It is still that way today.  I suspect that the secret ingredient in Skin So Soft is Banana Oil.

Another trick that Bill McAllister taught me was that when Arthritis is bothering you, you just spray some WD-40 on your joints and rub it in, and it fixes it right up.

A can of WD-40

I told my dad a Veterinary Professor at Oklahoma State University about this.  He told me that WD-40 had the same solvent in it that was used by veterinarians to rub medication on horses that helps the medication absorb into the animal.  He warned that using WD-40 on your joints to lubricate your arthritic joints may make them feel better, but at the same time it pulls in the other chemicals found in the product that you wouldn’t want in your body.

The first summer when I was a summer help and I was in a truck driving around the perimeter of the new lake, that was still being filled, with Dee Ball looking for anything unusual, we spied what at first looked like a Muskrat near the edge of the water.

A Muskrat

Dee stopped the truck and climbed out to get a closer look.  A Muskrat looks somewhat like a big rat and sort of like a beaver.  What we were seeing looked more like an otter than a beaver.

An otter

But it wasn’t quite like an otter either.  It was more furry. and dark.  Dee knew what it was after watching it for a minute.  He told me.  “That is a Mink”.  My first thought was how does this Dee Ball know what a Mink is?  He sounded so definite.  To me Dee Ball, though he was in his early 40’s at the time, looked like an old farmer who had a hard life.  He acted half crazy part of the time, though he was always respectful and kind.  At least when he wasn’t mad at you for playing a joke on him.

So, later I went and looked it up, and you know what?  He was right.  He had told me that it was unusual for Minks to be this far south, and again I wondered how he knew so much about something that wasn’t even from around there.  He said that the mink must have followed the Arkansas river on down to the lake.  Pointing toward the north with his finger… and tracing it down until he pointed at the lake…. (that way he could show me how he was processing the journey of the Mink to the lake).  I thought maybe some ranger had put posters up around the lakes up north letting the animal life know that a new animal preserve had opened up in Northern Oklahoma where even a Mink could live in peace knowing they would be safe from hunters and trappers.

This is what we saw.  An American Mink

I remember Dee telling me that it was the tail of the mink that gave it away.

I have mentioned in the Post about Power Plant Men Taking the Temperature Down By The River that Bald Eagles migrate to the Power Plant every winter.  This brings bird watchers to the lake to watch the Eagles.  There is a link to view an Eagle’s nest on the Web.

The Cameras on Sooner Lake North of Stillwater

I have had the privilege along with the other Power Plant Men to watch these majestic birds, the symbol of the strength of our nation, each winter while I worked at the plant.  I have seen a bald eagle swoop down onto the lake and grab a fish from the water.

Bald Eagle Catching a Fish

What a beautiful site!

The plant itself has a beauty of its own.  When you visit the plant at night, you find that it takes on a surreal atmosphere.  The same hissing of steam through the pipes is heard.  The same vibration of the boiler and the bowl mills can be felt.  But the plant lights up like a ship on the ocean.

The lake on the hill with the Power Plant in the distance at sunset

You can’t see the light here, but if you ever travel from Stillwater to Ponca City during the night, you see what looks like a huge ship lit up floating above the landscape off in the distance.  It is truly a beautiful site.