Power Plant Men’s Club Prizes and a Story of Luck
My wife used to wince a little each time I told her I would be late coming home that evening because I was going to the Men’s Club dinner after work. Not because I was going to be spending the evening at the Raccoon Lodge with Ralph Cramden:
Ralph and Norton at the Raccoon Lodge
It wasn’t because I would come home Blotto’ed after an evening of drinking. No. The reason my wife would cringe at the thought of Men’s Club was because about half the time I went to Men’s Club I would come back with some sort of prize.
You see… I have always been cursed with being lucky. It came in handy sometimes because there were times when I was flying by the seat of my pants and if I wasn’t just plain lucky, things would have ended quite suddenly and there would not have been any “rest of the story.”
Others in the Electric shop recognized that I was lucky and would try to take advantage of it by having me buy the squares in the football pots and they would pay me back. Those types of things never really worked. I tried to pass my luck on by proxy, but it didn’t seem to rub off.
Sure in the early days, Men’s Club was held offsite at a lodge. At those dinners, there were alcoholic beverages being served. That was back during the summer of 1979 when I was 18. I was barely old enough to drink the 3.2% beer from a convenience store in Oklahoma at the time.
I didn’t have a car, so I had to rely on Steve Higginbotham driving me home in his Junky Jalopy. (See the post: “Steve Higginbotham in his Junky Jalopy Late for the Boiler Blowdown“). He acted as if he had been drinking even if he hadn’t been… or maybe he had and I just didn’t know it.
By the summer of 1980, after David Hankins was killed in an automobile accident while driving home from a Men’s Club event, alcohol was no longer served and most Men’s Clubs at our Power Plant were held On-Site.
The Women’s Club however was still held off-site. You see, in order to be fair, the Women’s Club was given the same amount of money that the Men’s Club was given. Only there over 300 men and only about 15 women. So the Women had even better prizes than the Men.
I suppose it was when they decided to have Men’s Clubs in the break room at the plant that they decided they needed to do something to make it worthwhile. They tried having interesting speakers, but listening to Bill Gibson (Gib) tell jokes would only go so far. After all, even though he could tell jokes as well as any other storyteller at the plant, we could hear him any day of the week. So it was decided to start having drawings for prizes.
Prizes were good. Everyone likes prizes. After all, when you won a prize it was given to you freely. You didn’t have to put on a show or stand on your head or anything to get it. You just had to walk the gauntlet of Power Plant Men oogling your new fishing rod, or tackle box wishing they had won it instead of you, and asking you if you would like to trade it for an old busted up pair of Channel Locks.
There were some of us that seemed to win prizes all the time. Some may have even won enough prizes to furnish their house with prizes from Men’s Clubs. Me? I did a pretty good job of furnishing my garage.
Here are some of the gifts I won:
Everything in this picture is a Power Plant Men’s Club prize except for the cat food
If you look closely at this picture you will see that even after 20 years, the “Heavy Duty Double Gear Cable Puller” is still in the box. — Yeah. I never had a chance to use it. Believe me…. I have been waiting desperately for the day when I can say. “I have a tool for that!” Just like Bob Kennedy used to say (See the Post, “Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy“). Alas… the “come-along” is still in the box.
I did use the floor jack on my riding lawn mower when i had to change the tires. The tackle box actually has Tackle in it. the cooler has been used a lot. The camping chair, not so often. I have never used the Emergency blinking light combination air compressor, that hooks up to a car battery for power.
I won many other prizes, but these are the prizes that I still have readily available in my garage. You can see that I dragged them all into the kitchen this evening for the picture. My wife was sitting on the couch when I came into the room with a floor jack under one arm, and a combination light slash air compressor under the other arm holding a tackle box in one hand the cooler in the other.
She asked me what I was doing, (with a look of anticipation). I suddenly realized that the look of hope in her eyes was because she thought that I had a momentary lapse of civility and was going to be throwing out some junk from the garage. I caught a glimpse of disappointment when I told her I was writing my blog post. — What? throw away something from the Power Plant? Do I act like I have dementia?
My son walked into the kitchen to quench his thirst and saw the assorted items arranged across the kitchen floor and asked, “Why is all this junk here in the kitchen?” I explained that I was writing my blog and these were some of the things I won at Men’s Club at the Power Plant. “Oh. Ok,” he said as he gave me a side-glance that said, “whatever dad.”
After having collected all sorts of really good junk over the years at the plant, Terry Blevins who had been a fellow electrician for 11 of the 18 years I had spent in the shop was sitting across from me during dinner and the subject of winning prizes came up.
I never liked to mention to others how I won a prize half the time I went to a Men’s Club, because they used to give the other lucky people such a hard time about it. Accusing them of cheating because they were always winning. It seemed like Fred Turner was another lucky person that came away with a lot of loot.
Anyway, When Scott Hubbard and I were talking to Terry, he mentioned that he had never won a prize at Men’s Club. What? I couldn’t believe it. He had to repeat it many times before it sunk into my thick skull. I must have had more than 20 Men’s club prizes by that time and Terry had never ever won a prize. How does that happen?
I recognized that I was lucky early on. When I was in college I would count on it. I also contributed it with having Saint Anthony as one of my best friends. He is the saint of finding lost items. Here are a couple of examples that happened in just one night.
I had arrived in Columbia, Missouri my senior year in college from Christmas break in a brand new Honda Civic. It was early January, 1982. This was the same Honda Civic I just re-posted about earlier this week (See, “How Many Power Plant Men can You Put in a 1982 Honda Civic“).
My friend Ben Cox had come over to the dorm and we decided to go eat at a natural food store just northeast of the campus. So, we took my car. The roads were icy. That was fine with me. Not only was I lucky, but I was experienced in driving on ice, having learned to drive in Columbia.
Now, when I say the roads were icy. I mean.. with ice. Not packed snow. So, with Ben sitting next to me in the Honda, in the dark as I made my way up Locust Street going east. I was timing my speed so that I would hit 9th street (The Strollway) just as the light turned green, because if I had to stop, it would be difficult since I would be stopping on the slope of a hill and would probably start sliding back down.
Just as I arrived at 9th street the light turned green and I slid right through the intersection right on time. The only problem was that there were two cars going each direction on 9th street (one in front of the Missouri Theater and the other in front of the Calvary Episcopal Church), and they were not able to stop.
So, I was caught directly between two cars. There didn’t appear to be anyway out of this predicament. That was when I found that my Honda had a tendency to spin out of control on ice for no apparent reason.
As I slid across the intersection my car began to spin around. Just as I was in the middle of the intersection and the two other cars were skidding by me, I had turned parallel with them. As they passed by, all three cars continued spinning and going through the intersection, pirouetting as in a ballet, so that as the car going north was just passing by, the front of my car came around and pointed back in the direction of travel (I had spun 360 degrees), and I continued on my way as if nothing had happened. Whew… — Yeah. My pants were still dry at that point… — see how lucky I was? Dry Pants!
Anyway. I went one more block and parallel parked directly across from the Greyhound bus depot. Ben climbed out of the car and made some sort of comment, though I couldn’t quite hear him. I noticed he was walking a little funny. Maybe his pants weren’t as lucky.
Anyway. We walked the two blocks to the restaurant slash health food store called “The Catalpa Tree”. We ate something that had fried tofu in it that tasted like the tofu had went bad some time last summer… — No. That wasn’t part of the story about how lucky I am.
Anyway. After eating Ben and I walked back to my car. As we were approaching the car, another car began rolling back out of the Greyhound bus depot directly toward my car. There was no one behind the wheel. All that Ben and I could do was stand there and stare at it heading directly into the side of my car.
The car had rolled out into the street and was bound to smash right into my brand new car. Then all of the sudden another car came sliding down the road right between my car and the approaching one. The rogue car smashed into the side of that car instead.
When the car with no driver from the bus depot came to a smashing stop, two little boy heads peered up from the front seat. You see. Their mother had left the two kids in the car while she went into the bus station to do something. She had left the car running to keep her children warm in the sub-freezing weather. Well…. oops.
After making sure that everyone was all right, I climbed into my car and drove away. Within an hour… two incidents where I could have had my new car smashed through no real fault of my own, instead I came out unscathed. — That has been the story of my life — well.. Not to tempt fate…
My luck hasn’t changed… I still end up bringing home things that I win at different functions. Sure some functions everyone comes home a winner. But there are times when it just isn’t fair to the my coworkers.
I have a number of stories since I have been at Dell, but they are all similar to this one story…. A couple of years ago, I attended a Well At Dell event where a special speaker that was a Champion Runner from Burundi Africa was speaking about everything he went through to reach this point in his life. He survived an attack during the war between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes. His name is Gilbert Tuhabonye.
Gilbert Tuhabonye
Tuhabonye was a lucky person. Or you may say that he has a large guardian angel. On October 21, 1993 while he was in High School, a group of Hutu attacked his school. They took more than 100 students and teachers, beat them and packed them in a school room then burned the building down with them in it. After being burned, nine hours later he took the charred bone of another student and used it to break out of the building where he ran to safety.
Anyway. I went to go listen to this remarkable man speak in a large meeting room on the Dell Campus in Round Rock, Texas on October 21, 2010. 17 years to the day after Gilbert’s tragedy, and the beginning of his new life.
I arrived early and was the first person in the room that wasn’t someone setting up the room for the event. I walked up the middle row with the pick of any seat. I went the the third row on the left and sat on the chair in the middle of the row.
The people that were setting up the room all smiled at me. They had all seen me, as I had been working out in the gym where they all worked. I said hi back to them.
Anyway at the end of the inspirational talk by Gilbert, he announced that one person in this room was going to get a free copy of his book. They just had to look under their seat and if they had a paper taped under it then they were the winner. — Of course… I had the pick of chairs in the room… so you know what happened. Yep. Here is the book:
Gilbert’s Inspirational book
I could go on and on… maybe I will later when I talk again about how lucky I was to just miss a falling piece of metal that would have killed me, but I had stopped to tie my shoe…
Sure I’m lucky. Today is September 27. It is one of those days that sticks in my mind because both tragedies and good things have happened on this day in the past. On September 27, 1980 I was lucky enough during a tragic situation when the world was turned upside down, that I became friends with a young beautiful person named Kelly.
Kelly became my wife 5 years and 3 months later. After all the times I have been lucky enough to win some prize even when I wasn’t really trying, I can surely say that on that one day when I really wasn’t looking, I began a relationship with the most remarkable person I have ever met. It has been exactly 33 years since that day, and I still believe that it is the luckiest day of my life.
How Many Power Plant Men Can You Put in a 1982 Honda Civic? — Repost
Originally Posted on September 21, 2012:
Not long after I became a full time Power Plant employee as a janitor in 1982, I began carpooling with 3 other Power Plant employees. An Electrician, Bill Rivers. A Chemist, Yvonne Taylor, and one of the new members of the Testing team, Rich Litzer. With such a diverse group, you can only imagine the types of topics that were discussed driving to and from work each day.
Bill Rivers usually talked about different absurdities that he encountered during his day as an electrician. How one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing, leading to some times very funny results. Yvonne Taylor would talk about her farm and something called School Land Lease that she farmed, and how she had to deal with the bureaucracy and the constantly changing laws. Rich Litzer would discuss how their newly formed team were learning new things at the plant and often had funny things to say about his encounters during the day. Me? Occasionally I would lift up my head from the book I was reading (if I wasn’t the driver), and ask, “Would anyone like to hear about the training that we received from Johnson & Johnson about how to properly wax a floor using their top of the line wax, ShowPlace?” that didn’t usually jump to the top of the list of most interesting stories.
The Best Floor Wax money can buy!
We did use ShowPlace wax by Johnson and Johnson, and they did send a representative to our plant to teach us backward Oklahoma hick janitors how to properly care for our plain tile hallways and offices. Not the fancy tile like they have these days. If you are over 50 years old, then it is probably the same type of tile that you had on the floors of your school if you went to the standard brick public elementary school like the one I used to attend. But the office area floors were sure shiny after we applied a healthy dose of ShowPlace on them. They taught us how to properly buff the floor and showed us how a properly buffed floor that was really shiny was actually less slick than a badly waxed floor.
Anyway, I digress. Waxing floors is usually something that I tend to ramble about when I have an audience that shows interest in it. Since I can’t see your expression, I can only suspect that you would like to hear more about Power Plant floor waxing techniques, so I just might indulge you later on in this post after I have talked about the three other people in the car.
Bill Rivers was about 10 years younger than my father and I know he had at least 6 children (I think). Maybe more. He told me once that even he lost count. Before he came to work at the Power Plant, he lived in Columbia, Missouri (while I had lived there), and worked at a Tool and Die manufacturing plant. He worked so much overtime that one day he came home and sat down to eat dinner and sitting across from him at the table was a young boy that he didn’t recognize. He figured that he was a friend of one of his own kids, so he asked him, “What’s your name?” Come to find out, it was one of his own children, and he had spent so little time at home that he didn’t even recognize him because his children were growing up and he was missing it because he worked so much overtime. That was when Bill decided to move to Oklahoma and go to work at the plant. Probably at some time when I had moved to work there also, and was still going back to Columbia to finish college before becoming a full fledged bonafide Power plant Janitor.
Bill Rivers always seemed to be having fun, and usually at the expense of someone else. He was constantly playing jokes on someone, and his most common target was Sonny Kendrick, the Electrical Specialist. Sonny was somewhat gullible, and so, Bill would weave some very complicated stories together to draw Sonny’s attention and string it along until Sonny was totally believing something preposterous. — Sonny wasn’t gullible like Curtis Love was gullible. Sonny knew that Bill Rivers was always trying to pull something over on him. So, Bill would just see how far along he could string Sonny until Sonny realized that everything Bill was saying was just made up in his head. — Then Bill Rivers would spend the rest of the week chuckling about it. Which usually aggravated Sonny to no end.
Sonny Kendrick was the only Electrical Specialist at the plant. I suppose he had some electronics training that allowed him to hold that honored position. His real name is Franklin Floyd Kendrick. I first met Sonny when I was the janitor for the Electric Shop. People would call him “Baby Huey”. Since I didn’t know who Baby Huey was, I just figured that it was some character that reminded them of Sonny. So, when I had the opportunity, I looked up Baby Huey (this was a number of years before the Internet). I still wasn’t sure why, unless they were talking about a different Baby Huey:
I didn’t really get the connection, unless it had something to do with the diaper or the facial expression
Bill Rivers had a son that was in High School at the time, and he had the same Algebra teacher that by brother Greg had when he was trying to learn Algebra. The teacher had a real problem teaching algebra to high school students, and Bill asked me if I would tutor his son in Algebra. When I first met Bill’s son, (I think his name was either Jerard or Bryan, I don’t remember now), his life ambition was to graduate from High School and work as a mechanic in an auto garage and drive motorcycles. I tried to show him how interesting and fun Algebra and Math in general could be, so each time I went to meet with him, I would bring him either a puzzle or a book with a story about a mathematician, or a neat Mathematical oddity… such as imaginary numbers, and things like that.
Later, long after Bill had moved to another Power Plant in Konawa, Oklahoma, I saw Bill, and he told me that he his son was working toward becoming a dentist. I don’t know if he was ever able to fulfill his dream, but when I visit Oklahoma, I keep my eye out for a guy on a motorcycle with a Dentist symbol on the back of his Harley Davidson jacket. Because that would probably be him.
The Dental Symbol. it would probably look good on a Harley Jacket, don’t you think?
Anyway, while the four of us were carpooling together, the person that did the most talking was Yvonne Taylor. Now, I like Yvonne Taylor. I liked her a lot. But she was the main reason why I was never able to practice my Ramblin’ Ann rambles (See the post “Ed Shiever Trapped in a Confined Space With a Disciple of Ramblin’ Ann“) because she was usually in the midst of exercising her right to ramble as well. Since she was my elder, (almost my mother’s age), I always let her go first, which usually meant there wasn’t much of a chance for anyone to go second. I finally just decided this would be a great time to read. So I started reading books about different sorts of religions around the world. With the Bhagavad Gita being one of my favorite ones.
I always had a certain attraction to Yvonne, because she had a son named Kevin (which is my name), and a daughter named Kelley (My girlfirend’s name was Kelly). And her son and daughter were about the same age as my future wife and I were. So, in the midst of rambles, I would look up every time I would hear, “Kelley said this, or Kevin said that….” She did say one thing one time that I have always remembered and I have tried to follow. Yvonne said that you never want to buy a house that is West of the place where you work. Especially if it is any distance away. Because, I believe it was when she lived in Michigan, she had to drive a long way East every day, and the sun was glaring in her eyes all the way to work. Then when she had to drive home going West in the evening, the sun was glaring in her eyes as it was going down. So, when you live West of your workplace, you have to drive with the sun in your eyes every day, both ways, and you just pray and pray for rain or at least a cloudy day.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Yvonne’s husband, Pat, had a dad with last name Taylor (obviously), and his mom’s Maiden Name was Songer. My Grandmother’s last name is Taylor (by marriage), and my wife Kelly has a Grandmother who’s maiden name was Songer.
Unfortunately for Yvonne, was that by the time we arrived at the plant in the morning, she was usually slightly hoarse. I don’t know if it was the morning air… or maybe… it could have possibly been the rambling…. So, when she would have to page someone on the PA system (The Gaitronics Gray Phone), she sounded a little bit like the wicked witch. Just like some clothes can cause someone to look fatter than other clothes, the Gray Phone system had a tendency to make one’s voice more “tinny” than it actually is. Especially if your voice is hoarse, and high pitched already.
Gaitronics Gray Phone
So, whenever I heard Yvonne paging someone and I was in the Electric shop or with the janitor crew, I would say, “Yvonne just has the sexiest voice I’ve ever heard. I can’t hardly Stand it!!” Those who were hearing me for the first time would give me a look like I must be crazy. And Well… who knows for sure. I think the Electricians knew for sure.
Rich Litzer lived just up the street from me, so I would drive by his house and pick him up, or I would park my car at his house and we would take his car, and we would meet Bill Rivers and Yvonne Taylor at the local Bowling Alley, since it was on the main drag out of town on Washington Street in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Rich was a great guy to carpool with because he usually had a lighthearted story to tell about something that happened at home, or we would talk about something else equally not serious. Later he was relocated downtown in Corporate Headquarters, and I didn’t see him for a long time, until one day, Rich and Ron Madron came down to Austin, Texas after I had moved down to work for Dell, to go to a school or conference, and I was able to meet them for dinner. That was the last time I saw Rich or Ron, and that was about 9 or 10 years ago.
At this point I was going to rambl… I mean…. talk more about how we used to wax the floor when I was a janitor, however, I have decided to leave that for another post “Wax On, Wax Off and other Power Plant Janitorial Secrets“.
Today when I finally found out that the post I was going to write was about my carpooling with Bill River, Yvonne Taylor and Rich Litzer, I went to the Internet and looked up the latest news on my old friends. To my surprise, I found that Yvonne’s husband Patrick, died on September 12, just 9 days ago. Though I don’t think I ever met Patrick in person, I used to hear about his daily activities for the 2 1/2 years from October 1982 through December 1985 when I used to carpool with Yvonne. Learning about Patrick’s death has saddened me because I know how much Yvonne loved and cared for Patrick. I know she has four sons and two daughters that are there to comfort her. I offer Yvonne my condolences and I wish her all the best.
Yvonne Taylor’s husband for the past 52 years, Patrick Taylor
Power Plant Art of Making a Bad First Impression
I had to stop and think why when I was a senior in college and I went to work in The Bakery in Columbia, Missouri that I instantly considered the grumpy old baker named Larry a close friend. His eyebrows were knit in a permanent scowl. He purposely ignored you when you said “hello”. He grumbled under his breath when you walked by. I immediately thought he was a great guy.
Why? I had to stop and think about it. Why would I trust this guy that acted as if he held me in disdain? Why? Because he acted like so many Power Plant Men I had worked with during my previous three summers working as a summer help at the coal-fired power plant in North Central Oklahoma.
It took me longer to realize that there was a particular art to making a bad first impression. It happened a lot at the power plant during my summer help years. One of my favorite mentors of all time Jerry Mitchell was really good at making a perfectly bad first impression. I wrote about Jerry in the post “A Power Plant becomes an Unlikely Saint“.
I guess some people would read it as acting macho. The person not only acts like they don’t care what you think, but that you are an annoyance and they wish you weren’t there. That’s what Jerry would do. I watched him when he first met Jimm Harrison who was a foreman that had just arrived from another plant.
We were standing just outside what would later become the A-Foreman’s office. Jimm came up to us and introduced himself and asked if we could show him around the plant. Jimm was being extra polite in order to make a “good” first impression. He kept complimenting us even though he didn’t know anything about us. Not that it bothered me. I always liked Jimm. I was glad to do anything he ever asked me.
Anyway. While Jimm was introducing himself to us, Jerry just stood there staring at him with a cigarette sticking out of his mouth. Jerry nodded his head slightly like only Jerry could do with an expression that looked like it said, “I don’t care who you are. You are bothering me.”
I wondered at the time why Jerry would want someone to think that Jerry was a mean old man. I knew better by that time. I had seen Jerry’s heart that first summer and I knew that he really did care about things. I just let it go at the time.
The second summer as a summer help Don Pierce the crane operator from construction that was loaned to the plant would do basically the same thing. He was a tall countryish guy with a moustache and beard that reminded you a little of Paul Bunyan (well. he reminded me of him anyway). I talked about Don in the Post “Why Stanley Elmore and Other Power Plant Question“.
Like this Paul Bunyan only with tinted glasses. Actually, this is a historian named Wayne Chamberlain
When you were first introduced to Don Pierce, he would stand there acting like he was 10 feet tall looking down at you. He would kind of give you a sneer like you weren’t worth his time. He might even spit Skoal between your feet if you caught him at the right moment. Yep. That was Don.
Turned out that even though Don didn’t want you to know it, he was really a nice guy. He liked a joke just as much as any other guy, but when it came down to it, he really cared about you. I would trust Don with my life. Actually, I probably did a few times. However, if he didn’t like you, he might point his Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum right in your face and just grin as you sped off. — That’s right Don. I remember that story.
Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum
I’m not saying that everyone at the plant gave you a bad first impression. There were those obviously nice people that acted kind at first glance. There were those that acted like they genuinely wanted to help right away. Of course, there were those that you immediately wanted play jokes on like Gene Day (See the post “Power Plant Humor and Joking with Gene Day” for one example of the many jokes I was compelled to play on Gene only because he was such a perfect target).
I’m also not saying that everyone that gave you a bad first impression was the kindest soul on the face of the earth. Obviously some people who gave a bad first impression did it because, well… because they really were bad and they didn’t care if you knew it. I won’t name names because well… Eldon Waugh might not like it if I did.
Eldon Waugh was the plant manager from the time I first arrived at the plant in 1979 until the first of the year 1988. If you were under his “control” (which meant, his chain of command), then he treated you like minion from day one. Sure, he could act nice at certain moments, but that wasn’t the norm. Throughout my posts I refer to Eldon as the “evil plant manager.”
That never kept me from praying for him. I figured that even a guy that seemed to admire “all things treacherous” still had a soul in there somewhere. The last time I saw Eldon at the plant I had a little “discussion” with him in the elevator.
It was a day when there was going to be a Men’s Club dinner. Eldon had come a little early so that he could visit people that he used to rule. I met him at the bottom floor of the office elevator. The elevator actually rose 6 floors to the next floor which was called the 2nd floor unless you took the Control Room elevator where it was called the 3rd floor.
As the door of the elevator closed on the two of us, I turned to Eldon and said, “Hey Eldon. You’re not Plant Manager here anymore. Are you?” He replied, “No.” Then as I pushed him around the elevator, I said, “So, I can push you around all I want and there’s nothing you can do about it right?” Surprised, he replied only by saying, “Ahh!!” Caught like a rat.
Oh. I didn’t hurt him. I just humiliated him a little, just between the two of us. When the elevator doors opened we both exited without saying a word. I went my way. He went his. Never a word spoken about it until now.
On a side note… I found throughout the years that all things become equal in an elevator when occupied by just two people. I will not mention encounters in the elevator again in any posts in case there are others of you curious if your names are going to be mentioned in the future. The rest of you are True Power Plant Men, of which I have the greatest respect. Eldon deserved a little payback.
If you met Eldon off of the plant site. Say in Stillwater, Oklahoma selling Honey. He would be a nice old man. So it was with his assistant plant manager. The difference was that Bill Moler would make a good first impression.
Jar of honey Eldon might be selling
Which brings me to those that make a good first impression, only to find out later that they aren’t quite the good person they appeared to be. I won’t go into them because I want to focus on Power Plant Men, and those guys are definitely not in that category. I quickly learned to tell the difference thanks to my mentor Jerry Mitchell.
So, by the time I met Larry the Bakery Man in Columbia, Missouri, I could see through his scowl immediately. I could look right through the facade of orneriness to see that he was no more harmful than I was. We eventually became good friends. He said he could tell me things that he couldn’t tell another living soul. Well at least no other living soul that wasn’t all “country”.
When I arrived in the electric shop as a new electrician November, 1983, I came face to face with Ben Davis. Yep. Bad first impression. Small jabs of insults. Acting like he didn’t want me around. Like I was a nuisance. I was in his way. Needless to say…. I had to like him right off the bat. I knew his kind. He was really a great guy and I could tell.
Ben Davis somehow reminds me of Tony Dow. The guy that played Wally Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver. Ben has always been clean-cut and good to the core.
Wally Cleaver. See the resemblance?
I thought about writing this post because lately I have realized that I have taken on the habit of making a bad first impression. For many years when I am meeting a new person or a group of people, I seem to purposely look or act “unfriendly” or aloof. It comes in different forms depending on the situation. But it has become my philosophy. I think unconsciously until now.
I have even been saying that now. It is my philosophy to make a bad first impression. Just as people in the dorm when I was in college never knew what to make of me, so it is 35 years later at Dell where I work today.
I have found that by making a bad first impression, then I am starting at the bottom of the barrel. The only way from there is up. Sure there is a time when someone will not know what to think of me. After a while when they know me better they come to realize that I’m not that bad of a person. In all the time I have been at Dell (12 years), I have found only a couple of instances where someone couldn’t get past that first bad impression.
For some reason when someone has a low opinion of me and then find out that I’m not so bad, it seems that they like me more than if they understood who I was right off the bat. Maybe it’s because they have set lower expectations and I surpassed them. I’m not sure.
When I think back about Larry the Bakery Man now, I realize the reason that I could nail him so quickly as having a good soul. He was just like a certain Power Plant man that I had encountered the summer before. He was a welder. He would give you the same scowl when he looked at you… or well… when he looked at me.
This welder looked at me as if he didn’t like me. Like I was a nuisance and he didn’t want me around (have I said that before?). Anyway. The more I knew of Dave Goosman, the more I admired him.
Dave had his idiosyncrasies like everyone else, but he had a good heart. He would help you without hesitation if you needed help. You learn a lot about people when you are shoveling coal side-by-side.
I learned that Dave had a kind soul. He was quiet and in some sense, he was shy. He mumbled under his breath like Larry the Bakery Man. He knit his eyebrows when he looked at me just like Larry.
A few weeks ago Fred Turner (a True Power Plant Man) left a comment on the post “Sky climbing in the Dark With Power Plant Boiler Rats“. He told me that “Goose went to his maker a couple of weeks ago. I always liked him.” That pretty well sums up what everyone thought about Dave Goosman.
Dave Goosman
Notice the scowl? Yep. I replied back to Fred. I said, “Dave Goosman always had a smile on his face like he knew what you were thinking….. even when you weren’t thinking it.” Yeah. It was a smile to me… I knew a smile when I saw it. I could always see the humor behind the scowl. The humor that said…. “I’m really a mean guy. Don’t mess with me.” Yeah. Right Dave. He never fooled anyone. All the Power Plant Men loved Dave.
Dave was born 19 years and 2 days before I was born. When he was old enough he joined the Armed forces for a couple of years before settling on a career as a welder. I know that Dave loved his country as he did his fellow Power Plant Men. I think it is fitting that he died July 4, 2013.
Dave shares the day of his death with two of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who incidentally both died on July 4, 1826. Exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams died in Quincy, Massachusetts. Thomas Jefferson died in Charlottesville, Virginia. Within hours of each other, these two great Americans died 560 miles apart.
Thomas Jefferson — good first impression
John Adams — bad first impression
All three patriots.
When the True Power Plant Men like Dave die, I like to think of them meeting St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. I can see Dave walking up there by himself. Handing his ticket to Peter and scowling at him as if to say, “You don’t want me in here. I’m not good enough for a joint like this.” St. Peter smiles and says, “Who do you think you’re foolin’ Dave? This place was made for people just like you.”
Power Plant Safety is Job Number One — Repost
Originally posted September 14, 2012:
I found out soon after I arrived at the Coal-fired power plant in Oklahoma the first summer I worked as a summer help that Safety was Job Number One. I was given a hard hat and safety glasses the first day I was there, and I watched a safety film on how to lift with my legs and not with my back. I thought the hard hat made me look really cool. Especially with the safety glasses that looked like someone wore as a scientist during the 1950s. Dark and square.
The first safety glasses we had didn’t have side shields
I used to keep a pair with me when I went back to school. When I was a senior at the University of Missouri, Columbia, while working at the Bakery on Broadway, I kept a pair with me at all times, along with a hat that I had stol…um…. borrowed from my dad and always forgot to return. (In fact, I still have that hat to this day).
A hat just like this. An Inspector Clouseau hat.
That way, whenever someone suspected who I was, I would put on my glasses and hat and people would think I was Clark Kent. Anyway…. I diverse. I never thought about it being an Inspector Clouseau hat until one winter morning in the parking lot at the plant Louise Gates (later Louise Kalicki) called me Inspector Clouseau.
The yellow hard hat made me confident that I was part of the blue collar working class. Hard hats have a suspension system in them that make them look like it is riding too high on your head. You soon get used to it, but for the first couple of weeks I kept bumping into things because my hardhat made me taller than I was used to being.
See? The hardhat looks like it is floating above this man’s head
This is this because of this great suspension system that causes the hat to ride so high on someone’s head. I learned about this not long after I arrived and Marlin McDaniel the A Foreman at the time told me to sort out of bunch of large steel chokers (or slings) in a wooden shack just inside the Maintenance shop by the door to the office elevator.
Ok. Not this big, but pretty large
While I was bending over picking up the chokers (I mean…. While I was lifting with my legs and not my back…) and hanging them on pegs I suddenly found myself laying on the ground. At first I wasn’t sure what had happened because I hadn’t felt anything and it happened so fast. It seemed that my legs had just buckled under me.
I soon realized that one of the large chokers that I had just hung on a peg a couple of feet above my head had fallen off and struck me square in the middle of the hard hat. I was surprised by the force of the cable and how little I had felt. I became a true believer in wearing my hardhat whenever I was working. The steel rope had left a small gash across the hardhat that remained as a reminder to me of the importance of wearing my hardhat at all times.
Larry Riley used to comment to me that I didn’t need to wear it when we were in the truck driving somewhere. Especially when I was sitting in the middle in the back seat of the crew cab and it made it hard for him to see anything through the rear view mirror other than a yellow hard hat sticking up to the top of the cab.
During my first summer at the plant (1979), I did witness how easy it was for someone to hurt their back. I mean… really hurt their back. I was helping to carry a very large 30 foot long section of a wooden extension ladder. There were four of us. Each on one corner. I know that Tom Dean was behind me carrying one side of the back end. I believe that Ben Hutchinson and Aubrey Cargill were on the other side of the ladder.
As we were walking through the shop, Tom stepped on the floor drain just outside of the A Foreman’s office. The drain cover was missing and a wooden piece of plywood had been put in its place to cover the hole.
A Cast Iron Floor drain cover similar to this was missing
Large equipment had driven over the plywood and it was smashed down into the drain making a slight indention in the middle of the floor.
When Tom stepped on the piece of wood, he lost his balance, and ended up spinning himself around as he tried to remain holding onto the ladder. By doing this, he became slightly twisted, and at once he was in terrible pain. Back pain. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this one event was a critical turning point in Tom Dean’s career at the power plant. He was pretty well out the rest of the summer recuperating from the back injury.
The next summer when I returned to the plant, Tom was working in the tool room. Obviously a step down from being a mechanic. He was also very unhappy. You could tell by looking at him that he had lost the proud expression that he had wore the summer before.
I don’t remember how long Tom worked at the plant after that. I just know that it really made me sad to see someone’s life deteriorate during the snapshots that I had in my mind from the summer before to when I returned to see a man tortured not only by back pain, but by a feeling of inadequate self worth. Hurting your back is one of the most common and most serious injuries in an industrial setting. It is definitely a life changing event.
There were other tragedies during my time as a summer help and they didn’t necessarily have to do with something dangerous at work. One summer there was a young man working in the warehouse and tool room. His name was Bill Engleking (thanks Fred. I didn’t remember his name in the original post). The next summer I asked where he had gone, and I learned that one morning he had woke up and found that he had become completely blind. It turned out that he had a very serious case of diabetes. The sugar levels in his blood had reached such dangerous levels that it destroyed his optic nerves overnight.
Then there was one of the Electricians, Bill Ennis. He would say that he was “Blind in one eye and couldn’t see out of the other one.” He was actually blind in one eye completely, and the other eye he was color blind. So, what he said was actually true.
It happened on occasion that people visiting the plant would be seriously hurt. Everyone at the plant was trained in first aid, and Power Plant Men, being the way that they are, are always willing to do whatever it takes to help someone out in time of trouble.
One day during lunch, a man came to the plant to fill the unleaded gas tank on the side of the garage in front of the warehouse. While he was reaching over the PTO (Power Take Off), His shirt sleeve caught in the spinning PTO shaft and broke his arm.
An example of a PTO shaft on a brush hog
I remember Mickey Postman explaining what happened. His crew was eating lunch in the garage when they heard someone yelling for help. When they ran out to see what had happened, they found the man tied up in the PTO with one bone from his arm sticking straight out in the air. They quickly took care of him and treated him for shock as they waited for the Ambulance from Ponca City to arrive.
It is times like this that you wish would never happen, but you are glad that you had first aid training and you know what to do. This person could easily have died from this injury if not for the quick action of Mickey Postman and the rest of his crew. I believe other Power Plant Men that were there to help was Dale Mitchell, George Alley, Don Timmons and Preston Jenkins. Mickey would know for sure. I’ll leave it up to him to remind me.
I have illustrated these tragic events to demonstrate the importance of making Safety Job Number One. The Power Plant Men didn’t have to be told by a safety video to know how important it was. They all knew examples of tragedies such as these.
Each month the plant would have the Monthly Safety Meeting, and every Monday morning each crew would have their own safety meeting. Safety pamphlets would be read, safety videos would be watched. Campaigns would be waged to re-emphasize the importance of proper lifting techniques. Everyone in the plant had to take the Defensive Driving course.
The last summer I worked as a summer help in 1982 was the first summer that everyone was required to take the Defensive Driving course. The course was being given by Nancy Brien (I think that was her last name) and Ken Couri. We learned a lot of defensive driving slogans like, “Is the Pass really necessary?” “Slow down, ride to the right, ride off the road” (when an emergency vehicle is approaching), “Use the Two Second Rule” (Only, I think it was 3 seconds at that time). “Do a Circle For Safety” etc….
My friend Tim Flowers and another summer help were carpooling during that time and we made signs with those slogans on them. Then when we were driving home in my little Honda Civic, we would hold one of those signs up in the back window so that the Power Plant person that was following us home (Usually Dick Dale and Mike Gibbs) would wonder what it said, and would pull up closer to read the sign, and it would say, “Use the 3 second rule”, or “If you can read this, you are too close”.
That was when I began wearing my seat belt all the time. Before that, it was not common for people to wear seat belts. They only had the lap belt before that, and those weren’t the safest things in the world. Especially since they would get lost inside the seat. I attribute the Defensive Driving Course that I took while I was a summer help at the plant for my safe record as a driver. There were a number of tips that I learned then, that I still use all the time today.
There is one advantage to wearing a hardhat that I didn’t realize until I left the power plant in 2001. It is that you never have to worry about hair loss on the top of your head. Whenever you are outside at the plant, you always wear your hardhat and safety glasses. When I changed jobs to become a software developer at Dell, I would find that just by walking down the street in the neighborhood in Texas, I would quickly develop a sunburn on the top of my head.
During the years of wearing a hardhat, I may have been losing my hair, but it never occurred to me. Not until I had a sunburn on the top of my head. I wondered at times if people would look at me funny if I showed up for work in my cubicle at Dell (when we had cubicles) wearing a yellow hardhat. Oh, and a pair of super stylish safety glasses like those shown at the top of this post.
You know when you are young, and I’m sure this has happened to all of you at one point in your life, you dream that you get off of the school bus at your school in the morning only to find that you are still wearing your pajamas. — Yeah. I thought you would remember that one. Well. I still have dreams of showing up at my desk job wearing a hardhat and safety glasses. I don’t realize it until I lift my hardhat up to wipe the sweat off of my brow, then I quickly look around to see if anyone noticed as I stuff the hardhat under the desk.
Petty Power Plant Jokes Played on Prominent Power Plant Men
Of the 1,500 jokes played on Power Plant Men while I was working at the Coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma, I can only remember a handful of the smaller ones. There are some I’m saving for later topics. Sometimes it was the smallest jokes that spoke the loudest. Especially when great care was taken to play the joke just right.
I think it was the idea that someone thought enough of you to spend a great deal of time setting up a joke just for the one little moment that the person finally realizes that they have been played. It’s when that smile comes across their face that all that work pays off. The realization that someone else would spend so much time just to make you smile was a good indication that they really did care about you.
In the post called, “Why Stanley Elmore and Other Power Plant Questions” I told a story about when I was a janitor in the electric shop and one of the electricians Andy Tubbs had been playing jokes on me while I was cleaning the bathroom. The funniest one was when I had turned around for a moment and when I went to go grab the dust mop, the handle to the mop was missing, while the dust mop was just sitting there on the floor.
Like this, except the bracket for the handle was still there.
Charles Foster, my electric foremen had told me of a time when he played a joke on a welder in the welding shop that was welding away on something. The power to the welding machine was around the corner. Charles picked up the cord for the welder and kinked it like you would kink a water hose to stop the water from flowing. When he kinked it, the welding machine stopped working.
An arc welding machine like this only gray
The welder looked at the machine to find that the power was off. Then he looked over and saw that Charles was standing about 40 feet away grinning at him holding the kinked cable. About that time, Charles straightened out the cable and the welding machine turned back on. The welder spun around to find the welding machine humming away. He looked back at Charles who kinked the cable again and the welding machine again shut off.
Amazed, the welder said something like, “I didn’t know you could do that!” Charles shrugged, dropped the cable and walked off. Unbeknownst to the welder, as Charles left, he met up with the other electrician that had been opening an closing the electric disconnect where the welding machine received its power. Leaving the welder unaware.
An Electrical Disconnect like this one by Square D
In the electric shop there is one bathroom. It is shared by all electricians, and therefore it has a lock on the door because Diana Lucas (Brien) had to use it. But sometimes someone might not realize that it was used jointly by both male and female members of the Power Plant family, and they might not lock the door. So, on occasion, Dee would go into the bathroom only to find that it was already occupied.
Once she entered the bathroom and found that someone was in the stall. She waited around for a while and asked me to go check it out because the guy was taking quite a long time and what at first was only a minor inconvenience was becoming higher priority. So, I entered there bathroom and sure enough. The stall was closed and there was a pair of boots easily visible under the stall where someone sat taking their own sweet time.
Dee finally figured that it wasn’t worth the wait and walked across the T-G floor to the maintenance shop to the nearest women’s restroom. After a while someone else remarked that someone was in the bathroom and had been in there a long time. At that point, it became obvious that either someone had died while sitting on his thinkin’ chair, or something else was definitely amiss.
So, one of the electricians decided to see if everything was all right. That was when they peered into the stall to find that there was only a pair of boots sitting all by themselves in the stall. It turned out that O D McGaha had put them there. He locked the stall, then climbed out under the stall and left them there. — It was a pretty good joke. It had half the shop concerned about the mysterious stranger in the stall.
Soon after this episode, a new sign was placed on the bathroom door:
A Power Plant Unisex bathroom sign
Other little jokes like that were played on individuals throughout the 20 years that I worked at the plant. One small one that is a typical example of many was when Mickey Postman drove to work one morning with a brand new motorcycle. He was really proud of the new machine. Well. Mickey’s nickname at the time was “Pup”.
Mickey had two main reasons why he was a prime target for having jokes played on him. First, he took the jokes pretty well, because he would have a definite reaction. Sometimes good. Sometimes not so. The second reason was that he was red-headed. That meant that when he realized that a joke was being played on him, his face would turn as red as his hair. Everyone witnessing this couldn’t help but smile.
Mickey had worked his way into the maintenance shop from a janitor as I had, though he missed the labor crew (I believe) because it hadn’t been dreamed up by Ray Butler yet. He and I were practically the same age. He is 7 months older than I am. So, I always felt like, “but for the grace of God go I”. No. I don’t really mean it. I care a lot for Mickey and I never personally considered him as a candidate for jokes. I guess it was because he already had a cohort of Power Plant Men willing to play that part.
So, anyway. Mickey had this shiny new motorcycle parked out in the parking lot all day, so it was inevitable that at least one of the many Power Plant Men that had been assigned to the “Play a Joke on Mickey” detail, would happen to pass by the motorcycle in the parking lot. One of them would have felt obligated to reach down and turn the gas valve off.
The Gas valve on a motorcycle
The word had gone out throughout the plant that the valve had been closed on Mickey’s motorcycle so that we were all to expect that about the time that Mickey hit the bridge over the discharge on the way out the gate, his motorcycle would run out of fuel and die. It’s times like this that you never forget. A simple joke. A couple hundred Power Plant men all chuckling as they drove across the discharge bridge grinning at Mickey trying to restart his brand new motorcycle that had died perfectly positioned midway across the bridge. His face beaming as red as his hair!
I won’t go into the Wedding present that was given to Mickey Postman the day before his wedding. I intended this post to be only about petty or “minor” jokes. That one was a doozy. Actually. I will never post anything about it, other than to say that I wouldn’t ever say anything about how the machinist’s blue dye was applied.
Machinist’s Blue Dye
Machinist’s Blue Dye, or Layout fluid is used when honing down a surface to make sure it is flat. There are other uses for it, but that is the one I am most familiar with. I wonder how that blue color looked along with Mickey’s red face…
A example of how the blue dye shows the low spots on a flat surface
Here are examples of two small jokes that took a lot of preparation.
The first one involved Howard Chumbley’s chair. Howard was a foreman in the electric shop. One of the nicest Power Plant Men in all of God’s creation. He was shorter than most taller people. And he was particular about how high his chair was adjusted. Being particular about anything automatically meant that you were a prime target for a joke dealing with whatever you were particular about.
Back then (1984), the height of an office chair was adjusted by turning it upside down and spinning the wheel bracket around to screw in or out the shaft.
An old office chair that is adjusted by spinning the bracket where the wheels attach
So, Charles and I would rotate the bottom of the wheels around 1/4 turn each day. That meant just moving the wheels around to one set of wheels. Not very much. Every week the bracket would only be turned about 1 time, especially given that we wouldn’t remember to do it every day.
Eventually, after 5 or 6 weeks, Howard would go to sit down in his chair and realize that it was lower than he would like it to be. So, he would turn it over on and lay the seat on his desk and spin the wheel bracket around a few times. Then test it and do it again until it was just the right height. Howard probably never thought about why every month and a half or so, his chair would be too short and he would end up turning it over and adjusting it back up.
This was a joke that Howard never knew was being played, but every time that chair went upside down, you can bet that Charles and I were grinning from ear-to-ear to have been there to watch it.
Ok. the last story has to be about Gene Day. After all. There was no one that I loved playing jokes on more than Gene Day. Actually, half of them, Gene probably never knew had been jokes. I have written two posts about playing jokes on Gene Day. One of them was just about one joke. See “Psychological Profile of a Control Room Operator” and “Power Plant Humor and Joking with Gene Day“.
So, this particular week, I noticed that Gene Day was the auxiliary operator for Unit 1 Boiler. That meant that at least once each shift he was going to walk through the Unit 1 Precipitator Control Room that housed the controls for the 84 transformers on the precipitator roof.
So, I decided, this was a perfect opportunity to play a petty joke on Gene Day. I took an Eeprom chip that was used to hold the control program for a Precipitator control cabinet, and proceeded to rewrite the program.
An Eeprom Chip used in the precipitator controls
I found the code in the assembly language code that sent the message to the display when there was an overcurrent trip. That is, when the cabinet trips, the little LCD display would say: “Overcurrent Trip”. I rewrote the code to say: “Gene Day Trip”. This meant finding the code string: 4F:76:65:72:63:75:72:72:65:6E:74:20:54:72:69:70 and replacing it with: 47:65:6E:65:20:44:61:79:20:54:72:69:70:20:20:20. I wrote the program for a specific cabinet in the middle of the precipitator that I could trip without causing an issue in the general operation of the precipitator.
Then I took the chip to the Precipitator Control room and replaced the control chip for that cabinet and left it running. I had seen Gene Day on his way to the Precipitator Control room the day before, so I had a pretty good idea what time he would be passing through. Because no matter how lazy Gene Day was, he was always consistent. (Gene you know I’m kidding…. right?)
Anyway. I spied Gene leaving the control room around the time I expected, so I made haste to the Precip. Control Room and with my screwdriver, after opening the cabinet, I reached down to the tripping mechanism for an overcurrent trip and I tripped the cabinet. Then leaving from the opposite direction that Gene would be arriving, I slipped out of the Precip Control Room and headed for the plant control room to see Gene’s reaction when he arrived.
About the time I was going around the corner in the breezeway toward the Unit 1 elevator, I saw that Gene had already exited the precip. area, so when I entered the T-G basement I quickly called Gene on the gray phone. Gene turned around and went back in the Precip switchgear (which was just below the control cabinets).
When Gene answered the phone I told him that I was looking at the Precipitator controls in the control room and I saw that one of the cabinets had tripped and I was wondering if he had just been out there because the error indicated something very strange. He said he had just been in there and hadn’t noticed that a cabinet had tripped.
So, I asked him if he could look again, it was 1D8. I needed to know what the cabinet display said had happened because it looked like Gene had done something to it. He told me he hadn’t touched anything, but he would go look. — of course, when went to look at it, the display showed: “Gene Day Trip”.
This is the size of the LCD Display on the Precipitator Control cabinets
So, I was sitting at the precipitator computer for Unit 1 when Gene Day arrived in the Control room. As was typical with Gene Day, my head began to waiver and my eyes began to blur as Gene had grabbed me by the throat and was shaking me back and forth. My eyes may have been blurry, and I know that I was acting totally surprised as if I didn’t know what had happened, but you can believe that inside I was grinning ear-to-ear!
Why Stanley Elmore and Other Power Plant Questions — Repost
Originally posted September 7, 2012:
Why Stanley Elmore? I suppose that was on the mind of a few Power Plant Men when the foreman for the new Automotive Garage and Yard crew was chosen in 1980. What did Stanley have that the rest of the Power Plant Men lacked? Why did Stanley accept such a position in a power plant out in the middle of nowhere in the plains of Oklahoma? I have some thoughts about these questions and others that I will share with the rest of the Power Plant Kingdom.
When I returned to the Power Plant for my second summer as a summer help in 1980, I found that the Automotive Garage had been finished and a new crew had been assigned to work from this shop. Doug House, Jim Heflin, Larry Riley and Ken Conrad were there to welcome me. I had only known Larry from the year before and when he saw that I was returning, he actually said he was glad to see me. It was usually hard to tell what Larry was thinking because he kept face even when he was chuckling under his breath. So, I never really knew what he thought about me until he told the others that he was glad that I would be working there this summer.
Then the new foreman walked in. He was a medium height stocky man that had obviously come from another plant and was well seasoned in the ways of Power Plant etiquette. This required him to act as if I had just walked into a snake pit and my summer was going to be a living Hell working under him. Of course I accepted this well, knowing that this merely meant that he had a lot for us to do during the summer and I should enjoy myself.
There was another summer help there, David Foster. He had been hired because he had experience driving a Tractor, and he would spend a lot of the time that summer mowing grass. That is, until he wrecked a new brush hog while going perpendicular across a ditch at too high rate of speed.
Almost Like this without the safety guards and just about as new
(Boy, I’m getting a lot of mileage out of that one picture of a Brush Hog). At that point, he started working on watering the grass, as I did (and you can read about that in the post “When a Power Plant Man Speaks, It Pays to Listen”).
A short time after I had been there I realized that there was another resident of the garage. It was Don Pierce that came from Construction to operate the P&H Crane used by the Plant. Here is a Picture of the same kind of P&H Crane that Don Pierce operated for at least two of the summers that I was working out of the Garage.
A P&H Crane, just like the one at the plant
Don Pierce was a tall person with a moustache and tinted glasses. He was chewing something often that he spit into a cup or a Coke can, that made a squeaky squirty sound each time he spit. He always looked like to me like he wore the same size jeans that he wore when he graduated from High School, even though the rest of him had filled out some. Making him look like his upper body had been squeezed some out of his jeans. Like Hank Hil in King of the Hill:
Don had too tight jeans like this only his belt buckle was much bigger
It didn’t take long to figure out that Stanley Elmore loved to play jokes on people. He would get the biggest laugh from causing someone a moment of confusion. He would shake his head and laugh and say, “oooooohhh weeee” (or something similar). I always had a bigger kick out of watching Stanley’s reaction to someone encountering his joke than I did from the joke itself. As you may have learned from an earlier post “Power Plant Painting Lessons with Aubrey Cargill“, that I was the target of at least some of his jokes. It would make me laugh to know what Stanley was playing a joke on me.
Actually, anytime during my time at the plant it made me laugh to find that someone was playing a joke on me. I remember while I was a janitor that one day while I was cleaning out the bathroom in the Electric Shop, I would first Sweep out the bathroom and then mop it. Each time I turned around to pick up something that was sitting just outside the door of the bathroom, I found that something had moved. Like the mop bucket had moved down to the door by the lab. Everyone in the shop was just doing their normal job. But when I walked out of the bathroom to find the handle missing from the push broom and Andy Tubbs and Ben Davis sitting at the break table acting like nothing was wrong, I had to walk back into the bathroom in order to keep them from seeing how hard I was laughing. For some reason that was the funniest joke I encountered. To turn around in one moment and have the broom handle gone and the broom itself just sitting on the floor with no handle and the obvious culprit Andy Tubbs trying his best to keep a straight face and act like he wasn’t noticing anything. I still laugh when I think about it 30 years later.
Stanley’s jokes were of that caliber. When Don Pierce drove to work one day on his new Harley Davidson Motorcycle, Stanley just couldn’t resist. He started out by asking him if he noticed that it leaked oil. Don said it better not, because he just bought it brand new. Stanley answered by saying that Harley Davidsons always leaked oil.
A Harley Davidson similar to the one Don Pierce had
So, while Don was out operating the P&H Crane, Stanley took a small cup of oil and poured a little oil spot under his motorcycle, just as a reminder to Don that all Harleys in 1980 leaked oil. Then Stanley watched and waited for Don to stroll by his motorcycle in the parking lot during lunch to see what his reaction would be. Of course, Don had been an Electric Company Construction worker long enough to spot a snow job when he saw a grease spot. But it did make him smile to know that Stanley had gone through the trouble of putting an oil spot under his motorcycle. — That’s one way to know that someone really cares about you. They are willing to take the time out of their busy day to play a little power plant joke on you.
I was able to work one-on-one with Don Pierce for about a week that summer when we had to go to the laydown yard by the main gate and organize all the spare cable, rebar, piping, et cetera into neat rows and in some kind of order like from largest to smallest. In order to put the large reels of cable into neat rows, we would line up two rows of very large telephone poles close to each other, and then place the reels on the poles to keep them off of the ground so they would last longer, and not sink into the ground when it rained.
To give you an idea. Some of the wooden reels were taller than me
Don was operating the crane and I was doing my best to use the newly learned hand signals to direct him where to go and what to do. There was a hand signal for everything, and I was afraid that if I stopped to itch my nose, Don would cut the engine and leave for lunch.
I had been studying this chart during break before we went to the laydown yard
We were picking up wooden telephone poles and carefully placing them in a line, and I was standing there guiding the poles into place as they were lowered to the ground. At one point, I had signaled Don to lower the pole all the way to the ground and as I turned to undo the chokers from under the poles, I realized that the pole had been placed right on top of my feet, and I couldn’t move. It was at times like that when I was glad that I was wearing Steel Toed Boots. — A must when you are working in a power plant.
Steel Toed Boots
So, finding myself stuck, I straightened myself up and signaled to Don that I wanted him to raise the pole up. He looked a little confused as if he thought I had given him the wrong signal (again…). But when I didn’t change my signal, he succumbed and raised the pole off the ground. At that point, I took one step backward and with the straightest face I could muster, I signaled for Don to lower the pole back to the ground. I saw the smile go across Don’s face when he finally realized that I had been held captive by the pole, and I smiled back because at that point, I couldn’t look serious, and what would be the point anyway.
During the first summer that Stanley was my foreman, I carpooled with him and 5 others. We would all pile into Stanley’s station wagon and head home at the end of the day. I would be dropped off at the corner of Washington and Lakeview Dr. in Stillwater and would walk the rest of the way home, about a mile down the road and across a field to my parent’s house. We each paid Stanley $5.00 each week for the ride, and we didn’t have to worry about the gas and the driving. It was left up to Stanley.
So, why Stanley? That was the question I was going to answer when I started this post. Well. I think I have a good reason. All during the summer, Stanley was studying different types of weed killers that could be used around the lake without causing harm to the lake itself. He was very conscious about keeping the lake pristine and free from poisonous chemicals. He finally found a weed killer that was approved by the department of Agriculture at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater to be used around lakes. By Stanley’s conscientious view of the Power Plant Property, I could see that he was a good choice for being over the yard crew. We did spend many hours driving down the roadways spraying the newly mowed and chopped weeds with weed killer with the knowledge that we weren’t causing more harm than good.
But that wasn’t the only reason. I think Stanley was put over the garage crew because he took such great care with his own vehicles. I had the opportunity to see the engine in the station wagon that ferried us to work and home each day, and when I first saw it, I was astounded. The entire engine was cleaned and polished and even waxed!
Shiny like this engine is shiny
Even though the engine had over 100,000 miles on it, it looked brand new. Stanley said that he keeps his engine spotless so that at the first sign of any kind of leak, he takes the steps necessary to fix it before it becomes a real problem.
I remember one Monday morning while we were on the way to work, and the Power Plant Men in the car, which included John Blake and another inspector, were talking about what they did over the weekend. Stanley said that he spent all day Saturday cleaning his car. I knew what he meant. That included waxing his engine.
I had the opportunity to go to Stanley’s house one day to drop something off or pick something up, I don’t remember, but what I do remember is that when I arrived at his humble abode, the front yard, as small and normal as the rest of the neighborhood, was so well groomed. It looked like someone had taken a scissors and carefully clipped all of the blades of grass just the right height. The various rocks and bird bath, and other yard ornaments were placed so perfectly that it had transformed this normal little yard into a complete work of art.
A yard not near as perfect as Stanley’s
So, why was Stanley chosen to be the foreman over the yard crew and the Automotive garage? I believe it was because he had demonstrated by the way he took care of his own property that those in the Electric Company who knew that, knew that he was a man that would take care of their property equally as well. So, I salute Stanley for being a great foreman to work for, and never letting the work seem dull. He treated everyone in the shop with respect (except maybe in the middle of a joke). I wish I had a picture to show you, because I was unable to think of any actor or historical figure that reminds me of him. There just isn’t anyone else quite like Stanley.
Comments from the original Post:
Powerplant jokes are the greatest! I remember one time I was going on vacation (as a Control Room Operator) and my assistant was filling in for me for the first time (let’s call him “Dave”) well, anyway the Shift Supervisor asked me if I felt Dave was up to the task (Dave is an excellant operator). I told the Supervisor I had faith in Dave, but he should keep a close eye on him, so the whole time I was on vacation, the Supervisor hovered over Dave’s shoulder like a buzzing mosquito! And to add icing to the cake, on Dave’s performance appraisal the Supervisor wrote “Dave is a competent operator…but needs a little too much personal supervision!!
This is the kind of fun powerplant men have with each other, no one is closer than a CO and his assistant, and Dave was, and always will be a great friend. We’ve been to each others weddings & helped each other through divorces. He’s a Control Room Operator of his own crew now, but we still get a kick out of laughing over the good times we had working together.
A book could/should be written on all the classic power plant jokes over the years. Some of the oldest I’ve heard from the Osage and Belle Isle vintage power plant men.
Something that comes through these stories: There existed in those days a very different attitude toward both one’s work and one’s coworkers, at least in industrial settings. I found it in both aircraft manufacturing and the telephone business.
It doesn’t seem to exist today or at least, isn’t obvious and I think that represents an unfortunate loss to our society…
Prolonged Power Plant Pause Before the Panic
Today when I attend meetings while on the job at Dell and the discussion is about something new, and the manager is looking for input from the team, I usually sit there quiety while the others share their thoughts. This is not my usual behavior as I am usually quick to respond with a quip or something sarcastic.
Later, after everyone else has given their two cents, then if asked, I will wade in with both feet. This hasn’t always been the course of action I would have taken. Actually, I used to be pretty hot-headed. I was usually the first person to respond when someone asked a question. I already had my mind made up about just about everything.
My wife began noticing a change in my behavior a few years after we were married. She would ask me a simple question, like, “Would you like a piece of gum.” I would suddenly go into a momentary comatose state where I would stare off into space and think about it. She would say something like, “The answer doesn’t need a lot of thought. It is either ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”
After careful analysis, I finally figured out what happened. The transformation began the day I entered the electric shop at the coal-fired power plant as an electrician. I described that first day in the post “New Home in the Power Plant Electric Shop“. In that post I described my first job as an electrician when I went to the coalyard with my foreman Charles Foster to fix a room heater that wasn’t working.
The first time I used my new tools, Charles told me to remove a screw from a fuse block so that we could lift a wire in order to replace the fuse block.
A small fuse block like this.
When I was removing the wire (with one hand, as Charles had warned me that an electrician never uses two hands to do this), the screwdriver slipped and shorted out on the mounting screw which caused a brief flash. In the millisecond that the flash occurred, it cut a notch in the tip of my new Stanley screwdriver.
A Stanley screwdriver used by electricians because of the rubber on the handle
This was the beginning of my 18 year career of various minor electrocutions and small explosions. We did things to minimize the chances of shorting out your screwdriver when working on a hot circuit (that means a circuit that has the electricity still turned on). One thing we would do is wrap rubber tape up the metal shank so that if it leaned against something metal with it while the tip was touching something hot, it wouldn’t short out the circuit.
Inevitably, something would happen every now and then and something was going to explode. So you just had to be prepared for that. This is where the “Prolonged Pause” comes in.
Sometimes there is nothing you can do. Let me give you a “For Instance”. One time when we had an overhaul on Unit 1 (we had 2 units at our Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma), Richard Moravek was visiting from the Power Plant in Muskogee, Oklahoma. I have written about him in the Post “Lap o’ Luxury at the Muskogee Power Plant“. Each morning at Muskogee, he and Jay Harris would sing the song, “Nestle’s makes the very best Chocolate”, with Richard whistling as he sang like the Nestle’s rabbit.
The Nestle’s Rabbit
On one particular day, Richard and I were sent to perform a “quick and dirty” elevator inspection on the Unit 1 elevator. It received a lot of wear and tear during overhaul with everyone riding up and down from the 9th floor where you could reach the upper echelons of the boiler. If things didn’t work perfectly every time, then the work would be slowed, and schedules wouldn’t be met.
During our elevator inspection we decided that we needed to change out some lights on the push buttons, because…. well… because some of them were burned out. Which caused them to not light up when they were supposed to, causing some Power Plant workers to become confused because they would forget which button they had pushed when they entered the elevator, thus, allowing them to forget which floor they were supposed to get off.
Anyway, Richard had taken the screws out of the push button panel and had swung the door on the panel open so that the wiring inside was all exposed. He reached in to pulled out one of the push button assemblies so that he could remove the bulb (oh… electricians call bulbs, Lamps… I mentioned that in the post “Place On Light Duty at the Power Plant“, if you recall).
I had reached down into my tool bucket and pulled out a box of special elevator lamps….. Actually, I think it was a standard 6S6 lamp, but it looked like a bulb to me:
A 12 Volt 6S6 bulb
Richard had put his hand out to receive the bulb I had in my hand, so I handed it to him. At that point, a funny thing happened. You see, my other hand was on the elevator scissor gate.
An Elevator Scissor Gate
As I placed the lamp into Richard’s hand, he suddenly twitched and sort of jumped at the same time. When he did, he pushed into me and he began doing a jig. My legs were twitching and I was sort of doing a jig myself, or maybe a jog.
It became apparent right away what had happened. While Richard’s one hand was in the elevator push button panel taking out the bulb, he had come in contact with the electric circuit. This was fine as long as he wasn’t grounded. That is, he wasn’t touching anything else metal, like the front of the panel.
Being a good electrician, Richard had kept his other hand at his side like Charles Foster had taught me my first day as an electrician. That is, until he raised that hand for me to give him a lamp. When my fingers touched his palm, and my other hand was holding the elevator gate, we suddenly made a circuit to ground. From Richard, to me, to the gate, to the ground, and back to the the main power generator through various grounds and circuits and transformers….
About the time that I realized what was happening, we had separated from each other, and were no longer dancing. It cracked us up and we stood there laughing about it for a minute because both of us had just been dancing in the elevator.
As I explained in the post about being on light duty that I mentioned above, when you went to work on the stack lights, you carried metal prod with you that you used to ground the large capacitors before you worked on the circuit. When you did this, there would be a bright flash and a loud explosion.
If a noise or a flash like that made you jump, you may end up going over the handrail and falling 500 feet to the ground. So, you learned that in the event of a flash, your first reaction is to freeze. Then assess the situation, and then if necessary, Panic.
Many years later (like 16), I became very aware of how well trained we were when something like this happened when I was once again working with Charles Foster in a junction box on the 11 landing of Unit 1 on the west side. We were standing side-by-side and we were working on something hot.
Suddenly there was a bright flash and a loud boom as something shorted out. By that time in our history, we had learned all about wearing fire resistant clothing, so that even though what we were wearing wasn’t fire proof, it also wasn’t going to melt to our skin.
What amazed me about this moment was that we both stood there still for a moment before we panicked. There was about a one second pause where we both restrained ourselves from jumping back. I chalked this up to our years of being around explosive situations. Jumping back as the first reaction can often lead to other injuries.
I took this resistance to panic with me into other situations. Before 1994 when OSHA added a bunch of new laws protecting people in confined spaces, I was crawling inside the main generator bus that goes out to the main power transformer. No hole watch. No one watching me outside that could grab me and pull me out if something went wrong.
A Main Power Transformer. The bus piping are those three pipes going into the building at the top in the back
I had squeezed myself into one of these pipes to clean the insulators that held the bus in place in the middle of the pipe. This meant that I was crammed into the pipe under the bus bar that ran through the middle of the pipe.
I had made it to the insulator that I needed to clean and wiped it down with the rag I had taken with me. Then I decided I couldn’t go forward anymore to look at any more of the insulators because it was too tight of a fit. So, I started to back myself out.
As I went to push myself back I suddenly realized that I was stuck. It was easy moving forward because I was using the soles of my sneakers to push on the pipe, but as soon as I wanted to go back, there didn’t seem to be anyway to maneuver my body in a way that would back myself out. This was one of a few times when I began to feel the panicky feeling of claustrophobia.
I had seen claustrophobia in others and I knew that when you are gripped with it, you can hurt yourself, or even Bob Lillibridge if he happened to be grabbing your legs at the time (see the post: Bob Lillibridge Meets the Power Plant Ghost for an explanation.
Here it came… I felt myself swelling up tight in the pipe as the panic was gripping me. I knew I had to do something quickly or it wasn’t going to be pretty…. Well, either way… nothing about this was pretty. So, I forced myself to calm down. I told myself to breathe out, and slowly back in.
Then I decided to use the palms of my hands that were stretched out straight in front of me to push against the pipe to move me back. With that effort, I could see (in the darkness) that I had moved myself back about 1/2 inch. I thought. “Ok, 1/2 inch is something. If I did that 100 more times, that would be more than 4 feet. 200 times and I would be out of this pipe.”
Realizing I could move myself at least a little bit allowed me to calm down and quell the panic. I did nothing but concentrate on pushing with my palms 1/2 inch at a time and eventually, I did climb out of that pipe (What you expected me to say I was still in there?).
I don’t know how many times over the years I have woken up in the middle of the night and swung my feet over the side of the bed and taken a few large breaths because I had been dreaming about being in that pipe again. I will discuss the top of claustrophobia in a later post, but this example fit the top of training yourself not to panic so I thought I would use it here.
If you ever end up talking to someone that doesn’t quite look at you when they look like they are trying to look at you, then you may think that they are a welder. There are some welders that seem to look at you from the corner of their eye. I suppose it was because the middle of their vision has been burned out because they have looked at the welding arc too many times without their visor down.
Similarly, if you ever encounter someone that momentarily goes into a comatose state for a few moments when you ask them a simple question, you may now think that maybe this person was a Power Plant Electrician that has learned to have a Prolonged Pause before they Panic… or.. well, respond to your question. If they aren’t, then they probably were just trying to ignore you.
Power Plant Adventures with Jim Heflin — Repost
Originally posted August 31, 2012:
I have often mentioned Jim Heflin in many of my posts. One might think from the attitude that Jim had toward me in a few of those posts that we didn’t get along. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jim and I were best of friends during the time that we worked together and when we carpooled together back and forth from Ponca City to the Power Plant Kingdom in the midst of North Central Oklahoma.
I have mentioned before that Jim gave me the impression of a friendly hound that was happy to see you.
The Splittin’ Image of Jim Heflin
That’s him all right, except he had a happier expression. I also mentioned that the first time I talked to his wife Brenda on the phone I made the mistake of calling her “Brenda Bulldog” because of a character that my wife and I used as a point of contention between us. As I mentioned before, I should have chosen something more becoming since there was a slight resemblance of Brenda Sue and a Bulldog….
Brenda had red hair and this expression
Besides that Faux Pas, Jim and I remained friends.
Jim was fun to be around because you could joke around with him, and you could tell that he was happy to be there. You could also tell that Jim was a very kind person. He didn’t like to see animals hurt, and felt bad when he knew he had accidentally mowed over even a field mouse with the Brush Hog. He was the kind of person you could put in a carnival in a tent and have people pay 50 cents to go see a happy lovable person, and people would come out feeling like they received their money’s worth.
Unlike most posts where I start out talking about a person, I usually end up telling you that they have died. I don’t think that Jim has died. I believe that Jim Heflin is still alive and well and living in Moore, Oklahoma with Brenda to this day. I was just remembering all the fun times that I had with Jim and thought I would share some with you to give you a flavor of the man.
So, here is a moment that I often think about when I think about Jim. He was driving to work one morning and I was in the front seat next to him. He kept looking at his side window and lifting up his nose at the window like he was sniffing it. It reminded me of a hound dog in a car that was trying to tell you that they wanted the window rolled down so they could stick their head out. He would do that for a few seconds, then he would look back at the road and pay attention to his driving. A little while later he would be back to sniffing the window with his nose pointing up to the top of the window.
Finally I couldn’t take it anymore, so I asked him, “Jim… what’s up? Why do you keep sniffing at that window?” He looked at me like he had forgotten I was in the car and just realized that I had been watching him. “Oh!” he said, “I’m trying to sneeze.” Thoughts flashed through my mind like, “Maybe he’s allergic to windows…” or “I hope that Jim hasn’t lost his mind, or I’m going to have to find another ride back to town in the evening…” or “Yeah, that’s right. Why didn’t I think of that?” Finally the thought came to my mind to ask him how that was going to help him sneeze, so I said, “Huh?”
That was when I learned something that I suppose I should have known by then, but no one ever told me… Jim was pointing his face at the rising sun, and the sunlight was helping him sneeze. That’s right. Some people have this uncanny “allergy” or “gift” or “talent” that causes them to sneeze when they look up at the sun. Especially, I figured, if they sniff a lot like a dog sniffing a window. I do remember that Jim gave it up, and we made it to the plant without a single sneeze.
Now unfortunately, whenever I hear a sneeze, I look around to see if the sun is shining on their face, just so that I can catch someone having a “Sun Sneeze”. Years later, my wife confirmed that, yes, some people sneeze when looking at the sun. I may have even been doing that before and didn’t realize it. I have even become some what of a pseudo expert on the subject and can now tell my son when he sneezes as he steps out into the sunlight that, “Yes… It is a known fact that some people sneeze because of the sunlight shining on their face.” You just don’t know when moments of life-changing education is going to come along and raise your IQ. Like that morning riding alongside Jim Heflin on the way to work that morning.
Another time I often think about when thinking about Jim Heflin was in 1982 when we were dropped off below the dam when the floodgates had been open so the lake level could be lowered in order for EPA, or whatever department could inspect our dam and dikes. Eventually, after the lake had been full for 3 years, it had to be inspected, and repaired where it was deemed necessary. Because a large amount of water was being released, the Electric Company wanted to make sure that we weren’t accidentally flooding anyone’s land beyond the foot of the dam down to the Arkansas River. So Jim Heflin and I were commissioned for that job.
We were dropped off at the foot of the dam and we were to follow the creek as it wound through the countryside down to the river. Instead of just heading straight toward the river, it ended up turning south for a while, and winding back and forth a bit, and what would have been about 1/2 mile to the river seemed like more than 2 or 3 miles. Anyway, we didn’t find the creek running over it’s banks, and everything was fine. We didn’t have any great adventures where we were chased by wild animals, or we saw Bambi or anything like that. We just spent a couple of hours walking through fields and trees and brush, and we talked. We had a great time talking about nothing in particular.
I’m afraid that this was shortly after I had learned how to ramble from Ramblin’ Ann, so I was doing most of the talking (You can read more about that in the post about Ed Shiever Trapped in a Confined Space with a Disciple of Ramblin’ Ann). But anyway, I had a great time with Jim just walking out in the woods talking about whatever came up.
I have found that there are times in life where I am sharing an experience with someone when I realize all of the sudden that I truly care for this person and I would do anything to help them if they needed it. I tend to imagine all sorts of scenarios when I’m in a situation and I remember that I was thinking about what I would do if a wild animal were to come charging through the woods toward us, and my main concern was how I could protect Jim. Jim was the kind of guy that looked like he needed protecting. I even looked around and found a good sized walking stick just in case the need should arise.
When we returned to the road where we had been dropped off, we still had about 1/2 hour before anyone was going to come pick us up and it started to rain really hard. At that spot there was a little hut that I would call a “monitoring hut”. It was the same kind of hut that was at the River Pump station that had the temperature recorder that was used to monitor the temperature of the Arkansas river (see the post, Power Plant Men Taking the Temperature Down by the River). So, we stood in the little hut until the rain stopped.
You may remember that it was Jim Heflin that had gotten the Backhoe stuck in the mud down at the park when Larry Riley came and showed us his magic. Also, it was Jim Heflin that informed me that David Hankins had died a few months before, while I was away at school. I spent days chopping weeds along roadways while Jim Heflin was mowing the fields all around me. It was Jim Heflin that first flushed out the Bobcat at the Otoe-Missouria Indian Reservation as I was watching from the back of the truck.
If I were to sum up the three summers as a summer help working in the Garage, I would call them my “Adventures with Jim Heflin”. It was Jim that I worked with most of the time. We cleaned the park twice each week. Mowed grass. changed oil in the trucks. Washed trucks in the special truck washing bay behind the garage. Picked up rocks from the fields so the mowers could mow without tearing up the equipment. Changed flat tires.
Throughout all of this I was keenly aware that as nice a guy that Jim was, he wasn’t a True Power Plant Man. Like Sonny Karcher, he longed for a simple life. Power Plant Men rarely have a simple life. It is filled with one crazy adventure after the other. When you drive through the gate, you have no idea what you might be doing that day. Like Sonny, Jim would have loved to have mowed grass clear across the country until the day he died.
So, I wasn’t too surprised when Jim and I were driving home one evening and Jim told me that he was going to leave the plant. He tried to explain it to me by coming up with various reasons why he was unhappy with his job; which was no longer in the garage. He didn’t really have to convince me. I knew. The Power Plant Life was not for Jim. He was sad about it, but at the same time I could tell he had already made up his mind.
After Jim left, I never saw him again. I never ran into him in town or heard from him. I had heard that he had moved to Oklahoma City, and I believe now that he lives in Moore, Oklahoma as I mentioned before. I have another friend from my childhood that lives in Moore, Oklahoma that may have an occasion to read this blog. His name is Dr. Bryan Treacy. So, I would just like to say to Bryan, that if you are walking down the street in Moore someday and you see a couple coming out of a Sirloin Stockade, or Wendy’s and one of them looks like a bloodhound and the other sort of like a bulldog, just walk up to them and tell them that Kevin Breazile says Hello. And then just before you go, say, “Oh, and Otto says that Brenda bulldog sure has a cute wiggle.” — Now I’m really going to get it… and not from Brenda….
Power Plant Men 