Power Plant Cajun and the Hatchet Man — Repost

Originally Posted August 30, 2013:

During the 18 years I worked as an electrician at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma, we often had contractors working from our shop.  I have mentioned that from the moment that I first entered the electric shop the first day I was an electrician, one of the first two people I met was a contract electrician.  (See the post: “New Home in the Power Plant Electric Shop“).

Gene Roget (pronounced, “Row Jay” with a soft J) was originally from Louisiana.

A Cajun I found on Google Images (this is actually the actor Shia Lebeouf) that slightly resembles Gene Roget

Gene had spent the first 10 to 12 years of his adult life as a construction electrician.  Charles Foster told him to be my mentor.  At first Gene was shocked to find out that instead of hiring him to be a Plant Electrician along with his best buddy, Arthur Hammond, they had hired a young kid who didn’t know squat about being a real Power Plant Electrician.  Yeah…. that was me.

I felt sorry for Gene because he obviously was the better candidate.  The only saving grace for my mind was the knowledge that I was hired through the internal job program and that if they hadn’t taken me into the electric shop, they were going to be stuck with Charles Peavler.  Charles was… well… he was somewhat older, but, well….. he couldn’t get around the fact that no matter what he did, he was always still Charles Peavler.

The day I entered the electric shop, I was 23 years and about 3 weeks old.  Charles Peavler was 43.  However, Charles might remind you of someone more around the age of 65.  Not because he looked quite that old.  He looked more like, well… um….. I guess he did look like he was about 65.  I couldn’t tell if it was just the way he walked or stood, or the way his lip curled around the wad of skoal between his front lower lip and gums.

Just a pinch between your cheek and gums…. Never tried it myself.

I know… I’m being a little hard on Charles.  I just like to tease him.  I could be worse.  I could tell you that his first name was really Amos.  But I wouldn’t stoop that low.  That would be like saying that Andy Tubb’s first name is really Carl, only worse, so I won’t go there.  Actually, Peavler looks more like an Amos than a Charles. (Oh.  That paragraph was about Amos and Andy!).

Anyway, by hiring me instead of Charles Peavler off of the labor crew I figured that even though I was dumb as dirt as far as being an electrician, I was more apt to learn new things than Charles.  So in the long run I was probably the better candidate.  Gene Roget wouldn’t have been able to be hired even if they hadn’t chosen me.

There were two openings for electrician when I was hired.  Arthur Hammond (Art) was able to be hired by the electric shop was because they convinced the higher-ups that they needed someone with a background in electronics and there weren’t any internal candidates that fit that bill.  So Charles Foster, the foreman, made the case that they needed an experienced electrician with electronics background and they needed someone dumb as dirt, but able to learn something more than just how to lace up their steel-toed boot. — That was where I came in.

I figured that Gene Roget would hold a grudge against me for taking the job that he wanted.  This is where the true quality of a person may peer through.  When you are involved in making someone upset, even though it wasn’t your decision to make, the way a person reacts to you will tell you a lot about that person’s character.

When Charles Foster told Gene Roget to be my mentor and show me the ropes to being an electrician I suspected that I was being setup for failure.  “Ok…” I thought, “I’ll watch what he does instead of what he tells me…”  I’ll also watch my back to make sure I don’t end up being electrocuted or knocked off of a ledge or some other accident that would create a new opening in the electric shop.

As it turned out Gene Roget was a man of great quality.  Not once in the year and a half that I worked with him did I ever have the feeling that Gene wasn’t doing his best to teach me the skills of being the best electrician I could be.  It also turned out that Gene was not only eager to teach me, but he was a highly skilled electrician.  So, I felt like I was being taught by one of the best.

Gene Roget (I always liked calling him Gene Roget instead of just Gene… I’m not sure why, but I suppose I can blame it on Gene Day.  I never could just call him Gene.  And Gene Day and Gene Roget rhymed), carpooled with Art Hammond (I always liked calling Art, Arthur, but I’ll call him Art in this post just to make it shorter… except that I just used all these words explaining it that now it’s longer).

Gene and Art were like best buddies.  I carpooled with them a couple of times when I had to catch a ride because I had to stay late and my carpooling ride had to leave (that would have been Rich Litzer, Yvonne Taylor and Bill Rivers).  During the drive home, I came to learn that Art and Gene had worked with each other on construction jobs for quite a while and their families were close in some ways.

I also learned that there was another activity that they did together that was not all together kosher (I don’t mean in a Jewish way).  They asked me on the way into Stillwater one day if I wanted to take a “hit” on the small rolled cigarette they were taking turns taking tokes from.  I had spent 4 years prior to this time in college in a dorm where smoking marijuana was more common than cigarettes and the idea didn’t phase me.

I declined, because I had no desire to go down that route.  I told them that I wished that they didn’t do that while I was in the car because then my clothes would smell like I had been living in the dorm again, where your clothes were going to smell like that just going from your room to the elevator… At least it was that way my second year in college.

I’m only talking about this now because it was 29 years ago, and by now if Gene Roget wanted to set his grandchildren on his knee and tell them about the times he was a younger construction electrician, he can mention that he had a shady past at one point, but now he’s just a kind old man.  So, I’m going to go on with a story that up to now I have only shared with Arthur Hammond.

One day I went into the main switchgear to find some parts in the parts cage behind the electric shop.  When I went back there, an operator Dan Landes was in the switchgear with another operator.  They were looking for something by the ladders, so I walked over to see if I could help.  Maybe they needed the key to unlock the ladders, I thought.

I don’t remember what they wanted, but I do remember that when I walked up to them I immediately smelled the aroma of marijuana being smoked somewhere.  We had just recently lost an electrician in our shop when the snitch tricked him into trading some marijuana for a supposedly stolen knife set (see the post “Power Plant Snitch“).

I asked Dan if he smelled that smell.  It was pretty strong.  I told him that was marijuana, and I could tell him what type it was.  You see, even though I had never smoked the stuff, the drug dealer for the entire dorm used to share the bathroom with our room, and three nights each week he held parties in his room.  He had high quality stuff and low.  There was a definite difference in the smell.  So, I would ask my roommate Mark Sarmento about it and he explained it to me.

So, I told Dan that someone had just been smoking marijuana somewhere right there.  It would have definitely been a dumb thing to do.  Eventually Dan and the other operator (I can’t remember who) left the switchgear to continue on their with their switching.  So I returned to the rack where the ladders were.

As I stood there alone I realized that the aroma was pouring down from on top of the battery rooms.  So I yelled out, “Hey!  You better stop that right now!  Don’t you know that the smoke is coming right down here in the switchgear?!?!  Put that out and come on down from there!”  I stood there for a few minutes and then I walked back into the electric shop.

I laid my parts on the workbench where I was repairing something, and then I walked back over to where I look through the window in the door into the main switchgear.  I finally saw someone climb down one of the ladders from the top of the battery rooms.  So, I confronted him.

Yep.  It was Gene Roget.  I had been working with him for a year and a half at this time and I considered him a very good friend.  I told him, “Gene!  How could you do that?  You know if they catch you they will fire you right away.  No questions asked!”  He said he was sorry, he didn’t think about the smell coming down into the switchgear and he would make sure it never happened again.  I told him that he was lucky that I had found him and not Dan Landes.  Dan’s nickname was Deputy Dan.  He was a deputy in Perry, Oklahoma.

Well.  as it turned out a few weeks later, Gene Roget was let go.  I hadn’t told a soul about our encounter, but I wondered if he thought I had.  Later I found out that he was let go so suddenly because he had confronted Leroy Godfrey about how Craig Jones had been fired because he had done something wrong.  He didn’t know all the details about the snitch, but he did know that they said he was part of a (non-existent) Drug and Theft Ring.

No one tells Leroy Godfrey how to do his job, and in this case, Leroy had nothing to do with it.  As a matter of fact, Leroy’s best buddy Jim Stevenson had been unjustly fingered by the snitch just because he was Leroy’s friend.  So, Leroy had Gene Roget fired.  I barely had time to say goodbye to Gene as he was led out the door to the parking lot and escorted out the gate by the highway patrolman who doubled as a security guard.

One time a year later, when I was carpooling with Art Hammond once again, I talked to Arthur about that day in the switchgear.  I knew he was best friends with Gene Roget.  So I told him about that instance.  He told me that Gene had told him the whole story on the way home that day.  Gene had just about had a heart attack when I had yelled up there for him to come down.  He had swore to Arthur that he was never going to be that stupid again.

I made it clear to Arthur that I hadn’t told a soul about that day.  And up until now, I still hadn’t.  That was when Art explained to me the real reason that Gene had been fired.  That made total sense.  I knew how Leroy Godfrey was.  He was an “old school” Power Plant Supervisor.

This is where the short story of the Hatchet Man comes up.  He was another contract electrician.  I think he was hired to help Jim Stevenson and Bill Ennis with the freeze protection.  They were preparing for the coming winter and they needed a little extra help.  I call this guy the “Hatchet Man” not because he was a hatchet man for the “Tong”, but because the only tool he used was a hatchet.

A Detective holding a Tong War Hatchet

He didn’t have a tool bucket.  He just used this one tool.  A Hatchet.  As it turned out, he was missing two fingers on one hand and three fingers on the other hand.  Hmmm… what came first?  I wondered… the hatchet or the lost fingers?  It seemed comical that a person missing half of all his fingers used only a hatchet as his only tool as an electrician.  — how would he screw in a screw?  Electricians had to work with screws all the time.  Maybe he had a pocket knife for that.

I figured he probably lost his fingers working in the oil fields, since a lot of people lost fingers doing that.  This guy definitely didn’t look much like a rodeo rider, which was the other group of people that would lose fingers.

One day, while sitting in the electrical lab during break time or lunch the subject of an upcoming job opening in the shop came up.  The Hatchet Man made the mistake of saying that since he was handicapped, they had to give him the job.  All he had to do was apply.  They couldn’t turn him down.  His missing fingers was his ticket.

Well.  It didn’t take long before word of this conversation made its way up to the one ear that Leroy Godfrey used to hear.  The other one was out of commission.  As I mentioned before.  No one told Leroy what to do.  He was supreme leader of the electric shop domain.  By the end of the day, the Hatchet Man was given the Ax.

Ted Riddle was hired instead.  Now you know the rest of the story.