How Power Plant Men “Ate My Lunch”
Originally posted: November 22, 2013:
I suppose you’ve heard it said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The same is true at the Coal-fired Power Plant where I worked for 20 years first as a summer help, then a janitor, a laborer and finally as an electrician. I did find out when I was a janitor, that even though there may not have been a free lunch, there was often a carefully prepared lunch for special occasions.
I have written about when I was an electrician where I would sit in the electric shop office during lunch and Charles Foster and I would sit and talk day after day about various topics throughout the years (See the post “Eating Power Plant Pickles, Peppers and Ice Cream“). He kept my lunch well-stocked with various types of vegetables throughout the year. It seemed to me that I had little to offer in the way of providing for the team.
The electric shop would occasionally have a special feast for no apparent reason. I would walk into the shop one day and find a big pot of beans soaking in water. They would soak the beans overnight. When I saw that big pot of beans, I knew that tomorrow the shop would be having a real bean feast. It was funny, but before becoming an electrician, the only place I had ever heard the phrase, “Bean Feast” was from Varuca in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
It was customary that when there was going to be a shop lunch that we would each bring something to go with it. We often had someone that made some Sun Tea. That is, they would put some tea in a big jar of water and put it outside so that it could bake in the hot summer sun until lunch.
A couple of jugs of tea sitting out in the sun making Power Plant Sun Tea
I was pretty inept with coming up with some kind of casserole, and I didn’t have ready-made vegetable garden like Charles, so at first I didn’t know how I could contribute. As time went by, whenever we had a shop lunch, I could always be counted on to bring a tray of brownies. I knew how to bake brownies.
Sometimes, when it was the right season, and Andy Tubbs and Ben Davis and others had gathered enough fish that they had a lot left over, we would be treated to a fish fry. That was one of my favorite lunches. I could eat fish anytime.
Chili was another shop treat that I was always glad to see. It broke the monotony of the same lunch I ate every day. The shop used to make the best spicy hot chili.
Sometimes the Maintenance shop would cook hamburgers or something, usually because they wanted to do something for the people from other plants that were visiting during overhaul, or they were raising money for someone who was sick, or had some tragedy in their life like their house burned down or something. Power Plant Men were always on the lookout for someone to help. I always felt it was my duty to pitch in by eating as many hamburgers as I could.
For years, for lunch I either only brought a ham sandwich or I brought a couple of boiled eggs for lunch. I tried not to spend too much time putting my lunch together in the morning, so I went for the quick fix. For a year, each morning when I woke up, before taking my shower I went in the kitchen, put a couple of eggs in a pan of water, put them on the stove, and headed for the shower.
By the time I came out of the shower, the eggs were ready to come out of the pan and into my Little Playmate lunch box with my salt shaker and a couple of paper towels to be used as napkins for when I peeled them at lunch time. I had to put the shells somewhere….
One exactly like this
When I was on the labor crew I used to be able to eat all day long and remain thin. When I arrived in the electric shop, the amount of physical activity was a lot less. I found that buying a cinnamon roll from the vending machine for morning and afternoon break was no longer a viable idea. My weight quickly went from 145 pounds to 163 in a few short months.
So, I could no longer eat like a Hobbit. I had to watch my weight. I stopped drinking Dr. Peppers and bought Diet Cokes instead. I limited myself to my one sandwich or a couple of boiled eggs and a fruit, and whatever vegetable treats Charles would give me. That still didn’t seem to help me keep my weight down, so I had to take other measures.
I began drinking Slim Fast for lunch every day. I would bring a half gallon of skim milk and keep it in the refrigerator and then I would use half of it each day for lunch mixing up a glass of Slim Fast. This helped keep me fairly…. um…. less Hobbit-like.
I would mix up a helping of Slim Fast each day for lunch
I don’t remember how many years I continued drinking Slim-Fast for lunch, but I’m sure it was a number of years. The same lunch every day. A glass of Slim Fast for lunch. — Yum…. um…. Yum…..
One day as lunch time was rapidly approaching, I went to the Ice Box to retrieve my carton of milk to mix my Slim-Fast. When I opened the refrigerator door, I didn’t see the carton of milk. I stopped and thought. I was sure I had left a half carton of milk there from the day before…. Someone had obviously taken my milk. That was unusual. I would trust just about everyone in the shop with my life (well, there were a couple of them in the lab that I had my doubts). Surely I could trust them all with my carton of milk.
So, as Andy, Ben and Diana came to the Work Table slash Lunch Table, I asked if anyone had seen my carton of milk that was in the refrigerator. Andy Tubbs replied that he had thrown it out that morning. He had seen that carton of milk sitting in there for months and had figured that it had gone bad a long time ago, so that morning he had poured it down the drain.
Semi-stunned, I explained that I had only put that milk carton in the refrigerator yesterday, and that I put a new one in there every two day. But at this point what could you do? Andy shrugged his shoulders. Said something like, “Oh Well…” I hobbled back to the office feeling a little downtrodden that I wasn’t going to be able to feast on my cool Malt Chocolaty glass of Slim-Fast like I had for the past 100 weeks…. Like I said… I was a “little” downtrodden about it.
I sat down in the office across from Charles and told him that my milk had been inadvertently tossed out. The only thing I had in my lunchbox at that point was my can of Slim-Fast. Maybe I had a spare pocket knife, some old hardhat stickers and a rosary, but nothing really edible as a backup.
I sat there for a couple of minutes when the office door opened up and Andy walked in with a plastic Tupperware bowl. It was filled with some meat and vegetables. He placed it down in front of me, and turned to walk out. — Power Plant Men….. That’s how they are. He had given me, what looked like the majority of his lunch to eat.
Andy Tubbs – True Power Plant Electrician
In the 20 years that I worked at the Power Plant, I had eaten all kinds of foods for the first time. From Squirrel to Deer Jerky. I think this was some kind of Deer Stew. I can tell you that of all the lunches I ate during that time, I can vividly remember eating that lunch. It was a Power Plant Man lunch fit for a king.
I guess I was feeling guilty that I never could really contribute anything more than just a tray of stale brownies for the team lunches, so I told the shop that the next day I was going to prepare a salad for them. Like at a salad bar. The idea didn’t seem to excite them too much. Most of them were Meat and Potato type people, as I was myself. But I thought I would surprise them.
I went to the store that evening and bought all kinds of things that I could use to make a salad bar. The next day, I brought bean sprouts, Alfalfa Sprouts, boiled eggs, a ham, some spinach, leaf lettuce and iceberg lettuce, some diced beets, broccoli, cauliflower, and about 4 different kinds of salad dressing.
Around 9:30 after our morning break, I began working on setting up the counter for lunch. I began by dicing up the ham….. Well… using a regular old knife to slice ham into little tiny cubes takes a lot longer than I thought it would. It turned out that by the time I had finished with the ham, and sliced up about 6 boiled eggs, and slicing up a pound of mushrooms and washed and prepared the lettuce, and cheese and beets and lemons (for squeezing) and everything to make it look like a real salad bar, it was already lunch time.
Ok. My Salad bar didn’t have this many items…
I think I surprised the electricians that day. I don’t think they were thinking that they were going to get anything more than a bowl of lettuce with some vinegar and oil. I did the best I could and they seemed to enjoy it. Being that they hadn’t really counted on my salad being a full blown lunch, I think many of them (or most of them) had went ahead and brought there regular lunch just in case.
I know this wasn’t a typical Power Plant Man Lunch. And it isn’t like I eat a lot of salads myself. I just thought it was something that I could do without having to cook a lot…. I mean… the ham was already cooked, and I knew how to boil eggs. So, I thought, what the heck. I’ll give it a try.
I wasn’t very good at showing my appreciation toward the electricians because….. well….. because I just was never much good at that. I only did something like that once that I can remember. The electricians on the other hand were constantly doing things to show their appreciation for others. At least there was that one day when the Power Plant Men “Ate My Lunch”!
How Power Plant Men “Ate My Lunch”
Originally posted: November 22, 2013:
I suppose you’ve heard it said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The same is true at the Coal-fired Power Plant where I worked for 20 years first as a summer help, then a janitor, a laborer and finally as an electrician. I did find out when I was a janitor, that even though there may not have been a free lunch, there was often a carefully prepared lunch for special occasions.
I have written about when I was an electrician where I would sit in the electric shop office during lunch and Charles Foster and I would sit and talk day after day about various topics throughout the years (See the post “Eating Power Plant Pickles, Peppers and Ice Cream“). He kept my lunch well-stocked with various types of vegetables throughout the year. It seemed to me that I had little to offer in the way of providing for the team.
The electric shop would occasionally have a special feast for no apparent reason. I would walk into the shop one day and find a big pot of beans soaking in water. They would soak the beans overnight. When I saw that big pot of beans, I knew that tomorrow the shop would be having a real bean feast. It was funny, but before becoming an electrician, the only place I had ever heard the phrase, “Bean Feast” was from Varuca in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
It was customary that when there was going to be a shop lunch that we would each bring something to go with it. We often had someone that made some Sun Tea. That is, they would put some tea in a big jar of water and put it outside so that it could bake in the hot summer sun until lunch.
A couple of jugs of tea sitting out in the sun making Power Plant Sun Tea
I was pretty inept with coming up with some kind of casserole, and I didn’t have ready-made vegetable garden like Charles, so at first I didn’t know how I could contribute. As time went by, whenever we had a shop lunch, I could always be counted on to bring a tray of brownies. I knew how to bake brownies.
Sometimes, when it was the right season, and Andy Tubbs and Ben Davis and others had gathered enough fish that they had a lot left over, we would be treated to a fish fry. That was one of my favorite lunches. I could eat fish anytime.
Chili was another shop treat that I was always glad to see. It broke the monotony of the same lunch I ate every day. The shop used to make the best spicy hot chili.
Sometimes the Maintenance shop would cook hamburgers or something, usually because they wanted to do something for the people from other plants that were visiting during overhaul, or they were raising money for someone who was sick, or had some tragedy in their life like their house burned down or something. Power Plant Men were always on the lookout for someone to help. I always felt it was my duty to pitch in by eating as many hamburgers as I could.
For years, for lunch I either only brought a ham sandwich or I brought a couple of boiled eggs for lunch. I tried not to spend too much time putting my lunch together in the morning, so I went for the quick fix. For a year, each morning when I woke up, before taking my shower I went in the kitchen, put a couple of eggs in a pan of water, put them on the stove, and headed for the shower.
By the time I came out of the shower, the eggs were ready to come out of the pan and into my Little Playmate lunch box with my salt shaker and a couple of paper towels to be used as napkins for when I peeled them at lunch time. I had to put the shells somewhere….
One exactly like this
When I was on the labor crew I used to be able to eat all day long and remain thin. When I arrived in the electric shop, the amount of physical activity was a lot less. I found that buying a cinnamon roll from the vending machine for morning and afternoon break was no longer a viable idea. My weight quickly went from 145 pounds to 163 in a few short months.
So, I could no longer eat like a Hobbit. I had to watch my weight. I stopped drinking Dr. Peppers and bought Diet Cokes instead. I limited myself to my one sandwich or a couple of boiled eggs and a fruit, and whatever vegetable treats Charles would give me. That still didn’t seem to help me keep my weight down, so I had to take other measures.
I began drinking Slim Fast for lunch every day. I would bring a half gallon of skim milk and keep it in the refrigerator and then I would use half of it each day for lunch mixing up a glass of Slim Fast. This helped keep me fairly…. um…. less Hobbit-like.
I would mix up a helping of Slim Fast each day for lunch
I don’t remember how many years I continued drinking Slim-Fast for lunch, but I’m sure it was a number of years. The same lunch every day. A glass of Slim Fast for lunch. — Yum…. um…. Yum…..
One day as lunch time was rapidly approaching, I went to the Ice Box to retrieve my carton of milk to mix my Slim-Fast. When I opened the refrigerator door, I didn’t see the carton of milk. I stopped and thought. I was sure I had left a half carton of milk there from the day before…. Someone had obviously taken my milk. That was unusual. I would trust just about everyone in the shop with my life (well, there were a couple of them in the lab that I had my doubts). Surely I could trust them all with my carton of milk.
So, as Andy, Ben and Diana came to the Work Table slash Lunch Table, I asked if anyone had seen my carton of milk that was in the refrigerator. Andy Tubbs replied that he had thrown it out that morning. He had seen that carton of milk sitting in there for months and had figured that it had gone bad a long time ago, so that morning he had poured it down the drain.
Semi-stunned, I explained that I had only put that milk carton in the refrigerator yesterday, and that I put a new one in there every two day. But at this point what could you do? Andy shrugged his shoulders. Said something like, “Oh Well…” I hobbled back to the office feeling a little downtrodden that I wasn’t going to be able to feast on my cool Malt Chocolaty glass of Slim-Fast like I had for the past 100 weeks…. Like I said… I was a “little” downtrodden about it.
I sat down in the office across from Charles and told him that my milk had been inadvertently tossed out. The only thing I had in my lunchbox at that point was my can of Slim-Fast. Maybe I had a spare pocket knife, some old hardhat stickers and a rosary, but nothing really edible as a backup.
I sat there for a couple of minutes when the office door opened up and Andy walked in with a plastic Tupperware bowl. It was filled with some meat and vegetables. He placed it down in front of me, and turned to walk out. — Power Plant Men….. That’s how they are. He had given me, what looked like the majority of his lunch to eat.
Andy Tubbs – True Power Plant Electrician
In the 20 years that I worked at the Power Plant, I had eaten all kinds of foods for the first time. From Squirrel to Deer Jerky. I think this was some kind of Deer Stew. I can tell you that of all the lunches I ate during that time, I can vividly remember eating that lunch. It was a Power Plant Man lunch fit for a king.
I guess I was feeling guilty that I never could really contribute anything more than just a tray of stale brownies for the team lunches, so I told the shop that the next day I was going to prepare a salad for them. Like at a salad bar. The idea didn’t seem to excite them too much. Most of them were Meat and Potato type people, as I was myself. But I thought I would surprise them.
I went to the store that evening and bought all kinds of things that I could use to make a salad bar. The next day, I brought bean sprouts, Alfalfa Sprouts, boiled eggs, a ham, some spinach, leaf lettuce and iceberg lettuce, some diced beets, broccoli, cauliflower, and about 4 different kinds of salad dressing.
Around 9:30 after our morning break, I began working on setting up the counter for lunch. I began by dicing up the ham….. Well… using a regular old knife to slice ham into little tiny cubes takes a lot longer than I thought it would. It turned out that by the time I had finished with the ham, and sliced up about 6 boiled eggs, and slicing up a pound of mushrooms and washed and prepared the lettuce, and cheese and beets and lemons (for squeezing) and everything to make it look like a real salad bar, it was already lunch time.
Ok. My Salad bar didn’t have this many items…
I think I surprised the electricians that day. I don’t think they were thinking that they were going to get anything more than a bowl of lettuce with some vinegar and oil. I did the best I could and they seemed to enjoy it. Being that they hadn’t really counted on my salad being a full blown lunch, I think many of them (or most of them) had went ahead and brought there regular lunch just in case.
I know this wasn’t a typical Power Plant Man Lunch. And it isn’t like I eat a lot of salads myself. I just thought it was something that I could do without having to cook a lot…. I mean… the ham was already cooked, and I knew how to boil eggs. So, I thought, what the heck. I’ll give it a try.
I wasn’t very good at showing my appreciation toward the electricians because….. well….. because I just was never much good at that. I only did something like that once that I can remember. The electricians on the other hand were constantly doing things to show their appreciation for others. At least there was that one day when the Power Plant Men “Ate My Lunch”!
How Power Plant Men “Ate My Lunch”
Originally posted: November 22, 2013:
I suppose you’ve heard it said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The same is true at the Coal-fired Power Plant where I worked for 20 years first as a summer help, then a janitor, a laborer and finally as an electrician. I did find out when I was a janitor, that even though they may not have been a free lunch, there was often a carefully prepared lunch for special occasions.
I have written about when I was an electrician where I would sit in the electric shop office during lunch and Charles Foster and I would sit and talk day after day about various topics throughout the years (See the post “Eating Power Plant Pickles, Peppers and Ice Cream“). He kept my lunch well-stocked with various types of vegetables throughout the year. It seemed to me that I had little to offer in the way of providing for the team.
The electric shop would occasionally have a special feast for no apparent reason. I would walk into the shop one day and find a big pot of beans soaking in water. They would soak the beans overnight. When I saw that big pot of beans, I knew that tomorrow the shop would be having a real bean feast. It was funny, but before becoming an electrician, the only place I had ever heard the phrase, “Bean Feast” was from Varuca in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
It was customary that when there was going to be a shop lunch that we would each bring something to go with it. We often had someone that made some Sun Tea. That is, they would put some tea in a big jar of water and put it outside so that it could bake in the hot summer sun until lunch.
A couple of jugs of tea sitting out in the sun making Power Plant Sun Tea
I was pretty inept with coming up with some kind of casserole, and I didn’t have ready-made vegetable garden like Charles, so at first I didn’t know how I could contribute. As time went by, whenever we had a shop lunch, I could always be counted on to bring a tray of brownies. I knew how to bake brownies.
Sometimes, when it was the right season, and Andy Tubbs and Ben Davis and others had gathered enough fish that they had a lot left over, we would be treated to a fish fry. That was one of my favorite lunches. I could eat fish anytime.
Chili was another shop treat that I was always glad to see. It broke the monotony of the same lunch I ate every day. The shop used to make the best spicy hot chili.
Sometimes the Maintenance shop would cook hamburgers or something, usually because they wanted to do something for the people from other plants that were visiting during overhaul, or they were raising money for someone who was sick, or had some tragedy in their life like their house burned down or something. Power Plant Men were always on the lookout for someone to help. I always felt it was my duty to pitch in by eating as many hamburgers as I could.
For years, for lunch I either only brought a ham sandwich or I brought a couple of boiled eggs for lunch. I tried not to spend too much time putting my lunch together in the morning, so I went for the quick fix. For a year, each morning when I woke up, before taking my shower I went in the kitchen, put a couple of eggs in a pan of water, put them on the stove, and headed for the shower.
By the time I came out of the shower, the eggs were ready to come out of the pan and into my Little Playmate lunch box with my salt shaker and a couple of paper towels to be used as napkins for when I peeled them at lunch time. I had to put the shells somewhere….
One exactly like this
When I was on the labor crew I used to be able to eat all day long and remain thin. When I arrived in the electric shop, the amount of physical activity was a lot less. I found that buying a cinnamon roll from the vending machine for morning and afternoon break was no longer a viable idea. My weight quickly went from 145 pounds to 163 in a few short months.
So, I could no longer eat like a Hobbit. I had to watch my weight. I stopped drinking Dr. Peppers and bought Diet Cokes instead. I limited myself to my one sandwich or a couple of boiled eggs and a fruit, and whatever vegetable treats Charles would give me. That still didn’t seem to help me keep my weight down, so I had to take other measures.
I began drinking Slim Fast for lunch every day. I would bring a half gallon of skim milk and keep it in the refrigerator and then I would use half of it each day for lunch mixing up a glass of Slim Fast. This helped keep me fairly…. um…. less Hobbit-like.
I would mix up a helping of Slim Fast each day for lunch
I don’t remember how many years I continued drinking Slim-Fast for lunch, but I’m sure it was a number of years. The same lunch every day. A glass of Slim Fast for lunch. — Yum…. um…. Yum…..
One day as lunch time was rapidly approaching, I went to the Ice Box to retrieve my carton of milk to mix my Slim-Fast. When I opened the refrigerator door, I didn’t see the carton of milk. I stopped and thought. I was sure I had left a half carton of milk there from the day before…. Someone had obviously taken my milk. That was unusual. I would trust just about everyone in the shop with my life (well, there were a couple of them in the lab that I had my doubts). Surely I could trust them all with my carton of milk.
So, as Andy, Ben and Diana came to the Work Table slash Lunch Table, I asked if anyone had seen my carton of milk that was in the refrigerator. Andy Tubbs replied that he had thrown it out that morning. He had seen that carton of milk sitting in there for months and had figured that it had gone bad a long time ago, so that morning he had poured it down the drain.
Semi-stunned, I explained that I had only put that milk carton in the refrigerator yesterday, and that I put a new one in there every two day. But at this point what could you do? Andy shrugged his shoulders. Said something like, “Oh Well…” I hobbled back to the office feeling a little downtrodden that I wasn’t going to be able to feast on my cool Malt Chocolaty glass of Slim-Fast like I had for the past 100 weeks…. Like I said… I was a “little” downtrodden about it.
I sat down in the office across from Charles and told him that my milk had been inadvertently tossed out. The only thing I had in my lunchbox at that point was my can of Slim-Fast. Maybe I had a spare pocket knife, some old hardhat stickers and a rosary, but nothing really edible as a backup.
I sat there for a couple of minutes when the office door opened up and Andy walked in with a plastic Tupperware bowl. It was filled with some meat and vegetables. He placed it down in front of me, and turned to walk out. — Power Plant Men….. That’s how they are. He had given me, what looked like the majority of his lunch to eat.
Andy Tubbs – True Power Plant Electrician
In the 20 years that I worked at the Power Plant, I had eaten all kinds of foods for the first time. From Squirrel to Deer Jerky. I think this was some kind of Deer Stew. I can tell you that of all the lunches I ate during that time, I can vividly remember eating that lunch. It was a Power Plant Man lunch fit for a king.
I guess I was feeling guilty that I never could really contribute anything more than just a tray of stale brownies for the team lunches, so I told the shop that the next day I was going to prepare a salad for them. Like at a salad bar. The idea didn’t seem to excite them too much. Most of them were Meat and Potato type people, as I was myself. But I thought I would surprise them.
I went to the store that evening and bought all kinds of things that I could use to make a salad bar. The next day, I brought bean sprouts, Alfalfa Sprouts, boiled eggs, a ham, some spinach, leaf lettuce and iceberg lettuce, some diced beets, broccoli, cauliflower, and about 4 different kinds of salad dressing.
Around 9:30 after our morning break, I began working on setting up the counter for lunch. I began by dicing up the ham….. Well… using a regular old knife to slice ham into little tiny cubes takes a lot longer than I thought it would. It turned out that by the time I had finished with the ham, and sliced up about 6 boiled eggs, and slicing up a pound of mushrooms and washed and prepared the lettuce, and cheese and beets and lemons (for squeezing) and everything to make it look like a real salad bar, it was already lunch time.
Ok. My Salad bar didn’t have this many items…
I think I surprised the electricians that day. I don’t think they were thinking that they were going to get anything more than a bowl of lettuce with some vinegar and oil. I did the best I could and they seemed to enjoy it. Being that they hadn’t really counted on my salad being a full blown lunch, I think many of them (or most of them) had went ahead and brought there regular lunch just in case.
I know this wasn’t a typical Power Plant Man Lunch. And it isn’t like I eat a lot of salads myself. I just thought it was something that I could do without having to cook a lot…. I mean… the ham was already cooked, and I knew how to boil eggs. So, I thought, what the heck. I’ll give it a try.
I wasn’t very good at showing my appreciation toward the electricians because….. well….. because I just was never much good at that. I only did something like that once that I can remember. The electricians on the other hand were constantly doing things to show their appreciation for others. At least there was that one day when the Power Plant Men “Ate My Lunch”!
How Power Plant Men “Ate My Lunch” — Repost
Originally posted: November 22, 2013:
I suppose you’ve heard it said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The same is true at the Coal-fired Power Plant where I worked for 20 years first as a summer help, then a janitor, a laborer and finally as an electrician. I did find out when I was a janitor, that even though they may not have been a free lunch, there was often a carefully prepared lunch for special occasions.
I have written about when I was an electrician where I would sit in the electric shop office during lunch and Charles Foster and I would sit and talk day after day about various topics throughout the years (See the post “Eating Power Plant Pickles, Peppers and Ice Cream“). He kept my lunch well-stocked with various types of vegetables throughout the year. It seemed to me that I had little to offer in the way of providing for the team.
The electric shop would occasionally have a special feast for no apparent reason. I would walk into the shop one day and find a big pot of beans soaking in water. They would soak the beans overnight. When I saw that big pot of beans, I knew that tomorrow the shop would be having a real bean feast. It was funny, but before becoming an electrician, the only place I had ever heard the phrase, “Bean Feast” was from Varuca in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
It was customary that when there was going to be a shop lunch that we would each bring something to go with it. We often had someone that made some Sun Tea. That is, they would put some tea in a big jar of water and put it outside so that it could bake in the hot summer sun until lunch.
A couple of jugs of tea sitting out in the sun making Power Plant Sun Tea
I was pretty inept with coming up with some kind of casserole, and I didn’t have ready-made vegetable garden like Charles, so at first I didn’t know how I could contribute. As time went by, whenever we had a shop lunch, I could always be counted on to bring a tray of brownies. I knew how to bake brownies.
Sometimes, when it was the right season, and Andy Tubbs and Ben Davis and others had gathered enough fish that they had a lot left over, we would be treated to a fish fry. That was one of my favorite lunches. I could eat fish anytime.
Chili was another shop treat that I was always glad to see. It broke the monotony of the same lunch I ate every day. The shop used to make the best spicy hot chili.
Sometimes the Maintenance shop would cook hamburgers or something, usually because they wanted to do something for the people from other plants that were visiting during overhaul, or they were raising money for someone who was sick, or had some tragedy in their life like their house burned down or something. Power Plant Men were always on the lookout for someone to help. I always felt it was my duty to pitch in by eating as many hamburgers as I could.
For years, for lunch I either only brought a ham sandwich or I brought a couple of boiled eggs for lunch. I tried not to spend too much time putting my lunch together in the morning, so I went for the quick fix. For a year, each morning when I woke up, before taking my shower I went in the kitchen, put a couple of eggs in a pan of water, put them on the stove, and headed for the shower.
By the time I came out of the shower, the eggs were ready to come out of the pan and into my Little Playmate lunch box with my salt shaker and a couple of paper towels to be used as napkins for when I peeled them at lunch time. I had to put the shells somewhere….
One exactly like this
When I was on the labor crew I used to be able to eat all day long and remain thin. When I arrived in the electric shop, the amount of physical activity was a lot less. I found that buying a cinnamon roll from the vending machine for morning and afternoon break was no longer a viable idea. My weight quickly went from 145 pounds to 163 in a few short months.
So, I could no longer eat like a Hobbit. I had to watch my weight. I stopped drinking Dr. Peppers and bought Diet Cokes instead. I limited myself to my one sandwich or a couple of boiled eggs and a fruit, and whatever vegetable treats Charles would give me. That still didn’t seem to help me keep my weight down, so I had to take other measures.
I began drinking Slim Fast for lunch every day. I would bring a half gallon of skim milk and keep it in the refrigerator and then I would use half of it each day for lunch mixing up a glass of Slim Fast. This helped keep me fairly…. um…. less Hobbit-like.
I would mix up a helping of Slim Fast each day for lunch
I don’t remember how many years I continued drinking Slim-Fast for lunch, but I’m sure it was a number of years. The same lunch every day. A glass of Slim Fast for lunch. — Yum…. um…. Yum…..
One day as lunch time was rapidly approaching, I went to the Ice Box to retrieve my carton of milk to mix my Slim-Fast. When I opened the refrigerator door, I didn’t see the carton of milk. I stopped and thought. I was sure I had left a half carton of milk there from the day before…. Someone had obviously taken my milk. That was unusual. I would trust just about everyone in the shop with my life (well, there were a couple of them in the lab that I had my doubts). Surely I could trust them all with my carton of milk.
So, as Andy, Ben and Diana came to the Work Table slash Lunch Table, I asked if anyone had seen my carton of milk that was in the refrigerator. Andy Tubbs replied that he had thrown it out that morning. He had seen that carton of milk sitting in there for months and had figured that it had gone bad a long time ago, so that morning he had poured it down the drain.
Semi-stunned, I explained that I had only put that milk carton in the refrigerator yesterday, and that I put a new one in there every two day. But at this point what could you do? Andy shrugged his shoulders. Said something like, “Oh Well…” I hobbled back to the office feeling a little downtrodden that I wasn’t going to be able to feast on my cool Malt Chocolaty glass of Slim-Fast like I had for the past 100 weeks…. Like I said… I was a “little” downtrodden about it.
I sat down in the office across from Charles and told him that my milk had been inadvertently tossed out. The only thing I had in my lunchbox at that point was my can of Slim-Fast. Maybe I had a spare pocket knife, some old hardhat stickers and a rosary, but nothing really edible as a backup.
I sat there for a couple of minutes when the office door opened up and Andy walked in with a plastic Tupperware bowl. It was filled with some meat and vegetables. He placed it down in front of me, and turned to walk out. — Power Plant Men….. That’s how they are. He had given me, what looked like the majority of his lunch to eat.
In the 20 years that I worked at the Power Plant, I had eaten all kinds of foods for the first time. From Squirrel to Deer Jerky. I think this was some kind of Deer Stew. I can tell you that of all the lunches I ate during that time, I can vividly remember eating that lunch. It was a Power Plant Man lunch fit for a king.
I guess I was feeling guilty that I never could really contribute anything more than just a tray of stale brownies for the team lunches, so I told the shop that the next day I was going to prepare a salad for them. Like at a salad bar. The idea didn’t seem to excite them too much. Most of them were Meat and Potato type people, as I was myself. But I thought I would surprise them.
I went to the store that evening and bought all kinds of things that I could use to make a salad bar. The next day, I brought bean sprouts, Alfalfa Sprouts, boiled eggs, a ham, some spinach, leaf lettuce and iceberg lettuce, some diced beets, broccoli, cauliflower, and about 4 different kinds of salad dressing.
Around 9:30 after our morning break, I began working on setting up the counter for lunch. I began by dicing up the ham….. Well… using a regular old knife to slice ham into little tiny cubes takes a lot longer than I thought it would. It turned out that by the time I had finished with the ham, and sliced up about 6 boiled eggs, and slicing up a pound of mushrooms and washed and prepared the lettuce, and cheese and beets and lemons (for squeezing) and everything to make it look like a real salad bar, it was already lunch time.
Ok. My Salad bar didn’t have this many items…
I think I surprised the electricians that day. I don’t think they were thinking that they were going to get anything more than a bowl of lettuce with some vinegar and oil. I did the best I could and they seemed to enjoy it. Being that they hadn’t really counted on my salad being a full blown lunch, I think many of them (or most of them) had went ahead and brought there regular lunch just in case.
I know this wasn’t a typical Power Plant Man Lunch. And it isn’t like I eat a lot of salads myself. I just thought it was something that I could do without having to cook a lot…. I mean… the ham was already cooked, and I knew how to boil eggs. So, I thought, what the heck. I’ll give it a try.
I wasn’t very good at showing my appreciation toward the electricians because….. well….. because I just was never much good at that. I only did something like that once that I can remember. The electricians on the other hand were constantly doing things to show their appreciation for others. At least there was that one day when the Power Plant Men “Ate My Lunch”!
How Power Plant Men “Ate My Lunch”
I suppose you’ve heard it said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The same is true at the Coal-fired Power Plant where I worked for 20 years first as a summer help, then a janitor, a laborer and finally as an electrician. I did find out when I was a janitor, that even though they may not have been a free lunch, there was often a carefully prepared lunch for special occasions.
I have written about when I was an electrician where I would sit in the electric shop office during lunch and Charles Foster and I would sit and talk day after day about various topics throughout the years (See the post “Eating Power Plant Pickles, Peppers and Ice Cream“). He kept my lunch well-stocked with various types of vegetables throughout the year. It seemed to me that I had little to offer in the way of providing for the team.
The electric shop would occasionally have a special feast for no apparent reason. I would walk into the shop one day and find a big pot of beans soaking in water. They would soak the beans overnight. When I saw that big pot of beans, I knew that tomorrow the shop would be having a real bean feast. It was funny, but before becoming an electrician, the only place I had ever heard the phrase, “Bean Feast” was from Varuca in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
It was customary that when there was going to be a shop lunch that we would each bring something to go with it. We often had someone that made some Sun Tea. That is, they would put some tea in a big jar of water and put it outside so that it could bake in the hot summer sun until lunch.
A couple of jugs of tea sitting out in the sun making Power Plant Sun Tea
I was pretty inept with coming up with some kind of casserole, and I didn’t have ready-made vegetable garden like Charles, so at first I didn’t know how I could contribute. As time went by, whenever we had a shop lunch, I could always be counted on to bring a tray of brownies. I knew how to bake brownies.
Sometimes, when it was the right season, and Andy Tubbs and Ben Davis and others had gathered enough fish that they had a lot left over, we would be treated to a fish fry. That was one of my favorite lunches. I could eat fish anytime.
Chili was another shop treat that I was always glad to see. It broke the monotony of the same lunch I ate every day. The shop used to make the best spicy hot chili.
Sometimes the Maintenance shop would cook hamburgers or something, usually because they wanted to do something for the people from other plants that were visiting during overhaul, or they were raising money for someone who was sick, or had some tragedy in their life like their house burned down or something. Power Plant Men were always on the lookout for someone to help. I always felt it was my duty to pitch in by eating as many hamburgers as I could.
For years, for lunch I either only brought a ham sandwich or I brought a couple of boiled eggs for lunch. I tried not to spend too much time putting my lunch together in the morning, so I went for the quick fix. For a year, each morning when I woke up, before taking my shower I went in the kitchen, put a couple of eggs in a pan of water, put them on the stove, and headed for the shower.
By the time I came out of the shower, the eggs were ready to come out of the pan and into my Little Playmate lunch box with my salt shaker and a couple of paper towels to be used as napkins for when I peeled them at lunch time. I had to put the shells somewhere….
One exactly like this
When I was on the labor crew I used to be able to eat all day long and remain thin. When I arrived in the electric shop, the amount of physical activity was a lot less. I found that buying a cinnamon roll from the vending machine for morning and afternoon break was no longer a viable idea. My weight quickly went from 145 pounds to 163 in a few short months.
So, I could no longer eat like a Hobbit. I had to watch my weight. I stopped drinking Dr. Peppers and bought Diet Cokes instead. I limited myself to my one sandwich or a couple of boiled eggs and a fruit, and whatever vegetable treats Charles would give me. That still didn’t seem to help me keep my weight down, so I had to take other measures.
I began drinking Slim Fast for lunch every day. I would bring a half gallon of milk and keep it in the refrigerator and then I would use half of it each day for lunch mixing up a glass of Slim Fast. This helped keep me fairly…. um…. less Hobbit-like.
I would mix up a helping of Slim Fast each day for lunch
I don’t remember how many years I continued drinking Slim-Fast for lunch, but I’m sure it was a number of years. The same lunch every day. A glass of Slim Fast for lunch. — Yum…. um…. Yum…..
One day as lunch time was rapidly approaching, I went to the Ice Box to retrieve my carton of milk to mix my Slim-Fast. When I opened the refrigerator door, I didn’t see the carton of milk. I stopped and thought. I was sure I had left a half carton of milk there from the day before…. Someone had obviously taken my milk. That was unusual. I would trust just about everyone in the shop with my life (well, there were a couple of them in the lab that I had my doubts). Surely I could trust them all with my carton of milk.
So, as Andy, Ben and Diana came to the Work Table slash Lunch Table, I asked if anyone had seen my carton of milk that was in the refrigerator. Andy Tubbs replied that he had thrown it out that morning. He had seen that carton of milk sitting in there for months and had figured that it had gone bad a long time ago, so that morning he had poured it down the drain.
Semi-stunned, I explained that I had only put that milk carton in the refrigerator yesterday, and that I put a new one in there every two day. But at this point what could you do? Andy shrugged his shoulders. Said something like, “Oh Well…” I hobbled back to the office feeling a little downtrodden that I wasn’t going to be able to feast on my cool Malt Chocolaty glass of Slim-Fast like I had for the past 100 weeks…. Like I said… I was a “little” downtrodden about it.
I sat down in the office across from Charles and told him that my milk had been inadvertently tossed out. The only thing I had in my lunchbox at that point was my can of Slim-Fast. Maybe I had a spare pocket knife, some old hardhat stickers and a rosary, but nothing really edible as a backup.
I sat there for a couple of minutes when the office door opened up and Andy walked in with a plastic Tupperware bowl. It was filled with some meat and vegetables. He placed it down in front of me, and turned to walk out. — Power Plant Men….. That’s how they are. He had given me, what looked like the majority of his lunch to eat.
In the 20 years that I worked at the Power Plant, I had eaten all kinds of foods for the first time. From Squirrel to Deer Jerky. I think this was some kind of Deer Stew. I can tell you that of all the lunches I ate during that time, I can vividly remember eating that lunch. It was a Power Plant Man lunch fit for a king.
I guess I was feeling guilty that I never could really contribute anything more than just a tray of stale brownies for the team lunches, so I told the shop that the next day I was going to prepare a salad for them. Like at a salad bar. The idea didn’t seem to excite them too much. Most of them were Meat and Potato type people, as I was myself. But I thought I would surprise them.
I went to the store that evening and bought all kinds of things that I could use to make a salad bar. The next day, I brought bean sprouts, Alfalfa Sprouts, boiled eggs, a ham, some spinach, leaf lettuce and iceberg lettuce, some diced beets, broccoli, cauliflower, and about 4 different kinds of salad dressing.
Around 9:30 after our morning break, I began working on setting up the counter for lunch. I began by dicing up the ham….. Well… using a regular old knife to slice ham into little tiny cubes takes a lot longer than I thought it would. It turned out that by the time I had finished with the ham, and sliced up about 6 boiled eggs, and slicing up a pound of mushrooms and washed and prepared the lettuce, and cheese and beets and lemons (for squeezing) and everything to make it look like a real salad bar, it was already lunch time.
Ok. My Salad bar didn’t have this many items…
I think I surprised the electricians that day. I don’t think they were thinking that they were going to get anything more than a bowl of lettuce with some vinegar and oil. I did the best I could and they seemed to enjoy it. Being that they hadn’t really counted on my salad being a full blown lunch, I think many of them (or most of them) had went ahead and brought there regular lunch just in case.
I know this wasn’t a typical Power Plant Man Lunch. And it isn’t like I eat a lot of salads myself. I just thought it was something that I could do without having to cook a lot…. I mean… the ham was already cooked, and I knew how to boil eggs. So, I thought, what the heck. I’ll give it a try.
I wasn’t very good at showing my appreciation toward the electricians because….. well….. because I just was never much good at that. I only did something like that once that I can remember. The electricians on the other hand were constantly doing things to show their appreciation for others. At least there was that one day when the Power Plant Men “Ate My Lunch”!
Power Plant Men 