A Day in the Life of Power Plant Man and the Sign Hangin’ Chain Gang
Favorites Post #73
Originally Posted July 21, 2012:
No one knows more about having to put up with the antics of Summer Help than the Power Plant Man Jim Heflin. Though Jim wasn’t completely a True Power Plant Man, he was nevertheless certified as a Bonafide Caretaker of Summer Help Helpers.
I understood after a couple of years of being a Summer Help myself that the reason that Summer Help were called by that name was because they really did indeed need help. Though some may think that this help could best be found in the company of a licensed Therapist, most of the time what they really needed was a good dose of Summer Help chores to keep them out of trouble and to teach them the fine art of labor in its most tedious and repetitious form.
Though I’m not sure, it could have been Jim Heflin that talked Stanley Elmore into allowing the summer help to attach the signs to the barbed wire fence that surrounded the Electric Company property that enclosed the Power Plant itself as well as the lake that was built to be used as cooling water in the condenser. I say that because it didn’t seem like it was a long time after I had answered the phone one day in the garage and I found Jim Heflin’s wife on the other end of the line calling to talk to Jim, that we were assigned to the task of installing the signs.
Jim wasn’t in the shop at the time so she told me to tell Jim that his wife Brenda had called.
It just so happened that my girlfriend at the time (who I later married and lived happily ever after) and I had a joke character that we would talk about named “Brenda Bulldog”. It is a long story to tell about Brenda Bulldog, so I’ll just say that it has to do with “Otto” in the Beetle Bailey Comic Strip, and his girlfriend “Polly Bulldog” who is always suspicious of another bulldog named “Brenda Bulldog”. I’m sure that you all have the same sort of characters that you talk about in your family… um… don’t you?
Otto from the Beetle Bailey Comic Strip
So, obviously, when she told me that her name was Brenda, I just had to respond as Otto would respond. So I said in a gruff but excited voice (rolling the “R” in the word Brenda in my throat), “Brenda Bulldog?!?” Jim’s Wife responded by asking what I had said, so I responded back exactly as I had the first time, “Brenda Bulldog?!?”
I guess she misunderstood my intentions because she sounded obviously disgruntled as she explained to me in no uncertain terms that she was not a bulldog. I answered back by insisting that this was, “Brenda Bulldog!” She repeated again that she was not a bulldog and told me to just tell Jim to call her at home when he returned to the garage.
When Jim came back from the Maintenance Shop I told him that his wife had called, and I added, “By the way. I called her “Brenda Bulldog”. I explained to him that I just couldn’t help it when I heard her name was Brenda, I just had to say “Brenda Bulldog”. I couldn’t help it. It just came out. He looked a little mystified by my explanation and quickly went into the office to call home.
I guess in hindsight, after having met Brenda in person it probably wasn’t a good idea to have called her “Brenda Bulldog”. First of all, not only did Jim Heflin have the face that reminded you of a likable Basset hound, but Brenda really did kind of remind you of a bulldog (a slight underbite). If I had known that earlier, I am sure I would have insisted that she was Brenda Poodle. That would be the most logical response given the circumstance.
Kind of like this
A couple of days later a pickup truck was backed up to the garage and in the back were bundles of thin metal signs. Each sign was about the size of a piece of paper. the sign was white and had red lettering. There were two different signs. One that indicated that this was the Property of the Electric company and that a person should only enter at designated areas. The other had a set of warnings or rules, which I can’t remember anymore.
There were 4,500 of each type of sign. It was our job to take the signs and to bolt them together with small nuts and bolts that were supplied in buckets. As we bolted them together we placed them in boxes and put them in the back of the truck, where we went around the fence line surrounding the lake and the plant and every third section of fence (about 30 feet) we would mount the sign onto the barbed wire fence. It would take about 4,500 of each of the signs to completely cover the perimeter of the property.
In the back of my mind I could hear Jim Heflin say to Stanley Elmore after he hung up the call with his wife, “Stanley. Wouldn’t it be a good chore for the summer help to hang all those signs around the 25 mile perimeter of the electric company property?” And Stanley replying, “Jim! That’s a brilliant idea!”
So began the long trek of hanging signs. We had a small blue Mitsubishi Tractor that we used to travel around the fence line in areas where the truck couldn’t easily go.
A tractor just like this
It had a small trailer on the back of it that we would pile a bunch of sign assemblies (the two signs bolted together). Then we would walk or ride behind the tractor as we went from fence post to fence post mounting the signs evenly between the posts every third section.
This was a brilliant way to teach the young and inexperienced summer help the art of patience as well as the art of subservience. This way, later in life when the summer help became a Power Plant Man-in-Training, or even a mechanic or electrician or husband and was asked to do something that may seem boring to the average citizen, all the summer help had to do was remember the time they had to hang 4,500 signs on barbed wire fences and even the most boring tasks seemed like an exciting ride on a roller coaster in comparison.
For those power plant men who knew me as a janitor, now maybe they can understand how I could find so much enjoyment sweeping the turbine room floor (about the size of two football fields) over and over with a red dust mop.
Like this only with a mop handle
Anyway, during our time while traversing the wilds along the fence line, it gave the summer help time to think. I was working with a good friend of mine by the name of Tim Flowers. We had become friends while I had attended Oklahoma University in Norman my first year in college (before going to Missouri University in Columbia for my last 3 years). So, my fourth year, 1982, as a summer help, Tim came to work alongside me.
Jim Heflin and Ken Conrad (as well as Opal Ward — or was it Opal Brien at the time) used to take turns shuffling us around the fence line. When we were with Jim Heflin we would spend our time in the intellectual pursuit of inventing new “Burning Cat” jokes.
This was a skill I had picked up from my father who was a Veterinary Professor at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He had come home one day from work with the latest copy of a Veterinary journal. In the journal was a set of “Burning Cat” jokes that he read to me. I’m sure you must already know them.
There were jokes like, “Why did the Burning Cat cross the road?” “So that it could burn on the other side.” Or “Knock, Knock” “Who’s there?” “Burning”, “Burning who?” “Burning Cat.” Or “What did one burning cat say to the other burning cat when he met him in a bar?” “That’s silly. Everyone knows that a burning cat can’t talk when they’re on fire.”
We made it a goal to come up with at least one new burning cat joke every day. This came in handy later on when I was in my last year in college and I became known as the “Burning Cat Man” in Columbia, Missouri as I would tell burning cat jokes to the workers at the Subway every time my friend Ben Cox and I would go there to eat a sub sandwich. I would be introduced as “The Burning Cat Man” when customers would come in while we were there.
When we were with Ken Conrad we would think about more esoteric subjects like, “What does a cow think about while it is chewing it’s cud?”
Hmmm…. What does he think about?
We would go on and on speculating “Maybe the cow is meditating about the full meaning of life and whether or not the self is the center of his being or is it somewhere else, or is it just that he’s thinking that his ear itches and he can’t reach it with his tail. He can only twitch it”
We would think about these things as we would be passing some cows standing opposite across the fence. We would wonder if they stood around trying to think up jokes that would entertain themselves since they had to stand out in the hot sun all day. Maybe they thought about burning cats, or even chickens crossing the road.
At first we couldn’t tell if Ken was even listening to us until one time, the tractor started to swerve a bit and he pulled it to a stop so that he could turn around and tell us that we were the strangest bunch of kids he had ever run across. But I could tell that we had started him thinking about it. I’m pretty sure that it was on his mind for quite a while. “What is that cow thinking about?”
Every once in a while I knew that Ken Conrad had gained some enlightenment because he would suddenly turn to me and say, “Hey Sweet Pea!” And then he would grin real big. Yep. He knew. The meaning of life was within his grasp.
Anyway, long story short, before all the signs were hung by the barbed wire with care (as if it was Christmas in July), I went up to the main office and asked Eldon Waugh if I could talk to him. He was the plant manager. The one I often have referred to as the “Evil Plant Manager”. Mostly because I think he would have liked that title. He worked so hard to obtain it.
I asked him if he had an opening at the plant because I would like to go to work there permanently. He said there was a janitor position opening up and if it was all right with Ken Scott he would hire me. So he paged Ken and asked him to come up to his office.
When he arrived, Eldon asked Ken if he thought they ought to hire me because I wanted to work at the plant full time. Ken said that he would be happy to hire me on as a janitor.
I don’t know if Ken realized at the time how much trouble I would cause in the years that followed, because I always had come across as a fairly decent person up to that point. I don’t know if he ever regretted his decision. I’m pretty sure that Eldon did and I know that Bill Moler regretted it when he returned from his summer vacation to find me standing in the janitor closet across from his office.
He was none too happy about it. Especially since he considered it his job to do the hiring for people in the maintenance shop. Bill knew that I had already expressed my willingness to open my mouth and reveal my innermost thoughts right to someone’s face at the most inappropriate moments. I used to explain that I took after my Italian Mother who always spoke twice before thinking.
That was how I was able to escape the sign hangin’ chain gang and became the Janitor that I was always meant to be! Years later the words had worn off of the signs, but the white signs were still hanging from those barbed wire fences for as long as I can remember. Now that I think about it, I wonder what Jim Heflin was thinking when I became a janitor and he still had to tote babbling summer helps around the wilderness in the hot sun with an endless supply of Burning Cat Jokes.
Was he wishing that he had thought twice before he spoke about having us hang the signs? Or maybe he didn’t and I just imagined that he was slightly upset all because I had said those two impulsive words….. “Brenda Bulldog!”
Jim Heflin
Comment from previous Repost
A Day in the Life of Power Plant Man and the Sign Hangin’ Chain Gang
Originally Posted July 21, 2012:
No one knows more about having to put up with the antics of Summer Help than the Power Plant Man Jim Heflin. Though Jim wasn’t completely a True Power Plant Man, he was nevertheless certified as a Bonafide Caretaker of Summer Help Helpers.
I understood after a couple of years of being a Summer Help myself that the reason that Summer Help were called by that name was because they really did indeed need help. Though some may think that this help could best be found in the company of a licensed Therapist, most of the time what they really needed was a good dose of Summer Help chores to keep them out of trouble and to teach them the fine art of labor in its most tedious and repetitious form.
Though I’m not sure, it could have been Jim Heflin that talked Stanley Elmore into allowing the summer help to attach the signs to the barbed wire fence that surrounded the Electric Company property that enclosed the Power Plant itself as well as the lake that was built to be used as cooling water in the condenser. I say that because it didn’t seem like it was a long time after I had answered the phone one day in the garage and I found Jim Heflin’s wife on the other end of the line calling to talk to Jim, that we were assigned to the task of installing the signs.
Jim wasn’t in the shop at the time so she told me to tell Jim that his wife Brenda had called.
It just so happened that my girlfriend at the time (who I later married and lived happily ever after) and I had a joke character that we would talk about named “Brenda Bulldog”. It is a long story to tell about Brenda Bulldog, so I’ll just say that it has to do with “Otto” in the Beetle Bailey Comic Strip, and his girlfriend “Polly Bulldog” who is always suspicious of another bulldog named “Brenda Bulldog”. I’m sure that you all have the same sort of characters that you talk about in your family… um… don’t you?
Otto from the Beetle Bailey Comic Strip
So, obviously, when she told me that her name was Brenda, I just had to respond as Otto would respond. So I said in a gruff but excited voice (rolling the “R” in the word Brenda in my throat), “Brenda Bulldog?!?” Jim’s Wife responded by asking what I had said, so I responded back exactly as I had the first time, “Brenda Bulldog?!?”
I guess she misunderstood my intentions because she sounded obviously disgruntled as she explained to me in no uncertain terms that she was not a bulldog. I answered back by insisting that this was, “Brenda Bulldog!” She repeated again that she was not a bulldog and told me to just tell Jim to call her at home when he returned to the garage.
When Jim came back from the Maintenance Shop I told him that his wife had called, and I added, “By the way. I called her “Brenda Bulldog”. I explained to him that I just couldn’t help it when I heard her name was Brenda, I just had to say “Brenda Bulldog”. I couldn’t help it. It just came out. He looked a little mystified by my explanation and quickly went into the office to call home.
I guess in hindsight, after having met Brenda in person it probably wasn’t a good idea to have called her “Brenda Bulldog”. First of all, not only did Jim Heflin have the face that reminded you of a likable Basset hound, but Brenda really did kind of remind you of a bulldog (a slight underbite). If I had known that earlier, I am sure I would have insisted that she was Brenda Poodle. That would be the most logical response given the circumstance.
Kind of like this
A couple of days later a pickup truck was backed up to the garage and in the back were bundles of thin metal signs. Each sign was about the size of a piece of paper. the sign was white and had red lettering. There were two different signs. One that indicated that this was the Property of the Electric company and that a person should only enter at designated areas. The other had a set of warnings or rules, which I can’t remember anymore.
There were 4,500 of each type of sign. It was our job to take the signs and to bolt them together with small nuts and bolts that were supplied in buckets. As we bolted them together we placed them in boxes and put them in the back of the truck, where we went around the fence line surrounding the lake and the plant and every third section of fence (about 30 feet) we would mount the sign onto the barbed wire fence. It would take about 4,500 of each of the signs to completely cover the perimeter of the property.
In the back of my mind I could hear Jim Heflin say to Stanley Elmore after he hung up the call with his wife, “Stanley. Wouldn’t it be a good chore for the summer help to hang all those signs around the 25 mile perimeter of the electric company property?” And Stanley replying, “Jim! That’s a brilliant idea!”
So began the long trek of hanging signs. We had a small blue Mitsubishi Tractor that we used to travel around the fence line in areas where the truck couldn’t easily go.
A tractor just like this
It had a small trailer on the back of it that we would pile a bunch of sign assemblies (the two signs bolted together). Then we would walk or ride behind the tractor as we went from fence post to fence post mounting the signs evenly between the posts every third section.
This was a brilliant way to teach the young and inexperienced summer help the art of patience as well as the art of subservience. This way, later in life when the summer help became a Power Plant Man-in-Training, or even a mechanic or electrician and was asked to do something that may seem boring to the average citizen, all the summer help had to do was remember the time they had to hang 4,500 signs on barbed wire fences and even the most boring tasks seemed like an exciting ride on a roller coaster in comparison.
For those power plant men who knew me as a janitor, now maybe they can understand how I could find so much enjoyment sweeping the turbine room floor (about the size of a football field) over and over with a red dust mop.
Like this only with a mop handle
Anyway, during our time while traversing the wilds along the fence line, it gave the summer help time to think. I was working with a good friend of mine by the name of Tim Flowers. We had become friends while I had attended Oklahoma University in Norman my first year in college (before going to Missouri University in Columbia for my last 3 years). So, my fourth year as a summer help, Tim came to work alongside me.
Jim Heflin and Ken Conrad (as well as Opal Ward — or was it Opal Brien at the time) used to take turns shuffling us around the fence line. When we were with Jim Heflin we would spend our time in the intellectual pursuit of inventing new “Burning Cat” jokes.
This was a skill I had picked up from my father who was a Veterinary Professor at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He had come home one day from work with the latest copy of a Veterinary journal. In the journal was a set of “Burning Cat” jokes that he read to me. I’m sure you must already know them.
There were jokes like, “Why did the Burning Cat cross the road?” “So that it could burn on the other side.” Or “Knock, Knock” “Who’s there?” “Burning”, “Burning who?” “Burning Cat.” Or “What did one burning cat say to the other burning cat when he met him in a bar?” “That’s silly. Everyone knows that a burning cat can’t talk when they’re on fire.”
We made it a goal to come up with at least one new burning cat joke every day. This came in handy later on when I was in my last year in college and I became known as the “Burning Cat Man” in Columbia, Missouri as I would tell burning cat jokes to the workers at the Subway every time my friend Ben Cox and I would go there to eat a sub sandwich. I would be introduced as “The Burning Cat Man” when customers would come in while we were there.
When we were with Ken Conrad we would think about more esoteric subjects like, “What does a cow think about while it is chewing it’s cud?”
Hmmm…. What does he think about?
We would go on and on speculating “Maybe the cow is meditating about the full meaning of life and whether or not the self is the center of his being or is it somewhere else, or is it just that he’s thinking that his ear itches and he can’t reach it with his tail. He can only twitch it”
We would think about these things as we would be passing some cows standing opposite across the fence. We would wonder if they stood around trying to think up jokes that would entertain themselves since they had to stand out in the hot sun all day. Maybe they thought about burning cats, or even chickens crossing the road.
At first we couldn’t tell if Ken was even listening to us until one time, the tractor started to swerve a bit and he pulled it to a stop so that he could turn around and tell us that we were the strangest bunch of kids he had ever run across. But I could tell that we had started him thinking about it. I’m pretty sure that it was on his mind for quite a while. “What is that cow thinking about?”
Every once in a while I knew that Ken Conrad had gained some enlightenment because he would suddenly turn to me and say, “Hey Sweet Pea!” And then he would grin real big. Yep. He knew. The meaning of life was within his grasp.
Anyway, long story short, before all the signs were hung by the barbed wire with care (as if it was Christmas in July), I went up to the main office and asked Eldon Waugh if I could talk to him. He was the plant manager. The one I often have referred to as the “Evil Plant Manager”. Mostly because I think he would have liked that title. He worked so hard to obtain it.
I asked him if he had an opening at the plant because I would like to go to work there permanently. He said there was a janitor position opening up and if it was all right with Ken Scott he would hire me. So he paged Ken and asked him to come up to his office.
When he arrived, Eldon asked Ken if he thought they ought to hire me because I wanted to work at the plant full time. Ken said that he would be happy to hire me on as a janitor.
I don’t know if Ken realized at the time how much trouble I would cause in the years that followed, because I always had come across as a fairly decent person up to that point. I don’t know if he ever regretted his decision. I’m pretty sure that Eldon did and I know that Bill Moler regretted it when he returned from his summer vacation to find me standing in the janitor closet across from his office.
He was none too happy about it. Especially since he considered it his job to do the hiring for people in the maintenance shop. Bill knew that I had already expressed my willingness to open my mouth and reveal my innermost thoughts right to someone’s face at the most inappropriate moments. I used to explain that I took after my Italian Mother who always spoke twice before thinking.
That was how I was able to escape the sign hangin’ chain gang and became the Janitor that I was always meant to be! Years later the words had worn off of the signs, but the white signs were still hanging from those barbed wire fences for as long as I can remember. Now that I think about it, I wonder what Jim Heflin was thinking when I became a janitor and he still had to tote babbling summer helps around the wilderness in the hot sun with an endless supply of Burning Cat Jokes.
Was he wishing that he had thought twice before he spoke about having us hang the signs? Or maybe he didn’t and I just imagined that he was slightly upset all because I had said those two impulsive words….. “Brenda Bulldog!”
Jim Heflin
Comment from previous Repost
-
Good Story!
I still remember my first job as a “Summer Student” at the Mustang Plant (1967). Ben Snow and I worked from the top of the turbine room crane and changed out all the burned-out light bulbs (1,000 watt incandescent). Boy – that was one HOT job!
What do Power Plant Men in North Central Oklahoma Do For Recreation
Originally Posted on August 9, 2013:
I first ran across Power Plant Men totally by accident the summer of 1979 when I was 18 and I went to work as a summer help at a Power Plant in Oklahoma. I walked into the plant, and there they were. All standing there looking at me as if I was the new kid on the block. Which, of course, I was.
I had very little in common with this group of men. It was interesting enough to watch them at work, but it was equally as interesting to observe them after hours. I didn’t spend a lot of time with them myself. I often just listened to their stories of adventure on Monday Mornings. I think that was why the Monday Morning Safety Meeting was invented.
Like I said. I had little in common with these He-men. The only thing I could relate to was around Fishing. I had been fishing my entire childhood with my Father. Most everything else they did was foreign to me. Though, the first summer it seemed like the only things to do was to go fishing and to go over to the Peach Orchard by Marland, Oklahoma and pick peaches. Well, that, and go to Men’s Club dinners.
Like I’ve said twice now, I had little in common with this sunflower eatin’ bunch of men. I had just finished my first year as a college student and the only thing I knew to do during my free time was to play Dungeons and Dragons or Pinball. Actually, I was quite a pinball wizard and could usually spend all day on one quarter. This didn’t seem to impress the likes of this bunch, so I kept my Pinball Prowess to myself.
The Evel Knievel Pinball machine was one of the many I had mastered. By the way, why isn’t his last name pronounced: “Nee-vel”? Just wondering.
As I learned more about the Power Plant Men, I found out that they were a diverse group of men that had many different recreational activities. I have mentioned before that the evil plant Manager Eldon Waugh was a beekeeper, and so was my good friend Sonny Karcher. Even though Sonny spent a good portion of his time away from the plant doing some sort of farming, he enjoyed raising bees.
I mentioned in a previous post “Imitations and Innovations of Sonny Karcher” that Sonny liked to choose one thing about someone else and then take on that characteristic or possess a particular item that they had. So, I figured Sonny had become a beekeeper because he had a friend that did the same thing. I never thought that it was Eldon Waugh, since Sonny usually only chose something from someone he admired and Eldon made it a full time effort to make sure no one really liked him.
Power Plant Beehives
While I was a summer help I learned a few of the activities that Power Plant Men liked to do. For instance, I knew that Stanley Elmore liked to spend the weekend either making his yard look like something you would find in a Home and Garden magazine, or he liked cleaning his car and waxing his engine so that you could cook an egg right on it and not have to worry about any grit or grime between your teeth.
It goes without saying that the Power Plant Men that had families spent most of their free time with them. Those that didn’t have a family spent a lot of their time trying to avoid going down that path. So, they chose activities that would take them into the wilderness somewhere or maybe a river or two.
I heard very little talk of disgruntled husbands from the true Power Plant Men. The only story I can remember off the top of my head about a husband that was upset with his wife was Marlin McDaniel. He told us one Monday morning that he had to take his wife over his knee on Saturday. He explained it like this. “I was so mad at her that I grabbed her and laid her across my knees. I pulled up her skirt to spank her. I looked down to make sure I was aiming in the right direction… Then I paused for a moment… and I suddenly couldn’t remember what I was mad about.”
You know… It is funny because I had always thought that Marlin McDaniel looked like Spanky, and in the story he told about his wife, he was going to spank her. What are the odds of that?
Marlin McDaniel always reminded me of Spanky from Little Rascals
It wasn’t until I entered the Electric Shop as an electrician in 1983 that I learned more about the recreational activities of Power Plant Men. I mean. I knew that Gene Day liked to drive around campus on weekends in his black pickup truck with the flames on it to impress the college girls, even if he was 50 years older than them. But besides that, I mean…..
Gene Day’s truck was similar to this only different, with a different pattern of flames and it wasn’t a low rider
Outside the welding shop on the lawn was a piece of art made from metal rods that had been created by the welders to resemble a cow with horns. It was used to practice lassoing. There was a certain group of Power Plant Men that took part in rodeos. Some riding on broncos, some lassoing cows and tying them up in knots. If I remember correctly, Andy Tubbs, one of the most intelligent electricians, was a rodeo clown. If you haven’t been to a rodeo, then you might not realize what a Rodeo Clown does.
A couple of Rodeo Clowns
Sure they stand around in bright colored clothes. These two guys aren’t just there for laughs. Here is a rodeo clown at work.
Rodeo Clown at Work
You see. When a contestant is riding a bull and they fall off, in order to keep the bull from turning around and goring the poor guy to death, a rodeo clown jumps into action and distracts the bull while the contestant is quickly spirited away to safety.
A Rodeo Clown Hard at Work
Jerry Mitchell had told me when I was still a summer help that you could tell who liked to participate in rodeos. They were usually missing one or more fingers. One of the rodeo hands explained it to me like this. When you lasso the cow, you quickly wrap the rope around the saddle horn. Just as you are doing that, the cow hits the end of the rope and goes flying back. This means that if you don’t get your fingers out of the way when you are wrapping the rope around the saddle horn, the rope will snap it right off.
January 1997 a new Instrument and Controls person came to work at the plant. Brent Kautzman was a rodeo person. We were sitting in a Confined Space Rescue team meeting once and Randy Dailey was espousing the dangers of roping cows in a rodeo when Brent said that he had his thumb cut off in a rodeo once. At first we looked at him as if he was just pulling our leg (or one of our fingers). He had all of his fingers.
Someone asked if they sewed his thumb back on. He said they weren’t able to do that. Instead they took one of his big toes and sewed it on his hand where his thumb had been. We were surprised when he showed us his thumb and sure enough. There was a big toe in place of his thumb.
Brent said that if he knew at the time how important a big toe is, he never would have done it. He said that he was young at the time, and he wanted to continue participating in rodeos, so he had them cut off his big toe and sew it on his hand. Anyway. Later, Brent returned to where he had come from, Richardton, North Dakota. He was a great guy, and a hard worker, but like myself, he wasn’t a True Power Plant Man.
The biggest source of recreation for Power Plant Men was Hunting. I would hear stories about how the hunters would send in their name for a drawing to be able to take part in the annual Elk Hunt in Montana. It was a lottery and they only picked so many people. So, the hunters would wait patiently each year to see if they were going to be able to make a trip to Montana.
Corporate Headquarters and the Evil Plant Manager wanted to make sure that not too many took off for Christmas because they wanted to ensure that enough people stayed in town in case there was an emergency at the plant and they needed to call everyone out. Christmas wasn’t really the problem at the plant as was “Hunting Season”.
There were two parts to deer hunting. The first few weeks it was bow season. You could go hunting for deer with a bow and arrows. Later you could hunt with a rifle. This was serious business in North Central Oklahoma. The Deer Hunters would prepare for this season all summer long. They would build their tree stands, and they would put out deer feeders to fatten up the deer.
A Deer and a raccoon fighting over who gets first dibs on the deer feeder. My money is on the raccoon.
People would become pretty sparse around when deer hunting season opened. At least or a few days. You could usually only kill one or two deer and that was your limit. Each year the number was decided by the population of deer.
If there were too many deer running around then the deer hunters could kill more. The whole idea of Deer Hunting from a Wildlife perspective was for population control. When there were too many deer, they would start passing around diseases and then all end up dying off anyway. So, this was a way of controlling the population.
A few times I was invited to join the Power Plant Men in their recreation. It was always a learning experience for both of us.
I was invited to Charles Foster’s house one summer to make pickles. We picked the cucumbers from Charles garden. Charles’ garden was the pride of Pawnee. I spent some time with his family that day, cleaning and boiling the cucumbers in vinegar in the pickle jars with the dill we had picked from his garden. I think often of the day I spent with Charles in his garden picking the cucumbers and in his house that evening.
I was also invited once to go to the Resort just outside of Pawnee known as “Pawnee Lake”. Diana Brien and Gary Wehunt and their spouses were camping out there and they invited me to join them the following morning. I showed up in the morning where we cooked breakfast, then they taught me the art of flying across the lake on a jet ski.
Pawnee Lake Oklahoma. Photo taken by John Brumfield
To me, this was sheer madness, but I bucked up and did it anyway. If I was going to die, doing it on a jet ski was as good of a place as any.
Then they invited me to play horseshoes. Well. I kindly declined saying that they didn’t really want me to play horseshoes. They said that they needed two teams of two, and they would really appreciate it if I joined them. So, I succumbed.
My first throw was very impressive as it bumped right up against the stake. I knew that this was just beginner’s luck, I really wasn’t a beginner. I had played a lot of horseshoes as a kid. Only, I had lost any sort of self-control when it came to letting lose of the horseshoe. I think it was my third throw that did it. The horseshoe literally ended up behind me. I think I almost hit Tek’s pickup. (Tek was Dee’s husband’s nickname or was it Tex?). When I let go of the horseshoe and it went flying through the air, everyone scattered.
There was an interesting character that came by when we were at the Pawnee Lake. His name was Trail Boss. He was a larger sociable person. Someone that you would think would come from a town called Pawnee, Oklahoma. There was another guy that was there that scattered when Trail Boss showed up. So, I made a comment to the Boss that he seemed to have quite an influence on people. I figured that was why they called him Trail Boss.
This isn’t Trail Boss, but you get the idea. This guy is wearing a Trail Boss Hat
Anyway. There were a lot of other things that the Power Plant Men did for recreation. I could go on and on. Maybe some of the Power plant that read this blog will post some of them in the comments. I purposely didn’t mention anything about “Noodling” (except for just now). I think I’ll do that in another post some time later.
Though I was like a fish out of water when I was with the Power Plant Men enjoying their time off, I was always treated as if I belonged. No one made fun of me even when they were scattering to dodge a rogue horseshoe. When I went fishing with them as a new summer help when I was 18 years old, I was never shunned and no one ever looked down on me. I have to give them this: True Power Plant are patient people. They put up with me for 20 years. I can’t ask for more than that.
Comments from the previous repost:
-
-
My hobby was astronomy. I built an 8″ telescope when I lived in Ada (worked at the Seminole Plant in Konawa). I remember telling my Plant Manager (Jim Gist – lived in Konawa) about all the things I could see with my telescope. When I told him that I could see Uranus (I used the long “a” pronunciation), he got a real surprised look on his face – and finally said “All the way from Ada?” He was a real hoot!
-
-
Good story! That’s the kind of experience most people can relate to, getting to know ones coworkers. And the interesting facts and pictures just make it more interesting.
Never occurred to me a raccoon would take on a deer.
A Day in the Life of Power Plant Man and the Sign Hangin’ Chain Gang
Originally Posted July 21, 2012:
No one knows more about having to put up with the antics of Summer Help than the Power Plant Man Jim Heflin. Though Jim wasn’t completely a True Power Plant Man, he was nevertheless certified as a Bonafide Caretaker of Summer Help Helpers.
I understood after a couple of years of being a Summer Help myself that the reason that Summer Help were called by that name was because they really did indeed need help. Though some may think that this help could best be found in the company of a licensed Therapist, most of the time what they really needed was a good dose of Summer Help chores to keep them out of trouble and to teach them the fine art of labor in its most tedious and repetitious form.
Though I’m not sure, it could have been Jim Heflin that talked Stanley Elmore into allowing the summer help to attach the signs to the barbed wire fence that surrounded the Electric Company property that enclosed the Power Plant itself as well as the lake that was built to be used as cooling water in the condenser. I say that because it didn’t seem like it was a long time after I had answered the phone one day in the garage and I found Jim Heflin’s wife on the other end of the line calling to talk to Jim, that we were assigned to the task of installing the signs.
Jim wasn’t in the shop at the time so she told me to tell Jim that his wife Brenda had called.
It just so happened that my girlfriend at the time (who I later married and lived happily ever after) and I had a joke character that we would talk about named “Brenda Bulldog”. It is a long story to tell about Brenda Bulldog, so I’ll just say that it has to do with “Otto” in the Beetle Bailey Comic Strip, and his girlfriend “Polly Bulldog” who is always suspicious of another bulldog named “Brenda Bulldog”. I’m sure that you all have the same sort of characters that you talk about in your family… um… don’t you?
Otto from the Beetle Bailey Comic Strip
So, obviously, when she told me that her name was Brenda, I just had to respond as Otto would respond. So I said in a gruff but excited voice (rolling the “R” in the word Brenda in my throat), “Brenda Bulldog?!?” Jim’s Wife responded by asking what I had said, so I responded back exactly as I had the first time, “Brenda Bulldog?!?”
I guess she misunderstood my intentions because she sounded obviously disgruntled as she explained to me in no uncertain terms that she was not a bulldog. I answered back by insisting that this was, “Brenda Bulldog!” She repeated again that she was not a bulldog and told me to just tell Jim to call her at home when he returned to the garage.
When Jim came back from the Maintenance Shop I told him that his wife had called, and I added, “By the way. I called her “Brenda Bulldog”. I explained to him that I just couldn’t help it when I heard her name was Brenda, I just had to say “Brenda Bulldog”. I couldn’t help it. It just came out. He looked a little mystified by my explanation and quickly went into the office to call home.
I guess in hindsight, after having met Brenda in person it probably wasn’t a good idea to have called her “Brenda Bulldog”. First of all, not only did Jim Heflin have the face that reminded you of a likable Basset hound, but Brenda really did kind of remind you of a bulldog (a slight underbite). If I had known that earlier, I am sure I would have insisted that she was Brenda Poodle. That would be the most logical response given the circumstance.
Kind of like this
A couple of days later a pickup truck was backed up to the garage and in the back were bundles of thin metal signs. Each sign was about the size of a piece of paper. the sign was white and had red lettering. There were two different signs. One that indicated that this was the Property of the Electric company and that a person should only enter at designated areas. The other had a set of warnings or rules, which I can’t remember anymore.
There were 4,500 of each type of sign. It was our job to take the signs and to bolt them together with small nuts and bolts that were supplied in buckets. As we bolted them together we placed them in boxes and put them in the back of the truck, where we went around the fence line surrounding the lake and the plant and every third section of fence (about 30 feet) we would mount the sign onto the barbed wire fence. It would take about 4,500 of each of the signs to completely cover the perimeter of the property.
In the back of my mind I could hear Jim Heflin say to Stanley Elmore after he hung up the call with his wife, “Stanley. Wouldn’t it be a good chore for the summer help to hang all those signs around the 25 mile perimeter of the electric company property?” And Stanley replying, “Jim! That’s a brilliant idea!”
So began the long trek of hanging signs. We had a small blue Mitsubishi Tractor that we used to travel around the fence line in areas where the truck couldn’t easily go.
A tractor just like this
It had a small trailer on the back of it that we would pile a bunch of sign assemblies (the two signs bolted together). Then we would walk or ride behind the tractor as we went from fence post to fence post mounting the signs evenly between the posts every third section.
This was a brilliant way to teach the young and inexperienced summer help the art of patience as well as the art of subservience. This way, later in life when the summer help became a Power Plant Man-in-Training, or even a mechanic or electrician and was asked to do something that may seem boring to the average citizen, all the summer help had to do was remember the time they had to hang 4,500 signs on barbed wire fences and even the most boring tasks seemed like an exciting ride on a roller coaster in comparison.
For those power plant men who knew me as a janitor, now maybe they can understand how I could find so much enjoyment sweeping the turbine room floor (about the size of a football field) over and over with a red dust mop.
Like this only with a mop handle
Anyway, during our time while traversing the wilds along the fence line, it gave the summer help time to think. I was working with a good friend of mine by the name of Tim Flowers. We had become friends while I had attended Oklahoma University in Norman my first year in college (before going to Missouri University in Columbia for my last 3 years). So, my fourth year as a summer help, Tim came to work alongside me.
Jim Heflin and Ken Conrad (as well as Opal Ward — or was it Opal Brien at the time) used to take turns shuffling us around the fence line. When we were with Jim Heflin we would spend our time in the intellectual pursuit of inventing new “Burning Cat” jokes.
This was a skill I had picked up from my father who was a Veterinary Professor at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He had come home one day from work with the latest copy of a Veterinary journal. In the journal was a set of “Burning Cat” jokes that he read to me. I’m sure you must already know them.
There were jokes like, “Why did the Burning Cat cross the road?” “So that it could burn on the other side.” Or “Knock, Knock” “Who’s there?” “Burning”, “Burning who?” “Burning Cat.” Or “What did one burning cat say to the other burning cat when he met him in a bar?” “That’s silly. Everyone knows that a burning cat can’t talk when they’re on fire.”
We made it a goal to come up with at least one new burning cat joke every day. This came in handy later on when I was in my last year in college and I became known as the “Burning Cat Man” in Columbia, Missouri as I would tell burning cat jokes to the workers at the Subway every time my friend Ben Cox and I would go there to eat a sub sandwich. I would be introduced as “The Burning Cat Man” when customers would come in while we were there.
When we were with Ken Conrad we would think about more esoteric subjects like, “What does a cow think about while it is chewing it’s cud?”
Hmmm…. What does he think about?
We would go on and on speculating “Maybe the cow is meditating about the full meaning of life and whether or not the self is the center of his being or is it somewhere else, or is it just that he’s thinking that his ear itches and he can’t reach it with his tail. He can only twitch it”
We would think about these things as we would be passing some cows standing opposite across the fence. We would wonder if they stood around trying to think up jokes that would entertain themselves since they had to stand out in the hot sun all day. Maybe they thought about burning cats, or even chickens crossing the road.
At first we couldn’t tell if Ken was even listening to us until one time, the tractor started to swerve a bit and he pulled it to a stop so that he could turn around and tell us that we were the strangest bunch of kids he had ever run across. But I could tell that we had started him thinking about it. I’m pretty sure that it was on his mind for quite a while. “What is that cow thinking about?”
Every once in a while I knew that Ken Conrad had gained some enlightenment because he would suddenly turn to me and say, “Hey Sweet Pea!” And then he would grin real big. Yep. He knew. The meaning of life was within his grasp.
Anyway, long story short, before all the signs were hung by the barbed wire with care (as if it was Christmas in July), I went up to the main office and asked Eldon Waugh if I could talk to him. He was the plant manager. The one I often have referred to as the “Evil Plant Manager”. Mostly because I think he would have liked that title. He worked so hard to obtain it.
I asked him if he had an opening at the plant because I would like to go to work there permanently. He said there was a janitor position opening up and if it was all right with Ken Scott he would hire me. So he paged Ken and asked him to come up to his office.
When he arrived, Eldon asked Ken if he thought they ought to hire me because I wanted to work at the plant full time. Ken said that he would be happy to hire me on as a janitor.
I don’t know if Ken realized at the time how much trouble I would cause in the years that followed, because I always had come across as a fairly decent person up to that point. I don’t know if he ever regretted his decision. I’m pretty sure that Eldon did and I know that Bill Moler regretted it when he returned from his summer vacation to find me standing in the janitor closet across from his office.
He was none too happy about it. Especially since he considered it his job to do the hiring for people in the maintenance shop. Bill knew that I had already expressed my willingness to open my mouth and reveal my innermost thoughts right to someone’s face at the most inappropriate moments. I used to explain that I took after my Italian Mother who always spoke twice before thinking.
That was how I was able to escape the sign hangin’ chain gang and became the Janitor that I was always meant to be! Years later the words had worn off of the signs, but the white signs were still hanging from those barbed wire fences for as long as I can remember. Now that I think about it, I wonder what Jim Heflin was thinking when I became a janitor and he still had to tote babbling summer helps around the wilderness in the hot sun with an endless supply of Burning Cat Jokes.
Was he wishing that he had thought twice before he spoke about having us hang the signs? Or maybe he didn’t and I just imagined that he was slightly upset all because I had said those two impulsive words….. “Brenda Bulldog!”
Jim Heflin
Comment from previous Repost
-
Good Story!
I still remember my first job as a “Summer Student” at the Mustang Plant (1967). Ben Snow and I worked from the top of the turbine room crane and changed out all the burned-out light bulbs (1,000 watt incandescent). Boy – that was one HOT job!
What do Power Plant Men in North Central Oklahoma Do For Recreation
Originally Posted on August 9, 2013:
I first ran across Power Plant Men totally by accident the summer of 1979 when I was 18 and I went to work as a summer help at a Power Plant in Oklahoma. I walked into the plant, and there they were. All standing there looking at me as if I was the new kid on the block. Which, of course, I was.
I had very little in common with this group of men. It was interesting enough to watch them at work, but it was equally as interesting to observe them after hours. I didn’t spend a lot of time with them myself. I often just listened to their stories of adventure on Monday Mornings. I think that was why the Monday Morning Safety Meeting was invented.
Like I said. I had little in common with these He-men. The only thing I could relate to was around Fishing. I had been fishing my entire childhood with my Father. Most everything else they did was foreign to me. Though, the first summer it seemed like the only things to do was to go fishing and to go over to the Peach Orchard by Marland, Oklahoma and pick peaches. Well, that, and go to Men’s Club dinners.
Like I’ve said twice now, I had little in common with this sunflower eatin’ bunch of men. I had just finished my first year as a college student and the only thing I knew to do during my free time was to play Dungeons and Dragons or Pinball. Actually, I was quite a pinball wizard and could usually spend all day on one quarter. This didn’t seem to impress the likes of this bunch, so I kept my Pinball Prowess to myself.
The Evel Knievel Pinball machine was one of the many I had mastered. By the way, why isn’t his last name pronounced: “Nee-vel”? Just wondering.
As I learned more about the Power Plant Men, I found out that they were a diverse group of men that had many different recreational activities. I have mentioned before that the evil plant Manager Eldon Waugh was a beekeeper, and so was my good friend Sonny Karcher. Even though Sonny spent a good portion of his time away from the plant doing some sort of farming, he enjoyed raising bees.
I mentioned in a previous post “Imitations and Innovations of Sonny Karcher” that Sonny liked to choose one thing about someone else and then take on that characteristic or possess a particular item that they had. So, I figured Sonny had become a beekeeper because he had a friend that did the same thing. I never thought that it was Eldon Waugh, since Sonny usually only chose something from someone he admired and Eldon made it a full time effort to make sure no one really liked him.
Power Plant Beehives
While I was a summer help I learned a few of the activities that Power Plant Men liked to do. For instance, I knew that Stanley Elmore liked to spend the weekend either making his yard look like something you would find in a Home and Garden magazine, or he liked cleaning his car and waxing his engine so that you could cook an egg right on it and not have to worry about any grit or grime between your teeth.
It goes without saying that the Power Plant Men that had families spent most of their free time with them. Those that didn’t have a family spent a lot of their time trying to avoid going down that path. So, they chose activities that would take them into the wilderness somewhere or maybe a river or two.
I heard very little talk of disgruntled husbands from the true Power Plant Men. The only story I can remember off the top of my head about a husband that was upset with his wife was Marlin McDaniel. He told us one Monday morning that he had to take his wife over his knee on Saturday. He explained it like this. “I was so mad at her that I grabbed her and laid her across my knees. I pulled up her skirt to spank her. I looked down to make sure I was aiming in the right direction… Then I paused for a moment… and I suddenly couldn’t remember why I what I was mad about.”
You know… It is funny because I had always thought that Marlin McDaniel looked like Spanky, and in the story he told about his wife, he was going to spank her. What are the odds of that?
Marlin McDaniel always reminded me of Spanky from Little Rascals
It wasn’t until I entered the Electric Shop as an electrician in 1983 that I learned more about the recreational activities of Power Plant Men. I mean. I knew that Gene Day liked to drive around campus on weekends in his black pickup truck with the flames on it to impress the college girls, even if he was 50 years older than them. But besides that, I mean…..
Gene Day’s truck was similar to this only different, with a different pattern of flames and it wasn’t a low rider
Outside the welding shop on the lawn was a piece of art made from metal rods that had been created by the welders to resemble a cow with horns. It was used to practice lassoing. There was a certain group of Power Plant Men that took part in rodeos. Some riding on broncos, some lassoing cows and tying them up in knots. If I remember correctly, Andy Tubbs, one of the most intelligent electricians, was a rodeo clown. If you haven’t been to a rodeo, then you might not realize what a Rodeo Clown does.
A couple of Rodeo Clowns
Sure they stand around in bright colored clothes. These two guys aren’t just there for laughs. Here is a rodeo clown at work.
Rodeo Clown at Work
You see. When a contestant is riding a bull and they fall off, in order to keep the bull from turning around and goring the poor guy to death, a rodeo clown jumps into action and distracts the bull while the contestant is quickly spirited away to safety.
A Rodeo Clown Hard at Work
Jerry Mitchell had told me when I was still a summer help that you could tell who liked to participate in rodeos. They were usually missing one or more fingers. One of the rodeo hands explained it to me like this. When you lasso the cow, you quickly wrap the rope around the saddle horn. Just as you are doing that, the cow hits the end of the rope and goes flying back. This means that if you don’t get your fingers out of the way when you are wrapping the rope around the saddle horn, the rope will snap it right off.
January 1997 a new Instrument and Controls person came to work at the plant. Brent Kautzman was a rodeo person. We were sitting in a Confined Space Rescue team meeting once and Randy Dailey was espousing the dangers of roping cows in a rodeo when Brent said that he had his thumb cut off in a rodeo once. At first we looked at him as if he was just pulling our leg. He had all of his fingers.
Someone asked if they sewed his thumb back on. He said they weren’t able to do that. Instead they took one of his big toes and sewed it on his hand where his thumb had been. We were surprised when he showed us his thumb and sure enough. There was a big toe in place of his thumb.
Brent said that if he knew at the time how important a big toe is, he never would have done it. He said that he was young at the time, and he wanted to continue participating in rodeos, so he had them cut off his big toe and sew it on his hand. Anyway. Later, Brent returned to where he had come from, Richardton, North Dakota. He was a great guy, and a hard worker, but like myself, he wasn’t a True Power Plant Man.
The biggest source of recreation for Power Plant Men was Hunting. I would hear stories about how the hunters would send in their name for a drawing to be able to take part in the annual Elk Hunt in Montana. It was a lottery and they only picked so many people. So, the hunters would wait patiently each year to see if they were going to be able to make a trip to Montana.
Corporate Headquarters and the Evil Plant Manager wanted to make sure that not too many took off for Christmas because they wanted to ensure that enough people stayed in town in case there was an emergency at the plant and they needed to call everyone out. Christmas wasn’t really the problem at the plant as was “Hunting Season”.
There were two parts to deer hunting. The first few weeks it was bow season. You could go hunting for dear with a bow and arrows. Later you could hunt with a rifle. This was serious business in North Central Oklahoma. The Deer Hunters would prepare for this season all summer long. They would build their tree stands, and they would put out deer feeders to fatten up the deer.
A Deer and a raccoon fighting over who gets first dibs on the deer feeder. My money is on the raccoon.
People would become pretty sparse around when deer hunting season opened. At least or a few days. You could usually only kill one or two deer and that was your limit. Each year the number was decided by the population of deer.
If there were too many deer running around then the deer hunters could kill more. The whole idea of Deer Hunting from a Wildlife perspective was for population control. When there were too many deer, they would start passing around diseases and then all end up dying off anyway. So, this was a way of controlling the population.
A few times I was invited to join the Power Plant Men in their recreation. It was always a learning experience for both of us.
I was invited to Charles Foster’s house one summer to make pickles. We picked the cucumbers from Charles garden. Charles’ garden was the pride of Pawnee. I spent some time with his family that day, cleaning and boiling the cucumbers in vinegar in the pickle jars with the dill we had picked from his garden. I think often of the day I spent with Charles in his garden picking the cucumbers and in his house that evening.
I was also invited once to go to the Resort just outside of Pawnee known as “Pawnee Lake”. Diana Brien and Gary Wehunt and their spouses were camping out there and they invited me to join them the following morning. I showed up in the morning where we cooked breakfast, then they taught me the art of flying across the lake on a jet ski.
Pawnee Lake Oklahoma. Photo taken by John Brumfield
To me, this was sheer madness, but I bucked up and did it anyway. If I was going to die, doing it on a jet ski was as good of a place as any.
Then they invited me to play horseshoes. Well. I kindly declined saying that they didn’t really want me to play horseshoes. They said that they needed two teams of two, and they would really appreciate it if I joined them. So, I succumbed.
My first throw was very impressive as it bumped right up against the stake. I knew that this was just beginner’s luck, I really wasn’t a beginner. I had played a lot of horseshoes as a kid. Only, I had lost any sort of self-control when it came to letting lose of the horseshoe. I think it was my third throw that did it. The horseshoe literally ended up behind me. I think I almost hit Tek’s pickup. (Tek was Dee’s husband’s nickname or was it Tex?). When I let go of the horseshoe and it went flying through the air, everyone scattered.
There was an interesting character that came by when we were at the Pawnee Lake. His name was Trail Boss. He was a larger sociable person. Someone that you would think would come from a town called Pawnee, Oklahoma. There was another guy that was there that scattered when Trail Boss showed up. So, I made a comment to the Boss that he seemed to have quite an influence on people. I figured that was why they called him Trail Boss.
This isn’t Trail Boss, but you get the idea. This guy is wearing a Trail Boss Hat
Anyway. There were a lot of other things that the Power Plant Men did for recreation. I could go on and on. Maybe some of the Power plant that read this blog will post some of them in the comments. I purposely didn’t mention anything about “Noodling” (except for just now). I think I’ll do that in another post some time later.
Though I was like a fish out of water when I was with the Power Plant Men enjoying their time off, I was always treated as if I belonged. No one made fun of me even when they were scattering to dodge a rogue horseshoe. When I went fishing with them as a new summer help when I was 18 years old, I was never shunned and no one ever looked down on me. I have to give them this: True Power Plant are patient people. They put up with me for 20 years. I can’t ask for more than that.
Comments from the previous repost:
-
My hobby was astronomy. I built an 8″ telescope when I lived in Ada (worked at the Seminole Plant in Konawa). I remember telling my Plant Manager (Jim Gist – lived in Konawa) about all the things I could see with my telescope. When I told him that I could see Uranus (I used the long “a” pronunciation), he got a real surprised look on his face – and finally said “All the way from Ada?” He was a real hoot!
-
Good story! That’s the kind of experience most people can relate to, getting to know ones coworkers. And the interesting facts and pictures just make it more interesting.
Never occurred to me a raccoon would take on a deer.
What do Power Plant Men in North Central Oklahoma Do For Recreation
Originally Posted on August 9, 2013:
I first ran across Power Plant Men totally by accident the summer of 1979 when I was 18 and I went to work as a summer help at a Power Plant in Oklahoma. I walked into the plant, and there they were. All standing there looking at me as if I was the new kid on the block. Which, of course, I was.
I had very little in common with this group of men. It was interesting enough to watch them at work, but it was equally as interesting to observe them after hours. I didn’t spend a lot of time with them myself. I often just listened to their stories of adventure on Monday Mornings. I think that was why the Monday Morning Safety Meeting was invented.
Like I said. I had little in common with these He-men. The only thing I could relate to was around Fishing. I had been fishing my entire childhood with my Father. Most everything else they did was foreign to me. Though, the first summer it seemed like the only things to do was to go fishing and to go over to the Peach Orchard by Marland, Oklahoma and pick peaches. Well, that, and go to Men’s Club dinners.
Like I’ve said twice now, I had little in common with this sunflower eatin’ bunch of men. I had just finished my first year as a college student and the only thing I knew to do during my free time was to play Dungeons and Dragons or Pinball. Actually, I was quite a pinball wizard and could usually spend all day on one quarter. This didn’t seem to impress the likes of this bunch, so I kept my Pinball Prowess to myself.
The Evel Knievel Pinball machine was one of the many I had mastered. By the way, why isn’t his last name pronounced: “Nee-vel”? Just wondering.
As I learned more about the Power Plant Men, I found out that they were a diverse group of men that had many different recreational activities. I have mentioned before that the evil plant Manager Eldon Waugh was a beekeeper, and so was my good friend Sonny Karcher. Even though Sonny spent a good portion of his time away from the plant doing some sort of farming, he enjoyed raising bees.
I mentioned in a previous post “Imitations and Innovations of Sonny Karcher” that Sonny liked to choose one thing about someone else and then take on that characteristic or possess a particular item that they had. So, I figured Sonny had become a beekeeper because he had a friend that did the same thing. I never thought that it was Eldon Waugh, since Sonny usually only chose something from someone he admired and Eldon made it a full time effort to make sure no one really liked him.
Power Plant Beehives
While I was a summer help I learned a few of the activities that Power Plant Men liked to do. For instance, I knew that Stanley Elmore liked to spend the weekend either making his yard look like something you would find in a Home and Garden magazine, or he liked cleaning his car and waxing his engine so that you could cook an egg right on it and not have to worry about any grit or grime between your teeth.
It goes without saying that the Power Plant Men that had families spent most of their free time with them. Those that didn’t have a family spent a lot of their time trying to avoid going down that path. So, they chose activities that would take them into the wilderness somewhere or maybe a river or two.
I heard very little talk of disgruntled husbands from the true Power Plant Men. The only story I can remember off the top of my head about a husband that was upset with his wife was Marlin McDaniel. He told us one Monday morning that he had to take his wife over his knee on Saturday. He explained it like this. “I was so mad at her that I grabbed her and laid her across my knees. I pulled up her skirt to spank her. I looked down to make sure I was aiming in the right direction… Then I paused for a moment… and I suddenly couldn’t remember why I what I was mad about.”
You know… It is funny because I had always thought that Marlin McDaniel looked like Spanky, and in the story he told about his wife, he was going to spank her. What are the odds of that?
Marlin McDaniel always reminded me of Spanky from Little Rascals
It wasn’t until I entered the Electric Shop as an electrician in 1983 that I learned more about the recreational activities of Power Plant Men. I mean. I knew that Gene Day liked to drive around campus on weekends in his black pickup truck with the flames on it to impress the college girls, even if he was 50 years older than them. But besides that, I mean…..
Gene Day’s truck was similar to this only different, with a different pattern of flames and it wasn’t a low rider
Outside the welding shop on the lawn was a piece of art made from metal rods that had been created by the welders to resemble a cow with horns. It was used to practice lassoing. There was a certain group of Power Plant Men that took part in rodeos. Some riding on broncos, some lassoing cows and tying them up in knots. If I remember correctly, Andy Tubbs, one of the most intelligent electricians, was a rodeo clown. If you haven’t been to a rodeo, then you might not realize what a Rodeo Clown does.
A couple of Rodeo Clowns
Sure they stand around in bright colored clothes. These two guys aren’t just there for laughs. Here is a rodeo clown at work.
Rodeo Clown at Work
You see. When a contestant is riding a bull and they fall off, in order to keep the bull from turning around and goring the poor guy to death, a rodeo clown jumps into action and distracts the bull while the contestant is quickly spirited away to safety.
A Rodeo Clown Hard at Work
Jerry Mitchell had told me when I was still a summer help that you could tell who liked to participate in rodeos. They were usually missing one or more fingers. One of the rodeo hands explained it to me like this. When you lasso the cow, you quickly wrap the rope around the saddle horn. Just as you are doing that, the cow hits the end of the rope and goes flying back. This means that if you don’t get your fingers out of the way when you are wrapping the rope around the saddle horn, the rope will snap it right off.
January 1997 a new Instrument and Controls person came to work at the plant. Brent Kautzman was a rodeo person. We were sitting in a Confined Space Rescue team meeting once and Randy Dailey was espousing the dangers of roping cows in a rodeo when Brent said that he had his thumb cut off in a rodeo once. At first we looked at him as if he was just pulling our leg. He had all of his fingers.
Someone asked if they sewed his thumb back on. He said they weren’t able to do that. Instead they took one of his big toes and sewed it on his hand where his thumb had been. We were surprised when he showed us his thumb and sure enough. There was a big toe in place of his thumb.
Brent said that if he knew at the time how important a big toe is, he never would have done it. He said that he was young at the time, and he wanted to continue participating in rodeos, so he had them cut off his big toe and sew it on his hand. Anyway. Later, Brent returned to where he had come from, Richardton, North Dakota. He was a great guy, and a hard worker, but like myself, he wasn’t a True Power Plant Man.
The biggest source of recreation for Power Plant Men was Hunting. I would hear stories about how the hunters would send in their name for a drawing to be able to take part in the annual Elk Hunt in Montana. It was a lottery and they only picked so many people. So, the hunters would wait patiently each year to see if they were going to be able to make a trip to Montana.
Corporate Headquarters and the Evil Plant Manager wanted to make sure that not too many took off for Christmas because they wanted to ensure that enough people stayed in town in case there was an emergency at the plant and they needed to call everyone out. Christmas wasn’t really the problem at the plant as was “Hunting Season”.
There were two parts to deer hunting. The first few weeks it was bow season. You could go hunting for dear with a bow and arrows. Later you could hunt with a rifle. This was serious business in North Central Oklahoma. The Deer Hunters would prepare for this season all summer long. They would build their tree stands, and they would put out deer feeders to fatten up the deer.
A Deer and a raccoon fighting over who gets first dibs on the deer feeder. My money is on the raccoon.
People would become pretty sparse around when deer hunting season opened. At least or a few days. You could usually only kill one or two deer and that was your limit. Each year the number was decided by the population of deer.
If there were too many deer running around then the deer hunters could kill more. The whole idea of Deer Hunting from a Wildlife perspective was for population control. When there were too many deer, they would start passing around diseases and then all end up dying off anyway. So, this was a way of controlling the population.
A few times I was invited to join the Power Plant Men in their recreation. It was always a learning experience for both of us.
I was invited to Charles Foster’s house one summer to make pickles. We picked the cucumbers from Charles garden. Charles’ garden was the pride of Pawnee. I spent some time with his family that day, cleaning and boiling the cucumbers in vinegar in the pickle jars with the dill we had picked from his garden. I think often of the day I spent with Charles in his garden picking the cucumbers and in his house that evening.
I was also invited once to go to the Resort just outside of Pawnee known as “Pawnee Lake”. Diana Brien and Gary Wehunt and their spouses were camping out there and they invited me to join them the following morning. I showed up in the morning where we cooked breakfast, then they taught me the art of flying across the lake on a jet ski.
Pawnee Lake Oklahoma. Photo taken by John Brumfield
To me, this was sheer madness, but I bucked up and did it anyway. If I was going to die, doing it on a jet ski was as good of a place as any.
Then they invited me to play horseshoes. Well. I kindly declined saying that they didn’t really want me to play horseshoes. They said that they needed two teams of two, and they would really appreciate it if I joined them. So, I succumbed.
My first throw was very impressive as it bumped right up against the stake. I knew that this was just beginner’s luck, I really wasn’t a beginner. I had played a lot of horseshoes as a kid. Only, I had lost any sort of self-control when it came to letting lose of the horseshoe. I think it was my third throw that did it. The horseshoe literally ended up behind me. I think I almost hit Tek’s pickup. (Tek was Dee’s husband’s nickname or was it Tex?). When I let go of the horseshoe and it went flying through the air, everyone scattered.
There was an interesting character that came by when we were at the Pawnee Lake. His name was Trail Boss. He was a larger sociable person. Someone that you would think would come from a town called Pawnee, Oklahoma. There was another guy that was there that scattered when Trail Boss showed up. So, I made a comment to the Boss that he seemed to have quite an influence on people. I figured that was why they called him Trail Boss.
This isn’t Trail Boss, but you get the idea. This guy is wearing a Trail Boss Hat
Anyway. There were a lot of other things that the Power Plant Men did for recreation. I could go on and on. Maybe some of the Power plant that read this blog will post some of them in the comments. I purposely didn’t mention anything about “Noodling” (except for just now). I think I’ll do that in another post some time later.
Though I was like a fish out of water when I was with the Power Plant Men enjoying their time off, I was always treated as if I belonged. No one made fun of me even when they were scattering to dodge a rogue horseshoe. When I went fishing with them as a new summer help when I was 18 years old, I was never shunned and no one ever looked down on me. I have to give them this: True Power Plant are patient people. They put up with me for 20 years. I can’t ask for more than that.
Comments from the previous repost:
-
My hobby was astronomy. I built an 8″ telescope when I lived in Ada (worked at the Seminole Plant in Konawa). I remember telling my Plant Manager (Jim Gist – lived in Konawa) about all the things I could see with my telescope. When I told him that I could see Uranus (I used the long “a” pronunciation), he got a real surprised look on his face – and finally said “All the way from Ada?” He was a real hoot!
-
Good story! That’s the kind of experience most people can relate to, getting to know ones coworkers. And the interesting facts and pictures just make it more interesting.
Never occurred to me a raccoon would take on a deer.
A Day in the Life of Power Plant Man and the Sign Hangin’ Chain Gang
Originally Posted July 21, 2012:
No one knows more about having to put up with the antics of Summer Help than the Power Plant Man Jim Heflin. Though Jim wasn’t completely a True Power Plant Man, he was nevertheless certified as a Bonafide Caretaker of Summer Help Helpers.
I understood after a couple of years of being a Summer Help myself that the reason that Summer Help were called by that name was because they really did indeed need help. Though some may think that this help could best be found in the company of a licensed Therapist, most of the time what they really needed was a good dose of Summer Help chores to keep them out of trouble and to teach them the fine art of labor in its most tedious and repetitious form.
Though I’m not sure, it could have been Jim Heflin that talked Stanley Elmore into allowing the summer help to attach the signs to the barbed wire fence that surrounded the Electric Company property that enclosed the Power Plant itself as well as the lake that was built to be used as cooling water in the condenser. I say that because it didn’t seem like it was a long time after I had answered the phone one day in the garage and I found Jim Heflin’s wife on the other end of the line calling to talk to Jim, that we were assigned to the task of installing the signs.
Jim wasn’t in the shop at the time so she told me to tell Jim that his wife Brenda had called.
It just so happened that my girlfriend at the time (who I later married and lived happily ever after) and I had a joke character that we would talk about named “Brenda Bulldog”. It is a long story to tell about Brenda Bulldog, so I’ll just say that it has to do with “Otto” in the Beetle Bailey Comic Strip, and his girlfriend “Polly Bulldog” who is always suspicious of another bulldog named “Brenda Bulldog”. I’m sure that you all have the same sort of characters that you talk about in your family… um… don’t you?
Otto from the Beetle Bailey Comic Strip
So, obviously, when she told me that her name was Brenda, I just had to respond as Otto would respond. So I said in a gruff but excited voice (rolling the “R” in the word Brenda in my throat), “Brenda Bulldog?!?” Jim’s Wife responded by asking what I had said, so I responded back exactly as I had the first time, “Brenda Bulldog?!?”
I guess she misunderstood my intentions because she sounded obviously disgruntled as she explained to me in no uncertain terms that she was not a bulldog. I answered back by insisting that this was, “Brenda Bulldog!” She repeated again that she was not a bulldog and told me to just tell Jim to call her at home when he returned to the garage.
When Jim came back from the Maintenance Shop I told him that his wife had called, and I added, “By the way. I called her “Brenda Bulldog”. I explained to him that I just couldn’t help it when I heard her name was Brenda, I just had to say “Brenda Bulldog”. I couldn’t help it. It just came out. He looked a little mystified by my explanation and quickly went into the office to call home.
I guess in hindsight, after having met Brenda in person it probably wasn’t a good idea to have called her “Brenda Bulldog”. First of all, not only did Jim Heflin have the face that reminded you of a likable Basset hound, but Brenda really did kind of remind you of a bulldog (a slight underbite). If I had known that earlier, I am sure I would have insisted that she was Brenda Poodle. That would be the most logical response given the circumstance.
Kind of like this
A couple of days later a pickup truck was backed up to the garage and in the back were bundles of thin metal signs. Each sign was about the size of a piece of paper. the sign was white and had red lettering. There were two different signs. One that indicated that this was the Property of the Electric company and that a person should only enter at designated areas. The other had a set of warnings or rules, which I can’t remember anymore.
There were 4,500 of each type of sign. It was our job to take the signs and to bolt them together with small nuts and bolts that were supplied in buckets. As we bolted them together we placed them in boxes and put them in the back of the truck, where we went around the fence line surrounding the lake and the plant and every third section of fence (about 30 feet) we would mount the sign onto the barbed wire fence. It would take about 4,500 of each of the signs to completely cover the perimeter of the property.
In the back of my mind I could hear Jim Heflin say to Stanley Elmore after he hung up the call with his wife, “Stanley. Wouldn’t it be a good chore for the summer help to hang all those signs around the 25 mile perimeter of the electric company property?” And Stanley replying, “Jim! That’s a brilliant idea!”
So began the long trek of hanging signs. We had a small blue Mitsubishi Tractor that we used to travel around the fence line in areas where the truck couldn’t easily go.
A tractor just like this
It had a small trailer on the back of it that we would pile a bunch of sign assemblies (the two signs bolted together). Then we would walk or ride behind the tractor as we went from fence post to fence post mounting the signs evenly between the posts every third section.
This was a brilliant way to teach the young and inexperienced summer help the art of patience as well as the art of subservience. This way, later in life when the summer help became a Power Plant Man-in-Training, or even a mechanic or electrician and was asked to do something that may seem boring to the average citizen, all the summer help had to do was remember the time they had to hang 4,500 signs on barbed wire fences and even the most boring tasks seemed like an exciting ride on a roller coaster in comparison.
For those power plant men who knew me as a janitor, now maybe they can understand how I could find so much enjoyment sweeping the turbine room floor (about the size of a football field) over and over with a red dust mop.
Like this only with a mop handle
Anyway, during our time while traversing the wilds along the fence line, it gave the summer help time to think. I was working with a good friend of mine by the name of Tim Flowers. We had become friends while I had attended Oklahoma University in Norman my first year in college (before going to Missouri University in Columbia for my last 3 years). So, my fourth year as a summer help, Tim came to work alongside me.
Jim Heflin and Ken Conrad (as well as Opal Ward — or was it Opal Brien at the time) used to take turns shuffling us around the fence line. When we were with Jim Heflin we would spend our time in the intellectual pursuit of inventing new “Burning Cat” jokes.
This was a skill I had picked up from my father who was a Veterinary Professor at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He had come home one day from work with the latest copy of a Veterinary journal. In the journal was a set of “Burning Cat” jokes that he read to me. I’m sure you must already know them.
There were jokes like, “Why did the Burning Cat cross the road?” “So that it could burn on the other side.” Or “Knock, Knock” “Who’s there?” “Burning”, “Burning who?” “Burning Cat.” Or “What did one burning cat say to the other burning cat when he met him in a bar?” “That’s silly. Everyone knows that a burning cat can’t talk when they’re on fire.”
We made it a goal to come up with at least one new burning cat joke every day. This came in handy later on when I was in my last year in college and I became known as the “Burning Cat Man” in Columbia, Missouri as I would tell burning cat jokes to the workers at the Subway every time my friend Ben Cox and I would go there to eat a sub sandwich. I would be introduced as “The Burning Cat Man” when customers would come in while we were there.
When we were with Ken Conrad we would think about more esoteric subjects like, “What does a cow think about while it is chewing it’s cud?”
Hmmm…. What does he think about?
We would go on and on speculating “Maybe the cow is meditating about the full meaning of life and whether or not the self is the center of his being or is it somewhere else, or is it just that he’s thinking that his ear itches and he can’t reach it with his tail. He can only twitch it”
We would think about these things as we would be passing some cows standing opposite across the fence. We would wonder if they stood around trying to think up jokes that would entertain themselves since they had to stand out in the hot sun all day. Maybe they thought about burning cats, or even chickens crossing the road.
At first we couldn’t tell if Ken was even listening to us until one time, the tractor started to swerve a bit and he pulled it to a stop so that he could turn around and tell us that we were the strangest bunch of kids he had ever run across. But I could tell that we had started him thinking about it. I’m pretty sure that it was on his mind for quite a while. “What is that cow thinking about?”
Every once in a while I knew that Ken Conrad had gained some enlightenment because he would suddenly turn to me and say, “Hey Sweet Pea!” And then he would grin real big. Yep. He knew. The meaning of life was within his grasp.
Anyway, long story short, before all the signs were hung by the barbed wire with care, I went up to the main office and asked Eldon Waugh if I could talk to him. He was the plant manager. The one I often have referred to as the “Evil Plant Manager”. Mostly because I think he would have liked that title. He worked so hard to obtain it.
I asked him if he had an opening at the plant because I would like to go to work there permanently. He said there was a janitor position opening up and if it was all right with Ken Scott he would hire me. So he paged Ken and asked him to come up to his office.
When he arrived, Eldon asked Ken if he thought they ought to hire me because I wanted to work at the plant full time. Ken said that he would be happy to hire me on as a janitor.
I don’t know if Ken realized at the time how much trouble I would cause in the years that followed, because I always had come across as a fairly decent person up to that point. I don’t know if he ever regretted his decision. I’m pretty sure that Eldon did and I know that Bill Moler regretted it when he returned from his summer vacation to find me standing in the janitor closet across from his office.
He was none too happy about it. Especially since he considered it his job to do the hiring for people in the maintenance shop. Bill knew that I had already expressed my willingness to open my mouth and reveal my innermost thoughts right to someone’s face at the most inappropriate moments. I used to explain that I took after my Italian Mother who always spoke twice before thinking.
That was how I was able to escape the sign hangin’ chain gang and became the Janitor that I was always meant to be! Years later the words had worn off of the signs, but the white signs were still hanging from those barbed wire fences for as long as I can remember. Now that I think about it, I wonder what Jim Heflin was thinking when I became a janitor and he still had to tote babbling summer helps around the wilderness in the hot sun with an endless supply of Burning Cat Jokes.
Was he wishing that he had thought twice before he spoke about having us hang the signs? Or maybe he didn’t and I just imagined that he was slightly upset all because I had said those two impulsive words….. “Brenda Bulldog!”
Jim Heflin
Comment from previous Repost
-
Good Story!
I still remember my first job as a “Summer Student” at the Mustang Plant (1967). Ben Snow and I worked from the top of the turbine room crane and changed out all the burned-out light bulbs (1,000 watt incandescent). Boy – that was one HOT job!
What do Power Plant Men in North Central Oklahoma Do For Recreation — Repost
Originally Posted on August 9, 2013:
I first ran across Power Plant Men totally by accident the summer of 1979 when I was 18 and I went to work as a summer help at a Power Plant in Oklahoma. I walked into the plant, and there they were. All standing there looking at me as if I was the new kid on the block. Which, of course, I was.
I had very little in common with this group of men. It was interesting enough to watch them at work, but it was equally as interesting to observe them after hours. I didn’t spend a lot of time with them myself. I often just listened to their stories of adventure on Monday Mornings. I think that was why the Monday Morning Safety Meeting was invented.
Like I said. I had little in common with these He-men. The only thing I could relate to was around Fishing. I had been fishing my entire childhood with my Father. Most everything else they did was foreign to me. Though, the first summer it seemed like the only things to do was to go fishing and to go over to the Peach Orchard by Marland, Oklahoma and pick peaches. Well, that, and go to Men’s Club dinners.
Like I’ve said twice now, I had little in common with this sunflower eatin’ bunch of men. I had just finished my first year as a college student and the only thing I knew to do during my free time was to play Dungeons and Dragons or Pinball. Actually, I was quite a pinball wizard and could usually spend all day on one quarter. This didn’t seem to impress the likes of this bunch, so I kept my Pinball Prowess to myself.
The Evel Knievel Pinball machine was one of the many I had mastered. By the way, why isn’t his last name pronounced: “Nee-vel”? Just wondering.
As I learned more about the Power Plant Men, I found out that they were a diverse group of men that had many different recreational activities. I have mentioned before that the evil plant Manager Eldon Waugh was a beekeeper, and so was my good friend Sonny Karcher. Even though Sonny spent a good portion of his time away from the plant doing some sort of farming, he enjoyed raising bees.
I mentioned in a previous post “Imitations and Innovations of Sonny Karcher” that Sonny liked to choose one thing about someone else and then take on that characteristic or possess a particular item that they had. So, I figured Sonny had become a beekeeper because he had a friend that did the same thing. I never thought that it was Eldon Waugh, since Sonny usually only chose something from someone he admired and Eldon made it a full time effort to make sure no one really liked him.
Power Plant Beehives
While I was a summer help I learned a few of the activities that Power Plant Men liked to do. For instance, I knew that Stanley Elmore liked to spend the weekend either making his yard look like something you would find in a Home and Garden magazine, or he liked cleaning his car and waxing his engine so that you could cook an egg right on it and not have to worry about any grit or grime between your teeth.
It goes without saying that the Power Plant Men that had families spent most of their free time with them. Those that didn’t have a family spent a lot of their time trying to avoid going down that path. So, they chose activities that would take them into the wilderness somewhere or maybe a river or two.
I heard very little talk of disgruntled husbands from the true Power Plant Men. The only story I can remember off the top of my head about a husband that was upset with his wife was Marlin McDaniel. He told us one Monday morning that he had to take his wife over his knee on Saturday. He explained it like this. “I was so mad at her that I grabbed her and laid her across my knees. I pulled up her skirt to spank her. I looked down to make sure I was aiming in the right direction… Then I paused for a moment… and I suddenly couldn’t remember why I what I was mad about.”
You know… It is funny because I had always thought that Marlin McDaniel looked like Spanky, and in the story he told about his wife, he was going to spank her. What are the odds of that?
Marlin McDaniel always reminded me of Spanky from Little Rascals
It wasn’t until I entered the Electric Shop as an electrician in 1983 that I learned more about the recreational activities of Power Plant Men. I mean. I knew that Gene Day liked to drive around campus on weekends in his black pickup truck with the flames on it to impress the college girls, even if he was 50 years older than them. But besides that, I mean…..
Gene Day’s truck was similar to this only different, with a different pattern of flames and it wasn’t a low rider
Outside the welding shop on the lawn was a piece of art made from metal rods that had been created by the welders to resemble a cow with horns. It was used to practice lassoing. There was a certain group of Power Plant Men that took part in rodeos. Some riding on broncos, some lassoing cows and tying them up in knots. If I remember correctly, Andy Tubbs, one of the most intelligent electricians, was a rodeo clown. If you haven’t been to a rodeo, then you might not realize what a Rodeo Clown does.
A couple of Rodeo Clowns
Sure they stand around in bright colored clothes. These two guys aren’t just there for laughs. Here is a rodeo clown at work.
Rodeo Clown at Work
You see. When a contestant is riding a bull and they fall off, in order to keep the bull from turning around and goring the poor guy to death, a rodeo clown jumps into action and distracts the bull while the contestant is quickly spirited away to safety.
A Rodeo Clown Hard at Work
Jerry Mitchell had told me when I was still a summer help that you could tell who liked to participate in rodeos. They were usually missing one or more fingers. One of the rodeo hands explained it to me like this. When you lasso the cow, you quickly wrap the rope around the saddle horn. Just as you are doing that, the cow hits the end of the rope and goes flying back. This means that if you don’t get your fingers out of the way when you are wrapping the rope around the saddle horn, the rope will snap it right off.
January 1997 a new Instrument and Controls person came to work at the plant. Brent Kautzman was a rodeo person. We were sitting in a Confined Space Rescue team meeting once and Randy Dailey was espousing the dangers of roping cows in a rodeo when Brent said that he had his thumb cut off in a rodeo once. At first we looked at him as if he was just pulling our leg. He had all of his fingers.
Someone asked if they sewed his thumb back on. He said they weren’t able to do that. Instead they took one of his big toes and sewed it on his hand where his thumb had been. We were surprised when he showed us his thumb and sure enough. There was a big toe in place of his thumb.
Brent said that if he knew at the time how important a big toe is, he never would have done it. He said that he was young at the time, and he wanted to continue participating in rodeos, so he had them cut off his big toe and sew it on his hand. Anyway. Later, Brent returned to where he had come from, Richardton, North Dakota. He was a great guy, and a hard worker, but like myself, he wasn’t a True Power Plant Man.
The biggest source of recreation for Power Plant Men was Hunting. I would hear stories about how the hunters would send in their name for a drawing to be able to take part in the annual Elk Hunt in Montana. It was a lottery and they only picked so many people. So, the hunters would wait patiently each year to see if they were going to be able to make a trip to Montana.
Corporate Headquarters and the Evil Plant Manager wanted to make sure that not too many took off for Christmas because they wanted to ensure that enough people stayed in town in case there was an emergency at the plant and they needed to call everyone out. Christmas wasn’t really the problem at the plant as was “Hunting Season”.
There were two parts to deer hunting. The first few weeks it was bow season. You could go hunting for dear with a bow and arrows. Later you could hunt with a rifle. This was serious business in North Central Oklahoma. The Deer Hunters would prepare for this season all summer long. They would build their tree stands, and they would put out deer feeders to fatten up the deer.
A Deer and a raccoon fighting over who gets first dibs on the deer feeder. My money is on the raccoon.
People would become pretty sparse around when deer hunting season opened. At least or a few days. You could usually only kill one or two deer and that was your limit. Each year the number was decided by the population of deer.
If there were too many deer running around then the deer hunters could kill more. The whole idea of Deer Hunting from a Wildlife perspective was for population control. When there were too many deer, they would start passing around diseases and then all end up dying off anyway. So, this was a way of controlling the population.
A few times I was invited to join the Power Plant Men in their recreation. It was always a learning experience for both of us.
I was invited to Charles Foster’s house one summer to make pickles. We picked the cucumbers from Charles garden. Charles’ garden was the pride of Pawnee. I spent some time with his family that day, cleaning and boiling the cucumbers in vinegar in the pickle jars with the dill we had picked from his garden. I think often of the day I spent with Charles in his garden picking the cucumbers and in his house that evening.
I was also invited once to go to the Resort just outside of Pawnee known as “Pawnee Lake”. Diana Brien and Gary Wehunt and their spouses were camping out there and they invited me to join them the following morning. I showed up in the morning where we cooked breakfast, then they taught me the art of flying across the lake on a jet ski.
Pawnee Lake Oklahoma. Photo taken by John Brumfield
To me, this was sheer madness, but I bucked up and did it anyway. If I was going to die, doing it on a jet ski was as good of a place as any.
Then they invited me to play horseshoes. Well. I kindly declined saying that they didn’t really want me to play horseshoes. They said that they needed two teams of two, and they would really appreciate it if I joined them. So, I succumbed.
My first throw was very impressive as it bumped right up against the stake. I knew that this was just beginner’s luck, I really wasn’t a beginner. I had played a lot of horseshoes as a kid. Only, I had lost any sort of self-control when it came to letting lose of the horseshoe. I think it was my third throw that did it. The horseshoe literally ended up behind me. I think I almost hit Tek’s pickup. (Tek was Dee’s husband’s nickname or was it Tex?). When I let go of the horseshoe and it went flying through the air, everyone scattered.
There was an interesting character that came by when we were at the Pawnee Lake. His name was Trail Boss. He was a larger sociable person. Someone that you would think would come from a town called Pawnee, Oklahoma. There was another guy that was there that scattered when Trail Boss showed up. So, I made a comment to the Boss that he seemed to have quite an influence on people. I figured that was why they called him Trail Boss.
This isn’t Trail Boss, but you get the idea. This guy is wearing a Trail Boss Hat
Anyway. There were a lot of other things that the Power Plant Men did for recreation. I could go on and on. Maybe some of the Power plant that read this blog will post some of them in the comments. I purposely didn’t mention anything about “Noodling” (except for just now). I think I’ll do that in another post some time later.
Though I was like a fish out of water when I was with the Power Plant Men enjoying their time off, I was always treated as if I belonged. No one made fun of me even when they were scattering to dodge a rogue horseshoe. When I went fishing with them as a new summer help when I was 18 years old, I was never shunned and no one ever looked down on me. I have to give them this: True Power Plant are patient people. They put up with me for 20 years. I can’t ask for more than that.
A Day in the Life of Power Plant Man and the Sign Hangin’ Chain Gang — Repost
Originally Posted July 21, 2012:
No one knows more about having to put up with the antics of Summer Help than the Power Plant Man Jim Heflin. Though Jim wasn’t completely a True Power Plant Man, he was nevertheless certified as a Bonafide Caretaker of Summer Help Helpers. I understood after a couple of years of being a Summer Help myself that the reason that Summer Help were called by that name was because they really did indeed need help. Though some may think that this help could best be found in the company of a licensed Therapist, most of the time what they really needed was a good dose of Summer Help chores to keep them out of trouble and to teach them the fine art of labor in its most tedious and repetitious form.
Though I’m not sure, but it could have been Jim Heflin that talked Stanley Elmore into allowing the summer help to attach the signs to the barbed wire fence that surrounded the Electric Company property that enclosed the Power Plant itself as well as the lake that was built to be used as cooling water in the condenser. I say that because it didn’t seem like it was a long time after I had answered the phone one day in the garage and I found Jim Heflin’s wife on the other end of the line calling to talk to Jim that we were assigned to the task of installing the signs. Jim wasn’t in the shop at the time so she told me to tell Jim that his wife Brenda had called.
Well. It just so happened that my girlfriend at the time (who I later married and lived happily ever after) and I had a joke character that we would talk about named “Brenda Bulldog”. It is a long story to tell about Brenda Bulldog, so I’ll just say that it has to do with “Otto” in the Beetle Bailey Comic Strip, and his girlfriend “Polly Bulldog” who is always suspicious of another bulldog named “Brenda Bulldog”. I’m sure that you all have the same sort of characters that you talk about in your family… um… don’t you?
Otto from the Beetle Bailey Comic Strip
So, obviously, when she told me that her name was Brenda, I just had to respond as Otto would respond. So I said in a gruff but excited voice (rolling the “R” in the word Brenda in my throat), “Brenda Bulldog?!?” Jim’s Wife responded by asking what I had said, so I responded back exactly as I had the first time, “Brenda Bulldog?!?” Well, I guess she misunderstood my intentions because she sounded obviously disgruntled as she explained to me in no uncertain terms that she was not a bulldog. I answered back by insisting that this was, “Brenda Bulldog!” She repeated again that she was not a bulldog and told me to just tell Jim to call her at home when he returned to the garage.
When Jim came back from the Maintenance Shop I told him that his wife had called, and I added, “By the way. I called her “Brenda Bulldog”. I explained to him that I just couldn’t help it when I heard her name was Brenda, I just had to say “Brenda Bulldog”. I couldn’t help it. It just came out. He looked a little mystified by my explanation and quickly went into the office to call home.
I guess in hindsight, after having met Brenda in person it probably wasn’t a good idea to have called her “Brenda Bulldog”. First of all, not only did Jim Heflin have the face that reminded you of a likable Basset hound, but Brenda really did kind of remind you of a bulldog. If I had known that earlier, I am sure I would have insisted that she was Brenda Poodle. That would be the most logical response given the circumstance.
Kind of like this
A couple of days later a pickup truck was backed up to the garage and in the back were bundles of thin metal signs. Each sign was about the size of a piece of paper. the sign was white and had red lettering. There were two different signs. One that indicated that this was the Property of the Electric company and that a person should only enter at designated areas. The other had a set of warnings or rules, which I can’t remember anymore.
There were 4,500 of each type of sign. It was our job to take the signs and to bolt them together with small nuts and bolts that were supplied in buckets. As we bolted them together we placed them in boxes and put them in the truck, where we went around the fence line surrounding the lake and the plant and every third section of fence (about 30 feet) we would mount the sign onto the barbed wire fence. It would take about 4,500 of each of the signs to completely cover the perimeter of the property.
In the back of my mind I could hear Jim Heflin say to Stanley Elmore after he hung up the call with his wife, “Stanley. Wouldn’t it be a good chore for the summer help to hang all those signs around the 25 mile perimeter of the electric company property?” And Stanley replying, “Jim! That’s a brilliant idea!”
So began the long trek of hanging signs. We had a small blue Mitsubishi Tractor that we used to travel around the fence line in areas where the truck couldn’t easily go.
A tractor just like this
It had a small trailer on the back of it that we would pile a bunch of sign assemblies (the two signs bolted together). Then we would walk or ride behind the tractor as we went from fence post to fence post mounting the signs evenly between the posts every third section.
This was a brilliant way to teach the young and inexperienced summer help the art of patience as well as the art of subservience. This way, later in life when the summer help became a Power Plant Man-in-Training, or even a mechanic or electrician and was asked to do something that may seem boring to the average citizen, all the summer help had to do was remember the time they had to hang 4,500 signs on barbed wire fences and even the most boring tasks seemed like an exciting ride on a roller coaster in comparison. For those power plant men who knew me as a janitor, now maybe they can understand how I could find so much enjoyment sweeping the turbine room floor (about the size of a football field) over and over with a red dust mop.
Like this only with a mop handle
Anyway, during our time while traversing the wilds along the fence line, it gave the summer help time to think. I was working with a good friend of mine by the name of Tim Flowers. We had become friends while I had attended Oklahoma University in Norman my first year in college (before going to Missouri University in Columbia for my last 3 years). So, my fourth year as a summer help, Tim came to work alongside me.
Jim Heflin and Ken Conrad (as well as Opal Ward — or was it Opal Brien at the time) used to take turns shuffling us around the fence line. When we were with Jim Heflin we would spend our time in the intellectual pursuit of inventing new “Burning Cat” jokes. This was a skill I had picked up from my father who was a Veterinary Professor at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. He had come home one day from work with the latest copy of a Veterinary journal. In the journal was a set of “Burning Cat” jokes that he read to me. I’m sure you must already know them. There were jokes like, “Why did the Burning Cat cross the road?” “So that it could burn on the other side.” Or “Knock, Knock” “Who’s there?” “Burning”, “Burning who?” “Burning Cat.” Or “What did one burning cat say to the other burning cat when he met him in a bar?” “That’s silly. Everyone knows that a burning cat can’t talk when they’re on fire.”
We made it a goal to come up with at least one new burning cat joke every day. This came in handy later on when I was in my last year in college and I became known as the “Burning Cat Man” in Columbia, Missouri as I would tell burning cat jokes to the workers at the Subway every time my friend Ben Cox and I would go there to eat a sub sandwich. And then I would be introduced as “The Burning Cat Man” when customers would come in while we were there.
When we were with Ken Conrad we would think about more esoteric subjects like, “What does a cow think about while it is chewing it’s cud?”
Hmmm…. What does he think about?
We would go on and on speculating “Maybe the cow is meditating about the full meaning of life and whether or not the self is the center of his being or is it somewhere else, or is it just that he’s thinking that his ear itches and he can’t reach it with his tail. He can only twitch it” We would think about these things as we would be passing some cows standing opposite across the fence. We would wonder if they stood around trying to think up jokes that would entertain themselves since they had to stand out in the hot sun all day. Maybe they thought about burning cats, or even chickens crossing the road.
At first we couldn’t tell if Ken was even listening to us until one time, the tractor started to swerve a bit and he pulled it to a stop so that he could turn around and tell us that we were the strangest bunch of kids he had ever run across. But I could tell that we had started him thinking about it. I’m pretty sure that it was on his mind for quite a while. “What is that cow thinking about?” Every once in a while I knew that Ken Conrad had gained some enlightenment because he would suddenly turn to me and say, “Hey Sweet Pea!” And then he would grin real big. Yep. He knew. The meaning of life was within his grasp.
Anyway, long story short, before all the signs were hung by the barbed wire with care, I went up to the main office and asked Eldon Waugh if I could talk to him. He was the plant manager. The one I often have referred to as the “Evil Plant Manager”. Mostly because I think he would have liked that title. He worked so hard to obtain it.
I asked him if he had an opening at the plant because I would like to go to work there permanently. He said there was a janitor position opening up and if it was all right with Ken Scott he would hire me. So he paged Ken and asked him to come up to his office. When he arrived, Eldon asked Ken if he thought they ought to hire me because I wanted to work at the plant full time. Ken said that he would be happy to hire me on as a janitor.
I don’t know if Ken realized at the time how much trouble I would cause in the years that followed, because I always had come across as a fairly decent person up to that point. So I don’t know if he ever regretted his decision. I’m pretty sure that Eldon did and I know that Bill Moler regretted it when he returned from his summer vacation to find me standing in the janitor closet across from his office. He was none too happy about it. Especially since he considered it his job to do the hiring for people in the maintenance shop. Bill knew that I had already expressed my willingness to open my mouth and reveal my innermost thoughts right to someone’s face at the most inappropriate moments. I used to explain that I took after my Italian Mother who always spoke twice before thinking.
That was how I was able to escape the sign hangin’ chain gang and became the Janitor that I was always meant to be! Years later the words had worn off of the signs, but the white signs were still hanging from those barbed wire fences for as long as I can remember. Now that I think about it, I wonder what Jim Heflin was thinking when I became a janitor and he still had to tote babbling summer helps around the wilderness in the hot sun with an endless supply of Burning Cat Jokes. Was he wishing that he had thought twice before he spoke about having us hang the signs? Or maybe he didn’t and I just imagined that he was slightly upset all because I had said those two impulsive words….. “Brenda Bulldog!”
Comment from previous Repost
-
Good Story!
I still remember my first job as a “Summer Student” at the Mustang Plant (1967). Ben Snow and I worked from the top of the turbine room crane and changed out all the burned-out light bulbs (1,000 watt incandescent). Boy – that was one HOT job!
What do Power Plant Men in North Central Oklahoma Do For Recreation
I first ran across Power Plant Men totally by accident the summer of 1979 when I was 18 and I went to work as a summer help at a Power Plant in Oklahoma. I walked into the plant, and there they were. All standing there looking at me as if I was the new kid on the block. Which, of course, I was.
I had very little in common with this group of men. It was interesting enough to watch them at work, but it was equally as interesting to observe them after hours. I didn’t spend a lot of time with them myself. I often just listened to their stories of adventure on Monday Mornings. I think that was why the Monday Morning Safety Meeting was invented.
Like I said. I had little in common with these He-men. The only thing I could relate to was around Fishing. I had been fishing my entire childhood with my Father. Most everything else they did was foreign to me. Though, the first summer it seemed like the only things to do was to go fishing and to go over to the Peach Orchard by Marland, Oklahoma and pick peaches. Well, that, and go to Men’s Club dinners.
Like I’ve said twice now, I had little in common with this sunflower eatin’ bunch of men. I had just finished my first year as a college student and the only thing I knew to do during my free time was to play Dungeons and Dragons or Pinball. Actually, I was quite a pinball wizard and could usually spend all day on one quarter. This didn’t seem to impress the likes of this bunch, so I kept my Pinball Prowess to myself.
The Evel Knievel Pinball machine was one of the many I had mastered. By the way, why isn’t his last name pronounced: “Nee-vel”? Just wondering.
As I learned more about the Power Plant Men, I found out that they were a diverse group of men that had many different recreational activities. I have mentioned before that the evil plant Manager Eldon Waugh was a beekeeper, and so was my good friend Sonny Karcher. Even though Sonny spent a good portion of his time away from the plant doing some sort of farming, he enjoyed raising bees.
I mentioned in a previous post “Imitations and Innovations of Sonny Karcher” that Sonny liked to choose one thing about someone else and then take on that characteristic or possess a particular item that they had. So, I figured Sonny had become a beekeeper because he had a friend that did the same thing. I never thought that it was Eldon Waugh, since Sonny usually only chose something from someone he admired and Eldon made it a full time effort to make sure no one really liked him.
Power Plant Beehives
While I was a summer help I learned a few of the activities that Power Plant Men liked to do. For instance, I knew that Stanley Elmore liked to spend the weekend either making his yard look like something you would find in a Home and Garden magazine, or he liked cleaning his car and waxing his engine so that you could cook an egg right on it and not have to worry about any grit or grime between your teeth.
It goes without saying that the Power Plant Men that had families spent most of their free time with them. Those that didn’t have a family spent a lot of their time trying to avoid going down that path. So, they chose activities that would take them into the wilderness somewhere or maybe a river or two.
I heard very little talk of disgruntled husbands from the true Power Plant Men. The only story I can remember off the top of my head about a husband that was upset with his wife was Marlin McDaniel. He told us one Monday morning that he had to take his wife over his knee on Saturday. He explained it like this. “I was so mad at her that I grabbed her and laid her across my knees. I pulled up her skirt to spank her. I looked down to make sure I was aiming in the right direction… Then I paused for a moment… and I suddenly couldn’t remember why I what I was mad about.”
You know… It is funny because I had always thought that Marlin McDaniel looked like Spanky, and in the story he told about his wife, he was going to spank her. What are the odds of that?
Marlin McDaniel always reminded me of Spanky from Little Rascals
It wasn’t until I entered the Electric Shop as an electrician in 1983 that I learned more about the recreational activities of Power Plant Men. I mean. I knew that Gene Day liked to drive around campus on weekends in his black pickup truck with the flames on it to impress the college girls, even if he was 50 years older than them. But besides that, I mean…..
Gene Day’s truck was similar to this only different, with a different pattern of flames and it wasn’t a low rider
Outside the welding shop on the lawn was a piece of art made from metal rods that had been created by the welders to resemble a cow with horns. It was used to practice lassoing. There was a certain group of Power Plant Men that took part in rodeos. Some riding on broncos, some lassoing cows and tying them up in knots. If I remember correctly, Andy Tubbs, one of the most intelligent electricians, was a rodeo clown. If you haven’t been to a rodeo, then you might not realize what a Rodeo Clown does.
A couple of Rodeo Clowns
Sure they stand around in bright colored clothes. These two guys aren’t just there for laughs. Here is a rodeo clown at work.
Rodeo Clown at Work
You see. When a contestant is riding a bull and they fall off, in order to keep the bull from turning around and goring the poor guy to death, a rodeo clown jumps into action and distracts the bull while the contestant is quickly spirited away to safety.
A Rodeo Clown Hard at Work
Jerry Mitchell had told me when I was still a summer help that you could tell who liked to participate in rodeos. They were usually missing one or more fingers. One of the rodeo hands explained it to me like this. When you lasso the cow, you quickly wrap the rope around the saddle horn. Just as you are doing that, the cow hits the end of the rope and goes flying back. This means that if you don’t get your fingers out of the way when you are wrapping the rope around the saddle horn, the rope will snap it right off.
January 1997 a new Instrument and Controls person came to work at the plant. Brent Kautzman was a rodeo person. We were sitting in a Confined Space Rescue team meeting once and Randy Dailey was espousing the dangers of roping cows in a rodeo when Brent said that he had his thumb cut off in a rodeo once. At first we looked at him as if he was just pulling our leg. He had all of his fingers.
Someone asked if they sewed his thumb back on. He said they weren’t able to do that. Instead they took one of his big toes and sewed it on his hand where his thumb had been. We were surprised when he showed us his thumb and sure enough. There was a big toe in place of his thumb.
Brent said that if he knew at the time how important a big toe is, he never would have done it. He said that he was young at the time, and he wanted to continue participating in rodeos, so he had them cut off his big toe and sew it on his hand. Anyway. Later, Brent returned to where he had come from, Richardton, North Dakota. He was a great guy, and a hard worker, but like myself, he wasn’t a True Power Plant Man.
The biggest source of recreation for Power Plant Men was Hunting. I would hear stories about how the hunters would send in their name for a drawing to be able to take part in the annual Elk Hunt in Montana. It was a lottery and they only picked so many people. So, the hunters would wait patiently each year to see if they were going to be able to make a trip to Montana.
Corporate Headquarters and the Evil Plant Manager wanted to make sure that not too many took off for Christmas because they wanted to ensure that enough people stayed in town in case there was an emergency at the plant and they needed to call everyone out. Christmas wasn’t really the problem at the plant as was “Hunting Season”.
There were two parts to deer hunting. The first few weeks it was bow season. You could go hunting for dear with a bow and arrows. Later you could hunt with a rifle. This was serious business in North Central Oklahoma. The Deer Hunters would prepare for this season all summer long. They would build their tree stands, and they would put out deer feeders to fatten up the deer.
A Deer and a raccoon fighting over who gets first dibs on the deer feeder. My money is on the raccoon.
People would become pretty sparse around when deer hunting season opened. At least or a few days. You could usually only kill one or two deer and that was your limit. Each year the number was decided by the population of deer.
If there were too many deer running around then the deer hunters could kill more. The whole idea of Deer Hunting from a Wildlife perspective was for population control. When there were too many deer, they would start passing around diseases and then all end up dying off anyway. So, this was a way of controlling the population.
A few times I was invited to join the Power Plant Men in their recreation. It was always a learning experience for both of us.
I was invited to Charles Foster’s house one summer to make pickles. We picked the cucumbers from Charles garden. Charles’ garden was the pride of Pawnee. I spent some time with his family that day, cleaning and boiling the cucumbers in vinegar in the pickle jars with the dill we had picked from his garden. I think often of the day I spent with Charles in his garden picking the cucumbers and in his house that evening.
I was also invited once to go to the Resort just outside of Pawnee known as “Pawnee Lake”. Diana Brien and Gary Wehunt and their spouses were camping out there and they invited me to join them the following morning. I showed up in the morning where we cooked breakfast, then they taught me the art of flying across the lake on a jet ski.
Pawnee Lake Oklahoma. Photo taken by John Brumfield
To me, this was sheer madness, but I bucked up and did it anyway. If I was going to die, doing it on a jet ski was as good of a place as any.
Then they invited me to play horseshoes. Well. I kindly declined saying that they didn’t really want me to play horseshoes. They said that they needed two teams of two, and they would really appreciate it if I joined them. So, I succumbed.
My first throw was very impressive as it bumped right up against the stake. I knew that this was just beginner’s luck, I really wasn’t a beginner. I had played a lot of horseshoes as a kid. Only, I had lost any sort of self-control when it came to letting lose of the horseshoe. I think it was my third throw that did it. The horseshoe literally ended up behind me. I think I almost hit Tek’s pickup. (Tek was Dee’s husband’s nickname or was it Tex?). When I let go of the horseshoe and it went flying through the air, everyone scattered.
There was an interesting character that came by when we were at the Pawnee Lake. His name was Trail Boss. He was a larger sociable person. Someone that you would think would come from a town called Pawnee, Oklahoma. There was another guy that was there that scattered when Trail Boss showed up. So, I made a comment to the Boss that he seemed to have quite an influence on people. I figured that was why they called him Trail Boss.
This isn’t Trail Boss, but you get the idea. This guy is wearing a Trail Boss Hat
Anyway. There were a lot of other things that the Power Plant Men did for recreation. I could go on and on. Maybe some of the Power plant that read this blog will post some of them in the comments. I purposely didn’t mention anything about “Noodling” (except for just now). I think I’ll do that in another post some time later.
Though I was like a fish out of water when I was with the Power Plant Men enjoying their time off, I was always treated as if I belonged. No one made fun of me even when they were scattering to dodge a rogue horseshoe. When I went fishing with them as a new summer help when I was 18 years old, I was never shunned and no one ever looked down on me. I have to give them this: True Power Plant are patient people. They put up with me for 20 years. I can’t ask for more than that.
Power Plant Men 
Good Story!
I still remember my first job as a “Summer Student” at the Mustang Plant (1967). Ben Snow and I worked from the top of the turbine room crane and changed out all the burned-out light bulbs (1,000 watt incandescent). Boy – that was one HOT job!