Power Plant Cajun and the Hatchet Man
Originally Posted August 30, 2013:
During the 18 years I worked as an electrician at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma, we often had contractors working from our shop. I have mentioned that from the moment that I first entered the electric shop the first day I was an electrician, one of the first two people I met was a contract electrician. (See the post: “New Home in the Power Plant Electric Shop“).
Gene Roget (pronounced, “Row Jay” with a soft J) was originally from Louisiana.
A Cajun I found on Google Images (this is actually the actor Shia Lebeouf) that slightly resembles Gene Roget
Gene had spent the first 10 to 12 years of his adult life as a construction electrician. Charles Foster told him to be my mentor. At first Gene was shocked to find out that instead of hiring him to be a Plant Electrician along with his best buddy, Arthur Hammond, they had hired a young kid who didn’t know squat about being a real Power Plant Electrician. Yeah…. that was me.
I felt sorry for Gene because he obviously was the better candidate. The only saving grace for my mind was the knowledge that I was hired through the internal job program and that if they hadn’t taken me into the electric shop, they were going to be stuck with Charles Peavler. Charles was… well… he was somewhat older, but, well….. he couldn’t get around the fact that no matter what he did, he was always still Charles Peavler.
The day I entered the electric shop, I was 23 years and about 3 weeks old. Charles Peavler was 43. However, Charles might remind you of someone more around the age of 65. Not because he looked quite that old. He looked more like, well… um….. I guess he did look like he was about 65. I couldn’t tell if it was just the way he walked or stood, or the way his lip curled around the wad of skoal between his front lower lip and gums.
Just a pinch between your cheek and gums…. Never tried it myself.
I know… I’m being a little hard on Charles. I just like to tease him. I could be worse. I could tell you that his first name was really Amos. But I wouldn’t stoop that low. That would be like saying that Andy Tubb’s first name is really Carl, only worse, so I won’t go there. Actually, Peavler looks more like an Amos than a Charles. (Oh. That paragraph was about Amos and Andy!).
Anyway, by hiring me instead of Charles Peavler off of the labor crew I figured that even though I was dumb as dirt as far as being an electrician, I was more apt to learn new things than Charles. So in the long run I was probably the better candidate. Gene Roget wouldn’t have been able to be hired even if they hadn’t chosen me.
There were two openings for electrician when I was hired. Arthur Hammond (Art) was able to be hired by the electric shop was because they convinced the higher-ups that they needed someone with a background in electronics and there weren’t any internal candidates that fit that bill. So Charles Foster, the foreman, made the case that they needed an experienced electrician with electronics background and they needed someone dumb as dirt, but able to learn something more than just how to lace up their steel-toed boot. — That was where I came in.
I figured that Gene Roget would hold a grudge against me for taking the job that he wanted. This is where the true quality of a person may shine through. When you are involved in making someone upset, even though it wasn’t your decision to make, the way a person reacts to you will tell you a lot about that person’s character.
When Charles Foster told Gene Roget to be my mentor and show me the ropes to being an electrician I suspected that I was being setup for failure. “Ok…” I thought, “I’ll watch what he does instead of what he tells me…” I’ll also watch my back to make sure I don’t end up being electrocuted or knocked off of a ledge or some other accident that would create a new opening in the electric shop.
As it turned out Gene Roget was a man of great quality. Not once in the year and a half that I worked with him did I ever have the feeling that Gene wasn’t doing his best to teach me the skills of being the best electrician I could be. It also turned out that Gene was not only eager to teach me, but he was a highly skilled electrician. So, I felt like I was being taught by one of the best.
Gene Roget (I always liked calling him Gene Roget instead of just Gene… I’m not sure why, but I suppose I can blame it on Gene Day. I never could just call him Gene. And Gene Day and Gene Roget rhymed), carpooled with Art Hammond (I always liked calling Art, Arthur, but I’ll call him Art in this post just to make it shorter… except that I just used all these words explaining it that now it’s longer).
Gene and Art were like best buddies. I carpooled with them a couple of times when I had to catch a ride because I had to stay late and my carpooling ride had to leave (that would have been Rich Litzer, Yvonne Taylor and Bill Rivers). During the drive home, I came to learn that Art and Gene had worked with each other on construction jobs for quite a while and their families were close in some ways.
I also learned that there was another activity that they did together that was not all together kosher (I don’t mean in a Jewish way). They asked me on the way into Stillwater one day if I wanted to take a “hit” on the small rolled cigarette they were taking turns taking tokes from. I had spent 4 years prior to this time in college in a dorm where smoking marijuana was more common than cigarettes and the idea didn’t phase me.
I declined, because I had no desire to go down that route. I told them that I wished that they didn’t do that while I was in the car because then my clothes would smell like I had been living in the dorm again, where your clothes were going to smell like that just going from your room to the elevator… At least it was that way my second year in college.
I’m only talking about this now because it was 29 years ago, and by now if Gene Roget wanted to set his grandchildren on his knee and tell them about the times he was a younger construction electrician, he can mention that he had a shady past at one point, but now he’s just a kind old man. So, I’m going to go on with a story that up to now I have only shared with Arthur Hammond.
One day I went into the main switchgear to find some parts in the parts cage behind the electric shop. When I went back there, an operator Dan Landes was in the switchgear with another operator. They were looking for something by the ladders, so I walked over to see if I could help. Maybe they needed the key to unlock the ladders, I thought.
I don’t remember what they wanted, but I do remember that when I walked up to them I immediately smelled the aroma of marijuana being smoked somewhere. We had just recently lost an electrician in our shop when the snitch tricked him into trading some marijuana for a supposedly stolen knife set (see the post “Power Plant Snitch“).
I asked Dan if he smelled that smell. It was pretty strong. I told him that was marijuana, and I could tell him what type it was. You see, even though I had never smoked the stuff, the drug dealer for the entire dorm used to share the bathroom with our room, and three nights each week he held parties in his room. He had high quality stuff and low. There was a definite difference in the smell. So, I would ask my roommate Mark Sarmento about it and he explained it to me.
So, I told Dan that someone had just been smoking marijuana somewhere right there. It would have definitely been a dumb thing to do. Eventually Dan and the other operator (I can’t remember who) left the switchgear to continue on with their switching. So I returned to the rack where the ladders were.
As I stood there alone I realized that the aroma was pouring down from on top of the battery rooms. So I yelled out, “Hey! You better stop that right now! Don’t you know that the smoke is coming right down here in the switchgear?!?! Put that out and come on down from there!” I stood there for a few minutes and then I walked back into the electric shop.
I laid my parts on the workbench where I was repairing something, and then I walked back over to where I could look through the window in the door into the main switchgear. I finally saw someone climb down one of the ladders from the top of the battery rooms. So, I confronted him.
Yep. It was Gene Roget. I had been working with him for a year and a half at this time and I considered him a very good friend. I told him, “Gene! How could you do that? You know if they catch you they will fire you right away. No questions asked!” He said he was sorry, he didn’t think about the smell coming down into the switchgear and he would make sure it never happened again. I told him that he was lucky that I had found him and not Dan Landes. Dan’s nickname was Deputy Dan. He was a deputy in Perry, Oklahoma.
Well. as it turned out a few weeks later, Gene Roget was let go. I hadn’t told a soul about our encounter, but I wondered if he thought I had. Later I found out that he was let go so suddenly because he had confronted Leroy Godfrey about how Craig Jones had been fired because he had done something wrong. He didn’t know all the details about the snitch, but he did know that they said he was part of a (non-existent) Drug and Theft Ring.
No one tells Leroy Godfrey how to do his job, and in this case, Leroy had nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact, Leroy’s best buddy Jim Stevenson had been unjustly fingered by the snitch just because he was Leroy’s friend. So, Leroy had Gene Roget fired. I barely had time to say goodbye to Gene as he was led out the door to the parking lot and escorted out the gate by the highway patrolman who doubled as a security guard.
One time a year later, when I was carpooling with Art Hammond once again, I talked to Arthur about that day in the switchgear. I knew he was best friends with Gene Roget. So I told him about that instance. He told me that Gene had told him the whole story on the way home that day. Gene had just about had a heart attack when I had yelled up there for him to come down. He had swore to Arthur that he was never going to be that stupid again.
I made it clear to Arthur that I hadn’t told a soul about that day. And up until now, I still hadn’t. That was when Art explained to me the real reason that Gene had been fired. That made total sense. I knew how Leroy Godfrey was. He was an “old school” Power Plant Supervisor.
This is where the short story of the Hatchet Man comes up. He was another contract electrician. I think he was hired to help Jim Stevenson and Bill Ennis with the freeze protection. They were preparing for the coming winter and they needed a little extra help. I call this guy the “Hatchet Man” not because he was a hatchet man for the “Tong”, but because the only tool he used was a hatchet.
A Detective holding a Tong War Hatchet
He didn’t have a tool bucket. He just used this one tool. A Hatchet. As it turned out, he was missing two fingers on one hand and three fingers on the other hand. Hmmm… what came first? I wondered… the hatchet or the lost fingers? It seemed comical that a person missing half of all his fingers used only a hatchet as his only tool as an electrician. — how would he screw in a screw? Electricians had to work with screws all the time. Maybe he had a pocket knife for that.
I figured he probably lost his fingers working in the oil fields, since a lot of people lost fingers doing that. This guy definitely didn’t look much like a rodeo rider, which was the other group of people that would lose fingers.
One day, while sitting in the electrical lab during break time or lunch the subject of an upcoming job opening in the shop came up. The Hatchet Man made the mistake of saying that since he was handicapped, they had to give him the job. All he had to do was apply. They couldn’t turn him down. His missing fingers was his ticket.
Well. It didn’t take long before word of this conversation made its way up to the one good ear that Leroy Godfrey used to hear. The other one was out of commission. As I mentioned before. No one told Leroy what to do. He was supreme leader of the electric shop domain. By the end of the day, the Hatchet Man was given the Ax.
Ted Riddle was hired instead. Now you know the rest of the story.
Power Plant Women and the EEOC Shuffle
Originally posted November 30, 2013:
While I worked as a janitor at the coal-fired power plant in North Central Oklahoma the subject came up one Monday morning about the normal career path that janitors could take. We had already been told that the only place a janitor could advance to was the labor crew. We had also been told that there was a company policy that came down from Oklahoma City that only allowed janitors to move to the labor crew before they could move on to another job like an Operator or Mechanic.
I had been trying to decide if I wanted to go the route of being an Operator or a Mechanic during my time as a janitor. That is, until Charles Foster asked me if I would be interested in becoming an Electrician. I hadn’t even considered being an electrician up to that point, as I had no experience and it seemed like a job that needed a particular skill set.
I had begun my studies to learn about being an electrician when there was an opening in the Electric Shop. Charles Foster and Bill Bennett petitioned to hire me for the position, but the verdict came down from above that according to Company Policy, a janitor could only advance from janitor to the labor crew.
Charles Foster
I didn’t have any expectation at the time of becoming an electrician given that I had no experience, so I wasn’t disappointed when Mike Rose was hired from outside the company. He was hired to help out Jim Stevenson with Air Conditioning and Freeze Protection.
Mike Rose. A fair plant electrician
The next revelation about our position as janitor at the plant (and I’m sure that Ron Kilman, our next plant manager, who reads this blog can testify that it really was company policy…. after all…. that’s what our plant manager told us. — Just kidding…. I know that it really wasn’t), was that when it became our turn to move from being a janitor to moving to the labor crew, if we didn’t move to the labor crew during the next two openings on the labor crew, then we would be let go. I mean… we would lose our job.
This revelation came about when Curtis Love was next in line to go to the labor crew and he was turned down. Larry Riley, the foreman of the labor crew had observed Curtis while we were being loaned to the labor crew during outages and he didn’t want him on the crew for um…. various reasons. After Curtis had been turned down, he was later told that if he didn’t move onto the labor crew when there was another opening, then the company had to fire him. It was company policy (so we were told…. from Corporate Headquarters).
I had been around the plant long enough to know at that point that when we were told that it was company policy that came down to us from Corporate Headquarters, that, unless it was in our binders called General Policies and Procedures, then it probably wasn’t really company policy. It was more likely our evil plant manager’s excuse for not taking the responsibility himself and just telling us that this was the way it was, because he just said so….
One of two General Policies and Procedures Binders
Anyway… This caused a dilemma from an unlikely source on our team of janitors. Doris Voss became worried that if she didn’t move onto the labor crew, that she would lose her job. She was quite content at the time to have just stayed a janitor, but from this policy that had just come down from Corporate Headquarters, (i.e. The front corner office of our plant), she either had to go to the labor crew, or lose her job.
So, what Doris decided to do was to apply for the job of receptionist that had just been vacated by Grant Harned (see the post “Power Plant Carpooling Adventures with Grant Harned“). Doris applied for the job and her application was accepted. She moved on to work at the receptionist desk. I, on the other hand, was next in line behind Curtis Love. So, when he was turned down for the labor crew, I took his place.
As a side note, I talked Larry Riley into letting Curtis Love advance to the labor crew when there was another opening. I told him that I would let him work with me, and that I would take care of him. With that caveat, Larry agreed. You can read a couple of adventures I had with Curtis after he arrived on the labor crew by reading these posts: “Power Plant Safety as Interpreted by Curtis Love” and “Angel of Death Passes by the Precipitator Door“. Later, however, when I had moved on to be an electrician, Curtis was let go after having a vehicle accident and not reporting it right away.
What does this have to do with the EEOC shuffle? Well… about the time I have moved on to the labor crew, a new company-wide policy had been put in place for the internal “Employee Job Announcement Program”. Our power plant had some “irregularities” surrounding where our new employees were coming from. It seems that an inordinate amount of new employees were coming from Pawnee, and more particularly from a certain church. It was obvious to some that a more “uniform” method needed to be in place to keep local HR staff from hiring just their buddies.
Along with this, came a mandate that all external job announcements had to be sent to various different unemployment offices in a certain radius in order to guarantee that everyone that was interested had the opportunity to be informed about any new positions at the plant well in time to apply for it. That was, if the Internal job announcement program didn’t find any viable candidates within the company that was willing to take the job.
EEOC, by the way, means, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Around the same time that our plant had hired a “snitch” to go around an entrap unsuspecting employees into illegal activities (see the post: “Power Plant Snitch“), the EEOC had given us notice that we were not hiring enough women and American Indians as well as African Americans at the plant. Not only did we lack number, we also needed to have them spread out into a number of different jobs in the plant.
At the time the operators were 100% male. No women. The maintenance shop had a couple of women. The rest of the women at the plant were either clerks, working for the warehouse, or in the HR department…. Which all incidentally reported up to Jack Ballard our HR Supervisor. Well. Except for Yvonne Taylor in the Chemistry lab, and maybe someone that was on the testing team and of course Summer Goebel who was a Plant Engineer.
It wasn’t just women that were affected. We had to have an African American in Upper Management. Bill Bennett had become an A Foreman a few years earlier, and there was some discussion about whether they could promote him up one more level. He refused the offer. Later they decided that an A Foreman at our plant was high enough to be considered “upper management”.
American Indians were also a group of employees that needed to fill a certain quota. The Power Plant was located in North Central Oklahoma with many Indian Reservations surrounding it. I think we were supposed to have more than 10% American Indians employed at the plant. So the front office asked everyone to check to see if they were Indian enough to be considered. I think if you were 1/16th American Indian, you counted in the quota.
Some people were a little disturbed to be asked to report their racial status in order to fill a quota. Jerry Mitchell told me that he was Indian, but that he never had told anyone and he didn’t want to become a number, so he wasn’t going to tell them. I think we met our quota even without Jerry Mitchell and some others that felt insulted.
At the time, we had over 350 employees at the plant. That meant that we needed 35 women. I think we were closer to 25 when the push to hire more women went into effect.
The problem area that needed the most work was with the operators. Their entire organization had no women and they were told that they needed them. The problem was both structural and operational (yeah…. Operations had an operational problem…. how about that?).
There were two problems with hiring women to be operators. The first one was structural. The operators main base was the Control Room. That’s where their locker room was. That’s where their kitchen was. More importantly that’s where they could all stand around and watch Gene Day perform feats of magic by doing nothing more than standing there being…. well… being Gene Day!
Yipes. Notice how comfortable Jim Cave is standing between Gene Day and Joe Gallahar! Gene Day is the one with the Banjo and the more hairier legs. — I couldn’t resist…
There was only a Power Plant men’s locker room. There were no facilities for women. The nearest women’s rest / locker room was across the main plant in the office area, or downstairs in the Maintenance shop. This presented a logistical problem, especially on days when Gene Day made his special Chili or tortilla soup (Ok, I’m just picking on Gene Day…. We all know Gene never could cook. We loved him anyway).
Either way, there were times when taking a trek across the plant to make it to the nearest restroom was not acceptable. This was solved by building an additional rest / locker room in the control room for women operators. That problem was solved.
The operational problem inherent in operations was that they worked shift work. That is, each week, they shifted the hours they worked. Operators had to be working around the clock. So, one week, they would work from 7:00 am to 3:30 pm. Next week they may work from 3pm to 11:30pm, or from 11pm to 7:30am. The plant didn’t have any female applicants for a job where you had to work around the clock.
The EEOC said that wasn’t good enough. We needed to find women to work in operations. This was where Doris Voss became a person of interest.
Doris was asked if she would like to become an operator. Of course, she said no. She really still wanted to be a janitor, but was content being a receptionist. I’m not sure what she was told or was given, but she eventually agreed and moved over to become an operator. Another clerk, Helen Robinson was later coaxed into becoming an operator. Mary Lou Teeman was also hired into the Operations department. I don’t remember if she was a clerk before that, or if she was a new hire. — I do remember that she was the sweetest lady in operations.
Gene Day is the one standing on the right with the Orange shirt and longer pants than above (see what I mean about him being “instant Entertainment?). Mary Lou Teeman is standing next to him in the red shirt.
Here is a picture that includes Doris Voss:
Can you pick Doris Voss out of the lineup?
And here is Helen Robinson:
Helen Robinson is third from the left in the back row.
How is it that Charles Peavler showed up in two pictures? — Oh. Taken at different times. Note that Charles Peavler with the gray shirt in the front row is kneeling on one knee, but Larry Tapp with the blue shirt next to him is standing….. Hey. Larry Tapp may be short, but he’s one of the nicest guys in this picture. I have a story about those two guys on the right side of this picture. Merl Wright and Jack Maloy. I’ll probably include that as a side story in a later post (See the post: “Power Plant Conspiracy Theory“).
With the addition of the three new female operators, the EEOC shuffle was satisfied. We had added a few new female employees from the outside world and everyone was happy. Julienne Alley was added to the Welding shop during this time. The entire maintenance crew would agree that their new “Shop” mother was the best of them all (See the post: “Power Plant Mother’s Day“).
Comment from the Original Post:
Power Plant Cajun and the Hatchet Man
Originally Posted August 30, 2013:
During the 18 years I worked as an electrician at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma, we often had contractors working from our shop. I have mentioned that from the moment that I first entered the electric shop the first day I was an electrician, one of the first two people I met was a contract electrician. (See the post: “New Home in the Power Plant Electric Shop“).
Gene Roget (pronounced, “Row Jay” with a soft J) was originally from Louisiana.
A Cajun I found on Google Images (this is actually the actor Shia Lebeouf) that slightly resembles Gene Roget
Gene had spent the first 10 to 12 years of his adult life as a construction electrician. Charles Foster told him to be my mentor. At first Gene was shocked to find out that instead of hiring him to be a Plant Electrician along with his best buddy, Arthur Hammond, they had hired a young kid who didn’t know squat about being a real Power Plant Electrician. Yeah…. that was me.
I felt sorry for Gene because he obviously was the better candidate. The only saving grace for my mind was the knowledge that I was hired through the internal job program and that if they hadn’t taken me into the electric shop, they were going to be stuck with Charles Peavler. Charles was… well… he was somewhat older, but, well….. he couldn’t get around the fact that no matter what he did, he was always still Charles Peavler.
The day I entered the electric shop, I was 23 years and about 3 weeks old. Charles Peavler was 43. However, Charles might remind you of someone more around the age of 65. Not because he looked quite that old. He looked more like, well… um….. I guess he did look like he was about 65. I couldn’t tell if it was just the way he walked or stood, or the way his lip curled around the wad of skoal between his front lower lip and gums.
Just a pinch between your cheek and gums…. Never tried it myself.
I know… I’m being a little hard on Charles. I just like to tease him. I could be worse. I could tell you that his first name was really Amos. But I wouldn’t stoop that low. That would be like saying that Andy Tubb’s first name is really Carl, only worse, so I won’t go there. Actually, Peavler looks more like an Amos than a Charles. (Oh. That paragraph was about Amos and Andy!).
Anyway, by hiring me instead of Charles Peavler off of the labor crew I figured that even though I was dumb as dirt as far as being an electrician, I was more apt to learn new things than Charles. So in the long run I was probably the better candidate. Gene Roget wouldn’t have been able to be hired even if they hadn’t chosen me.
There were two openings for electrician when I was hired. Arthur Hammond (Art) was able to be hired by the electric shop was because they convinced the higher-ups that they needed someone with a background in electronics and there weren’t any internal candidates that fit that bill. So Charles Foster, the foreman, made the case that they needed an experienced electrician with electronics background and they needed someone dumb as dirt, but able to learn something more than just how to lace up their steel-toed boot. — That was where I came in.
I figured that Gene Roget would hold a grudge against me for taking the job that he wanted. This is where the true quality of a person may shine through. When you are involved in making someone upset, even though it wasn’t your decision to make, the way a person reacts to you will tell you a lot about that person’s character.
When Charles Foster told Gene Roget to be my mentor and show me the ropes to being an electrician I suspected that I was being setup for failure. “Ok…” I thought, “I’ll watch what he does instead of what he tells me…” I’ll also watch my back to make sure I don’t end up being electrocuted or knocked off of a ledge or some other accident that would create a new opening in the electric shop.
As it turned out Gene Roget was a man of great quality. Not once in the year and a half that I worked with him did I ever have the feeling that Gene wasn’t doing his best to teach me the skills of being the best electrician I could be. It also turned out that Gene was not only eager to teach me, but he was a highly skilled electrician. So, I felt like I was being taught by one of the best.
Gene Roget (I always liked calling him Gene Roget instead of just Gene… I’m not sure why, but I suppose I can blame it on Gene Day. I never could just call him Gene. And Gene Day and Gene Roget rhymed), carpooled with Art Hammond (I always liked calling Art, Arthur, but I’ll call him Art in this post just to make it shorter… except that I just used all these words explaining it that now it’s longer).
Gene and Art were like best buddies. I carpooled with them a couple of times when I had to catch a ride because I had to stay late and my carpooling ride had to leave (that would have been Rich Litzer, Yvonne Taylor and Bill Rivers). During the drive home, I came to learn that Art and Gene had worked with each other on construction jobs for quite a while and their families were close in some ways.
I also learned that there was another activity that they did together that was not all together kosher (I don’t mean in a Jewish way). They asked me on the way into Stillwater one day if I wanted to take a “hit” on the small rolled cigarette they were taking turns taking tokes from. I had spent 4 years prior to this time in college in a dorm where smoking marijuana was more common than cigarettes and the idea didn’t phase me.
I declined, because I had no desire to go down that route. I told them that I wished that they didn’t do that while I was in the car because then my clothes would smell like I had been living in the dorm again, where your clothes were going to smell like that just going from your room to the elevator… At least it was that way my second year in college.
I’m only talking about this now because it was 29 years ago, and by now if Gene Roget wanted to set his grandchildren on his knee and tell them about the times he was a younger construction electrician, he can mention that he had a shady past at one point, but now he’s just a kind old man. So, I’m going to go on with a story that up to now I have only shared with Arthur Hammond.
One day I went into the main switchgear to find some parts in the parts cage behind the electric shop. When I went back there, an operator Dan Landes was in the switchgear with another operator. They were looking for something by the ladders, so I walked over to see if I could help. Maybe they needed the key to unlock the ladders, I thought.
I don’t remember what they wanted, but I do remember that when I walked up to them I immediately smelled the aroma of marijuana being smoked somewhere. We had just recently lost an electrician in our shop when the snitch tricked him into trading some marijuana for a supposedly stolen knife set (see the post “Power Plant Snitch“).
I asked Dan if he smelled that smell. It was pretty strong. I told him that was marijuana, and I could tell him what type it was. You see, even though I had never smoked the stuff, the drug dealer for the entire dorm used to share the bathroom with our room, and three nights each week he held parties in his room. He had high quality stuff and low. There was a definite difference in the smell. So, I would ask my roommate Mark Sarmento about it and he explained it to me.
So, I told Dan that someone had just been smoking marijuana somewhere right there. It would have definitely been a dumb thing to do. Eventually Dan and the other operator (I can’t remember who) left the switchgear to continue on with their switching. So I returned to the rack where the ladders were.
As I stood there alone I realized that the aroma was pouring down from on top of the battery rooms. So I yelled out, “Hey! You better stop that right now! Don’t you know that the smoke is coming right down here in the switchgear?!?! Put that out and come on down from there!” I stood there for a few minutes and then I walked back into the electric shop.
I laid my parts on the workbench where I was repairing something, and then I walked back over to where I could look through the window in the door into the main switchgear. I finally saw someone climb down one of the ladders from the top of the battery rooms. So, I confronted him.
Yep. It was Gene Roget. I had been working with him for a year and a half at this time and I considered him a very good friend. I told him, “Gene! How could you do that? You know if they catch you they will fire you right away. No questions asked!” He said he was sorry, he didn’t think about the smell coming down into the switchgear and he would make sure it never happened again. I told him that he was lucky that I had found him and not Dan Landes. Dan’s nickname was Deputy Dan. He was a deputy in Perry, Oklahoma.
Well. as it turned out a few weeks later, Gene Roget was let go. I hadn’t told a soul about our encounter, but I wondered if he thought I had. Later I found out that he was let go so suddenly because he had confronted Leroy Godfrey about how Craig Jones had been fired because he had done something wrong. He didn’t know all the details about the snitch, but he did know that they said he was part of a (non-existent) Drug and Theft Ring.
No one tells Leroy Godfrey how to do his job, and in this case, Leroy had nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact, Leroy’s best buddy Jim Stevenson had been unjustly fingered by the snitch just because he was Leroy’s friend. So, Leroy had Gene Roget fired. I barely had time to say goodbye to Gene as he was led out the door to the parking lot and escorted out the gate by the highway patrolman who doubled as a security guard.
One time a year later, when I was carpooling with Art Hammond once again, I talked to Arthur about that day in the switchgear. I knew he was best friends with Gene Roget. So I told him about that instance. He told me that Gene had told him the whole story on the way home that day. Gene had just about had a heart attack when I had yelled up there for him to come down. He had swore to Arthur that he was never going to be that stupid again.
I made it clear to Arthur that I hadn’t told a soul about that day. And up until now, I still hadn’t. That was when Art explained to me the real reason that Gene had been fired. That made total sense. I knew how Leroy Godfrey was. He was an “old school” Power Plant Supervisor.
This is where the short story of the Hatchet Man comes up. He was another contract electrician. I think he was hired to help Jim Stevenson and Bill Ennis with the freeze protection. They were preparing for the coming winter and they needed a little extra help. I call this guy the “Hatchet Man” not because he was a hatchet man for the “Tong”, but because the only tool he used was a hatchet.
A Detective holding a Tong War Hatchet
He didn’t have a tool bucket. He just used this one tool. A Hatchet. As it turned out, he was missing two fingers on one hand and three fingers on the other hand. Hmmm… what came first? I wondered… the hatchet or the lost fingers? It seemed comical that a person missing half of all his fingers used only a hatchet as his only tool as an electrician. — how would he screw in a screw? Electricians had to work with screws all the time. Maybe he had a pocket knife for that.
I figured he probably lost his fingers working in the oil fields, since a lot of people lost fingers doing that. This guy definitely didn’t look much like a rodeo rider, which was the other group of people that would lose fingers.
One day, while sitting in the electrical lab during break time or lunch the subject of an upcoming job opening in the shop came up. The Hatchet Man made the mistake of saying that since he was handicapped, they had to give him the job. All he had to do was apply. They couldn’t turn him down. His missing fingers was his ticket.
Well. It didn’t take long before word of this conversation made its way up to the one good ear that Leroy Godfrey used to hear. The other one was out of commission. As I mentioned before. No one told Leroy what to do. He was supreme leader of the electric shop domain. By the end of the day, the Hatchet Man was given the Ax.
Ted Riddle was hired instead. Now you know the rest of the story.
Power Plant Women and the EEOC Shuffle
Originally posted November 30, 2013:
While I worked as a janitor at the coal-fired power plant in North Central Oklahoma the subject came up one Monday morning about the normal career path that janitors could take. We had already been told that the only place a janitor could advance to was the labor crew. We had also been told that there was a company policy that came down from Oklahoma City that only allowed janitors to move to the labor crew before they could move on to another job like an Operator or Mechanic.
I had been trying to decide if I wanted to go the route of being an Operator or a Mechanic during my time as a janitor. That is, until Charles Foster asked me if I would be interested in becoming an Electrician. I hadn’t even considered being an electrician up to that point, as I had no experience and it seemed like a job that needed a particular skill set.
I had begun my studies to learn about being an electrician when there was an opening in the Electric Shop. Charles Foster and Bill Bennett petitioned to hire me for the position, but the verdict came down from above that according to Company Policy, a janitor could only advance from janitor to the labor crew.
Charles Foster
I didn’t have any expectation at the time of becoming an electrician given that I had no experience, so I wasn’t disappointed when Mike Rose was hired from outside the company. He was hired to help out Jim Stevenson with Air Conditioning and Freeze Protection.
Mike Rose. A fair plant electrician
The next revelation about our position as janitor at the plant (and I’m sure that Ron Kilman, our next plant manager, who reads this blog can testify that it really was company policy…. after all…. that’s what our plant manager told us. — Just kidding…. I know that it really wasn’t), was that when it became our turn to move from being a janitor to moving to the labor crew, if we didn’t move to the labor crew during the next two openings on the labor crew, then we would be let go. I mean… we would lose our job.
This revelation came about when Curtis Love was next in line to go to the labor crew and he was turned down. Larry Riley, the foreman of the labor crew had observed Curtis while we were being loaned to the labor crew during outages and he didn’t want him on the crew for um…. various reasons. After Curtis had been turned down, he was later told that if he didn’t move onto the labor crew when there was another opening, then the company had to fire him. It was company policy (so we were told…. from Corporate Headquarters).
I had been around the plant long enough to know at that point that when we were told that it was company policy that came down to us from Corporate Headquarters, that, unless it was in our binders called General Policies and Procedures, then it probably wasn’t really company policy. It was more likely our evil plant manager’s excuse for not taking the responsibility himself and just telling us that this was the way it was, because he just said so….
One of two General Policies and Procedures Binders
Anyway… This caused a dilemma from an unlikely source on our team of janitors. Doris Voss became worried that if she didn’t move onto the labor crew, that she would lose her job. She was quite content at the time to have just stayed a janitor, but from this policy that had just come down from Corporate Headquarters, (i.e. The front corner office of our plant), she either had to go to the labor crew, or lose her job.
So, what Doris decided to do was to apply for the job of receptionist that had just been vacated by Grant Harned (see the post “Power Plant Carpooling Adventures with Grant Harned“). Doris applied for the job and her application was accepted. She moved on to work at the receptionist desk. I, on the other hand, was next in line behind Curtis Love. So, when he was turned down for the labor crew, I took his place.
As a side note, I talked Larry Riley into letting Curtis Love advance to the labor crew when there was another opening. I told him that I would let him work with me, and that I would take care of him. With that caveat, Larry agreed. You can read a couple of adventures I had with Curtis after he arrived on the labor crew by reading these posts: “Power Plant Safety as Interpreted by Curtis Love” and “Angel of Death Passes by the Precipitator Door“. Later, however, when I had moved on to be an electrician, Curtis was let go after having a vehicle accident and not reporting it right away.
What does this have to do with the EEOC shuffle? Well… about the time I have moved on to the labor crew, a new company-wide policy had been put in place for the internal “Employee Job Announcement Program”. Our power plant had some “irregularities” surrounding where our new employees were coming from. It seems that an inordinate amount of new employees were coming from Pawnee, and more particularly from a certain church. It was obvious to some that a more “uniform” method needed to be in place to keep local HR staff from hiring just their buddies.
Along with this, came a mandate that all external job announcements had to be sent to various different unemployment offices in a certain radius in order to guarantee that everyone that was interested had the opportunity to be informed about any new positions at the plant well in time to apply for it. That was, if the Internal job announcement program didn’t find any viable candidates within the company that was willing to take the job.
EEOC, by the way, means, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Around the same time that our plant had hired a “snitch” to go around an entrap unsuspecting employees into illegal activities (see the post: “Power Plant Snitch“), the EEOC had given us notice that we were not hiring enough women and American Indians as well as African Americans at the plant. Not only did we lack number, we also needed to have them spread out into a number of different jobs in the plant.
At the time the operators were 100% male. No women. The maintenance shop had a couple of women. The rest of the women at the plant were either clerks, working for the warehouse, or in the HR department…. Which all incidentally reported up to Jack Ballard our HR Supervisor. Well. Except for Yvonne Taylor in the Chemistry lab, and maybe someone that was on the testing team and of course Summer Goebel who was a Plant Engineer.
It wasn’t just women that were affected. We had to have an African American in Upper Management. Bill Bennett had become an A Foreman a few years earlier, and there was some discussion about whether they could promote him up one more level. He refused the offer. Later they decided that an A Foreman at our plant was high enough to be considered “upper management”.
American Indians were also a group of employees that needed to fill a certain quota. The Power Plant was located in North Central Oklahoma with many Indian Reservations surrounding it. I think we were supposed to have more than 10% American Indians employed at the plant. So the front office asked everyone to check to see if they were Indian enough to be considered. I think if you were 1/16th American Indian, you counted in the quota.
Some people were a little disturbed to be asked to report their racial status in order to fill a quota. Jerry Mitchell told me that he was Indian, but that he never had told anyone and he didn’t want to become a number, so he wasn’t going to tell them. I think we met our quota even without Jerry Mitchell and some others that felt insulted.
At the time, we had over 350 employees at the plant. That meant that we needed 35 women. I think we were closer to 25 when the push to hire more women went into effect.
The problem area that needed the most work was with the operators. Their entire organization had no women and they were told that they needed them. The problem was both structural and operational (yeah…. Operations had an operational problem…. how about that?).
There were two problems with hiring women to be operators. The first one was structural. The operators main base was the Control Room. That’s where their locker room was. That’s where their kitchen was. More importantly that’s where they could all stand around and watch Gene Day perform feats of magic by doing nothing more than standing there being…. well… being Gene Day!
Yipes. Notice how comfortable Jim Cave is standing between Gene Day and Joe Gallahar! Gene Day is the one with the Banjo and the more hairier legs. — I couldn’t resist…
There was only a Power Plant men’s locker room. There were no facilities for women. The nearest women’s rest / locker room was across the main plant in the office area, or downstairs in the Maintenance shop. This presented a logistical problem, especially on days when Gene Day made his special Chili or tortilla soup (Ok, I’m just picking on Gene Day…. We all know Gene never could cook. We loved him anyway).
Either way, there were times when taking a trek across the plant to make it to the nearest restroom was not acceptable. This was solved by building an additional rest / locker room in the control room for women operators. That problem was solved.
The operational problem inherent in operations was that they worked shift work. That is, each week, they shifted the hours they worked. Operators had to be working around the clock. So, one week, they would work from 7:00 am to 3:30 pm. Next week they may work from 3pm to 11:30pm, or from 11pm to 7:30am. The plant didn’t have any female applicants for a job where you had to work around the clock.
The EEOC said that wasn’t good enough. We needed to find women to work in operations. This was where Doris Voss became a person of interest.
Doris was asked if she would like to become an operator. Of course, she said no. She really still wanted to be a janitor, but was content being a receptionist. I’m not sure what she was told or was given, but she eventually agreed and moved over to become an operator. Another clerk, Helen Robinson was later coaxed into becoming an operator. Mary Lou Teeman was also hired into the Operations department. I don’t remember if she was a clerk before that, or if she was a new hire. — I do remember that she was the sweetest lady in operations.
Gene Day is the one standing on the right with the Orange shirt and longer pants than above (see what I mean about him being “instant Entertainment?). Mary Lou Teeman is standing next to him in the red shirt.
Here is a picture that includes Doris Voss:
Can you pick Doris Voss out of the lineup?
And here is Helen Robinson:
Helen Robinson is third from the left in the back row.
How is it that Charles Peavler showed up in two pictures? — Oh. Taken at different times. Note that Charles Peavler with the gray shirt in the front row is kneeling on one knee, but Larry Tapp with the blue shirt next to him is standing….. Hey. Larry Tapp may be short, but he’s one of the nicest guys in this picture. I have a story about those two guys on the right side of this picture. Merl Wright and Jack Maloy. I’ll probably include that as a side story in a later post (See the post: “Power Plant Conspiracy Theory“).
With the addition of the three new female operators, the EEOC shuffle was satisfied. We had added a few new female employees from the outside world and everyone was happy. Julienne Alley was added to the Welding shop during this time. The entire maintenance crew would agree that their new “Shop” mother was the best of them all (See the post: “Power Plant Mother’s Day“).
Comment from the Original Post:
-
I don’t know what “policies” Martin Louthan agreed to with the two coal plant managers. I remember them talking about how hard it was keeping good workers in their Labor crews. We didn’t have Labor crews at the gas plants so we weren’t affected. When I moved to Sooner, I don’t remember that “policy” (terminated after 2 turn-downs to Labor crew) being in place. Was it?
No. It was just a policy created specifically to target one person. It was never enforced.
Power Plant Women and the EEOC Shuffle
Originally posted November 30, 2013:
While I worked as a janitor at the coal-fired power plant in North Central Oklahoma the subject came up one Monday morning about the normal career path that janitors could take. We had already been told that the only place a janitor could advance to was the labor crew. We had been told that there was a company policy that came down from Oklahoma City that only allowed janitors to move to the labor crew before they could move on to another job like an Operator or Mechanic.
I had been trying to decide if I wanted to go the route of being an Operator or a Mechanic during my time as a janitor. That is, until Charles Foster asked me if I would be interested in becoming an Electrician.
I had begun my studies to learn about being an electrician when there was an opening in the Electric Shop. Charles Foster and Bill Bennett petitioned to hire me for the position, but the verdict came down from above that according to Company Policy, a janitor could only advance from janitor to the labor crew.
Charles Foster
I didn’t have any expectation at the time of becoming an electrician given that I had no experience, so I wasn’t disappointed when Mike Rose was hired from outside the company. He was hired to help out Jim Stevenson with Air Conditioning and Freeze Protection.
Mike Rose. A fair plant electrician
The next revelation about our position as janitor at the plant (and I’m sure that Ron Kilman, our next plant manager, who reads this blog can testify that it really was company policy…. after all…. that’s what our plant manager told us. — Just kidding…. I know that it really wasn’t), was that when it became our turn to move from being a janitor to moving to the labor crew, if we didn’t move to the labor crew during the next two openings on the labor crew, then we would be let go. I mean… we would lose our job.
This revelation came about when Curtis Love was next in line to go to the labor crew and he was turned down. Larry Riley, the foreman of the labor crew had observed Curtis while we were being loaned to the labor crew during outages and he didn’t want him on the crew for um…. various reasons. After Curtis had been turned down, he was later told that if he didn’t move onto the labor crew when there was another opening, then the company had to fire him. It was company policy (so we were told…. from Corporate Headquarters).
I had been around the plant long enough to know at that point that when we were told that it was company policy that came down to us from Corporate Headquarters, that, unless it was in our binders called General Policies and Practices, then it probably wasn’t really company policy. It was more likely our evil plant manager’s excuse for not taking the responsibility himself and just telling us that this was the way it was, because he just said so….
One of two General Policies and Procedures Binders
Anyway… This caused a dilemma from an unlikely source on our team of janitors. Doris Voss became worried that if she didn’t move onto the labor crew, that she would lose her job. She was quite content at the time to have just stayed a janitor, but from this policy that had just come down from Corporate Headquarters, (i.e. The front corner office of our plant), she either had to go to the labor crew, or lose her job.
So, what Doris decided to do was to apply for the job of receptionist that had just been vacated by Grant Harned (see the post “Power Plant Carpooling Adventures with Grant Harned“). Doris applied for the job and her application was accepted. She moved on to work at the receptionist desk. I, on the other hand, was next in line behind Curtis Love. So, when he was turned down for the labor crew, I took his place.
As a side note, I talked Larry Riley into letting Curtis Love advance to the labor crew when there was another opening. I told him that I would let him work with me, and that I would take care of him. With that caveat, Larry agreed. You can read a couple of adventures I had with Curtis after he arrived on the labor crew by reading these posts: “Power Plant Safety as Interpreted by Curtis Love” and “Angel of Death Passes by the Precipitator Door“. Later, however, when I had moved on to be an electrician, Curtis was let go after having a vehicle accident and not reporting it right away.
What does this have to do with the EEOC shuffle? Well… about the time I have moved on to the labor crew, a new company-wide policy had been put in place for the internal “Employee Job Announcement Program”. Our power plant had some “irregularities” surrounding where our new employees were coming from. It seems that an inordinate amount of new employees were coming from Pawnee, and more particularly from a certain church. It was obvious to some that a more “uniform” method needed to be in place to keep local HR staff from hiring just their buddies.
Along with this, came a mandated that all external job announcements had to be sent to various different unemployment offices in a certain radius in order to guarantee that everyone that was interested had the opportunity to be informed about any new positions at the plant well in time to apply for it. That was, if the Internal job announcement program didn’t find any viable candidates within the company that was willing to take the job.
EEOC, by the way, means, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Around the same time that our plant had hired a “snitch” to go around an entrap unsuspecting employees into illegal activities (see the post: “Power Plant Snitch“), the EEOC had given us notice that we were not hiring enough women and American Indians as well as African Americans at the plant. Not only did we lack number, we also needed to have them spread out into a number of different jobs in the plant.
At the time the operators were 100% male. No women. The maintenance shop had a couple of women. The rest of the women at the plant were either clerks, working for the warehouse, or in the HR department…. Which all incidentally reported up to Jack Ballard our HR Supervisor. Well. Except for Yvonne Taylor in the Chemistry lab, and maybe someone that was on the testing team and of course Summer Goebel who was a Plant Engineer.
It wasn’t just women that were affected. We had to have an African American in Upper Management. Bill Bennett had become an A Foreman a few years earlier, and there was some discussion about whether they could promote him up one more level. He refused the offer. Later they decided that an A Foreman at our plant was high enough to be considered “upper management”.
American Indians were also a group of employees that needed to fill a certain quota. The Power Plant was located in North Central Oklahoma with many Indian Reservations surrounding it. I think we were supposed to have more than 10% American Indians employed at the plant. So the front office asked everyone to check to see if they were Indian enough to be considered. I think if you were 1/16th American Indian, you counted in the quota.
Some people were a little disturbed to be asked to report their racial status in order to fill a quota. Jerry Mitchell told me that he was Indian, but that he never had told anyone and he didn’t want to become a number, so he wasn’t going to tell them. I think we met our quota even without Jerry Mitchell and some others that felt insulted.
At the time, we had over 350 employees at the plant. That meant that we needed 35 women. I think we were closer to 25 when the push to hire more women went into effect.
The problem area that needed the most work was with the operators. Their entire organization had no women and they were told that they needed them. The problem was both structural and operational (yeah…. Operations had an operational problem…. how about that?).
There were two problems with hiring women to be operators. The first one was structural. The operators main base was the Control Room. That’s where their locker room was. That’s where their kitchen was. More importantly that’s where they could all stand around and watch Gene Day perform feats of magic by doing nothing more than standing there being…. well… being Gene Day!
There was only a Power Plant men’s locker room. There were no facilities for women. The nearest women’s rest / locker room was across the main plant in the office area, or downstairs in the Maintenance shop. This presented a logistical problem, especially on days when Gene Day made his special Chili or tortilla soup (Ok, I’m just picking on Gene Day…. We all know Gene never could cook. We loved him anyway).
Either way, there were times when taking a trek across the plant to make it to the nearest restroom was not acceptable. This was solved by building an additional rest / locker room in the control room for women operators. That problem was solved.
The operational problem inherent in operations was that they worked shift work. That is, each week, they shifted the hours they worked. Operators had to be working around the clock. So, one week, they would work from 7:00 am to 3:30 pm. Next week they may work from 3pm to 11:30pm, or from 11pm to 7:30am. The plant didn’t have any female applicants for a job where you had to work around the clock.
The EEOC said that wasn’t good enough. We needed to find women to work in operations. This was where Doris Voss became a person of interest.
Doris was asked if she would like to become an operator. Of course, she said no. She really still wanted to be a janitor, but was content being a receptionist. I’m not sure what she was told or was given, but she eventually agreed and moved over to become an operator. Another clerk, Helen Robinson was later coaxed into becoming an operator. Mary Lou Teeman was also hired into the Operations department. I don’t remember if she was a clerk before that, or if she was a new hire. — I do remember that she was the sweetest lady in operations.
Gene Day is the one standing on the right with the Orange shirt (see what I mean about him being “instant Entertainment?). Mary Lou Teeman is standing next to him in the red shirt.
Here is a picture that includes Doris Voss:
Can you pick Doris Voss out of the lineup?
And here is Helen Robinson:
Helen Robinson is third from the left in the back row.
How is it that Charles Peavler showed up in two pictures? — Oh. Taken at different times. Note that Charles Peavler with the gray shirt in the front row is kneeling on one knee, but Larry Tapp with the blue shirt next to him is standing….. Hey. Larry Tapp may be short, but he’s one of the nicest guys in this picture. I have a story about those two guys on the right side of this picture. Merl Wright and Jack Maloy. I’ll probably include that as a side story in a later post (See the post: “Power Plant Conspiracy Theory“).
With the addition of the three new female operators, the EEOC shuffle was satisfied. We had added a few new female employees from the outside world and everyone was happy. Julienne Alley was added to the Welding shop during this time. The entire maintenance crew would agree that their new “Shop” mother was the best of them all (See the post: “Power Plant Mother’s Day“).
Comment from the Original Post:
-
I don’t know what “policies” Martin Louthan agreed to with the two coal plant managers. I remember them talking about how hard it was keeping good workers in their Labor crews. We didn’t have Labor crews at the gas plants so we weren’t affected. When I moved to Sooner, I don’t remember that “policy” (terminated after 2 turn-downs to Labor crew) being in place. Was it?
No. It was just a policy created specifically to target one person. It was never enforced.
Power Plant Cajun and the Hatchet Man
Originally Posted August 30, 2013:
During the 18 years I worked as an electrician at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma, we often had contractors working from our shop. I have mentioned that from the moment that I first entered the electric shop the first day I was an electrician, one of the first two people I met was a contract electrician. (See the post: “New Home in the Power Plant Electric Shop“).
Gene Roget (pronounced, “Row Jay” with a soft J) was originally from Louisiana.
A Cajun I found on Google Images (this is actually the actor Shia Lebeouf) that slightly resembles Gene Roget
Gene had spent the first 10 to 12 years of his adult life as a construction electrician. Charles Foster told him to be my mentor. At first Gene was shocked to find out that instead of hiring him to be a Plant Electrician along with his best buddy, Arthur Hammond, they had hired a young kid who didn’t know squat about being a real Power Plant Electrician. Yeah…. that was me.
I felt sorry for Gene because he obviously was the better candidate. The only saving grace for my mind was the knowledge that I was hired through the internal job program and that if they hadn’t taken me into the electric shop, they were going to be stuck with Charles Peavler. Charles was… well… he was somewhat older, but, well….. he couldn’t get around the fact that no matter what he did, he was always still Charles Peavler.
The day I entered the electric shop, I was 23 years and about 3 weeks old. Charles Peavler was 43. However, Charles might remind you of someone more around the age of 65. Not because he looked quite that old. He looked more like, well… um….. I guess he did look like he was about 65. I couldn’t tell if it was just the way he walked or stood, or the way his lip curled around the wad of skoal between his front lower lip and gums.
Just a pinch between your cheek and gums…. Never tried it myself.
I know… I’m being a little hard on Charles. I just like to tease him. I could be worse. I could tell you that his first name was really Amos. But I wouldn’t stoop that low. That would be like saying that Andy Tubb’s first name is really Carl, only worse, so I won’t go there. Actually, Peavler looks more like an Amos than a Charles. (Oh. That paragraph was about Amos and Andy!).
Anyway, by hiring me instead of Charles Peavler off of the labor crew I figured that even though I was dumb as dirt as far as being an electrician, I was more apt to learn new things than Charles. So in the long run I was probably the better candidate. Gene Roget wouldn’t have been able to be hired even if they hadn’t chosen me.
There were two openings for electrician when I was hired. Arthur Hammond (Art) was able to be hired by the electric shop was because they convinced the higher-ups that they needed someone with a background in electronics and there weren’t any internal candidates that fit that bill. So Charles Foster, the foreman, made the case that they needed an experienced electrician with electronics background and they needed someone dumb as dirt, but able to learn something more than just how to lace up their steel-toed boot. — That was where I came in.
I figured that Gene Roget would hold a grudge against me for taking the job that he wanted. This is where the true quality of a person may peer through. When you are involved in making someone upset, even though it wasn’t your decision to make, the way a person reacts to you will tell you a lot about that person’s character.
When Charles Foster told Gene Roget to be my mentor and show me the ropes to being an electrician I suspected that I was being setup for failure. “Ok…” I thought, “I’ll watch what he does instead of what he tells me…” I’ll also watch my back to make sure I don’t end up being electrocuted or knocked off of a ledge or some other accident that would create a new opening in the electric shop.
As it turned out Gene Roget was a man of great quality. Not once in the year and a half that I worked with him did I ever have the feeling that Gene wasn’t doing his best to teach me the skills of being the best electrician I could be. It also turned out that Gene was not only eager to teach me, but he was a highly skilled electrician. So, I felt like I was being taught by one of the best.
Gene Roget (I always liked calling him Gene Roget instead of just Gene… I’m not sure why, but I suppose I can blame it on Gene Day. I never could just call him Gene. And Gene Day and Gene Roget rhymed), carpooled with Art Hammond (I always liked calling Art, Arthur, but I’ll call him Art in this post just to make it shorter… except that I just used all these words explaining it that now it’s longer).
Gene and Art were like best buddies. I carpooled with them a couple of times when I had to catch a ride because I had to stay late and my carpooling ride had to leave (that would have been Rich Litzer, Yvonne Taylor and Bill Rivers). During the drive home, I came to learn that Art and Gene had worked with each other on construction jobs for quite a while and their families were close in some ways.
I also learned that there was another activity that they did together that was not all together kosher (I don’t mean in a Jewish way). They asked me on the way into Stillwater one day if I wanted to take a “hit” on the small rolled cigarette they were taking turns taking tokes from. I had spent 4 years prior to this time in college in a dorm where smoking marijuana was more common than cigarettes and the idea didn’t phase me.
I declined, because I had no desire to go down that route. I told them that I wished that they didn’t do that while I was in the car because then my clothes would smell like I had been living in the dorm again, where your clothes were going to smell like that just going from your room to the elevator… At least it was that way my second year in college.
I’m only talking about this now because it was 29 years ago, and by now if Gene Roget wanted to set his grandchildren on his knee and tell them about the times he was a younger construction electrician, he can mention that he had a shady past at one point, but now he’s just a kind old man. So, I’m going to go on with a story that up to now I have only shared with Arthur Hammond.
One day I went into the main switchgear to find some parts in the parts cage behind the electric shop. When I went back there, an operator Dan Landes was in the switchgear with another operator. They were looking for something by the ladders, so I walked over to see if I could help. Maybe they needed the key to unlock the ladders, I thought.
I don’t remember what they wanted, but I do remember that when I walked up to them I immediately smelled the aroma of marijuana being smoked somewhere. We had just recently lost an electrician in our shop when the snitch tricked him into trading some marijuana for a supposedly stolen knife set (see the post “Power Plant Snitch“).
I asked Dan if he smelled that smell. It was pretty strong. I told him that was marijuana, and I could tell him what type it was. You see, even though I had never smoked the stuff, the drug dealer for the entire dorm used to share the bathroom with our room, and three nights each week he held parties in his room. He had high quality stuff and low. There was a definite difference in the smell. So, I would ask my roommate Mark Sarmento about it and he explained it to me.
So, I told Dan that someone had just been smoking marijuana somewhere right there. It would have definitely been a dumb thing to do. Eventually Dan and the other operator (I can’t remember who) left the switchgear to continue on their with their switching. So I returned to the rack where the ladders were.
As I stood there alone I realized that the aroma was pouring down from on top of the battery rooms. So I yelled out, “Hey! You better stop that right now! Don’t you know that the smoke is coming right down here in the switchgear?!?! Put that out and come on down from there!” I stood there for a few minutes and then I walked back into the electric shop.
I laid my parts on the workbench where I was repairing something, and then I walked back over to where I look through the window in the door into the main switchgear. I finally saw someone climb down one of the ladders from the top of the battery rooms. So, I confronted him.
Yep. It was Gene Roget. I had been working with him for a year and a half at this time and I considered him a very good friend. I told him, “Gene! How could you do that? You know if they catch you they will fire you right away. No questions asked!” He said he was sorry, he didn’t think about the smell coming down into the switchgear and he would make sure it never happened again. I told him that he was lucky that I had found him and not Dan Landes. Dan’s nickname was Deputy Dan. He was a deputy in Perry, Oklahoma.
Well. as it turned out a few weeks later, Gene Roget was let go. I hadn’t told a soul about our encounter, but I wondered if he thought I had. Later I found out that he was let go so suddenly because he had confronted Leroy Godfrey about how Craig Jones had been fired because he had done something wrong. He didn’t know all the details about the snitch, but he did know that they said he was part of a (non-existent) Drug and Theft Ring.
No one tells Leroy Godfrey how to do his job, and in this case, Leroy had nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact, Leroy’s best buddy Jim Stevenson had been unjustly fingered by the snitch just because he was Leroy’s friend. So, Leroy had Gene Roget fired. I barely had time to say goodbye to Gene as he was led out the door to the parking lot and escorted out the gate by the highway patrolman who doubled as a security guard.
One time a year later, when I was carpooling with Art Hammond once again, I talked to Arthur about that day in the switchgear. I knew he was best friends with Gene Roget. So I told him about that instance. He told me that Gene had told him the whole story on the way home that day. Gene had just about had a heart attack when I had yelled up there for him to come down. He had swore to Arthur that he was never going to be that stupid again.
I made it clear to Arthur that I hadn’t told a soul about that day. And up until now, I still hadn’t. That was when Art explained to me the real reason that Gene had been fired. That made total sense. I knew how Leroy Godfrey was. He was an “old school” Power Plant Supervisor.
This is where the short story of the Hatchet Man comes up. He was another contract electrician. I think he was hired to help Jim Stevenson and Bill Ennis with the freeze protection. They were preparing for the coming winter and they needed a little extra help. I call this guy the “Hatchet Man” not because he was a hatchet man for the “Tong”, but because the only tool he used was a hatchet.
A Detective holding a Tong War Hatchet
He didn’t have a tool bucket. He just used this one tool. A Hatchet. As it turned out, he was missing two fingers on one hand and three fingers on the other hand. Hmmm… what came first? I wondered… the hatchet or the lost fingers? It seemed comical that a person missing half of all his fingers used only a hatchet as his only tool as an electrician. — how would he screw in a screw? Electricians had to work with screws all the time. Maybe he had a pocket knife for that.
I figured he probably lost his fingers working in the oil fields, since a lot of people lost fingers doing that. This guy definitely didn’t look much like a rodeo rider, which was the other group of people that would lose fingers.
One day, while sitting in the electrical lab during break time or lunch the subject of an upcoming job opening in the shop came up. The Hatchet Man made the mistake of saying that since he was handicapped, they had to give him the job. All he had to do was apply. They couldn’t turn him down. His missing fingers was his ticket.
Well. It didn’t take long before word of this conversation made its way up to the one ear that Leroy Godfrey used to hear. The other one was out of commission. As I mentioned before. No one told Leroy what to do. He was supreme leader of the electric shop domain. By the end of the day, the Hatchet Man was given the Ax.
Ted Riddle was hired instead. Now you know the rest of the story.
Power Plant Women and the EEOC Shuffle — Repost
Originally posted November 30, 2013:
While I worked as a janitor at the coal-fired power plant in North Central Oklahoma the subject came up one Monday morning about the normal career path that janitors could take. We had already been told that the only place a janitor could advance to was the labor crew. We had been told that there was a company policy that came down from Oklahoma City that only allowed janitors to move to the labor crew before they could move on to another job like an Operator or Mechanic.
I had been trying to decide if I wanted to go the route of being an Operator or a Mechanic during my time as a janitor. That is, until Charles Foster asked me if I would be interested in becoming an Electrician. I had begun my studies to learn about being an electrician when there was an opening in the Electric Shop. Charles Foster and Bill Bennett petitioned to hire me for the position, but the verdict came down from above that according to Company Policy, a janitor could only advance from janitor to the labor crew. I didn’t have any expectation at the time of becoming an electrician given that I had no experience, so I wasn’t disappointed when Mike Rose was hired from outside the company. He was hired to help out Jim Stevenson with Air Conditioning and Freeze Protection.
The next revelation about our position as janitor at the plant (and I’m sure that Ron Kilman, our next plant manager, who reads this blog can testify that it really was company policy…. after all…. that’s what our plant manager told us. — Just kidding…. I know that it really wasn’t), was that when it became our turn to move from being a janitor to moving to the labor crew, if we didn’t move to the labor crew during the next two openings on the labor crew, then we would be let go. I mean… we would lose our job.
This revelation came about when Curtis Love was next in line to go to the labor crew and he was turned down. Larry Riley, the foreman of the labor crew had observed Curtis while we were being loaned to the labor crew during outages and he didn’t want him on the crew for um…. various reasons. After Curtis had been turned down, he was later told that if he didn’t move onto the labor crew when there was another opening, then the company had to fire him. It was company policy (so we were told…. from Corporate Headquarters).
I had been around the plant long enough to know at that point that when we were told that it was company policy that came down to us from Corporate Headquarters, that, unless it was in our binders called General Policies and Practices, then it probably wasn’t really company policy. It was more likely our evil plant manager’s excuse for not taking the responsibility himself and just telling us that this was the way it was, because he just said so….
One of two General Policies and Procedures Binders
Anyway… This caused a dilemma from an unlikely source on our team of janitors. Doris Voss became worried that if she didn’t move onto the labor crew, that she would lose her job. She was quite content at the time to have just stayed a janitor, but from this policy that had just come down from Corporate Headquarters, (i.e. The front corner office of our plant), she either had to go to the labor crew, or lose her job.
So, what Doris decided to do was to apply for the job of receptionist that had just been vacated by Grant Harned (see the post “Power Plant Carpooling Adventures with Grant Harned“). Doris applied for the job and her application was accepted. She moved on to work at the receptionist desk. I on the other hand was next in line behind Curtis Love. So, when he was turned down for the labor crew, I took his place.
As a side note, I talked Larry Riley into letting Curtis Love advance to the labor crew when there was another opening. I told him that I would let him work with me, and that I would take care of him. With that caveat, Larry agreed. You can read a couple of adventured I had with Curtis after he arrived on the labor crew by reading these posts: “Power Plant Safety as Interpreted by Curtis Love” and “Angel of Death Passes by the Precipitator Door“. Later, however, when I had moved on to be an electrician, Curtis was let go after having a vehicle accident and not reporting it right away.
What does this have to do with the EEOC shuffle? Well… about the time I have moved on to the labor crew, a new company-wide policy had been put in place for the internal “Employee Job Announcement Program”. Our power plant had some “irregularities” surrounding where our new employees were coming from. It seems that an inordinate amount of new employees were coming from Pawnee, and more particularly from a certain church. It was obvious to some that a more “uniform” method needed to be in place to keep local HR staff from hiring just their buddies.
Along with this, came a mandated that all external job announcements had to be sent to various different unemployment offices in a certain radius in order to guarantee that everyone that was interested had the opportunity to be informed about any new positions at the plant well in time to apply for it. That was, if the Internal job announcement program didn’t find any viable candidates within the company that was willing to take the job.
EEOC, by the way, means, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Around the same time that our plant had hired a “snitch” to go around an entrap unsuspecting employees into illegal activities , the EEOC had given us notice that we were not hiring enough women and American Indians as well as African Americans at the plant. Not only were we hiring enough, but we needed to have them spread out into a number of different jobs in the plant.
At the time the operators were 100% male. No women. The maintenance shop had a couple of women. The rest of the women at the plant were either clerks, working for the warehouse, or in the HR department…. Which all incidentally reported up to Jack Ballard our HR Supervisor. Well. Except for Yvonne Taylor in the Chemistry lab, and maybe someone that was on the testing team and of course Summer Goebel who was a Plant Engineer.
It wasn’t just women that were affected. We had to have an African American in Upper Management. Bill Bennett had become an A Foreman a few years earlier, and there was some discussion about whether they could promote him up one more level. He refused the offer. Later they decided that an A Foreman at our plant was high enough to be considered “upper management”.
American Indians were also a group of employees that needed to fill a certain quota. The Power Plant was located in North Central Oklahoma with many Indian Reservations surrounding it. I think we were supposed to have more than 10% American Indians employed at the plant. So the front office asked everyone to check to see if they were Indian enough to be considered. I think if you were 1/16th American Indian, you counted in the quota.
Some people were a little disturbed to be asked to report their racial status in order to fill a quota. Jerry Mitchell told me that he was Indian, but that he never had told anyone and he didn’t want to become a number, so he wasn’t going to tell them. I think we met our quota even without Jerry Mitchell and some others that felt insulted.
At the time, we had over 350 employees at the plant. That meant that we needed 35 women. I think we were closer to 25 when the push to hire more women went into effect.
The problem area that needed the most work was with the operators. Their entire organization had no women and they were told that they needed them. The problem was both structural and operational (yeah…. Operations had an operational problem…. how about that?).
There were two problems with hiring women to be operators. The first one was structural. The operators main base was the Control Room. That’s where their locker room was. That’s where their kitchen was. More importantly that’s where they could all stand around and watch Gene Day perform feats of magic by doing nothing more than standing there being…. well… being Gene Day!
There was only a Power Plant men’s locker room. There were no facilities for women. The nearest women’s rest / locker room was across the main plant in the office area, or downstairs in the Maintenance shop. This presented a logistical problem, especially on days when Gene Day made his special Chili or tortilla soup (Ok, I’m just picking on Gene Day…. We all know Gene never could cook. We loved him anyway).
Either way, there were times when taking a trek across the plant to make it to the nearest restroom was not acceptable. This was solved by building an additional rest / locker room in the control room for women operators. That problem was solved.
The operational problem inherent in operations was that they worked shift work. That is, each week, they shifted the hours they worked. Operators had to be working around the clock. So, one week, they would work from 7:00 am to 3:30 pm. Next week they may work from 3pm to 11:30pm, or from 11pm to 7:30am. The plant didn’t have any female applicants for a job where you had to work around the clock.
The EEOC said that wasn’t good enough. We needed to find women to work in operations. This was where Doris Voss became a person of interest.
Doris was asked if she would like to become an operator. Of course, she said no. She really still wanted to be a janitor, but was content being a receptionist. I’m not sure what she was told or was given, but she eventually agreed and moved over to become an operator. Another clerk, Helen Robinson was later coaxed into becoming an operator. Mary Lou Teeman was also hired into the Operations department. I don’t remember if she was a clerk before that, or if she was a new hire. — I do remember that she was the sweetest lady in operations.
Gene Day is the one standing on the right with the Orange shirt (see what I mean about him being “instant Entertainment?). Mary Lou Teeman is standing next to him in the red shirt.
Here is a picture that includes Doris Voss:
Can you pick Doris Voss out of the lineup?
And here is Helen Robinson:
Helen Robinson is third from the left in the back row.
How is it that Charles Peavler showed up in two pictures? — Oh. Taken at different times. Note that Charles Peavler with the gray shirt in the front row is kneeling on one knee, but Larry Tapp with the blue shirt next to him is standing….. Hey. Larry Tapp may be short, but he’s one of the nicest guys in this picture. I have a story about those two guys on the right side of this picture. Merl Wright and Jack Maloy. I’ll probably include that as a side story in a later post.
With the addition of the three new female operators, the EEOC shuffle was satisfied. We had added a few new female employees from the outside world and everyone was happy. Julienne Alley was added to the Welding shop during this time. The entire maintenance crew would agree that their new “Shop” mother was the best of them all.
Comment from the Original Post:
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I don’t know what “policies” Martin Louthan agreed to with the two coal plant managers. I remember them talking about how hard it was keeping good workers in their Labor crews. We didn’t have Labor crews at the gas plants so we weren’t affected. When I moved to Sooner, I don’t remember that “policy” (terminated after 2 turn-downs to Labor crew) being in place. Was it?
No. It was just a policy created specifically to target one person. It was never enforced.
Power Plant Cajun and the Hatchet Man — Repost
Originally Posted August 30, 2013:
During the 18 years I worked as an electrician at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma, we often had contractors working from our shop. I have mentioned that from the moment that I first entered the electric shop the first day I was an electrician, one of the first two people I met was a contract electrician. (See the post: “New Home in the Power Plant Electric Shop“).
Gene Roget (pronounced, “Row Jay” with a soft J) was originally from Louisiana.
A Cajun I found on Google Images (this is actually the actor Shia Lebeouf) that slightly resembles Gene Roget
Gene had spent the first 10 to 12 years of his adult life as a construction electrician. Charles Foster told him to be my mentor. At first Gene was shocked to find out that instead of hiring him to be a Plant Electrician along with his best buddy, Arthur Hammond, they had hired a young kid who didn’t know squat about being a real Power Plant Electrician. Yeah…. that was me.
I felt sorry for Gene because he obviously was the better candidate. The only saving grace for my mind was the knowledge that I was hired through the internal job program and that if they hadn’t taken me into the electric shop, they were going to be stuck with Charles Peavler. Charles was… well… he was somewhat older, but, well….. he couldn’t get around the fact that no matter what he did, he was always still Charles Peavler.
The day I entered the electric shop, I was 23 years and about 3 weeks old. Charles Peavler was 43. However, Charles might remind you of someone more around the age of 65. Not because he looked quite that old. He looked more like, well… um….. I guess he did look like he was about 65. I couldn’t tell if it was just the way he walked or stood, or the way his lip curled around the wad of skoal between his front lower lip and gums.
Just a pinch between your cheek and gums…. Never tried it myself.
I know… I’m being a little hard on Charles. I just like to tease him. I could be worse. I could tell you that his first name was really Amos. But I wouldn’t stoop that low. That would be like saying that Andy Tubb’s first name is really Carl, only worse, so I won’t go there. Actually, Peavler looks more like an Amos than a Charles. (Oh. That paragraph was about Amos and Andy!).
Anyway, by hiring me instead of Charles Peavler off of the labor crew I figured that even though I was dumb as dirt as far as being an electrician, I was more apt to learn new things than Charles. So in the long run I was probably the better candidate. Gene Roget wouldn’t have been able to be hired even if they hadn’t chosen me.
There were two openings for electrician when I was hired. Arthur Hammond (Art) was able to be hired by the electric shop was because they convinced the higher-ups that they needed someone with a background in electronics and there weren’t any internal candidates that fit that bill. So Charles Foster, the foreman, made the case that they needed an experienced electrician with electronics background and they needed someone dumb as dirt, but able to learn something more than just how to lace up their steel-toed boot. — That was where I came in.
I figured that Gene Roget would hold a grudge against me for taking the job that he wanted. This is where the true quality of a person may peer through. When you are involved in making someone upset, even though it wasn’t your decision to make, the way a person reacts to you will tell you a lot about that person’s character.
When Charles Foster told Gene Roget to be my mentor and show me the ropes to being an electrician I suspected that I was being setup for failure. “Ok…” I thought, “I’ll watch what he does instead of what he tells me…” I’ll also watch my back to make sure I don’t end up being electrocuted or knocked off of a ledge or some other accident that would create a new opening in the electric shop.
As it turned out Gene Roget was a man of great quality. Not once in the year and a half that I worked with him did I ever have the feeling that Gene wasn’t doing his best to teach me the skills of being the best electrician I could be. It also turned out that Gene was not only eager to teach me, but he was a highly skilled electrician. So, I felt like I was being taught by one of the best.
Gene Roget (I always liked calling him Gene Roget instead of just Gene… I’m not sure why, but I suppose I can blame it on Gene Day. I never could just call him Gene. And Gene Day and Gene Roget rhymed), carpooled with Art Hammond (I always liked calling Art, Arthur, but I’ll call him Art in this post just to make it shorter… except that I just used all these words explaining it that now it’s longer).
Gene and Art were like best buddies. I carpooled with them a couple of times when I had to catch a ride because I had to stay late and my carpooling ride had to leave (that would have been Rich Litzer, Yvonne Taylor and Bill Rivers). During the drive home, I came to learn that Art and Gene had worked with each other on construction jobs for quite a while and their families were close in some ways.
I also learned that there was another activity that they did together that was not all together kosher (I don’t mean in a Jewish way). They asked me on the way into Stillwater one day if I wanted to take a “hit” on the small rolled cigarette they were taking turns taking tokes from. I had spent 4 years prior to this time in college in a dorm where smoking marijuana was more common than cigarettes and the idea didn’t phase me.
I declined, because I had no desire to go down that route. I told them that I wished that they didn’t do that while I was in the car because then my clothes would smell like I had been living in the dorm again, where your clothes were going to smell like that just going from your room to the elevator… At least it was that way my second year in college.
I’m only talking about this now because it was 29 years ago, and by now if Gene Roget wanted to set his grandchildren on his knee and tell them about the times he was a younger construction electrician, he can mention that he had a shady past at one point, but now he’s just a kind old man. So, I’m going to go on with a story that up to now I have only shared with Arthur Hammond.
One day I went into the main switchgear to find some parts in the parts cage behind the electric shop. When I went back there, an operator Dan Landes was in the switchgear with another operator. They were looking for something by the ladders, so I walked over to see if I could help. Maybe they needed the key to unlock the ladders, I thought.
I don’t remember what they wanted, but I do remember that when I walked up to them I immediately smelled the aroma of marijuana being smoked somewhere. We had just recently lost an electrician in our shop when the snitch tricked him into trading some marijuana for a supposedly stolen knife set (see the post “Power Plant Snitch“).
I asked Dan if he smelled that smell. It was pretty strong. I told him that was marijuana, and I could tell him what type it was. You see, even though I had never smoked the stuff, the drug dealer for the entire dorm used to share the bathroom with our room, and three nights each week he held parties in his room. He had high quality stuff and low. There was a definite difference in the smell. So, I would ask my roommate Mark Sarmento about it and he explained it to me.
So, I told Dan that someone had just been smoking marijuana somewhere right there. It would have definitely been a dumb thing to do. Eventually Dan and the other operator (I can’t remember who) left the switchgear to continue on their with their switching. So I returned to the rack where the ladders were.
As I stood there alone I realized that the aroma was pouring down from on top of the battery rooms. So I yelled out, “Hey! You better stop that right now! Don’t you know that the smoke is coming right down here in the switchgear?!?! Put that out and come on down from there!” I stood there for a few minutes and then I walked back into the electric shop.
I laid my parts on the workbench where I was repairing something, and then I walked back over to where I look through the window in the door into the main switchgear. I finally saw someone climb down one of the ladders from the top of the battery rooms. So, I confronted him.
Yep. It was Gene Roget. I had been working with him for a year and a half at this time and I considered him a very good friend. I told him, “Gene! How could you do that? You know if they catch you they will fire you right away. No questions asked!” He said he was sorry, he didn’t think about the smell coming down into the switchgear and he would make sure it never happened again. I told him that he was lucky that I had found him and not Dan Landes. Dan’s nickname was Deputy Dan. He was a deputy in Perry, Oklahoma.
Well. as it turned out a few weeks later, Gene Roget was let go. I hadn’t told a soul about our encounter, but I wondered if he thought I had. Later I found out that he was let go so suddenly because he had confronted Leroy Godfrey about how Craig Jones had been fired because he had done something wrong. He didn’t know all the details about the snitch, but he did know that they said he was part of a (non-existent) Drug and Theft Ring.
No one tells Leroy Godfrey how to do his job, and in this case, Leroy had nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact, Leroy’s best buddy Jim Stevenson had been unjustly fingered by the snitch just because he was Leroy’s friend. So, Leroy had Gene Roget fired. I barely had time to say goodbye to Gene as he was led out the door to the parking lot and escorted out the gate by the highway patrolman who doubled as a security guard.
One time a year later, when I was carpooling with Art Hammond once again, I talked to Arthur about that day in the switchgear. I knew he was best friends with Gene Roget. So I told him about that instance. He told me that Gene had told him the whole story on the way home that day. Gene had just about had a heart attack when I had yelled up there for him to come down. He had swore to Arthur that he was never going to be that stupid again.
I made it clear to Arthur that I hadn’t told a soul about that day. And up until now, I still hadn’t. That was when Art explained to me the real reason that Gene had been fired. That made total sense. I knew how Leroy Godfrey was. He was an “old school” Power Plant Supervisor.
This is where the short story of the Hatchet Man comes up. He was another contract electrician. I think he was hired to help Jim Stevenson and Bill Ennis with the freeze protection. They were preparing for the coming winter and they needed a little extra help. I call this guy the “Hatchet Man” not because he was a hatchet man for the “Tong”, but because the only tool he used was a hatchet.
A Detective holding a Tong War Hatchet
He didn’t have a tool bucket. He just used this one tool. A Hatchet. As it turned out, he was missing two fingers on one hand and three fingers on the other hand. Hmmm… what came first? I wondered… the hatchet or the lost fingers? It seemed comical that a person missing half of all his fingers used only a hatchet as his only tool as an electrician. — how would he screw in a screw? Electricians had to work with screws all the time. Maybe he had a pocket knife for that.
I figured he probably lost his fingers working in the oil fields, since a lot of people lost fingers doing that. This guy definitely didn’t look much like a rodeo rider, which was the other group of people that would lose fingers.
One day, while sitting in the electrical lab during break time or lunch the subject of an upcoming job opening in the shop came up. The Hatchet Man made the mistake of saying that since he was handicapped, they had to give him the job. All he had to do was apply. They couldn’t turn him down. His missing fingers was his ticket.
Well. It didn’t take long before word of this conversation made its way up to the one ear that Leroy Godfrey used to hear. The other one was out of commission. As I mentioned before. No one told Leroy what to do. He was supreme leader of the electric shop domain. By the end of the day, the Hatchet Man was given the Ax.
Ted Riddle was hired instead. Now you know the rest of the story.
Power Plant Women and the EEOC Shuffle
While I worked as a janitor at the coal-fired power plant in North Central Oklahoma the subject came up one Monday morning about the normal career path that janitors could take. We had already been told that the only place a janitor could advance to was the labor crew. We had been told that there was a company policy that came down from Oklahoma City that only allowed janitors to move to the labor crew before they could move on to another job like an Operator or Mechanic.
I had been trying to decide if I wanted to go the route of being an Operator or a Mechanic during my time as a janitor. That is, until Charles Foster asked me if I would be interested in becoming an Electrician. I had begun my studies to learn about being an electrician when there was an opening in the Electric Shop. Charles Foster and Bill Bennett petitioned to hire me for the position, but the verdict came down from above that according to Company Policy, a janitor could only advance from janitor to the labor crew. I didn’t have any expectation at the time of becoming an electrician given that I had no experience, so I wasn’t disappointed when Mike Rose was hired from outside the company. He was hired to help out Jim Stevenson with Air Conditioning and Freeze Protection.
The next revelation about our position as janitor at the plant (and I’m sure that Ron Kilman, our next plant manager, who reads this blog can testify that it really was company policy…. after all…. that’s what our plant manager told us. — Just kidding…. I know that it really wasn’t), was that when it became our turn to move from being a janitor to moving to the labor crew, if we didn’t move to the labor crew during the next two openings on the labor crew, then we would be let go. I mean… we would lose our job.
This revelation came about when Curtis Love was next in line to go to the labor crew and he was turned down. Larry Riley, the foreman of the labor crew had observed Curtis while we were being loaned to the labor crew during outages and he didn’t want him on the crew for um…. various reasons. After Curtis had been turned down, he was later told that if he didn’t move onto the labor crew when there was another opening, then the company had to fire him. It was company policy (so we were told…. from Corporate Headquarters).
I had been around the plant long enough to know at that point that when we were told that it was company policy that came down to us from Corporate Headquarters, that, unless it was in our binders called General Policies and Practices, then it probably wasn’t really company policy. It was more likely our evil plant manager’s excuse for not taking the responsibility himself and just telling us that this was the way it was, because he just said so….
One of two General Policies and Procedures Binders
Anyway… This caused a dilemma from an unlikely source on our team of janitors. Doris Voss became worried that if she didn’t move onto the labor crew, that she would lose her job. She was quite content at the time to have just stayed a janitor, but from this policy that had just come down from Corporate Headquarters, (i.e. The front corner office of our plant), she either had to go to the labor crew, or lose her job.
So, what Doris decided to do was to apply for the job of receptionist that had just been vacated by Grant Harned (see the post “Power Plant Carpooling Adventures with Grant Harned“). Doris applied for the job and her application was accepted. She moved on to work at the receptionist desk. I on the other hand was next in line behind Curtis Love. So, when he was turned down for the labor crew, I took his place.
As a side note, I talked Larry Riley into letting Curtis Love advance to the labor crew when there was another opening. I told him that I would let him work with me, and that I would take care of him. With that caveat, Larry agreed. You can read a couple of adventured I had with Curtis after he arrived on the labor crew by reading these posts: “Power Plant Safety as Interpreted by Curtis Love” and “Angel of Death Passes by the Precipitator Door“. Later, however, when I had moved on to be an electrician, Curtis was let go after having a vehicle accident and not reporting it right away.
What does this have to do with the EEOC shuffle? Well… about the time I have moved on to the labor crew, a new company-wide policy had been put in place for the internal “Employee Job Announcement Program”. Our power plant had some “irregularities” surrounding where our new employees were coming from. It seems that an inordinate amount of new employees were coming from Pawnee, and more particularly from a certain church. It was obvious to some that a more “uniform” method needed to be in place to keep local HR staff from hiring just their buddies.
Along with this, came a mandated that all external job announcements had to be sent to various different unemployment offices in a certain radius in order to guarantee that everyone that was interested had the opportunity to be informed about any new positions at the plant well in time to apply for it. That was, if the Internal job announcement program didn’t find any viable candidates within the company that was willing to take the job.
EEOC, by the way, means, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Around the same time that our plant had hired a “snitch” to go around an entrap unsuspecting employees into illegal activities , the EEOC had given us notice that we were not hiring enough women and American Indians as well as African Americans at the plant. Not only were we hiring enough, but we needed to have them spread out into a number of different jobs in the plant.
At the time the operators were 100% male. No women. The maintenance shop had a couple of women. The rest of the women at the plant were either clerks, working for the warehouse, or in the HR department…. Which all incidentally reported up to Jack Ballard our HR Supervisor. Well. Except for Yvonne Taylor in the Chemistry lab, and maybe someone that was on the testing team and of course Summer Goebel who was a Plant Engineer.
It wasn’t just women that were affected. We had to have an African American in Upper Management. Bill Bennett had become an A Foreman a few years earlier, and there was some discussion about whether they could promote him up one more level. He refused the offer. Later they decided that an A Foreman at our plant was high enough to be considered “upper management”.
American Indians were also a group of employees that needed to fill a certain quota. The Power Plant was located in North Central Oklahoma with many Indian Reservations surrounding it. I think we were supposed to have more than 10% American Indians employed at the plant. So the front office asked everyone to check to see if they were Indian enough to be considered. I think if you were 1/16th American Indian, you counted in the quota.
Some people were a little disturbed to be asked to report their racial status in order to fill a quota. Jerry Mitchell told me that he was Indian, but that he never had told anyone and he didn’t want to become a number, so he wasn’t going to tell them. I think we met our quota even without Jerry Mitchell and some others that felt insulted.
At the time, we had over 350 employees at the plant. That meant that we needed 35 women. I think we were closer to 25 when the push to hire more women went into effect.
The problem area that needed the most work was with the operators. Their entire organization had no women and they were told that they needed them. The problem was both structural and operational (yeah…. Operations had an operational problem…. how about that?).
There were two problems with hiring women to be operators. The first one was structural. The operators main base was the Control Room. That’s where their locker room was. That’s where their kitchen was. More importantly that’s where they could all stand around and watch Gene Day perform feats of magic by doing nothing more than standing there being…. well… being Gene Day!
There was only a Power Plant men’s locker room. There were no facilities for women. The nearest women’s rest / locker room was across the main plant in the office area, or downstairs in the Maintenance shop. This presented a logistical problem, especially on days when Gene Day made his special Chili or tortilla soup (Ok, I’m just picking on Gene Day…. We all know Gene never could cook. We loved him anyway).
Either way, there were times when taking a trek across the plant to make it to the nearest restroom was not acceptable. This was solved by building an additional rest / locker room in the control room for women operators. That problem was solved.
The operational problem inherent in operations was that they worked shift work. That is, each week, they shifted the hours they worked. Operators had to be working around the clock. So, one week, they would work from 7:00 am to 3:30 pm. Next week they may work from 3pm to 11:30pm, or from 11pm to 7:30am. The plant didn’t have any female applicants for a job where you had to work around the clock.
The EEOC said that wasn’t good enough. We needed to find women to work in operations. This was where Doris Voss became a person of interest.
Doris was asked if she would like to become an operator. Of course, she said no. She really still wanted to be a janitor, but was content being a receptionist. I’m not sure what she was told or was given, but she eventually agreed and moved over to become an operator. Another clerk, Helen Robinson was later coaxed into becoming an operator. Mary Lou Teeman was also hired into the Operations department. I don’t remember if she was a clerk before that, or if she was a new hire. — I do remember that she was the sweetest lady in operations.
Gene Day is the one standing on the right with the Orange shirt (see what I mean about him being “instant Entertainment?). Mary Lou Teeman is standing next to him in the red shirt.
Here is a picture that includes Doris Voss:
Can you pick Doris Voss out of the lineup?
And here is Helen Robinson:
Helen Robinson is third from the left in the back row.
How is it that Charles Peavler showed up in two pictures? — Oh. Taken at different times. Note that Charles Peavler with the gray shirt in the front row is kneeling on one knee, but Larry Tapp with the blue shirt next to him is standing….. Hey. Larry Tapp may be short, but he’s one of the nicest guys in this picture. I have a story about those two guys on the right side of this picture. Merl Wright and Jack Maloy. I’ll probably include that as a side story in a later post.
With the addition of the three new female operators, the EEOC shuffle was satisfied. We had added a few new female employees from the outside world and everyone was happy. Julienne Alley was added to the Welding shop during this time. The entire maintenance crew would agree that their new “Shop” mother was the best of them all.
Power Plant Cajun and the Hatchet Man
During the 18 years I worked as an electrician at the coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma, we often had contractors working from our shop. I have mentioned that from the moment that I first entered the electric shop the first day I was an electrician, one of the first two people I met was a contract electrician. (See the post: “New Home in the Power Plant Electric Shop“).
Gene Roget (pronounced, “Row Jay” with a soft J) was originally from Louisiana.
A Cajun I found on Google Images (this is actually the actor Shia Lebeouf) that slightly resembles Gene Roget
Gene had spent the first 10 to 12 years of his adult life as a construction electrician. Charles Foster told him to be my mentor. At first Gene was shocked to find out that instead of hiring him to be a Plant Electrician along with his best buddy, Arthur Hammond, they had hired a young kid who didn’t know squat about being a real Power Plant Electrician. Yeah…. that was me.
I felt sorry for Gene because he obviously was the better candidate. The only saving grace for my mind was the knowledge that I was hired through the internal job program and that if they hadn’t taken me into the electric shop, they were going to be stuck with Charles Peavler. Charles was… well… he was somewhat older, but, well….. he couldn’t get around the fact that no matter what he did, he was always still Charles Peavler.
The day I entered the electric shop, I was 23 years and about 3 weeks old. Charles Peavler was 43. However, Charles might remind you of someone more around the age of 65. Not because he looked quite that old. He looked more like, well… um….. I guess he did look like he was about 65. I couldn’t tell if it was just the way he walked or stood, or the way his lip curled around the wad of skoal between his front lower lip and gums.
Just a pinch between your cheek and gums…. Never tried it myself.
I know… I’m being a little hard on Charles. I just like to tease him. I could be worse. I could tell you that his first name was really Amos. But I wouldn’t stoop that low. That would be like saying that Andy Tubb’s first name is really Carl, only worse, so I won’t go there. Actually, Peavler looks more like an Amos than a Charles. (Oh. That paragraph was about Amos and Andy!).
Anyway, by hiring me instead of Charles Peavler off of the labor crew I figured that even though I was dumb as dirt as far as being an electrician, I was more apt to learn new things than Charles. So in the long run I was probably the better candidate. Gene Roget wouldn’t have been able to be hired even if they hadn’t chosen me.
There were two openings for electrician when I was hired. Arthur Hammond (Art) was able to be hired by the electric shop was because they convinced the higher-ups that they needed someone with a background in electronics and there weren’t any internal candidates that fit that bill. So Charles Foster, the foreman, made the case that they needed an experienced electrician with electronics background and they needed someone dumb as dirt, but able to learn something more than just how to lace up their steel-toed boot. — That was where I came in.
I figured that Gene Roget would hold a grudge against me for taking the job that he wanted. This is where the true quality of a person may peer through. When you are involved in making someone upset, even though it wasn’t your decision to make, the way a person reacts to you will tell you a lot about that person’s character.
When Charles Foster told Gene Roget to be my mentor and show me the ropes to being an electrician I suspected that I was being setup for failure. “Ok…” I thought, “I’ll watch what he does instead of what he tells me…” I’ll also watch my back to make sure I don’t end up being electrocuted or knocked off of a ledge or some other accident that would create a new opening in the electric shop.
As it turned out Gene Roget was a man of great quality. Not once in the year and a half that I worked with him did I ever have the feeling that Gene wasn’t doing his best to teach me the skills of being the best electrician I could be. It also turned out that Gene was not only eager to teach me, but he was a highly skilled electrician. So, I felt like I was being taught by one of the best.
Gene Roget (I always liked calling him Gene Roget instead of just Gene… I’m not sure why, but I suppose I can blame it on Gene Day. I never could just call him Gene. And Gene Day and Gene Roget rhymed), carpooled with Art Hammond (I always liked calling Art, Arthur, but I’ll call him Art in this post just to make it shorter… except that I just used all these words explaining it that now it’s longer).
Gene and Art were like best buddies. I carpooled with them a couple of times when I had to catch a ride because I had to stay late and my carpooling ride had to leave (that would have been Rich Litzer, Yvonne Taylor and Bill Rivers). During the drive home, I came to learn that Art and Gene had worked with each other on construction jobs for quite a while and their families were close in some ways.
I also learned that there was another activity that they did together that was not all together kosher (I don’t mean in a Jewish way). They asked me on the way into Stillwater one day if I wanted to take a “hit” on the small rolled cigarette they were taking turns taking tokes from. I had spent 4 years prior to this time in college in a dorm where smoking marijuana was more common than cigarettes and the idea didn’t phase me.
I declined, because I had no desire to go down that route. I told them that I wished that they didn’t do that while I was in the car because then my clothes would smell like I had been living in the dorm again, where your clothes were going to smell like that just going from your room to the elevator… At least it was that way my second year in college.
I’m only talking about this now because it was 29 years ago, and by now if Gene Roget wanted to set his grandchildren on his knee and tell them about the times he was a younger construction electrician, he can mention that he had a shady past at one point, but now he’s just a kind old man. So, I’m going to go on with a story that up to now I have only shared with Arthur Hammond.
One day I went into the main switchgear to find some parts in the parts cage behind the electric shop. When I went back there, an operator Dan Landes was in the switchgear with another operator. They were looking for something by the ladders, so I walked over to see if I could help. Maybe they needed the key to unlock the ladders, I thought.
I don’t remember what they wanted, but I do remember that when I walked up to them I immediately smelled the aroma of marijuana being smoked somewhere. We had just recently lost an electrician in our shop when the snitch tricked him into trading some marijuana for a supposedly stolen knife set (see the post “Power Plant Snitch“).
I asked Dan if he smelled that smell. It was pretty strong. I told him that was marijuana, and I could tell him what type it was. You see, even though I had never smoked the stuff, the drug dealer for the entire dorm used to share the bathroom with our room, and three nights each week he held parties in his room. He had high quality stuff and low. There was a definite difference in the smell. So, I would ask my roommate Mark Sarmento about it and he explained it to me.
So, I told Dan that someone had just been smoking marijuana somewhere right there. It would have definitely been a dumb thing to do. Eventually Dan and the other operator (I can’t remember who) left the switchgear to continue on their with their switching. So I returned to the rack where the ladders were.
As I stood there alone I realized that the aroma was pouring down from on top of the battery rooms. So I yelled out, “Hey! You better stop that right now! Don’t you know that the smoke is coming right down here in the switchgear?!?! Put that out and come on down from there!” I stood there for a few minutes and then I walked back into the electric shop.
I laid my parts on the workbench where I was repairing something, and then I walked back over to where I look through the window in the door into the main switchgear. I finally saw someone climb down one of the ladders from the top of the battery rooms. So, I confronted him.
Yep. It was Gene Roget. I had been working with him for a year and a half at this time and I considered him a very good friend. I told him, “Gene! How could you do that? You know if they catch you they will fire you right away. No questions asked!” He said he was sorry, he didn’t think about the smell coming down into the switchgear and he would make sure it never happened again. I told him that he was lucky that I had found him and not Dan Landes. Dan’s nickname was Deputy Dan. He was a deputy in Perry, Oklahoma.
Well. as it turned out a few weeks later, Gene Roget was let go. I hadn’t told a soul about our encounter, but I wondered if he thought I had. Later I found out that he was let go so suddenly because he had confronted Leroy Godfrey about how Craig Jones had been fired because he had done something wrong. He didn’t know all the details about the snitch, but he did know that they said he was part of a (non-existent) Drug and Theft Ring.
No one tells Leroy Godfrey how to do his job, and in this case, Leroy had nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact, Leroy’s best buddy Jim Stevenson had been unjustly fingered by the snitch just because he was Leroy’s friend. So, Leroy had Gene Roget fired. I barely had time to say goodbye to Gene as he was led out the door to the parking lot and escorted out the gate by the highway patrolman who doubled as a security guard.
One time a year later, when I was carpooling with Art Hammond once again, I talked to Arthur about that day in the switchgear. I knew he was best friends with Gene Roget. So I told him about that instance. He told me that Gene had told him the whole story on the way home that day. Gene had just about had a heart attack when I had yelled up there for him to come down. He had swore to Arthur that he was never going to be that stupid again.
I made it clear to Arthur that I hadn’t told a soul about that day. And up until now, I still hadn’t. That was when Art explained to me the real reason that Gene had been fired. That made total sense. I knew how Leroy Godfrey was. He was an “old school” Power Plant Supervisor.
This is where the short story of the Hatchet Man comes up. He was another contract electrician. I think he was hired to help Jim Stevenson and Bill Ennis with the freeze protection. They were preparing for the coming winter and they needed a little extra help. I call this guy the “Hatchet Man” not because he was a hatchet man for the “Tong”, but because the only tool he used was a hatchet.
A Detective holding a Tong War Hatchet
He didn’t have a tool bucket. He just used this one tool. A Hatchet. As it turned out, he was missing two fingers on one hand and three fingers on the other hand. Hmmm… what came first? I wondered… the hatchet or the lost fingers? It seemed comical that a person missing half of all his fingers used only a hatchet as his only tool as an electrician. — how would he screw in a screw? Electricians had to work with screws all the time. Maybe he had a pocket knife for that.
I figured he probably lost his fingers working in the oil fields, since a lot of people lost fingers doing that. This guy definitely didn’t look much like a rodeo rider, which was the other group of people that would lose fingers.
One day, while sitting in the electrical lab during break time or lunch the subject of an upcoming job opening in the shop came up. The Hatchet Man made the mistake of saying that since he was handicapped, they had to give him the job. All he had to do was apply. They couldn’t turn him down. His missing fingers was his ticket.
Well. It didn’t take long before word of this conversation made its way up to the one ear that Leroy Godfrey used to hear. The other one was out of commission. As I mentioned before. No one told Leroy what to do. He was supreme leader of the electric shop domain. By the end of the day, the Hatchet Man was given the Ax.
Ted Riddle was hired instead. Now you know the rest of the story.
Power Plant Men 
I don’t know what “policies” Martin Louthan agreed to with the two coal plant managers. I remember them talking about how hard it was keeping good workers in their Labor crews. We didn’t have Labor crews at the gas plants so we weren’t affected. When I moved to Sooner, I don’t remember that “policy” (terminated after 2 turn-downs to Labor crew) being in place. Was it?
No. It was just a policy created specifically to target one person. It was never enforced.