What Does a Hard Hat Sticker Tell You about a Power Plant Man?
Originally Posted September 28, 2012:
I have learned one thing from Power Plant Men, and the Power Plant Safety Process is that, when you become comfortable doing a dangerous job, that is when an accident is most likely to happen. Isn’t that when a young driver seems to become careless?
They drive carefully for the first couple of months when they have just learned how to drive, and then when they feel confident about their driving ability, they begin to cut safety corners, and the next thing you know an accident occurs. That was one lesson we learned in our Defensive Driving Course.
In the spring of 1986, while I was an electrician at the Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma, I went with another electrician, Ted Riddle, to work on a Major Overhaul for three months in Oklahoma City at a Power Plant just North of Mustang. While we worked there, we would eat lunch with a man well into his 50’s that was our acting foreman for the overhaul. His name was Willard Stark.
During lunch we would listen to Paul Harvey on the radio. When Paul would mention a date 20 years in the past, Willard would be able to tell us what he was doing on that day, many years earlier.
I was fascinated by his ability. I will probably talk about Willard more in a later post, but today, I mention him only because of his ability to remember what happened on dates long gone by.
Now that I am about the same age as Willard was then, I am beginning to see that certain dates hold a special significance. The more memorable the experience, either for the good or the bad, and I seem to remember what day it happened. That leads me to one of the memorable dates in my past life at the Power Plant.
The particular date was July 15, 1980. I was working at the power plant during my second summer when I was normally working out of the garage. But Stanley Elmore had told me to go to the Maintenance Shop and get with Ray Butler, because he was going to have me do some cleaning up around the shop.
When I arrived, Ray told me to go over and wait with this new hand that they had just hired the day before, and he would be over there in a few minutes when he finished what he was doing. I walked over to the young man (I say young, but he was 6 years older than I was. He was 25) named Kerry Lewallen.
I introduced myself to him, and we waited together for a few minutes until Ray came over and told us to get a forklift and move some crates that were nearby over to the Warehouse, and then meet him there to help build some shelves in the warehouse to store the larger material on pallets.
The reason I remember this day so well was because of what happened right after Ray walked away. Kerry looked at me and asked me if I wanted to drive the forklift. Well. I really did want to drive the forklift, because I thought it would be fun, but from my experience at the plant, I noticed that people like Larry Riley had a Hard Hat Sticker that said: “Certified Operator Industrial Powered Trucks”.
So I explained to Kerry that I wasn’t Certified to drive a forklift. Kerry had only worked there one day before that day, and even though he probably had a lot of experience driving a forklift (as most Power Plant Men did), he didn’t feel comfortable driving the forklift either.
So, we waited for Ray to come back and Ray asked if we were going to go get the forklift. Then Kerry said something that I have never forgotten, and that I have used repeatedly throughout my career at the Power Plant, as well as my current career. He explained to Ray, “I would like to, but I haven’t been circumcised to drive the forklift.”
I watched Ray as he listened, and I noticed a very faint smile as he realized what Kerry meant to say. Ray agreed, and said he would take care of it. I believe that was the day he took us to the warehouse and circumcised both of us to drive the forklift right then and there.
I couldn’t wait to get home and show my parents. As you can see, I was so proud of my new hardhat sticker, I didn’t put it on my hardhat, I just brought it home and framed it and hung it on the wall. That was July 15, 1980. Being Circumcised to drive the forklift was kind of like my “Come to Jesus” moment in my Power Plant journey.
Kerry Lewallen, as it turned out was a great welder, as were all the True Power Plant Welders. He stayed on at the plant to become one of the True Power Plant Men that worked side-by-side with the other great welders in the boilers welding boiler tubes, or in the bowl mill welding inside them in the tremendous heat that mere mortals like myself found totally unbearable.
As with Jerry Mitchell, my wife came home one day and told me about this very nice person that she worked with as a Nurse in the Stillwater Medical Center. She described her as being a very honest and pleasant person to work with. She also told me that her husband worked at the Power Plant. Her name was Vicki Lewallen, Kerry’s wife.
Through the years, there were many opportunities where we received Hardhat stickers. Most of them were safety related. Each year we would receive a safety sticker, if we hadn’t had an accident. It would indicate how many years in a row it has been that we have been accident free. I received my last safety sticker the last day I worked at the Power Plant during my going away party.
I didn’t place this on a hardhat either. Well. I was walking out the door leaving my hardhat behind (so to speak). I don’t remember how long the Plant Manager Eldon Waugh had worked for the electric company, (about 40 years) but just a couple of months before he retired, while driving back to the plant from Oklahoma City, he took an exit off of I-35 behind a semi-truck.
The truck stopped on the ramp realizing that he had taken the wrong exit and proceeded to back up. He ran into the company truck that Eldon was driving causing an accident. This was enough to ruin Eldon’s perfect safety record just months before he retired. The thought was that Eldon should not have pulled up so close to the truck, or have kept the truck in line with the driver’s side mirror so that he knew he was there.
Throughout the years that I worked at the plant we would have different Safety programs or initiatives that would help to drive our safe behavior. Since back injuries were a major concerned, we would watch films about lifting properly. Since we worked with heavy equipment we would watch videos about people being injured while working with dozers, and other big tractors.
One video that we watched was called: “Shake Hands With Danger”. You can watch it here on YouTube:
This is a classic Safety film shown at the Power Plant periodically. I always thought we should have been provided with popcorn when we watched these. Harry in this film reminds me of a cross between Ken Conrad and Darrell Low. The “Old timer” reminds me of Mike Lafoe. I could go on.

Darrel Low is the tall man in the far back left with the white shirt between two shifty looking characters
When our new plant manager Ron Kilman arrived after Eldon Waugh, he had us watch a film where there was a near fatal race car accident. When they looked more closely at the accident, it turned out that there were many things that had to happen wrong that led up to the accident.
When an accident occurs on the race track, a Yellow Flag is raised, and everyone gets in line and takes it slow around the track until the accident is cleared. In the movie, the thought was that it would have been helpful if the yellow flag had come out each time someone was about to do something wrong “Before” the accident happened.
The foremen at the plant were given yellow flags to put on their desks as a reminder to see yellow flags whenever you see something that has the potential to be dangerous. We were even given yellow flag stickers to put on our hardhat. — By now, you probably know what I did with mine. Yep. I have it right here. I keep it by my bedside as a reminder:
At one point during the years at the plant, we created a Safety Task Force. When Bill Gibson was the head of the Task Force, he used his Safety imagination to come up with some customized Hardhat Safety Stickers that people at our plant would appreciate. One of the more patriotic Hardhat Safety Stickers looked like this:
I didn’t receive one of the stickers that he came up with that I really liked because I was away at the time on an overhaul when they were being handed out. Many years later, when I mentioned it to the guys at the plant in an e-mail, I was given a stack of them by Randy Dailey the next time I visited the plant.
Randy Dailey the Plant Machinist that was known as “Mister Safety” himself. Thanks to Randy Dailey I am able to show you a hardhat safety sticker that was created based on a particular phrase that was going around the plant at the time:
That really says it all doesn’t it. The real truth about Power Plant Men. They really do care about each other. The close bond between the Power Plant Men is what kept us safe. In the “Shake Hands with Danger” at one point, it mentions that each person should “Watch out for the other guy.”
That is how our plant remained as safe as it did throughout the years that I was there. When I received the Hardhat Safety Sticker for working 20 years without an accident, it wasn’t because I was always being safe in every job I was doing, because that wasn’t always true. It was because there were enough Power Plant Men and Women looking out for me that decreased my odds of being injured by decreasing the number of times that I would end up doing something stupid and getting myself hurt or killed.
So, not only do I thank all the True Power Plant Men and Women that I worked with throughout those years, but so does my wife and my two children. One little mistake at the wrong time. One extra time of Shaking Hands with Danger, and I might not have come home one day from work. It was more than luck that kept me safe. I thank each and everyone of the Power Plant People that I worked with throughout my career for watching out for the other guy.
NOTE: After posting this last year, Ron Kilman, the plant manager at our plant from 1988 to 1994 sent me a picture of his Hard hat. I thought I would post it here so you can see it:
Ron said he stacked his Yearly safety stickers on top of each other as you can see. 24 years of working safely.
Working Power Plant Wonders with Willard Stark
Originally posted on July 6, 2013:
Ted Riddle and I were working for an “Acting” foreman named Willard Stark during an overhaul at the plant outside Mustang, Oklahoma the spring of ’86. Willard seemed much older than he was. I would have guessed he was in his late 60’s or early 70’s, but it turned out he was only in his mid to lower 50’s. I found out why he had aged as the overhaul unfolded.
I heard some slight grumblings from a few in the shop when Bill Bennett told me that I was going to the plant near Mustang, Oklahoma that spring. I suppose it was because since I had become an electrician in the Fall of 1983, this was already going to be my third overhaul away from our plant, and all of them ended up being major overhauls.
The reason others were grumbling about this was because when you were able to go on an extended overhaul at another plant, it meant that you were going to earn not only a lot of extra overtime, but you also received travel time, mileage and a per diem (a daily amount of money for expenses). I believe at the time the Per Diem rate was $32.00 each day. This was supposed to pay for your hotel room and your meals while you were away from your family. We lived in trailers to cut down on costs.
Others believed that I had received more than my share of the piece of this pie. I had been sent on every available overhaul since just before I had reached my first year as an electrician. So, by this time, most people would have saved up quite a sum of money. I, however, was making around $7.50 my first year, and by the time 1986 had rolled around, I was still making just under $10.00 an hour. So, overtime amounted to $14.50 an hour.
When you compared this to the first class electricians that were making around $19.00 an hour at the time, they would have been making $28.50 an hour overtime. This was about twice what I was making. So, I was a cheap date.
On December 21, 1985 I had been married (the day following my last day at Horseshoe Lake overhaul — see the post: A Slap in the Face at a Gas-Fired Power Plant), and I had used every cent I had in the world to pay for our honeymoon. I was even relying on paychecks I was receiving while I was away to finish paying for it.
So, it helped to come back and find that we were on a major overhaul at our plant on Unit 1 doing the 5 year checkout. Then finding that I was going to a major overhaul at the plant in Mustang, Oklahoma where I could live with my wife in her apartment in Oklahoma City while she finished her last semester to obtain her nursing degree from Oklahoma University. I went on the overhaul with Ted Riddle.
Ted was hired into the electric shop the previous summer. He wasn’t on my crew so I hadn’t worked much with him. He was a farmer that had an electric background. He was a bigger man than I was and had a good sense of humor. He had a steady temper and didn’t let much bother him. He would laugh at things that might bother others.
I appreciated working with Ted, because his steady mood helped to teach me that blowing my top about little things did little to help the situation. So, for this overhaul, I decided that I would try to emulate Ted Riddle by keeping up with his easy-going-ness (I know…. the dictionary couldn’t find that one).
Bob Kennedy was on this overhaul as well. He had been my acting foreman during the overhaul at Horseshoe Lake. I had described our relationship in the post: “Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy“. I was glad to be working with Bob again. As I mentioned, Willard Stark was our acting foreman.
For those that don’t know…. an acting foreman is someone that normally isn’t a foreman, but is appointed to lead a crew for a particular job. These men usually are the best foremen to work for, because they haven’t attended any official “manager training”. This usually made them better foremen, as the manager training had a tendency to destroy one’s character and moral integrity. — I never could figure that one out. Some people came back unscathed, but others came back with PTMD (Post-Traumatic Manager Disorder).
The plant at Mustang was the smallest gas-fired power plant that had people permanently working there. It had some smaller units that they wouldn’t run when the newer larger units weren’t running because the water treatment plant (that creates the boiler water) used more power than the small units could generate. — That amazed me. So, while we were there, I don’t think any of the units were running so they didn’t have to run the water treatment plant.
Willard Stark had spent a good portion of his life working at the plant and had a lot of stories about the plant manager and assistant manager at our plant. He had been an electrician when Bill Moler had first come to the plant as a new green electrician like me. I enjoyed sitting during lunch in Mark Thomas’s electric lab as Willard told us stories.
Willard had an incredible memory. He could remember what he was doing on any specific day decades before. We would listen to Paul Harvey on the radio during lunch, and whenever Paul would say, “….noon news and comment.” Willard would always finish the sentence by saying “…mostly comment.” I had spent a good part of my childhood listening to Paul Harvey on the radio because when I was young, we always had a radio playing in the house and the car. So, Paul Harvey’s voice was always a comfort to me. I was saddened a few years ago when he passed away.
Working with Ted Riddle cracked me up. He would notice things that I was totally oblivious to (yeah. I see it. A preposition at the end of a sentence). For instance, one day while we were working, Ted asked me if I ever noticed how Bob Kennedy drinks water out of his jar. I told him I hadn’t noticed.
You see, Bob had this jar that looked like a pickle jar that he brought to work each day filled with water. During lunch, he would drink out of this jar. Ted said, “Watch Bob during lunch today. Tell me what you think.” So as I was sitting next to Bob during lunch listening to Paul Harvey, and Willard Stark telling us what he did on any particular date in the past that Paul Harvey might mention, I kept one eye on Bob.
As Bob lifted his jar to his mouth I watched as he began to drink. I immediately knew what Ted had wanted me to see. As Bob took a drink, he slowly tilted the jar up until the water reached his mouth. As the jar was being tilted, Bob’s upper lip would reach way into the jar as far as it could, quivering in anticipation of a cool drink of fresh water. The upper lip of a camel came to my mind.
With all my might, I struggled to keep a straight face as I turned my head slowly to look over at Ted who had a grin from ear-to-ear….. ok. I’ll show you the picture of Andy Griffith again that I included in my post from last week, just so you can see what I saw when I looked over at Ted:
I think I almost choked on my ham sandwich as I swallowed while trying to keep my composure.
Another day while Ted and I were cleaning ignitors on the shop work bench Ted asked me if I had noticed what Randy Oxley and Jimmy Armafio were working on. I told him I hadn’t noticed. Ted said that if he’s not mistaken Randy Oxley has been coming into the shop all morning with the same piece of conduit. He bends it, then cuts a little off the end and re-threads it.
So, the next time Randy came into the shop I noticed he had a piece of one and a half inch conduit in his hand. It was about 3 1/2 feet long and had a couple of bends in it. Randy hooked the conduit up in the large conduit bender and using his measuring tape carefully lined it up as Armafio stood back and watched. He bent the conduit a little, then put it in the bandsaw and cut off a few inches. Then he put it in the vice on the work bench and proceeded to thread the end of the conduit.
Then Jimmy and Randy left. Ted said that if he wasn’t mistaken, that’s the same piece of conduit Randy has been working on all morning. So, as we continued the boring job of cleaning the 30 or so ignitors piled on our workbench, I told Ted about the time I was at the plant at Horseshoe Lake and Randy had told a Mechanical A foreman Joe Balkenbush (I think his first name was Joe), who was Randy’s uncle on his mom’s side, that Randy was the best electrician at the plant at Mustang, only he was the only one that knew it.
I mentioned this meeting and the reason for it in the post: “Bobbin Along with Bob Kennedy” (See the link above). Sure enough, a little while later, Randy came back to the shop with the same piece of conduit and performed the same procedure of bending, cutting and threading and scadoodling.
A little while later the electrical B foremen came out into the shop (I can’t remember his name for the life of me… I can see his face – maybe something Campbell), and asked us if we knew how to run conduit. We assured him that we did. I had been thoroughly trained by Gene Roget and Ted, well, as it turned out, Ted was a crackerjack conduit hand.
The foremen took us up onto the boiler and asked us if we could run some conduit from one place to another. He sounded apologetic when he asked if that would be all right. We assured him it was no problem. We would get right on it.
On the way back to the shop, as we were coming down from the boiler, Ted tapped my shoulder and pointed down to the bottom of a light fixture. He said, “Hey! Isn’t that the piece of conduit that Randy has been working on all morning?” Sure enough. There is was. He finally bent it and cut it to fit! Well… The rest of this part of the story is that instead of running back and forth to the shop to bend and cut and thread conduit, Ted and I grabbed a conduit stand, and the appropriate tools and hauled them up on the boiler.
We carried about 40 foot of conduit up there and began bending, cutting and threading and mounting the conduit. We finished just before lunch. As I mentioned above, Ted was a heck of a conduit person. He knew exactly what he was doing. We carried all the equipment back to the shop.
After lunch Ted and I went back to cleaning ignitors. The foreman saw us out of the window of the office and came out and asked us why we weren’t working on the conduit. When we told him we were done, he had a look of disbelief. He left the shop (to go check out our work). Ted and I smiled at each other.
A little while later the foreman returned with the electric supervisor. The electric supervisor asked us if we wouldn’t mind working on some more jobs to run conduit. Ted told him that we were there to do whatever they needed. I nodded in agreement.
During the rest of the overhaul we worked to repair broken conduit, pull wire and install new conduit where needed. Mark Thomas, the electric specialist, that was about my age, asked if he could use us to pull and mount some new controls. He said he wouldn’t let the others in the shop touch it because he would just have to follow through and redo it when they were done. So, we did that also.
We did get in trouble one day when we went to install some conduit over a control room just off of the T-G floor. We noticed that all of the lights were out except a couple, so we found a couple of large boxes of light bulbs and replaced the burned out bulbs. The Electric Foreman came running up to us a little while later and said, “What are you trying to do? Run us out of business?”
With looks on our faces that conveyed that we didn’t understand what he meant, he explained that in small plants like this one, they don’t have a budget like the bigger plants. They can’t afford to keep the lights burning all over the plant all the time. So, we were only supposed to replace lights in the immediate area where we had to work. Now the foreman had to figure out where he was going to find the money to buy another box of light bulbs. — These were incandescent bulbs that don’t have a long life span.
I had mentioned in an earlier post called Resistance in a Coal-fire Power Plant that Bill Rivers had been given a bum deal when another person had accused him of cutting off the leads of electronic components so that no one could check them to see if they were really bad (which doesn’t make any sense given that you could still check them no matter how short the leads are). Well, I found that the same situation had existed in this plant.
There was this one guy that sat in the electric shop Lab (not the same electric shop lab where Willard and Mark Thomas hung out), working on Gray Phones all day. Ted had asked me if I had noticed how many gray phone boxes were missing gray phones (gray phones are the PA system in a plant. You could go to any one of them and page someone).
Ted would point to empty gray phone boxes as we walked through the plant. He told me that they have one electrician that doesn’t do anything else but sit in the electric lab working on gray phones. That is all he does. When we asked Willard about it, he told us this story.
Mark Thomas used to work on all the gray phones, and kept them all running in good order. When Mark worked on a gray phone, sometimes to make sure it is working, he would page himself. Just to make sure that part worked. I understood this. When I was working on gray phones with Bill Rivers, he would page me, or I would page him, just to test it.
If you were working by yourself, it would make sense that you would page yourself instead of bugging someone else several times a day while you went from one gray phone to the next. Anyway, people accused Mark Thomas of trying to make himself more important by making others think that he was being paged all the time by paging himself.
Now, anyone with any sense would know how lame of an idea that is. I mean, anyone would recognize Mark Thomas’s voice. The plant wasn’t that big. There weren’t that many people working there. Everyone knew everyone else. Mark was obviously just working on gray phones.
So, after the foreman accused him of trying to promote his self importance by paging himself several times a day, Mark said, “Fine! Let someone else work on the gray phones!” Mark was by far the most intelligent person at the plant. He obviously didn’t need to artificially promote his reputation by making a fool of himself.
So, they gave the job of gray phone maintenance to someone that didn’t understand electronics. They even bought an expensive gray phone test set to help him out. So each day he would sit in the lab smoking his pipe staring at an ever-growing pile of gray phones. At one point, Ted and I offered to fix them all for him. He said, “That’s ok. It keeps me in the air conditioning.
I know in later times, Mark Thomas went on to greater successes within the company. I believe that Willard stayed around until there was a downsizing and he was able to early retire. I mentioned at the beginning that Willard looked a lot older than he really was. Willard brought this to my attention. He showed me a picture of himself a few years earlier. It was of him standing by a car wearing a suit.
He reminded me of an actor from an old movie, though, I can’t remember the actor’s name at the moment. Willard said that in the past few years he aged rapidly. It happened when the previous foreman had retired. Willard had seniority in the shop and had been at the plant most of his life. He knew what he was doing, and had filled in as foreman many times. He really expected to become the foreman.
Nevertheless, they gave the job to someone from somewhere else who didn’t know the plant, or even much about being a foreman. This upset Willard so much that he said he just gave up. He said the stress from that experience aged him. Mark Thomas agreed.
Mark had his own encounter with this attitude when he decided to retreat to his lab off and away from the electric shop. Willard and Mark, the two electricians that really knew what they were doing at the plant had sequestered themselves in their own hideaway where they would sit each day listening to Paul Harvey at lunch and biding their time until the next phase of their life came around.
What Does a Hard Hat Sticker Tell You about a Power Plant Man?
Originally Posted September 28, 2012:
I have learned one thing from Power Plant Men, and the Power Plant Safety Process is that, when you become comfortable doing a dangerous job, that is when an accident is most likely to happen. Isn’t that when a young driver seems to become careless?
They drive carefully for the first couple of months when they have just learned how to drive, and then when they feel confident about their driving ability, they begin to cut safety corners, and the next thing you know an accident occurs. That was one lesson we learned in our Defensive Driving Course.
In the spring of 1986, while I was an electrician at the Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma, I went with another electrician, Ted Riddle, to work on a Major Overhaul for three months in Oklahoma City at a Power Plant just North of Mustang. While we worked there, we would eat lunch with a man well into his 50’s that was our acting foreman for the overhaul. His name was Willard Stark.
During lunch we would listen to Paul Harvey on the radio. When Paul would mention a date 20 years in the past, Willard would be able to tell us what he was doing on that day, many years earlier.
I was fascinated by his ability. I will probably talk about Willard more in a later post, but today, I mention him only because of his ability to remember what happened on dates long gone by.
Now that I am about the same age as Willard was then, I am beginning to see that certain dates hold a special significance. The more memorable the experience, either for the good or the bad, and I seem to remember what day it happened. That leads me to one of the memorable dates in my past life at the Power Plant.
The particular date was July 15, 1980. I was working at the power plant during my second summer when I was normally working out of the garage. But Stanley Elmore had told me to go to the Maintenance Shop and get with Ray Butler, because he was going to have me do some cleaning up around the shop.
When I arrived, Ray told me to go over and wait with this new hand that they had just hired the day before, and he would be over there in a few minutes when he finished what he was doing. I walked over to the young man (I say young, but he was 6 years older than I was. He was 25) named Kerry Lewallen.
I introduced myself to him, and we waited together for a few minutes until Ray came over and told us to get a forklift and move some crates that were nearby over to the Warehouse, and then meet him there to help build some shelves in the warehouse to store the larger material on pallets.
The reason I remember this day so well was because of what happened right after Ray walked away. Kerry looked at me and asked me if I wanted to drive the forklift. Well. I really did want to drive the forklift, because I thought it would be fun, but from my experience at the plant, I noticed that people like Larry Riley had a Hard Hat Sticker that said: “Certified Operator Industrial Powered Trucks”.
So I explained to Kerry that I wasn’t Certified to drive a forklift. Kerry had only worked there one day before that day, and even though he probably had a lot of experience driving a forklift (as most Power Plant Men did), he didn’t feel comfortable driving the forklift either.
So, we waited for Ray to come back and Ray asked if we were going to go get the forklift. Then Kerry said something that I have never forgotten, and that I have used repeatedly throughout my career at the Power Plant, as well as my current career. He explained to Ray, “I would like to, but I haven’t been circumcised to drive the forklift.”
I watched Ray as he listened, and I noticed a very faint smile as he realized what Kerry meant to say. Ray agreed, and said he would take care of it. I believe that was the day he took us to the warehouse and circumcised both of us to drive the forklift right then and there.
I couldn’t wait to get home and show my parents. As you can see, I was so proud of my new hardhat sticker, I didn’t put it on my hardhat, I just brought it home and framed it and hung it on the wall. That was July 15, 1980. Being Circumcised to drive the forklift was kind of like my “Come to Jesus” moment in my Power Plant journey.
Kerry Lewallen, as it turned out was a great welder, as were all the True Power Plant Welders. He stayed on at the plant to become one of the True Power Plant Men that worked side-by-side with the other great welders in the boilers welding boiler tubes, or in the bowl mill welding inside them in the tremendous heat that mere mortals like myself found totally unbearable.
As with Jerry Mitchell, my wife came home one day and told me about this very nice person that she worked with as a Nurse in the Stillwater Medical Center. She described her as being a very honest and pleasant person to work with. She also told me that her husband worked at the Power Plant. Her name was Vicki Lewallen, Kerry’s wife.
Through the years, there were many opportunities where we received Hardhat stickers. Most of them were safety related. Each year we would receive a safety sticker, if we hadn’t had an accident. It would indicate how many years in a row it has been that we have been accident free. I received my last safety sticker the last day I worked at the Power Plant during my going away party.
I didn’t place this on a hardhat either. Well. I was walking out the door leaving my hardhat behind (so to speak). I don’t remember how long the Plant Manager Eldon Waugh had worked for the electric company, (about 40 years) but just a couple of months before he retired, while driving back to the plant from Oklahoma City, he took an exit off of I-35 behind a semi-truck.
The truck stopped on the ramp realizing that he had taken the wrong exit and proceeded to back up. He ran into the company truck that Eldon was driving causing an accident. This was enough to ruin Eldon’s perfect safety record just months before he retired. The thought was that Eldon should not have pulled up so close to the truck, or have kept the truck in line with the driver’s side mirror so that he knew he was there.
Throughout the years that I worked at the plant we would have different Safety programs or initiatives that would help to drive our safe behavior. Since back injuries were a major concerned, we would watch films about lifting properly. Since we worked with heavy equipment we would watch videos about people being injured while working with dozers, and other big tractors.
One video that we watched was called: “Shake Hands With Danger”. You can watch it here on YouTube:
This is a classic Safety film shown at the Power Plant periodically. I always thought we should have been provided with popcorn when we watched these. Harry in this film reminds me of a cross between Ken Conrad and Darrell Low. The “Old timer” reminds me of Mike Lafoe. I could go on.

Darrel Low is the tall man in the far back left with the white shirt between two shifty looking characters
When our new plant manager Ron Kilman arrived after Eldon Waugh, he had us watch a film where there was a near fatal race car accident. When they looked more closely at the accident, it turned out that there were many things that had to happen wrong that led up to the accident.
When an accident occurs on the race track, a Yellow Flag is raised, and everyone gets in line and takes it slow around the track until the accident is cleared. In the movie, the thought was that it would have been helpful if the yellow flag had come out each time someone was about to do something wrong “Before” the accident happened.
The foremen at the plant were given yellow flags to put on their desks as a reminder to see yellow flags whenever you see something that has the potential to be dangerous. We were even given yellow flag stickers to put on our hardhat. — By now, you probably know what I did with mine. Yep. I have it right here. I keep it by my bedside as a reminder:
At one point during the years at the plant, we created a Safety Task Force. When Bill Gibson was the head of the Task Force, he used his Safety imagination to come up with some customized Hardhat Safety Stickers that people at our plant would appreciate. One of the more patriotic Hardhat Safety Stickers looked like this:
I didn’t receive one of the stickers that he came up with that I really liked because I was away at the time on an overhaul when they were being handed out. Many years later, when I mentioned it to the guys at the plant in an e-mail, I was given a stack of them by Randy Dailey the next time I visited the plant.
Randy Dailey the Plant Machinist that was known as “Mister Safety” himself. Thanks to Randy Dailey I am able to show you a hardhat safety sticker that was created based on a particular phrase that was going around the plant at the time:
That really says it all doesn’t it. The real truth about Power Plant Men. They really do care about each other. The close bond between the Power Plant Men is what kept us safe. In the “Shake Hands with Danger” at one point, it mentions that each person should “Watch out for the other guy.”
That is how our plant remained as safe as it did throughout the years that I was there. When I received the Hardhat Safety Sticker for working 20 years without an accident, it wasn’t because I was always being safe in every job I was doing, because that wasn’t always true. It was because there were enough Power Plant Men and Women looking out for me that decreased my odds of being injured by decreasing the number of times that I would end up doing something stupid and getting myself hurt or killed.
So, not only do I thank all the True Power Plant Men and Women that I worked with throughout those years, but so does my wife and my two children. One little mistake at the wrong time. One extra time of Shaking Hands with Danger, and I might not have come home one day from work. It was more than luck that kept me safe. I thank each and everyone of the Power Plant People that I worked with throughout my career for watching out for the other guy.
NOTE: After posting this last year, Ron Kilman, the plant manager at our plant from 1988 to 1994 sent me a picture of his Hard hat. I thought I would post it here so you can see it:
Ron said he stacked his Yearly safety stickers on top of each other as you can see. 24 years of working safely.
Working Power Plant Wonders with Willard Stark
Originally posted on July 6, 2013:
Ted Riddle and I were working for an “Acting” foreman named Willard Stark during an overhaul at the plant outside Mustang, Oklahoma the spring of ’86. Willard seemed much older than he was. I would have guessed he was in his late 60’s or early 70’s, but it turned out he was only in his mid to lower 50’s. I found out why he had aged as the overhaul unfolded.
I heard some slight grumblings from a few in the shop when Bill Bennett told me that I was going to the plant near Mustang, Oklahoma that spring. I suppose it was because since I had become an electrician in the Fall of 1983, this was already going to be my third overhaul away from our plant, and all of them ended up being major overhauls.
The reason others were grumbling about this was because when you were able to go on an extended overhaul at another plant, it meant that you were going to earn not only a lot of extra overtime, but you also received travel time, mileage and a per diem (a daily amount of money for expenses). I believe at the time the Per Diem rate was $32.00 each day. This was supposed to pay for your hotel room and your meals while you were away from your family. We lived in trailers to cut down on costs.
Others believed that I had received more than my share of the piece of this pie. I had been sent on every available overhaul since just before I had reached my first year as an electrician. So, by this time, most people would have saved up quite a sum of money. I, however, was making around $7.50 my first year, and by the time 1986 had rolled around, I was still making just under $10.00 an hour. So, overtime amounted to $14.50 an hour.
When you compared this to the first class electricians that were making around $19.00 an hour at the time, they would have been making $28.50 an hour overtime. This was about twice what I was making. So, I was a cheap date.
On December 21, 1985 I had been married (the day following my last day at Horseshoe Lake overhaul — see the post: A Slap in the Face at a Gas-Fired Power Plant), and I had used every cent I had in the world to pay for our honeymoon. I was even relying on paychecks I was receiving while I was away to finish paying for it.
So, it helped to come back and find that we were on a major overhaul at our plant on Unit 1 doing the 5 year checkout. Then finding that I was going to a major overhaul at the plant in Mustang, Oklahoma where I could live with my wife in her apartment in Oklahoma City while she finished her last semester to obtain her nursing degree from Oklahoma University. I went on the overhaul with Ted Riddle.
Ted was hired into the electric shop the previous summer. He wasn’t on my crew so I hadn’t worked much with him. He was a farmer that had an electric background. He was a bigger man than I was and had a good sense of humor. He had a steady temper and didn’t let much bother him. He would laugh at things that might bother others.
I appreciated working with Ted, because his steady mood helped to teach me that blowing my top about little things did little to help the situation. So, for this overhaul, I decided that I would try to emulate Ted Riddle by keeping up with his easy-going-ness (I know…. the dictionary couldn’t find that one).
Bob Kennedy was on this overhaul as well. He had been my acting foreman during the overhaul at Horseshoe Lake. I had described our relationship in the post: “Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy“. I was glad to be working with Bob again. As I mentioned, Willard Stark was our acting foreman.
For those that don’t know…. an acting foreman is someone that normally isn’t a foreman, but is appointed to lead a crew for a particular job. These men usually are the best foremen to work for, because they haven’t attended any official “manager training”. This usually made them better foremen, as the manager training had a tendency to destroy one’s character and moral integrity. — I never could figure that one out. Some people came back unscathed, but others came back with PTMD (Post-Traumatic Manager Disorder).
The plant at Mustang was the smallest gas-fired power plant that had people permanently working there. It had some smaller units that they wouldn’t run when the newer larger units weren’t running because the water treatment plant (that creates the boiler water) used more power than the small units could generate. — That amazed me. So, while we were there, I don’t think any of the units were running so they didn’t have to run the water treatment plant.
Willard Stark had spent a good portion of his life working at the plant and had a lot of stories about the plant manager and assistant manager at our plant. He had been an electrician when Bill Moler had first come to the plant as a new green electrician like me. I enjoyed sitting during lunch in Mark Thomas’s electric lab as Willard told us stories.
Willard had an incredible memory. He could remember what he was doing on any specific day decades before. We would listen to Paul Harvey on the radio during lunch, and whenever Paul would say, “….noon news and comment.” Willard would always finish the sentence by saying “…mostly comment.” I had spent a good part of my childhood listening to Paul Harvey on the radio because when I was young, we always had a radio playing in the house and the car. So, Paul Harvey’s voice was always a comfort to me. I was saddened a few years ago when he passed away.
Working with Ted Riddle cracked me up. He would notice things that I was totally oblivious to (yeah. I see it. A preposition at the end of a sentence). For instance, one day while we were working, Ted asked me if I ever noticed how Bob Kennedy drinks water out of his jar. I told him I hadn’t noticed.
You see, Bob had this jar that looked like a pickle jar that he brought to work each day filled with water. During lunch, he would drink out of this jar. Ted said, “Watch Bob during lunch today. Tell me what you think.” So as I was sitting next to Bob during lunch listening to Paul Harvey, and Willard Stark telling us what he did on any particular date in the past that Paul Harvey might mention, I kept one eye on Bob.
As Bob lifted his jar to his mouth I watched as he began to drink. I immediately knew what Ted had wanted me to see. As Bob took a drink, he slowly tilted the jar up until the water reached his mouth. As the jar was being tilted, Bob’s upper lip would reach way into the jar as far as it could, quivering in anticipation of a cool drink of fresh water. The upper lip of a camel came to my mind.
With all my might, I struggled to keep a straight face as I turned my head slowly to look over at Ted who had a grin from ear-to-ear….. ok. I’ll show you the picture of Andy Griffith again that I included in my post from last week, just so you can see what I saw when I looked over at Ted:
I think I almost choked on my ham sandwich as I swallowed while trying to keep my composure.
Another day while Ted and I were cleaning ignitors on the shop work bench Ted asked me if I had noticed what Randy Oxley and Jimmy Armafio were working on. I told him I hadn’t noticed. Ted said that if he’s not mistaken Randy Oxley has been coming into the shop all morning with the same piece of conduit. He bends it, then cuts a little off the end and re-threads it.
So, the next time Randy came into the shop I noticed he had a piece of one and a half inch conduit in his hand. It was about 3 1/2 feet long and had a couple of bends in it. Randy hooked the conduit up in the large conduit bender and using his measuring tape carefully lined it up as Armafio stood back and watched. He bent the conduit a little, then put it in the bandsaw and cut off a few inches. Then he put it in the vice on the work bench and proceeded to thread the end of the conduit.
Then Jimmy and Randy left. Ted said that if he wasn’t mistaken, that’s the same piece of conduit Randy has been working on all morning. So, as we continued the boring job of cleaning the 30 or so ignitors piled on our workbench, I told Ted about the time I was at the plant at Horseshoe Lake and Randy had told a Mechanical A foreman Joe Balkenbush (I think his first name was Joe), who was Randy’s uncle on his mom’s side, that Randy was the best electrician at the plant at Mustang, only he was the only one that knew it.
I mentioned this meeting and the reason for it in the post: “Bobbin Along with Bob Kennedy” (See the link above). Sure enough, a little while later, Randy came back to the shop with the same piece of conduit and performed the same procedure of bending, cutting and threading and scadoodling.
A little while later the electrical B foremen came out into the shop (I can’t remember his name for the life of me… I can see his face), and asked us if we knew how to run conduit. We assured him that we did. I had been thoroughly trained by Gene Roget and Ted, well, as it turned out, Ted was a crackerjack conduit hand.
The foremen took us up onto the boiler and asked us if we could run some conduit from one place to another. He sounded apologetic when he asked if that would be all right. We assured him it was no problem. We would get right on it.
On the way back to the shop, as we were coming down from the boiler, Ted tapped my shoulder and pointed down to the bottom of a light fixture. He said, “Hey! Isn’t that the piece of conduit that Randy has been working on all morning?” Sure enough. There is was. He finally bent it and cut it to fit! Well… The rest of this part of the story is that instead of running back and forth to the shop to bend and cut and thread conduit, Ted and I grabbed a conduit stand, and the appropriate tools and hauled them up on the boiler.
We carried about 40 foot of conduit up there and began bending, cutting and threading and mounting the conduit. We finished just before lunch. As I mentioned above, Ted was a heck of a conduit person. He knew exactly what he was doing. We carried all the equipment back to the shop.
After lunch Ted and I went back to cleaning ignitors. The foreman saw us out of the window of the office and came out and asked us why we weren’t working on the conduit. When we told him we were done, he had a look of disbelief. He left the shop (to go check out our work). Ted and I smiled at each other.
A little while later the foreman returned with the electric supervisor. The electric supervisor asked us if we wouldn’t mind working on some more jobs to run conduit. Ted told him that we were there to do whatever they needed. I nodded in agreement.
During the rest of the overhaul we worked to repair broken conduit, pull wire and install new conduit where needed. Mark Thomas, the electric specialist, that was about my age, asked if he could use us to pull and mount some new controls. He said he wouldn’t let the others in the shop touch it because he would just have to follow through and redo it when they were done. So, we did that also.
We did get in trouble one day when we went to install some conduit over a control room just off of the T-G floor. We noticed that all of the lights were out except a couple, so we found a couple of large boxes of light bulbs and replaced the burned out bulbs. The Electric Foreman came running up to us a little while later and said, “What are you trying to do? Run us out of business?”
With looks on our faces that conveyed that we didn’t understand what he meant, he explained that in small plants like this one, they don’t have a budget like the bigger plants. They can’t afford to keep the lights burning all over the plant all the time. So, we were only supposed to replace lights in the immediate area where we had to work. Now the foreman had to figure out where he was going to find the money to buy another box of light bulbs. — These were incandescent bulbs that don’t have a long life span.
I had mentioned in an earlier post called Resistance in a Coal-fire Power Plant that Bill Rivers had been given a bum deal when another person had accused him of cutting off the leads of electronic components so that no one could check them to see if they were really bad (which doesn’t make any sense given that you could still check them no matter how short the leads are). Well, I found that the same situation had existed in this plant.
There was this one guy that sat in the electric shop Lab (not the same electric shop lab where Willard and Mark Thomas hung out), working on Gray Phones all day. Ted had asked me if I had noticed how many gray phone boxes were missing gray phones (gray phones are the PA system in a plant. You could go to any one of them and page someone).
Ted would point to empty gray phone boxes as we walked through the plant. He told me that they have one electrician that doesn’t do anything else but sit in the electric lab working on gray phones. That is all he does. When we asked Willard about it, he told us this story.
Mark Thomas used to work on all the gray phones, and kept them all running in good order. When Mark worked on a gray phone, sometimes to make sure it is working, he would page himself. Just to make sure that part worked. I understood this. When I was working on gray phones with Bill Rivers, he would page me, or I would page him, just to test it.
If you were working by yourself, it would make sense that you would page yourself instead of bugging someone else several times a day while you went from one gray phone to the next. Anyway, people accused Mark Thomas of trying to make himself more important by making others think that he was being paged all the time by paging himself.
Now, anyone with any sense would know how lame of an idea that is. I mean, anyone would recognize Mark Thomas’s voice. The plant wasn’t that big. There weren’t that many people working there. Everyone knew everyone else. Mark was obviously just working on gray phones.
So, after the foreman accused him of trying to promote his self importance by paging himself several times a day, Mark said, “Fine! Let someone else work on the gray phones!” Mark was by far the most intelligent person at the plant. He obviously didn’t need to artificially promote his reputation by making a fool of himself.
So, they gave the job of gray phone maintenance to someone that didn’t understand electronics. They even bought an expensive gray phone test set to help him out. So each day he would sit in the lab smoking his pipe staring at an ever-growing pile of gray phones. At one point, Ted and I offered to fix them all for him. He said, “That’s ok. It keeps me in the air conditioning.
I know in later times, Mark Thomas went on to greater successes within the company. I believe that Willard stayed around until there was a downsizing and he was able to early retire. I mentioned at the beginning that Willard looked a lot older than he really was. Willard brought this to my attention. He showed me a picture of himself a few years earlier. It was of him standing by a car wearing a suit.
He reminded me of an actor from an old movie, though, I can’t remember the actor’s name at the moment. Willard said that in the past few years he aged rapidly. It happened when the previous foreman had retired. Willard had seniority in the shop and had been at the plant most of his life. He knew what he was doing, and had filled in as foreman many times. He really expected to become the foreman.
Nevertheless, they gave the job to someone from somewhere else who didn’t know the plant, or even much about being a foreman. This upset Willard so much that he said he just gave up. He said the stress from that experience aged him. Mark Thomas agreed.
Mark had his own encounter with this attitude when he decided to retreat to his lab off and away from the electric shop. Willard and Mark, the two electricians that really knew what they were doing at the plant had sequestered themselves in their own hideaway where they would sit each day listening to Paul Harvey at lunch and biding their time until the next phase of their life came around.
What Does a Hard Hat Sticker Tell You about a Power Plant Man?
Originally Posted September 28, 2012:
I have learned one thing from Power Plant Men, and the Power Plant Safety Process is that, when you become comfortable doing a dangerous job, that is when an accident is most likely to happen. Isn’t that when a young driver seems to become careless?
They drive carefully for the first couple of months when they have just learned how to drive, and then when they feel confident about their driving ability, they begin to cut safety corners, and the next thing you know an accident occurs. That was one lesson we learned in our Defensive Driving Course.
In the spring of 1986, while I was an electrician at the Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma, I went with another electrician, Ted Riddle, to work on a Major Overhaul for three months in Oklahoma City at a Power Plant just North of Mustang. While we worked there, we would eat lunch with a man well into his 50’s that was our acting foreman for the overhaul. His name was Willard Stark.
During lunch we would listen to Paul Harvey on the radio. When Paul would mention a date 20 years in the past, Willard would be able to tell us what he was doing on that day, many years earlier.
I was fascinated by his ability. I will probably talk about Willard more in a later post, but today, I mention him only because of his ability to remember what happened on dates long gone by.
Now that I am about the same age as Willard was then, I am beginning to see that certain dates hold a special significance. The more memorable the experience, either for the good or the bad, and I seem to remember what day it happened. That leads me to one of the memorable dates in my past life at the Power Plant.
The particular date was July 15, 1980. I was working at the power plant during my second summer when I was normally working out of the garage. But Stanley Elmore had told me to go to the Maintenance Shop and get with Ray Butler, because he was going to have me do some cleaning up around the shop.
When I arrived, Ray told me to go over and wait with this new hand that they had just hired the day before, and he would be over there in a few minutes when he finished what he was doing. I walked over to the young man (I say young, but he was 6 years older than I was. He was 25) named Kerry Lewallen.
I introduced myself to him, and we waited together for a few minutes until Ray came over and told us to get a forklift and move some crates that were nearby over to the Warehouse, and then meet him there to help build some shelves in the warehouse to store the larger material on pallets.
The reason I remember this day so well was because of what happened right after Ray walked away. Kerry looked at me and asked me if I wanted to drive the forklift. Well. I really did want to drive the forklift, because I thought it would be fun, but from my experience at the plant, I noticed that people like Larry Riley had a Hard Hat Sticker that said: “Certified Operator Industrial Powered Trucks”.
So I explained to Kerry that I wasn’t Certified to drive a forklift. Kerry had only worked there one day before that day, and even though he probably had a lot of experience driving a forklift (as most Power Plant Men did), he didn’t feel comfortable driving the forklift either.
So, we waited for Ray to come back and Ray asked if we were going to go get the forklift. Then Kerry said something that I have never forgotten, and that I have used repeatedly throughout my career at the Power Plant, as well as my current career. He explained to Ray, “I would like to, but I haven’t been circumcised to drive the forklift.”
I watched Ray as he listened, and I noticed a very faint smile as he realized what Kerry meant to say. Ray agreed, and said he would take care of it. I believe that was the day he took us to the warehouse and circumcised both of us to drive the forklift right then and there.
I couldn’t wait to get home and show my parents. As you can see, I was so proud of my new hardhat sticker, I didn’t put it on my hardhat, I just brought it home and framed it and hung it on the wall. That was July 15, 1980. Being Circumcised to drive the forklift was kind of like my “Come to Jesus” moment in my Power Plant journey.
Kerry Lewallen, as it turned out was a great welder, as were all the True Power Plant Welders. He stayed on at the plant to become one of the True Power Plant Men that worked side-by-side with the other great welders in the boilers welding boiler tubes, or in the bowl mill welding inside them in the tremendous heat that mere mortals like myself found totally unbearable.
As with Jerry Mitchell, my wife came home one day and told me about this very nice person that she worked with as a Nurse in the Stillwater Medical Center. She described her as being a very honest and pleasant person to work with. She also told me that her husband worked at the Power Plant. Her name was Vicki Lewallen, Kerry’s wife.
Through the years, there were many opportunities where we received Hardhat stickers. Most of them were safety related. Each year we would receive a safety sticker, if we hadn’t had an accident. It would indicate how many years in a row it has been that we have been accident free. I received my last safety sticker the last day I worked at the Power Plant during my going away party.
I didn’t place this on a hardhat either. Well. I was walking out the door leaving my hardhat behind (so to speak). I don’t remember how long the Plant Manager Eldon Waugh had worked for the electric company, (about 40 years) but just a couple of months before he retired, while driving back to the plant from Oklahoma City, he took an exit off of I-35 behind a semi-truck.
The truck stopped on the ramp realizing that he had taken the wrong exit and proceeded to back up. He ran into the company truck that Eldon was driving causing an accident. This was enough to ruin Eldon’s perfect safety record just months before he retired. The thought was that Eldon should not have pulled up so close to the truck, or have kept the truck in line with the driver’s side mirror so that he knew he was there.
Throughout the years that I worked at the plant we would have different Safety programs or initiatives that would help to drive our safe behavior. Since back injuries were a major concerned, we would watch films about lifting properly. Since we worked with heavy equipment we would watch videos about people being injured while working with dozers, and other big tractors.
One video that we watched was called: “Shake Hands With Danger”. You can watch it here on YouTube:
This is a classic Safety film shown at the Power Plant periodically. I always thought we should have been provided with popcorn when we watched these. Harry in this film reminds me of a cross between Ken Conrad and Darrell Low. The “Old timer” reminds me of Mike Lafoe. I could go on.

Darrel Low is the tall man in the far back left with the white shirt between two shifty looking characters
When our new plant manager Ron Kilman arrived after Eldon Waugh, he had us watch a film where there was a near fatal race car accident. When they looked more closely at the accident, it turned out that there were many things that had to happen wrong that led up to the accident.
When an accident occurs on the race track, a Yellow Flag is raised, and everyone gets in line and takes it slow around the track until the accident is cleared. In the movie, the thought was that it would have been helpful if the yellow flag had come out each time someone was about to do something wrong “Before” the accident happened.
The foremen at the plant were given yellow flags to put on their desks as a reminder to see yellow flags whenever you see something that has the potential to be dangerous. We were even given yellow flag stickers to put on our hardhat. — By now, you probably know what I did with mine. Yep. I have it right here. I keep it by my bedside as a reminder:
At one point during the years at the plant, we created a Safety Task Force. When Bill Gibson was the head of the Task Force, he used his Safety imagination to come up with some customized Hardhat Safety Stickers that people at our plant would appreciate. One of the more patriotic Hardhat Safety Stickers looked like this:
I didn’t receive one of the stickers that he came up with that I really liked because I was away at the time on an overhaul when they were being handed out. Many years later, when I mentioned it to the guys at the plant in an e-mail, I was given a stack of them by Randy Dailey the next time I visited the plant.
Randy Dailey the Plant Machinist that was known as “Mister Safety” himself. Thanks to Randy Dailey I am able to show you a hardhat safety sticker that was created based on a particular phrase that was going around the plant at the time:
That really says it all doesn’t it. The real truth about Power Plant Men. They really do care about each other. The close bond between the Power Plant Men is what kept us safe. In the “Shake Hands with Danger” at one point, it mentions that each person should “Watch out for the other guy.”
That is how our plant remained as safe as it did throughout the years that I was there. When I received the Hardhat Safety Sticker for working 20 years without an accident, it wasn’t because I was always being safe in every job I was doing, because that wasn’t always true. It was because there were enough Power Plant Men and Women looking out for me that decreased my odds of being injured by decreasing the number of times that I would end up doing something stupid and getting myself hurt or killed.
So, not only do I thank all the True Power Plant Men and Women that I worked with throughout those years, but so does my wife and my two children. One little mistake at the wrong time. One extra time of Shaking Hands with Danger, and I might not have come home one day from work. It was more than luck that kept me safe. I thank each and everyone of the Power Plant People that I worked with throughout my career for watching out for the other guy.
NOTE: After posting this last year, Ron Kilman, the plant manager at our plant from 1988 to 1994 sent me a picture of his Hard hat. I thought I would post it here so you can see it:
Ron said he stacked his Yearly safety stickers on top of each other as you can see. 24 years of working safely.
Working Power Plant Wonders with Willard Stark
Originally posted on July 6, 2013:
We were working for an “Acting” foreman named Willard Stark during an overhaul at the plant outside Mustang, Oklahoma the spring of ’86. Willard seemed much older than he was. I would have guessed he was in his late 60’s or early 70’s, but it turned out he was only in his mid to lower 50’s. I found out why he had aged as the overhaul unfolded.
I heard some slight grumblings from a few in the shop when Bill Bennett told me that I was going to the plant near Mustang, Oklahoma that spring. I suppose it was because since I had become an electrician in the Fall of 1983, this was already going to be my third overhaul away from our plant, and all of them ended up being major overhauls.
The reason others were grumbling about this was because when you were able to go on a an extended overhaul at another plant, it meant that you were going to earn not only a lot of extra overtime, but you also received travel time, mileage and a per diem (a daily amount of money for expenses). I believe at the time the Per Diem rate was $32.00 each day. This was supposed to pay for your hotel room and your meals while you were away from your family. We lived in trailers to cut down on costs.
Others believed that I had received more than my share of the piece of this pie. I had been sent on every available overhaul since just before I had reached my first year as an electrician. So, by this time, most people would have saved up quite a sum of money. I, however, was making around $7.50 my first year, and by the time 1986 had rolled around, I was still making just under $10.00 an hour. So, overtime amounted to $14.50 an hour.
When you compared this to the first class electricians that were making around $19.00 an hour at the time, they would have been making $28.50 an hour overtime. This was about twice what I was making. So, I was a cheap date.
On December 21, 1985 I had been married (the day following my last day at Horseshoe Lake overhaul — see the post: A Slap in the Face at a Gas-Fired Power Plant), and I had used every cent I had in the world to pay for our honeymoon. I was even relying on paychecks I was receiving while I was away to finish paying for it.
So, it helped to come back and find that we were on a major overhaul at our plant on Unit 1 doing the 5 year checkout. Then finding that I was going to a major overhaul at the plant in Mustang, Oklahoma where I could live with my wife in her apartment in Oklahoma City while she finished her last semester to obtain her nursing degree from Oklahoma University. I went on the overhaul with Ted Riddle.
Ted was hired into the electric shop the previous summer. He wasn’t on my crew so I hadn’t worked much with him. He was a farmer that had an electric background. He was a bigger man than I was and had a good sense of humor. He had a steady temper and didn’t let much bother him. He would laugh at things that might bother others.
I appreciated working with Ted, because his steady mood helped to teach me that blowing my top about little things did little to help the situation. So, for this overhaul, I decided that I would try to emulate Ted Riddle by keeping up with his easy-going-ness (I know…. the dictionary couldn’t find that one).
Bob Kennedy was on this overhaul as well. He had been my acting foreman during the overhaul at Horseshoe Lake. I had described our relationship in the post: “Bobbin’ Along with Bob Kennedy“. I was glad to be working with Bob again. As I mentioned, Willard Stark was our acting foreman.
For those that don’t know…. an acting foreman is someone that normally isn’t a foreman, but is appointed to lead a crew for a particular job. These men usually are the best foremen to work for, because they haven’t attended any official “manager training”. This usually made them better foremen, as the manager training had a tendency to destroy one’s character and moral integrity. — I never could figure that one out. Some people came back unscathed, but others came back with PTMD (Post-Traumatic Manager Disorder).
The plant at Mustang was the smallest gas-fired power plant that had people permanently working there. It had some smaller units that they wouldn’t run when the newer larger units weren’t running because the water treatment plant (that creates the boiler water) used more power than the small units could generate. — That amazed me. So, while we were there, I don’t think any of the units were running so they didn’t have to run the water treatment plant.
Willard Stark had spent a good portion of his life working at the plant and had a lot of stories about our plant manager and assistant manager. He had been an electrician when Bill Moler had first come to the plant as a new green electrician like me. I enjoyed sitting during lunch in Mark Thomas’s electric lab as Willard told us stories.
Willard had an incredible memory. He could remember what he was doing on any specific day decades before. We would listen to Paul Harvey on the radio during lunch, and whenever Paul would say, “….noon news and comment.” Willard would always finish the sentence by saying “…mostly comment.” I had spent a good part of my childhood listening to Paul Harvey on the radio because when I was young, we always had a radio playing in the house and the car. So, Paul Harvey’s voice was always a comfort to me. I was saddened a few years ago when he passed away.
Working with Ted Riddle cracked me up. He would notice things that I was totally oblivious to. For instance, one day while we were working, Ted asked me if I ever noticed how Bob Kennedy drinks water out of his jar. I told him I hadn’t noticed.
You see, Bob had this jar that looked like a pickle jar that he brought to work each day filled with water. During lunch, he would drink out of this jar. Ted said, “Watch Bob during lunch today. Tell me what you think.” So as I was sitting next to Bob during lunch listening to Paul Harvey, and Willard Stark telling us what he did on any particular date in the past that Paul Harvey might mention, I kept one eye on Bob.
As Bob lifted his jar to his mouth I watched as he began to drink. I immediately knew what Ted had wanted me to see. As Bob took a drink, he slowly tilted the jar up until the water reached his mouth. As the jar was being tilted, Bob’s upper lip would reach way into the jar as far as it could, quivering in anticipation of a cool drink of fresh water. The upper lip of a camel came to my mind.
With all my might, I struggled to keep a straight face as I turned my head slowly to look over at Ted who had a grin from ear-to-ear….. ok. I’ll show you the picture of Andy Griffith again that I included in my post from last week, just so you can see what I saw when I looked over at Ted:
I think I almost choked on my ham sandwich as I swallowed while trying to keep my composure.
Another day while Ted and I were cleaning ignitors on the shop work bench Ted asked me if I had noticed what Randy Oxley and Jimmy Armafio were working on. I told him I hadn’t noticed. Ted said that if he’s not mistaken Randy Oxley has been coming into the shop all morning with the same piece of conduit. He bends it, then cuts a little off the end and re-threads it.
So, the next time Randy came into the shop I noticed he had a piece of one and a half inch conduit in his hand. It was about 3 1/2 feet long and had a couple of bends in it. Randy hooked the conduit up in the large conduit bender and using his measuring tape carefully lined it up as Armafio stood back and watched. He bent the conduit a little, then put it in the bandsaw and cut off a few inches. Then he put it in the vice on the work bench and proceeded to thread the end of the conduit.
Then Jimmy and Randy left. Ted said that if he wasn’t mistaken, that’s the same piece of conduit Randy has been working on all morning. So, as we continued the boring job of cleaning the 30 or so ignitors piled on our workbench, I told Ted about the time I was at the plant at Horseshoe Lake and Randy had told a Mechanical A foreman Joe Balkenbush (I think his first name was Joe), who was Randy’s uncle on his mom’s side, that Randy was the best electrician at the plant at Mustang, only he was the only one that knew it.
I mentioned this meeting and the reason for it in the post: “Bobbin Along with Bob Kennedy” (See the link above). Sure enough, a little while later, Randy came back to the shop with the same piece of conduit and performed the same procedure of bending, cutting and threading and scadoodling.
A little while later the electrical B foremen came out into the shop (I can’t remember his name for the life of me… I can see his face), and asked us if we knew how to run conduit. We assured him that we did. I had been thoroughly trained by Gene Roget and Ted, well, as it turned out, Ted was a crackerjack conduit hand.
The foremen took us up onto the boiler and asked us if we could run some conduit from one place to another. He sounded apologetic when he asked if that would be all right. We assured him it was no problem. We would get right on it.
On the way back to the shop, as we were coming down from the boiler, Ted tapped my shoulder and pointed down to the bottom of a light fixture. He said, “Hey! Isn’t that the piece of conduit that Randy has been working on all morning?” Sure enough. There is was. He finally bent it and cut it to fit! Well… The rest of this part of the story is that instead of running back and forth to the shop to bend and cut and thread conduit, Ted and I grabbed a conduit stand, and the appropriate tools and hauled them up on the boiler.
We carried about 40 foot of conduit up there and began bending, cutting and threading and mounting the conduit. We finished just before lunch. As I mentioned above, Ted was a heck of a conduit person. He knew exactly what he was doing. We carried all the equipment back to the shop.
After lunch Ted and I went back to cleaning ignitors. The foreman saw us out of the window of the office and came out and asked us why we weren’t working on the conduit. When we told him we were done, he had a look of disbelief. He left the shop (to go check out our work). Ted and I smiled at each other.
A little while later the foreman returned with the electric supervisor. The electric supervisor asked us if we wouldn’t mind working on some more jobs to run conduit. Ted told him that we were there to do whatever they needed. I nodded in agreement.
During the rest of the overhaul we worked to repair broken conduit, pull wire and install new conduit where needed. Mark Thomas, the electric specialist, that was about my age, asked if he could use us to pull and mount some new controls. He said he wouldn’t let the others in the shop touch it because he would just have to follow through and redo it when they were done. So, we did that also.
We did get in trouble one day when we went to install some conduit over a control room just off of the T-G floor. We noticed that all of the lights were out except a couple, so we found a couple of large boxes of light bulbs and replaced the burned out bulbs. The Electric Foreman came running up to us a little while later and said, “What are you trying to do? Run us out of business?”
With looks on our faces that conveyed that we didn’t understand what he meant, he explained that in small plants like this one, they don’t have a budget like the bigger plants. They can’t afford to keep the lights burning all over the plant all the time. So, we were only supposed to replace lights in the immediate area where we had to work. Now the foreman had to figure out where he was going to find the money to buy another box of light bulbs. — These were incandescent bulbs that don’t have a long life span.
I had mentioned in an earlier post called Resistance in a Coal-fire Power Plant that Bill Rivers had been given a bum deal when another person had accused him of cutting off the leads of electronic components so that no one could check them to see if they were really bad (which doesn’t make any sense given that you could still check them no matter how short the leads are). Well, I found that the same situation had existed in this plant.
There was this one guy that sat in the electric shop Lab (not the same electric shop lab where Willard and Mark Thomas hung out), working on Gray Phones all day. Ted had asked me if I had noticed how many gray phone boxes were missing gray phones (gray phones are the PA system in a plant. You could go to any one of them and page someone).
Ted would point to empty gray phone boxes as we walked through the plant. He told me that they have one electrician that doesn’t do anything else but sit in the electric lab working on gray phones. That is all he does. When we asked Willard about it, he told us this story.
Mark Thomas used to work on all the gray phones, and kept them all running in good order. When Mark worked on a gray phone, sometimes to make sure it is working, he would page himself. Just to make sure that part worked. I understood this. When I was working on gray phones with Bill Rivers, he would page me, or I would page him, just to test it.
If you were working by yourself, it would make sense that you would page yourself instead of bugging someone else several times a day while you went from one gray phone to the next. Anyway, people accused Mark Thomas of trying to make himself more important by making others think that he was being paged all the time by paging himself.
Now, anyone with any sense would know how lame of an idea that is. I mean, anyone would recognize Mark Thomas’s voice. The plant wasn’t that big. There weren’t that many people working there. Everyone knew everyone else. Mark was obviously just working on gray phones.
So, after the foreman accused him of trying to promote his self importance by paging himself several times a day, Mark said, “Fine! Let someone else work on the gray phones!” Mark was by far the most intelligent person at the plant. He obviously didn’t need to artificially promote his reputation by making a fool of himself.
So, they gave the job of gray phone maintenance to someone that didn’t understand electronics. They even bought an expensive gray phone test set to help him out. So each day he would sit in the lab smoking his pipe staring at an ever-growing pile of gray phones. At one point, Ted and I offered to fix them all for him. He said, “That’s ok. It keeps me in the air conditioning.
I know in later times, Mark Thomas went on to greater successes within the company. I believe that Willard stayed around until there was a downsizing and he was able to early retire. I mentioned at the beginning that Willard looked a lot older than he really was. Willard brought this to my attention. He showed me a picture of himself a few years earlier. It was of him standing by a car wearing a suit.
He reminded me of an actor from an old movie, though, I can’t remember the actor’s name at the moment. Willard said that in the past few years he aged rapidly. It happened when the previous foreman had retired. Willard had seniority in the shop and had been at the plant most of his life. He knew what he was doing, and had filled in as foreman many times. He really expected to become the foreman.
Nevertheless, they gave the job to someone from somewhere else who didn’t know the plant, or even much about being a foreman. This upset Willard so much that he said he just gave up. He said the stress from that experience aged him. Mark Thomas agreed.
Mark had his own encounter with this attitude when he decided to retreat to his lab off and away from the electric shop. Willard and Mark, the two electricians that really knew what they were doing at the plant had sequestered themselves in their own hideaway where they would sit each day listening to Paul Harvey at lunch and biding their time until the next phase of their life came around.
What Does a Hard Hat Sticker Tell You about a Power Plant Man? — Repost
Originally Posted September 28, 2012:
Yesterday at 8:12pm (CDT) the 10,000th person visited the Power Plant Man site. With only 39 posts, that is an average of 256 views per post. That may seem a lot since I have only 67 followers (at the time of this re-post, I now have 29,850 views with 178 followers). The truth is that most people come to this site by accident. They are usually searching for something that I have mentioned, and once they read one, they often read two or three more before going on their way. I will not stand on my laurels because if I have learned one thing from Power Plant Men, and the Power Plant Safety Process is that, when you become comfortable doing a dangerous job, that is when an accident is most likely to happen.
Isn’t that when a young driver seems to become careless? They drive carefully for the first couple of months when they have just learned how to drive, and then when they feel confident about their driving ability, they begin to cut safety corners, and the next thing you know an accident occurs. That was one lesson we learned in our Defensive Driving Course.
In the spring of 1986, while I was an electrician at the Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma, I went with another electrician, Ted Riddle, to work on a Major Overhaul for three months in Oklahoma City at a Power Plant just North of Mustang. While we worked there, we would eat lunch with a man well into his 50’s that was our acting foreman for the overhaul. His name was Willard Stark. During lunch we would listen to Paul Harvey on the radio. When Paul would mention a date back 20 years in the past, Willard would be able to tell us what he was doing on that day, many years earlier. I was fascinated by his ability. I will probably talk about Willard more in a later post, but today, I mention him only because of his ability to remember what happened on dates long gone by.
Now, when that I am almost the same age as Willard was then, I am beginning to see that certain dates hold a special significance. The more memorable the experience, either for the good or the bad, and I seem to remember what day it happened. That leads me to one of the memorable dates in my past life at the Power Plant. The particular date was July 15, 1980. I was working at the power plant during my second summer when I was normally working out of the garage. But Stanley Elmore had told me to go to the Maintenance Shop and get with Ray Butler, because he was going to have me do some cleaning up around the shop.
When I arrived, Ray told me to go over and wait with this new hand that they had just hired the day before, and he would be over there in a few minutes when he finished what he was doing. I walked over to the young man (I say young, but he was 6 years older than I was. He was 25) named Kerry Lewallen. I introduced myself to him, and we waited together for a few minutes until Ray came over and told us to get a forklift and move some crates that were nearby over to the Warehouse, and then meet him there to help build some shelves in the warehouse to store the larger material on pallets.
The reason I remember this day so well was because of what happened right after Ray walked away. Kerry looked at me and asked me if I wanted to drive the forklift. Well. I really did want to drive the forklift, because I thought it would be fun, but from my experience at the plant, I noticed that people like Larry Riley had a Hard Hat Sticker that said: “Certified Operator Industrial Powered Trucks”. So, I explained to Kerry that I wasn’t Certified to drive a forklift. Kerry had only worked there one day before that day, and even though he probably had a lot of experience driving a forklift (as most Power Plant Men did), he didn’t feel comfortable driving the forklift either.
So, we waited for Ray to come back and Ray asked if we were going to go get the forklift. Then Kerry said something that I have never forgotten, and that I have used repeatedly throughout my career at the Power Plant, as well as my current career. He explained to Ray, “I would like to, but I haven’t been circumcised to drive the forklift.” I watched Ray as he listened, and I noticed a very faint smile as he realized what Kerry meant to say. Ray agreed, and said he would take care of it. I believe that was the day he took us to the warehouse and circumcised both of us to drive the forklift right then and there.
I couldn’t wait to get home and show my parents. As you can see, I was so proud of my new hardhat sticker, I didn’t put it on my hardhat, I just brought it home and framed it and hung it on the wall. That was July 15, 1980. It was kind of like my “Come to Jesus” moment in my Power Plant journey.
Kerry Lewallen, as it turned out was a great welder, as were all the True Power Plant Welders. He stayed on at the plant to become one of the True Power Plant Men that worked side-by-side with the other great welders in the boilers welding boiler tubes, or in the bowl mill welding inside them in the tremendous heat that mere mortals like myself found totally unbearable.
As with Jerry Mitchell, my wife came home one day and told me about this very nice person that she worked with as a Nurse in the Stillwater Medical Center. She described her as being a very honest and pleasant person to work with. She also told me that she was married to someone that worked at the Power Plant. Her name was Vicki Lewallen, Kerry’s wife.
Through the years, there were many opportunities where we received Hardhat stickers. Most of them were safety related. Each year we would receive a safety sticker, if we hadn’t had an accident. It would indicate how many years in a row it has been that we have been accident free. I received my last safety sticker the last day I worked at the Power Plant during my going away party.
I didn’t place this on a hardhat either. Well. I was walking out the door leaving my hardhat behind (so to speak). I don’t remember how long the Plant Manager Eldon Waugh had worked for the electric company, (about 40 years) but just a couple of months before he retired, while driving back to the plant from Oklahoma City, he took an exit off of I-35 behind a semi-truck. The truck stopped on the ramp realizing that he had taken the wrong exit and proceeded to back up. He ran into the company truck that Eldon was driving causing an accident. This was enough to ruin Eldon’s perfect safety record just months before he retired. The thought was that Eldon should not have pulled up so close to the truck, or have kept the truck in line with the driver’s side mirror so that he knew he was there.
Throughout the years that I worked at the plant we would have different Safety programs or initiatives that would help to drive our safe behavior. Since back injuries were a major concerned, we would watch films about lifting properly. Since we worked with heavy equipment we would watch videos about people being injured while working with dozers, and other big tractors. One video that we watched was called: “Shake Hands With Danger”. You can watch it here on YouTube:
This is a classic Safety film shown at the Power Plant periodically. I always thought we should have been provided with popcorn when we watched these. Harry in this film reminds me of a cross between Ken Conrad and Darrell Low. The “Old timer” reminds me of Mike Lafoe. I could go on.
When our new plant manager Ron Kilman arrived after Eldon Waugh, he had us watch a film where there was a fatal race car accident. When they looked more closely at the accident, it turned out that there were many things that had to happen wrong that led up to the accident. When an accident occurs on the race track, a Yellow Flag is raised, and everyone gets in line and takes it slow around the track until the accident is cleared. In the movie, the thought was that it would have been helpful if the yellow flag had come out each time someone was about to do something wrong “Before” the accident happened.
The foremen at the plant were given yellow flags to put on their desks as a reminder to see yellow flags whenever you see something that has the potential to be dangerous. We were even given yellow flag stickers to put on our hardhat. — By now, you probably know what I did with mine. Yep. I have it right here. I keep it by my bedside as a reminder:
At one point during the years at the plant, we created a Safety Task Force. When Bill Gibson was the head of the Task Force, he used his Safety imagination to come up with some customized Hardhat Safety Stickers that people at our plant would appreciate. One of the more patriotic Hardhat Safety Stickers looked like this:
I didn’t receive one of the stickers that he came up with that I really liked because I was away at the time on an overhaul when they were being handed out. Many years later, when I mentioned it to the guys at the plant in an e-mail, I was given a stack of them by Randy Dailey the next time I visited the plant. Randy Dailey the Plant Machinist that was known as “Mister Safety” himself. Thanks to Randy Dailey I am able to show you a hardhat safety sticker that was created based on a particular phrase that was going around the plant at the time:
That really says it all doesn’t it. The real truth about Power Plant Men. They really do care about each other. The close bond between the Power Plant Men is what kept us safe. In the “Shake Hands with Danger” at one point, it mentions that each person should “Watch out for the other guy.”
That is how our plant remained as safe as it did throughout the years that I was there. When I received the Hardhat Safety Sticker for working 20 years without an accident, it wasn’t because I was always being safe in every job I was doing, because that wasn’t always true. It was because there were enough Power Plant Men and Women looking out for me that decreased my odds of being injured by decreasing the number of times that I would end up doing something stupid and getting myself hurt or killed.
So, not only do I thank all the True Power Plant Men and Women that I worked with throughout those years, but so does my wife and my two children. One little mistake at the wrong time. One extra time of Shaking Hands with Danger, and I might not have come home one day from work. It was more than luck that kept me safe. I thank each and everyone of the Power Plant People that I worked with throughout my career for watching out for the other guy.
NOTE: After posting this last year, Ron Kilman, the plant manager at our plant from 1988 to 1994 sent me a picture of his Hard hat. I thought I would post it here so you can see it:
Ron said he stacked his Yearly safety stickers on top of each other as you can see.
When I was in my early 20’s my company shipped me up north to a different branch office and so began eight years of living in contractors guest house accommodation in a run down once-holiday-resort town. For about a year we had eight guys who were working on a local power station stay at the guest house, they were “lagging strippers” which wasn’t some night club job for brazen hussy’s but a job where the power station authorities had recognized that the asbestos that clad every single inch of their pipework was dangerous enough to get rid of, but not so dangerous that it had yet been legislated against when treating or handling the stuff (this was 1978/1980-ish).
The team of eight spent several years travelling the UK chipping off asbestos cement by hand wearing nothing more complicated that a thin paper face mask over their nose and mouth, their work clothing was jeans and tee shirt because as you’ll know, the inside of a power station can be warm work.
Their rate of pay was at least four times what our “normal” contracting electricians were being paid and our electricians were craftsmen and so on what was considered a “good wage”, the asbestos guys accepted with a shrug of the shoulders that theirs was a dangerous job, it was known that asbestos was dangerous but there was no H&S law to protect them and so they took the money and hoped they wouldn’t die young – I have no doubt at all that most of them will be dead now as they used to come back to the guest house covered in white dust on the nights when they’d been in a hurry to leave site and not bothered getting changed, hell they probably exposed me to lots of asbestos dust too.
On one public holiday weekend we’d all gone back to our home towns and returned after the break, except this time there were only seven of them, the other had been to his doctor for a chest infection and an x-ray had revealed a shadow on his lung, the atmosphere was pretty down that week as they all knew what it could be, he never returned to the job.
As a sign off let me add that theses guys were not stupid or fearless or uncaring about their own mortality, they all had wives and some had young children, but they were mainly unskilled and how much persuasion do you need when you are unskilled and unemployed other than to offer you four times the skilled man rates – I saw lots of our electricians take up the golden wage packets on the oil rigs during the 1970s UK rush for North Sea oil – now there was a dangerous occupation…