“I Think I Can, I Think I Can” and Other Power Plant Chants
Originally Posted on August 3, 2012 (I added a picture of Walt Oswalt):
The second summer as Summer Help at the Coal-fired Power Plant, was when I first worked out of the Automotive garage. It wasn’t finished during the first summer. The second summer when I began working in the garage, Jim Heflin, Larry Riley, Doug House and Ken Conrad were the regular workers that mowed the fields using tractors with brush hogs, as I have explained in previous posts. A summer help that also worked with us from Ponca City named David Foster was also able to mow grass using one of the new Ford tractors that we painted Orange to easily identify them as belonging to the Electric Company in Oklahoma.
I learned to drive the tractors later in the summer when I worked irrigating the fields in our attempt to grow grass (as told in the post “When a Power Plant Man Talks, It Pays To Listen“). The next summer I was able to mow grass using a Brush Hog pulled behind a tractor:
Almost Like this without the safety guards and just about as new
It didn’t take long before I had to mow grass on the side of the dam (and other levies). The side of the dam has a very sharp incline, so while mowing grass on the side of the dam you sat more on the side of the tractor seat than on the seat itself. Heavy weights were put on the front of the tractor and the back tires on the tractor were turned around so that they were farther apart than they would be otherwise. This gave the tractor a lower, wider profile and a lower center of gravity helping to keep it from rolling over sideways down the slope.
Tractor Weights that fit on the front of the tractor
I had watched Jim, Larry, Ken and David mow grass along some very steep inclines the summer before without any tractors tumbling over, so I felt like it must be safe, even though looking at the tractors they still seemed a little “top heavy”.
The dam had a slope this steep but much was taller
It was quite an eerie feeling the first time I actually mowed a slope this steep. I experienced the same feeling as you have on a roller coaster when it hits the top of the hill and flings you down real fast when the tractor tire on the downhill side of the tractor rolls into a washed out spot on the dam causing the tractor to roll over just a little farther than you are used to. It was definitely an adrenaline rush each time this happened, because it felt like the tractor was going to roll over.
That is when I remembered the story about the little engine that was trying to pull the train over the steep mountain, and he kept chanting, “I think I can, I think I can” over and over. So, between each decade of the Rosary that I was saying while counting Hail Mary’s on my fingers, I added in an “I Think I can…” as an added prayer before the next “Our Father”.
The Little Power Plant Coal Train that Could
In the time that I worked as a summer help we never turned over a tractor while mowing on a slope. That isn’t to say that the tractors didn’t start to tip over. It’s just that if you realize that the large back tractor tire has left the ground and is spinning freely, you could quickly turn the steering wheel downhill so that the tractor would turn downhill preventing it from rolling completely over. The weight of the brush hog on the back helped to keep the tractor snug against the sloping dam.
Years later, after I left the Power Plant, in 2006, my father’s best friend, Tom Houghton, a Veterinarian in Lakeland, Florida was killed in a tractor accident at his family’s farm in Polo, Missouri. This greatly effected my father. He has not recovered from the loss of his friend still today. As I was mowing grass and picturing my sudden demise if a tractor were to roll down the hill, my main concern was the sorrow my family would have felt by my death. Needless to say… I never toppled a tractor.
It was during that same summer in 1981 that I first worked with the Power Plant Icon Walt Oswalt. Every plant must have at least one person like Walt. He is the type of person that once he has something in his mind about how to do something, nothing is going to change it. I know many different stories about Walt Oswalt that have been shared with me, but this is one of my own. Walt is a sandy-haired Irish-looking man that always reminded me of the little old man, Jackie Wright, on the Benny Hill Show.
Walt reminded me of Jackie Wright only with more hair
I now have an actual picture of Walt that I found laying around….
Walt Oswalt — See the resemblence? not much more hair
One Saturday while I had caught a ride to the Power Plant to do “coal cleanup” the crew was asked who would like to wash down belts 10 and 11. These are the 1/2 mile long belts that go from the coalyard all the way up to the plant. You can see them on the left side of the picture of the plant on the side of this post. Finding the opportunity for a challenge, I volunteered.
this big long belt here
I made my way up to the top of the Transfer tower where I found Walt Oswalt. He was working out of the coalyard at the time and was helping us wash down 10 and 11 belt. Wearing rainsuits and rubber boots we began at the top and worked our way down. It didn’t look like this belt had been washed down for a while. We could blast the tin enclosure with the high pressure hoses we were using to completely wash off all the coal dust that had built up over time. This looked like it was going to be a fun job.
Then Walt pointed out to me that most of our work was under the belt where the coal had built up almost solid up to the belt itself so that the coal was rubbing on the rubber Uniroyal conveyor belt. Remember, if the conveyor belt goes up, it has to go back down also. So underneath the conveyor is where the belt returns. it is a big loop.
Directly underneath this conveyor is the return for the belt
So, Walt Oswalt and I spent the rest of the day laying on the grating so we could see under the belts washing the coal down the slope of belt 10 and 11. Under the conveyor is another set of rollers that the rubber conveyor belt rides on it’s return trip to the Crusher Tower. During this time there were two chants that came to my mind…. One was, “Whistle While you Work”, since we seemed to be in some kind of coal mine working away like the Seven Dwarfs (you know… Walt Disney… Walt Oswalt). The other one was the song, “Workin’ In a Coal Mine” (…goin’ down down).
Disney’s Seven Dwarfs Mining
At one particular spot the coal had built up and packed itself in there so much that one of the rollers wasn’t able to turn and the belt was just rubbing on the roller. After we had washed the coal away we could see that the roller was not able to turn still because the belt had worn it flat on one side.
Walt called the Control Room to shutdown the belt so that we could look at it. We could see that the roller was bad. For some reason the other belt (11) was out of commission so without this belt running, no coal was being sent up to the plant. The coal silos and the surge bin hold enough coal for a while but not for too long during the summer when the units need to run at their maximum rate to supply the electricity needed by the customers. We could have the belt shutdown for a while, but not for too long.
I followed Walt down the belt to the Crusher Tower wondering what he had in mind. He didn’t tell me what we were going to do, so I just gathered my clues by watching what he did. When we came out of the belt and left the Crusher I was surprised that it was already dark outside. When I had left the Maintenance Shop it had been morning. Now it was dark. We had spent the entire day (12 hours at this point) in Belt 10 and 11. I didn’t remember ever taking a break or eating lunch or even going to the bathroom. Just holding the high pressure water hose, directing the stream down under the belt… all day.
We walked over to a new building that was still being built called the Coalyard Maintenance Building. This was the new building that was going to be used by the new Labor Crew in a few months. Outside the building to one side was a Conex Box, as I have described before. This is the kind of large box that you see on the CSX train commercials that are being transported by trains.
A Conex Box
We used them to store equipment used for specific jobs or crews. In this case, the Conex box had conveyor equipment in it. Walt found a long straight roller that is used under the Number 10 and 11 belts and tied it to a 2 wheel dolly. We rolled it back to the Crusher Tower and began the long trek back up the belt. I was pulling the dolly and Walt was carrying some large wrenches.
When we arrived at the spot where the roller had been worn, Walt called the control room to let them know we were beginning to work. We pulled the safety cords on the side of the conveyor to ensure that the belt would not start, even though we were assured that a Clearance had been placed on the breaker in the Main Switchgear (where I began my first war with the spiders a year later. See the post “Power Plant Spider Wars and Bugs in the Basement“).
Walt climbed over the belt and I stayed on the main walkway. We worked upside down for a while unbolting the roller. At one point we decided we needed some more suitable tools and headed back down the belt to the Coalyard Garage where the heavy equipment is serviced and brought back some large ratchet wrenches and sockets with an extension.
Socket Wrench with extension
I think the chant, “I think I can, I think I can” was running through my head on our second trip back up the conveyor belt. I think it was around 10pm. We finished changing the roller and decided to leave the old one laying in the walkway for the night. Walt said he would bring it back to the coalyard on Monday morning.
We made our way back to the Maintenance shop where I took off the rain suit and rubber boots that I had been wearing all day and put my regular boots back on. I went up to the control room and asked if anyone could give me a ride to Stillwater since the evening shift of operators were just getting off at 11pm. I believe it was Charles Buchanan that gave me a ride home that night in his little beat up pickup truck.
I never worked directly with Charles Buchanan since he was an operator. The first impression that one may have is that he looks like a caricature of a construction worker in a comic strip.
First Impression of Charles Buchanan
Charles reaffirmed my belief that Power Plant Men are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. There were a few times when I caught a ride with Charles to or from the plant. Each time I felt honored to ride in his truck. If I think about what chant was running through my mind as we were on our way home at night, I think it would be something like the song “You’ve Got a Friend”: “Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call, Lord, I’ll be there, yeah, yeah, you’ve got a friend….”
That is what all real Power Plant men and linemen are like. Wherever you look in the United States, these great men and women work tirelessly to keep you safe by providing electricity to your homes. Something we take for granted until the power goes out.
Recently when the power went out in the east, the linemen from this electric company drove with pride, eager to help those in need:
A convoy of Electric Company Trucks on their way from Oklahoma to Indiana to help return power to millions of Americans in the dark
Below I have included the lyrics for the song “You’ve Got a Friend” by Carole King and her husband James Taylor. See how well it fits those people that work around the clock bringing the power to your home:
You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I’ll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call and I’ll be there, yeah, yeah,
you’ve got a friend.
If the sky above you should turn dark and full of clouds
and that old north wind should begin to blow,
keep your head together and call my name out loud.
Soon I will be knocking upon your door.
You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I’ll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call and I’ll be there.
Hey, ain’t it good to know that you’ve got a friend? People can be so cold.
They’ll hurt you and desert you. Well, they’ll take your soul if you let them,
oh yeah, but don’t you let them.
You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I’ll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call, Lord, I’ll be there, yeah, yeah,
you’ve got a friend. You’ve got a friend.
Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a friend. Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a friend.
Oh, yeah, yeah, you’ve got a friend.
Here is a YouTube video of James Taylor singing this song:
If your aren’t able to play youtube videos directly from the picture… here is the link: “You’ve got a Friend“
Power Plant Catholic Calibrating Cathodic Protection
Originally posted October 25, 2015.
It was no secret at the Coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma that I was Catholic. When I was a summer help and working on the labor crew, I wore a large crucifix under my tee shirt. I had worn the crucifix since I was 13 years old.
I wore a crucifix just like this only one size larger
When I joined the electric shop I had to take it off. Electricians should not wear any kind of metal jewelry for the obvious reason that if it were to come into contact with a “hot” circuit, the effect would be the same as if I wrapped the live electric wire around my neck. In other words… I could easily have been electrocuted.
In place of the crucifix, I wore a Scapular instead. Wearing a cord around my neck was unsafe enough, but it didn’t take much for the cord to break away from the piece of cloth on either end.
The Brown Scapular. It is worn so that one of cloth is in the front and the other is in the back.
So, as I said, most everyone at the plant knew that I was Catholic. It was common for someone to see the cloth with the picture on it sticking out the back of my tee shirt and ask me, “What is that around your neck with the postage stamp on it?” I usually hesitated to answer the question because I understood that living in Oklahoma where there was only a 5% Catholic population, the Catholic Church was greatly misunderstood and I really didn’t want to enter a lengthy discussion about why Catholics do what they do.
Diana Brien (my bucket buddy) helped me out one day when someone asked me why I wore the scapular, and I was hesitating trying to decide if they wanted a short answer or a long one, when Diana broke in and said, “It’s a Catholic thing.” I quickly agreed. “Yeah. It’s a Catholic thing. It reminds me to be good. I need all the reminders I can get. Sort of like ‘Catholic Protection’.”
Before I discuss what a Power Plant Catholic has to do with checking Cathodic Protection, let me just add that though I wasn’t the only Catholic at the plant, I was sort of the “Token” Catholic. Which meant, when someone wanted a straight answer about what the Catholic Church believes about any subject, I was the person that they turned to for answers.
Living in the midst of the Bible Belt, Monday mornings is when most of the questions would be asked. Preachers from various religions would occasionally say something during their Church service about Catholics and their “strange” beliefs. So, the next day, some would come to me to hear the other side of the story.
I will list a few questions…. “Why do Catholics say, ‘Hell Mary’?” “Is it true that the Pope has 666 on his Tiara?” “Is it true that Catholics are not able to say the entire ‘Our Father’?” “Are Catholics really against abortion because they need newborn babies to sacrifice in the basement of their Church?” “Is it true that Catholics can’t say for sure that they are going to heaven?” Aren’t Catholics cannibals by believing they are eating the real Body and Blood of Jesus?” “Don’t Catholics believe that they can do anything wrong they want because they know that they can just go to confession and have it forgiven?”
These are all actual questions I was asked when I was an electrician at the power plant. I understood why the Power Plant Men were asking me the questions, and I respectfully answered them. I would rather they felt comfortable asking me these questions than just going around thinking that I was some kind of barbaric pagan behind my back.
By feeling free to talk to me about being Catholic, I knew that I was respected by the Power Plant Men even though I was from a religion that they viewed as far from their own. There was one day when this became obvious to me.
I was on the second landing on Unit 2 boiler just about to enter the boiler enclosure when Floyd Coburn walked out. He was nicknamed “Coal Burner” partly because he was black, and partly because he worked in the coal yard for a long time, but mostly because his last name was Coburn which sounds a lot like Coal Burner. Someone figured that out one day, and called him that, and it stuck. When Floyd came out of the enclosure he stopped me. He tapped me on the arm and signaled for me to follow him.
We stepped out of the walkway a short distance and he held out his fist in front of me. Floyd was built like a wrestler. Actually, he was State Champion of the 148 lb weight class for 4A High Schools in Oklahoma in 1972 and 1973. This meant a lot because in Oklahoma, Wrestling was an important sport. He also had earned an associates degree at Rogers State College in Claremore.
Not once did I ever hear Floyd Coburn brag about his accomplishments, or even mention them. I suspect that few people if any knew much about Floyd’s background because as much fun as he was to work with, he was very humble, as are most True Power Plant Men.
Floyd was grinning at me as if he was about to show me a trick or a joke or something. Then he opened his fist. In the middle of his palm he held a small crucifix. The size of one on a typical rosary.
A rosary
When I saw the cross I looked up at Floyd and he was grinning ear-to-ear. I gave him a puzzled looked. Then he told me. “I found Jesus! I just wanted you to know. I know you would understand.”
I felt very privileged that Floyd felt like sharing his experience with me. I thanked him for letting me know. I patted him on the shoulder and we went on our way.
Throughout the years after that, Floyd would set me down every now and then and share how he was expanding his faith with Jesus. He finally became a minister and re-opened a Church in Ponca City where his family used to worship when he was a boy. Floyd was the Pastor of the Broken Heart Ministers Church.
I always felt blessed that he came to me to tell me about his journey. The last time I talked with Floyd Coburn was around Christmas, 2005. I had dropped in at the plant to say hello while I was visiting Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Floyd wanted to talk to me about the progress he was making as Pastor of the Church in Ponca City. He explained the troubles he was having and asked for my prayers. He felt as if the devil was fighting against him. I assured him I have always kept him in my prayers.
One day around the end of October 2006, I felt compelled to write to the plant about a Power Plant Man David Hankins, who had died after my first summer as a summer help in 1979. I have always remembered him on November 1, All Saints Day, because I know that he’s in heaven as he had a tremendous heart.
I hadn’t written to the plant for some time. When I did, I received a couple of e-mails back telling me that Floyd Coburn had died on August 25 during his son’s birthday party. He died of a sudden heart attack.
Though I felt very sorrowful for Floyd’s family because of the circumstance surrounding his death, I felt a great relief for Floyd. I know he had a great desire to be united with Jesus Christ.
So. Now that I discussed some of my experience as a Catholic at the Power Plant, let me tell you about Cathodic Protection (that is not a misspelling of ‘Catholic Protection’).
Have you ever noticed on a car battery how one post is more shiny, than the other post? Especially after it has been in your car for a while. It’s not real noticeable so you may not have realized it. The shiny post is the Cathode or Positive post. Well. Cathodic Protection is just that.
You see the main ingredient besides Power Plant Men at a Power Plant is Iron. The boilers are almost entirely made from the stuff. There are underground and above ground pipes running all over the place. Well. You can paint most of the iron that is above the ground to keep it from rusting, but it doesn’t work very well when you bury the pipes and structure in the dirt.
So, how do you protect your investment? The answer is by using Cathodic Protection. There is a grounding grid made of copper wires buried in the dirt that ties to all the metal objects around the plant grounds. This not only helps absorb things like lightening strikes, but it also allows for the seemingly miraculous anti-rust system known as “Cathodic Protection”.
This is how Cathodic Protection works… You bury a large piece of metal in the dirt and you tie a negative DC (direct current) power source to it. Then you tie the positive power to the grounding grid. By creating a positive charge on the boiler structure and the piping you inhibit rusting, while you enhance the corrosion on the large piece of buried metal with the negative charge.
A nifty trick if you ask me. The only thing about using cathodic protection is that you have to keep an eye on it because the large piece of buried metal will eventually need to be replaced, or the charge will need to be adjusted as it decays in order to protect all the other metal in the plant.
A Cathodic Protection Rectifier like those at the Power Plant
The Power Plant doesn’t just have one source for cathodic protection. There are numerous boxes placed around the plant that protected a specific set of equipment and buildings. So, when it came time to do Cathodic Protection checks, we would go to each station and take readings. If there were anomalies in the readings then someone would be alerted, and tap settings may be adjusted. In extreme cases, the large piece of metal would need to be replaced with a new one…. Though I never saw that happen.
Once I understood the concept of how Cathodic Protection worked I came to the conclusion that what Catholic Protection was doing for me, Cathodic Protection was doing for the Power Plant. It was helping to prevent corrosion.
If you don’t keep a close watch on how well your Cathodic Protection is doing, then you won’t realize when it needs to be re-calibrated. I have found the same thing applies with how well I am doing as a person. Sometimes I find I need to do a little adjustment to keep myself in line…
When checking a Cathodic Protection rectifier, when you use your multimeter to check the voltages, you have to put your leads and usually your hands into a container of transformer oil. This is somewhat messy and unpleasant. But we realize that it is something that just has to be done. We may wear latex disposable gloves to help keep our hands from soaking in the oil, but inevitably, I would end up dripping some on my jeans.
It’s the same way when trying to adjust myself to be a better person. It seems a little unpleasant at first, but you know it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes it’s swallowing your pride. Sometimes it’s admitting that you are wrong. Sometimes it is just getting off your duff and stop being so lazy.
This is why I always felt so honored working with such True Power Plant Men. They were the ones that, even though they struggled in their individual lives like the rest of us, they always kept their mind on what was right and used that as a guide to make the right decisions.
A Power Plant Backstabbing Experience
Originally posted December 7, 2013:
Usually when I write a Power Plant Man post, the story is about the Power Plant Men and Women I worked with during the 20 years I spent at the Coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma. Today’s post, however, is more about a particular experience I had during this time period. Some Power Plant Men at the plant were witnesses to the events, but for the most part, this was personal.
This story begins early in the morning on New Years Day 1987. Some time around 3:00 am. I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night from the bed where I was sleeping at my parents house in Stillwater, Oklahoma where my wife and I were visiting on New Year’s Eve. It felt as if someone had crept into my room and stabbed me in the back with a knife!
Instead of replying “Et Tu Brute” (pronounced “Bru Tey”), I jumped out of bed, flailing to fight back, only to find that Kelly and I were alone in the room. A quick search of my back with my right hand told me that I didn’t have any external injury, even though the pain indicated that a knife of some sort was still piercing my lower back as if someone was working the knife around trying to increase the pain.
Not wanting to wake my wife, I left the room and went into the hallway. I figured I must be having a kidney stone. I seemed to recall a similar pain many years earlier when I was a boy. At that time the pain didn’t last too long, and I figured that I would just drink some water and hope that it would work itself out quickly.
Some of you who have experienced this pain probably guessed this from the start that I was having a kidney stone. there isn’t much that is more painful than having a kidney stone, especially if the kidney stone is of any size and spiky.
I did finally wake up my wife and tell her that I thought I was having a kidney stone. She is an RN, and I figured she would know what to do if I passed out from the pain. Besides, I didn’t want her to think the house was haunted if she woke up and heard some moaning and groaning out in the hallway.
Luckily for me, the kidney stone was small and without spikes. I was able to pass the stone through the painful stage in less than hour. It felt as if I had dropped a pebble right into my bladder. A quick trip to the bathroom, and I emerged with a little stone the size of a piece of sand.
The next morning (still New Year’s Day), we drove back to Ponca City where we lived at the time. We were only about 3 miles north of Stillwater when all of the sudden, I was hit with another stabbing pain. This time coming from the lower left side. It was that same experience as a few hours earlier.
I was able to pull the car into the gas station at Bill’s Corner. I climbed quickly out of the car, paced back and forth for a minute or two, and then climbed into the passenger seat as Kelly drove the rest of the way home. At some point on the way home. I think it was about the time we passed the power plant, the stone had worked its way down into the bladder and the pain was over.
We scheduled an appointment with a Urologist the following week, and when I arrived at the doctor’s office, I gave him the two kidney stones and he had them analyzed. They were the typical kidney stone made of Calcium Oxalate. The doctor’s advice? Cut down on my calcium intake. Ok. So, I stopped drinking a glass of milk each morning before I left for work.
The result was that every 3 months I churned out another kidney stone. For the next 10 and a half year, every 3 months I had a kidney stone. Sometimes they were easy. Other times they were difficult. It depended on the size and shape of the stones.
Notice the irregular shape of these kidney stones
I began saving them in one of those cases that people use for their contact lenses. The ones that have a side for the left contact, and one for the right contact.
A contact lens case with an L and an R for the Left and Right eye.
I would put the kidney stones from my left kidney in the Left side, and the right Kidney in the R section. How did I know which was which? It was easy. Was I being stabbed in the back on the left or the right.
So, what does this have to do with Power Plant Men? Well, at times the Power Plant men had to deal with me while I was in the middle of having a Kidney stone. Most of the times it was just as a bystander sharing in my misery as they watched me pace back and forth as pale as a zombie. Other times it was riding shotgun in peril of their lives as I struggled to bring my car safely to a stop while writhing in pain.
Here are some instances I remember. One day when Scott Hubbard and either Toby O’Brien or Fred Turner were in my car as we were driving to work, I was suddenly hit with a bat across my lower back. I vaguely remember saying, “Oh No!” I asked Scott Hubbard, who was sitting in front with me to dump the contents of my lunchbox out on the floor of the car.
You see, when a kidney stone is in full swing and the feeling of intense pain begins to build up, there is a plexus of nerves around the kidneys that send a message to the stomach that it would be best if the stomach is empty. Meaning that any recently eaten breakfast should be evacuated as quickly as possible.
I struggled to remain conscious and sane and to keep the car on the road. We were only about a mile from Bill’s Corner (where I had stopped during my second kidney stone on New Years Eve (many years earlier). So, I headed for there as a place to jump out of the car. Only this was a much worse kidney stone that during the last time I pulled into the gas station to switch sides with my wife. I was going to have to turn around and go home. I wasn’t going to be passing this one any time soon.
When I climbed out of the car, I made it to the back of the car just in time to eject the contents of my stomach onto the pavement. When you are sick and you vomit, it usually makes you feel better because that it over. When you have a kidney stone, vomiting is only about as much relief as taking a breathe.
Luckily some other Power Plant Men had stopped at the gas station to fill up their vehicle and they had enough room to take Scott and Toby, (or was it Fred… Fred? You read these posts…. was it you?). I asked Scott to tell our foreman that I wasn’t going to be in for work today.
I climbed back into my Honda and pointed the car toward home. With my Little Playmate Lunchbox open at my side, I drove home. When I walked in the door at home, my wife immediately knew what was happening. She comforted me by saying, “Poor Beast.” While I began the ritual of drinking water and pacing around the house.
A lunchbox exactly like this
You see…. At this time I no longer went to the doctor or the hospital when attacked with a kidney stone. I had learned my lesson many years earlier.
Early on, in Ponca City, when I had a kidney stone, I went to the hospital bent over in pain and having visions of my life passing before my eyes as if I was already in the middle of judgement day. When I would arrive in the emergency room, they would give me a shot of morphine to ease the pain.
The problem with morphine was that I was already using all my mental faculties to suppress the pain, and as soon as the morphine would begin taking effect, it took away my ability to block the mentally blocked pain. I would end up, for about 20 minutes while the morphine was taking its full effect on my senses, climbing the walls in really intense pain. Then eventually they would send me home where I would be sick from the morphine for about a week even though I may have passed the kidney stone in a day or two.
During the worst kidney stone I encountered while I was living in Ponca City, (during the first 3 years that we were married), it took about 5 day to pass this one stone. It was especially rough. Usually the only relief I had from this particular stone was to pass out from the pain. Pacing didn’t seem to work. Drinking water didn’t seem to work. It seemed like this particular stone was stuck right at the bottom of the Ureters. That is, the urinary tract just before the bladder. I knew that if it would only fall into the bladder, the intense pain would be over.
I remember how this passed very clearly. I was kneeling on the side of the bed saying a Rosary (the Sorrowful Mysteries of course). One of the Sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary is to meditate on the Scourging at the Pillar. That was what I felt I was going through at the time, so I had been saying the sorrowful mysteries all week.
A rosary
I finally prayed to God something I usually refrained from doing…. I said to Him. “Father…. this is enough. This is all I can take. Please take this away from me.” Almost immediately the kidney stone dropped into my bladder. Oh my gosh! I climbed up into the bed and fell asleep. The pain had finally ended after 5 hard days.
I was awoken 5 hours later. My Father was calling me from Florida where he was working at a Veterinary Clinic training the employees of the clinic for continuous education. (See the post “I Think I Can, I Think I Can and Other Power Plant Man Chants” to learn more about my Father and Tom Houghton who owned the Veterinary Clinic). He told me that about 5 hours earlier he was struck with a kidney stone.
My father, though he had one kidney stone when I was a boy, was not prone to kidney stones like I was. It seemed as if the moment that I was relieved of my pain, my Father had picked up the torch and carried on the pain. I apologized to him, because I had prayed that the pain I was feeling would go away and it seems as if he had to experience whatever pain I was meant to finish bearing. The coincidence was too much to belief. He had just passed the stone and wanted to call me to tell me, since he knew that I was regularly experiencing kidney stones at the time. I resolved from that time on, to go ahead and suffer through whatever pain was being sent my way, because it appeared as if it was for a reason of some sort. I never prayed to have the pain leave again. Only that I was able to endure it.
Back to the Power Plant. One day Diana Brien and I were doing some work in the Coal yard Maintenance building, where the Labor Crew called home. We had driven the electric cart to the coal yard to work on whatever we were working on. The moment we sat in the cart to head back to the electric shop. Wham. I was hit with a kidney stone.
I didn’t want to mention it to Dee. There was no need in worrying her, or embarrassing me, so I just remained silent. I just held onto the side rail on the cart and closed my eyes. As we banged over the railroad tracks and down the gravel road on the hill, I just held on and thought…. “don’t throw up…. don’t throw up….” I concentrated real hard to try and ease the pain.
A yellow electric Cushman cart like this
When we reached the shop, without a word, I walked into the shop and straight into the bathroom, where I began peeling back clothing. That is, I undid my belt, and unsnapped my pants. I paced a few minutes… then feeling the kidney stone hit the bladder, I relieved myself and walked back out into the shop. I figure all the jostling about on the bumpy road in a cart with no suspension system helped move the stone down quickly.
Dee and Scott Hubbard knew right away what had happened to me. There was no hiding the pale face and the sweat that was running down my face. I went in the office to rest a while. After a while I was ready to go back to work.
So, for all you kidney stone sufferers, here is a few words of advice. Today I have passed more than 55 kidney stones. I have never had one of them removed by any other means than passing them myself. I have passed very large kidney stones. Some so big you could crush them in your fingers.
My largest kidney stone was almost as large as this one.
First of all. Don’t panic. Kidney stones won’t kill you (at least not right away). The first thing that happens is that the muscles in your back tighten up. This is not a good thing. You need the muscles in your back to relax. Concentrate on relaxing those muscles. I used to use a handheld massager to try to relax the muscles. Now I just concentrate on relaxing the back. Today when I have a kidney stone, even a large one, I am usually able to pass it within hours.
A handheld massager like this
Pace a lot. Drink a lot of water. You will only move the kidney stone down into the bladder by drinking water and pacing (or a massager maybe). I walk back and forth in the house. I have a path that I take. I walk back and forth, then I sip water each time. Don’t worry about throwing up. It’s just part of the reaction to the pain.
I only have about one kidney stone of any size once each year these day. I found that taking a good dose of CitriCal each day (yes. Extra calcium, has reduced the number of kidney stones considerably).
If you are Catholic… then offer the pain up for souls in Purgatory. It is our belief that the painful time that a person suffers in purgatory can be shortened by someone else offering up their pain for someone in purgatory. Note the difference between suffering and pain. Pain is the sensation you receive. Suffering is what you do with it. When you accept the pain and you “embrace” it, then you suffer it. If you moan and groan a lot, you basically pass it on to others. You tell them…. “I am in Pain.” Then they empathize with you and in a sense “feel your pain.” If this helps comfort you, ok. If you want to offer it to someone in Purgatory, then accept your pain in silence (I realize this makes no sense for those who do not accept the idea of Purgatory).
For those Christians that are not Catholic, let me offer you another way to suffer the pain from a kidney stone when it is too intense to bear. St. Paul said the following: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col 1:24). With this in mind, the pain felt during a kidney stone has great meaning. It literally unites you with Christ during his Passion.
I realize this has been an odd break from the usual Power Plant Man Post. The power plant man posts for the remainder of the year will be those posts that include stories from the time that the plant was ruled under the “evil plant manager” Eldon Waugh. Beginning in January, for the next year, the post will be stories during the reign of the plant manager, Ron Kilman (1987 to 1994). During the year 2015, the stories will be during the reign of Bill Green until I left the electric company (1994 to 2001).
Comments from the original post:
“I Think I Can, I Think I Can” and Other Power Plant Chants
Originally Posted on August 3, 2012 (I added a picture of Walt Oswalt):
The second summer as Summer Help at the Coal-fired Power Plant, was when I first worked out of the Automotive garage. It wasn’t finished during the first summer. The second summer when I began working in the garage, Jim Heflin, Larry Riley, Doug House and Ken Conrad were the regular workers that mowed the fields using tractors with brush hogs, as I have explained in previous posts. A summer help that also worked with us from Ponca City named David Foster was also able to mow grass using one of the new Ford tractors that we painted Orange to easily identify them as belonging to the Electric Company in Oklahoma.
I learned to drive the tractors later in the summer when I worked irrigating the fields in our attempt to grow grass (as told in the post “When a Power Plant Man Talks, It Pays To Listen“). The next summer I was able to mow grass using a Brush Hog pulled behind a tractor:
Almost Like this without the safety guards and just about as new
It didn’t take long before I had to mow grass on the side of the dam (and other levies). The side of the dam has a very sharp incline, so while mowing grass on the side of the dam you sat more on the side of the tractor seat than on the seat itself. Heavy weights were put on the front of the tractor and the back tires on the tractor were turned around so that they were farther apart than they would be otherwise. This gave the tractor a lower, wider profile and a lower center of gravity helping to keep it from rolling over sideways down the slope.
Tractor Weights that fit on the front of the tractor
I had watched Jim, Larry, Ken and David mow grass along some very steep inclines the summer before without any tractors tumbling over, so I felt like it must be safe, even though looking at the tractors they still seemed a little “top heavy”.
The dam had a slope this steep but much was taller
It was quite an eerie feeling the first time I actually mowed a slope this steep. I experienced the same feeling as you have on a roller coaster when it hits the top of the hill and flings you down real fast when the tractor tire on the downhill side of the tractor rolls into a washed out spot on the dam causing the tractor to roll over just a little farther than you are used to. It was definitely an adrenaline rush each time this happened, because it felt like the tractor was going to roll over.
That is when I remembered the story about the little engine that was trying to pull the train over the steep mountain, and he kept chanting, “I think I can, I think I can” over and over. So, between each decade of the Rosary that I was saying while counting Hail Mary’s on my fingers, I added in an “I Think I can…” as an added prayer before the next “Our Father”.
The Little Power Plant Coal Train that Could
In the time that I worked as a summer help we never turned over a tractor while mowing on a slope. That isn’t to say that the tractors didn’t start to tip over. It’s just that if you realize that the large back tractor tire has left the ground and is spinning freely, you could quickly turn the steering wheel downhill so that the tractor would turn downhill preventing it from rolling completely over. The weight of the brush hog on the back helped to keep the tractor snug against the sloping dam.
Years later, after I left the Power Plant, in 2006, my father’s best friend, Tom Houghton, a Veterinarian in Lakeland, Florida was killed in a tractor accident at his family’s farm in Polo, Missouri. This greatly effected my father. He has not recovered from the loss of his friend still today. As I was mowing grass and picturing my sudden demise if a tractor were to roll down the hill, my main concern was the sorrow my family would have felt by my death. Needless to say… I never toppled a tractor.
It was during that same summer in 1981 that I first worked with the Power Plant Icon Walt Oswalt. Every plant must have at least one person like Walt. He is the type of person that once he has something in his mind about how to do something, nothing is going to change it. I know many different stories about Walt Oswalt that have been shared with me, but this is one of my own. Walt is a sandy-haired Irish-looking man that always reminded me of the little old man, Jackie Wright, on the Benny Hill Show.
Walt reminded me of Jackie Wright only with more hair
I now have an actual picture of Walt that I found laying around….
Walt Oswalt — See the resemblence? not much more hair
One Saturday while I had caught a ride to the Power Plant to do “coal cleanup” the crew was asked who would like to wash down belts 10 and 11. These are the 1/2 mile long belts that go from the coalyard all the way up to the plant. You can see them on the left side of the picture of the plant on the side of this post. Finding the opportunity for a challenge, I volunteered.
I made my way up to the top of the Transfer tower where I found Walt Oswalt. He was working out of the coalyard at the time and was helping us wash down 10 and 11 belt. Wearing rainsuits and rubber boots we began at the top and worked our way down. It didn’t look like this belt had been washed down for a while. We could blast the tin enclosure with the high pressure hoses we were using to completely wash off all the coal dust that had built up over time. This looked like it was going to be a fun job.
Then Walt pointed out to me that most of our work was under the belt where the coal had built up almost solid up to the belt itself so that the coal was rubbing on the rubber Uniroyal conveyor belt. Remember, if the conveyor belt goes up, it has to go back down also. So underneath the conveyor is where the belt returns. it is a big loop.
Directly underneath this conveyor is the return for the belt
So, Walt Oswalt and I spent the rest of the day laying on the grating so we could see under the belts washing the coal down the slope of belt 10 and 11. Under the conveyor is another set of rollers that the rubber conveyor belt rides on it’s return trip to the Crusher Tower. During this time there were two chants that came to my mind…. One was, “Whistle While you Work”, since we seemed to be in some kind of coal mine working away like the Seven Dwarfs (you know… Walt Disney… Walt Oswalt). The other one was the song, “Workin’ In a Coal Mine” (…goin’ down down).
Disney’s Seven Dwarfs Mining
At one particular spot the coal had built up and packed itself in there so much that one of the rollers wasn’t able to turn and the belt was just rubbing on the roller. After we had washed the coal away we could see that the roller was not able to turn still because the belt had worn it flat on one side.
Walt called the Control Room to shutdown the belt so that we could look at it. We could see that the roller was bad. For some reason the other belt (11) was out of commission so without this belt running, no coal was being sent up to the plant. The coal silos and the surge bin hold enough coal for a while but not for too long during the summer when the units need to run at their maximum rate to supply the electricity needed by the customers. We could have the belt shutdown for a while, but not for too long.
I followed Walt down the belt to the Crusher Tower wondering what he had in mind. He didn’t tell me what we were going to do, so I just gathered my clues by watching what he did. When we came out of the belt and left the Crusher I was surprised that it was already dark outside. When I had left the Maintenance Shop it had been morning. Now it was dark. We had spent the entire day (12 hours at this point) in Belt 10 and 11. I didn’t remember ever taking a break or eating lunch or even going to the bathroom. Just holding the high pressure water hose, directing the stream down under the belt… all day.
We walked over to a new building that was still being built called the Coalyard Maintenance Building. This was the new building that was going to be used by the new Labor Crew in a few months. Outside the building to one side was a Conex Box, as I have described before. This is the kind of large box that you see on the CSX train commercials that are being transported by trains.
A Conex Box
We used them to store equipment used for specific jobs or crews. In this case, the Conex box had conveyor equipment in it. Walt found a long straight roller that is used under the Number 10 and 11 belts and tied it to a 2 wheel dolly. We rolled it back to the Crusher Tower and began the long trek back up the belt. I was pulling the dolly and Walt was carrying some large wrenches.
When we arrived at the spot where the roller had been worn, Walt called the control room to let them know we were beginning to work. We pulled the safety cords on the side of the conveyor to ensure that the belt would not start, even though we were assured that a Clearance had been placed on the breaker in the Main Switchgear (where I began my first war with the spiders a year later. See the post “Power Plant Spider Wars and Bugs in the Basement“).
Walt climbed over the belt and I stayed on the main walkway. We worked upside down for a while unbolting the roller. At one point we decided we needed some more suitable tools and headed back down the belt to the Coalyard Garage where the heavy equipment is serviced and brought back some large ratchet wrenches and sockets with an extension.
Socket Wrench with extension
I think the chant, “I think I can, I think I can” was running through my head on our second trip back up the conveyor belt. I think it was around 10pm. We finished changing the roller and decided to leave the old one laying in the walkway for the night. Walt said he would bring it back to the coalyard on Monday morning.
We made our way back to the Maintenance shop where I took off the rain suit and rubber boots that I had been wearing all day and put my regular boots back on. I went up to the control room and asked if anyone could give me a ride to Stillwater since the evening shift of operators were just getting off at 11pm. I believe it was Charles Buchanan that gave me a ride home that night in his little beat up pickup truck.
I never worked directly with Charles Buchanan since he was an operator. The first impression that one may have is that he looks like a caricature of a construction worker in a comic strip.
First Impression of Charles Buchanan
Charles reaffirmed my belief that Power Plant Men are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. There were a few times when I caught a ride with Charles to or from the plant. Each time I felt honored to ride in his truck. If I think about what chant was running through my mind as we were on our way home at night, I think it would be something like the song “You’ve Got a Friend”: “Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call, Lord, I’ll be there, yeah, yeah, you’ve got a friend….”
That is what all real Power Plant men and linemen are like. Wherever you look in the United States, these great men and women work tirelessly to keep you safe by providing electricity to your homes. Something we take for granted until the power goes out.
Recently when the power went out in the east, the linemen from this electric company drove with pride, eager to help those in need:
A convoy of Electric Company Trucks on their way from Oklahoma to Indiana to help return power to millions of Americans in the dark
Below I have included the lyrics for the song “You’ve Got a Friend” by Carole King and her husband James Taylor. See how well it fits those people that work around the clock bringing the power to your home:
You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I’ll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call and I’ll be there, yeah, yeah,
you’ve got a friend.
If the sky above you should turn dark and full of clouds
and that old north wind should begin to blow,
keep your head together and call my name out loud.
Soon I will be knocking upon your door.
You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I’ll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call and I’ll be there.
Hey, ain’t it good to know that you’ve got a friend? People can be so cold.
They’ll hurt you and desert you. Well, they’ll take your soul if you let them,
oh yeah, but don’t you let them.
You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I’ll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call, Lord, I’ll be there, yeah, yeah,
you’ve got a friend. You’ve got a friend.
Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a friend. Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a friend.
Oh, yeah, yeah, you’ve got a friend.
Here is a YouTube video of James Taylor singing this song:
If your aren’t able to play youtube videos directly from the picture… here is the link: “You’ve got a Friend“
Power Plant Catholic Calibrating Cathodic Protection
Originally posted October 25, 2015.
It was no secret at the Coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma that I was Catholic. When I was a summer help and working on the labor crew, I wore a large crucifix under my tee shirt. I had worn the crucifix since I was 13 years old.
I wore a crucifix just like this only one size larger
When I joined the electric shop I had to take it off. Electricians should not wear any kind of metal jewelry for the obvious reason that if it were to come into contact with a “hot” circuit, the effect would be the same as if I wrapped the live electric wire around my neck. In other words… I could easily have been electrocuted.
In place of the crucifix, I wore a Scapular instead. Wearing a cord around my neck was unsafe enough, but it didn’t take much for the cord to break away from the piece of cloth on either end.
The Brown Scapular. It is worn so that one of cloth is in the front and the other is in the back.
So, as I said, most everyone at the plant knew that I was Catholic. It was common for someone to see the cloth with the picture on it sticking out the back of my tee shirt and ask me, “What is that around your neck with the postage stamp on it?” I usually hesitated to answer the question because I understood that living in Oklahoma where there was only a 5% Catholic population, the Catholic Church was greatly misunderstood and I really didn’t want to enter a lengthy discussion about why Catholics do what they do.
Diana Brien (my bucket buddy) helped me out one day when someone asked me why I wore the scapular, and I was hesitating trying to decide if they wanted a short answer or a long one, when Diana broke in and said, “It’s a Catholic thing.” I quickly agreed. “Yeah. It’s a Catholic thing. It reminds me to be good. I need all the reminders I can get. Sort of like ‘Catholic Protection’.”
Before I discuss what a Power Plant Catholic has to do with checking Cathodic Protection, let me just add that though I wasn’t the only Catholic at the plant, I was sort of the “Token” Catholic. Which meant, when someone wanted a straight answer about what the Catholic Church believes about any subject, I was the person that they turned to for answers.
Living in the midst of the Bible Belt, Monday mornings is when most of the questions would be asked. Preachers from various religions would occasionally say something during their Church service about Catholics and their “strange” beliefs. So, the next day, some would come to me to hear the other side of the story.
I will list a few questions…. “Why do Catholics say, ‘Hell Mary’?” “Is it true that the Pope has 666 on his Tiara?” “Is it true that Catholics are not able to say the entire ‘Our Father’?” “Are Catholics really against abortion because they need newborn babies to sacrifice in the basement of their Church?” “Is it true that Catholics can’t say for sure that they are going to heaven?” Aren’t Catholics cannibals by believing they are eating the real Body and Blood of Jesus?” “Don’t Catholics believe that they can do anything wrong they want because they know that they can just go to confession and have it forgiven?”
These are all actual questions I was asked when I was an electrician at the power plant. I understood why the Power Plant Men were asking me the questions, and I respectfully answered them. I would rather they felt comfortable asking me these questions than just going around thinking that I was some kind of barbaric pagan behind my back.
By feeling free to talk to me about being Catholic, I knew that I was respected by the Power Plant Men even though I was from a religion that they viewed as far from their own. There was one day when this became obvious to me.
I was on the second landing on Unit 2 boiler just about to enter the boiler enclosure when Floyd Coburn walked out. He was nicknamed “Coal Burner” partly because he was black, and partly because he worked in the coal yard for a long time, but mostly because his last name was Coburn which sounds la lot like Coal Burner. Someone figured that out one day, and called him that, and it stuck. When Floyd came out of the enclosure he stopped me. He tapped me on the arm and signaled for me to follow him.
We stepped out of the walkway a short distance and he held out his fist in front of me. Floyd was built like a wrestler. Actually, he was State Champion of the 148 lb weight class for 4A High Schools in Oklahoma in 1972 and 1973. This meant a lot because in Oklahoma, Wrestling was an important sport. He also had earned an associates degree at Rogers State College in Claremore.
Not once did I ever hear Floyd Coburn brag about his accomplishments, or even mention them. I suspect that few people if any knew much about Floyd’s background because as much fun as he was to work with, he was very humble, as are most True Power Plant Men.
Floyd was grinning at me as if he was about to show me a trick or a joke or something. Then he opened his fist. In the middle of his palm he held a small crucifix. The size of one on a typical rosary.
A rosary
When I saw the cross I looked up at Floyd and he was grinning ear-to-ear. I gave him a puzzled looked. Then he told me. “I found Jesus! I just wanted you to know. I know you would understand.”
I felt very privileged that Floyd felt like sharing his experience with me. I thanked him for letting me know. I patted him on the shoulder and we went on our way.
Throughout the years after that, Floyd would set me down every now and then and share how he was expanding his faith with Jesus. He finally became a minister and re-opened a Church in Ponca City where his family used to worship when he was a boy. Floyd was the Pastor of the Broken Heart Ministers Church.
I always felt blessed that he came to me to tell me about his journey. The last time I talked with Floyd Coburn was around Christmas, 2005. I had dropped in at the plant to say hello while I was visiting Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Floyd wanted to talk to me about the progress he was making as Pastor of the Church in Ponca City. He explained the troubles he was having and asked for my prayers. He felt as if the devil was fighting against him. I assured him I have always kept him in my prayers.
One day around the end of October 2006, I felt compelled to write to the plant about a Power Plant Man David Hankins, who had died after my first summer as a summer help in 1979. I have always remembered him on November 1, All Saints Day, because I know that he’s in heaven as he had a tremendous heart.
I hadn’t written to the plant for some time. When I did, I received a couple of e-mails back telling me that Floyd Coburn had died on August 25 during his son’s birthday party. He died of a sudden heart attack.
Though I felt very sorrowful for Floyd’s family because of the circumstance surrounding his death, I felt a great relief for Floyd. I know he had a great desire to be united with Jesus Christ.
So. Now that I discussed some of my experience as a Catholic at the Power Plant, let me tell you about Cathodic Protection (that is not a misspelling of ‘Catholic Protection’).
Have you ever noticed on a car battery how one post is more shiny, than the other post? Especially after it has been in your car for a while. It’s not real noticeable so you may not have realized it. The shiny post is the Cathode or Positive post. Well. Cathodic Protection is just that.
You see the main ingredient besides Power Plant Men at a Power Plant is Iron. The boilers are almost entirely made from the stuff. There are underground and above ground pipes running all over the place. Well. You can paint most of the iron that is above the ground to keep it from rusting, but it doesn’t work very well when you bury the pipes and structure in the dirt.
So, how do you protect your investment? The answer is by using Cathodic Protection. There is a grounding grid made of copper wires buried in the dirt that ties to all the metal objects around the plant grounds. This not only helps absorb things like lightening strikes, but it also allows for the seemingly miraculous anti-rust system known as “Cathodic Protection”.
This is how Cathodic Protection works… You bury a large piece of metal in the dirt and you tie a negative DC (direct current) power source to it. Then you tie the positive power to the grounding grid. By creating a positive charge on the boiler structure and the piping you inhibit rusting, while you enhance the corrosion on the large piece of buried metal with the negative charge.
A nifty trick if you ask me. The only thing about using cathodic protection is that you have to keep an eye on it because the large piece of buried metal will eventually need to be replaced, or the charge will need to be adjusted as it decays in order to protect all the other metal in the plant.
A Cathodic Protection Rectifier like those at the Power Plant
The Power Plant doesn’t just have one source for cathodic protection. There are numerous boxes placed around the plant that protected a specific set of equipment and buildings. So, when it came time to do Cathodic Protection checks, we would go to each station and take readings. If there were anomalies in the readings then someone would be alerted, and tap settings may be adjusted. In extreme cases, the large piece of metal would need to be replaced with a new one…. Though I never saw that happen.
Once I understood the concept of how Cathodic Protection worked I came to the conclusion that what Catholic Protection was doing for me, Cathodic Protection was doing for the Power Plant. It was helping to prevent corrosion.
If you don’t keep a close watch on how well your Cathodic Protection is doing, then you won’t realize when it needs to be re-calibrated. I have found the same thing applies with how well I am doing as a person. Sometimes I find I need to do a little adjustment to keep myself in line…
When checking a Cathodic Protection rectifier, when you use your multimeter to check the voltages, you have to put your leads and usually your hands into a container of transformer oil. This is somewhat messy and unpleasant. But we realize that it is something that just has to be done. We may wear latex disposable gloves to help keep our hands from soaking in the oil, but inevitably, I would end up dripping some on my jeans.
It’s the same way when trying to adjust myself to be a better person. It seems a little unpleasant at first, but you know it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes it’s swallowing your pride. Sometimes it’s admitting that you are wrong. Sometimes it is just getting off your duff and stop being so lazy.
This is why I always felt so honored working with such True Power Plant Men. They were the ones that, even though they struggled in their individual lives like the rest of us, they always kept their mind on what was right and used that as a guide to make the right decisions.
A Power Plant Backstabbing Experience
Originally posted December 7, 2013:
Usually when I write a Power Plant Man post, the story is about the Power Plant Men and Women I worked with during the 20 years I spent at the Coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma. Today’s post, however, is more about a particular experience I had during this time period. Some Power Plant Men at the plant were witnesses to the events, but for the most part, this was personal.
This story begins early in the morning on New Years Day 1987. Some time around 3:00 am. I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night from the bed where I was sleeping at my parents house in Stillwater, Oklahoma where my wife and I were visiting on New Year’s Eve. It felt as if someone had crept into my room and stabbed me in the back with a knife!
I jumped out of bed, flailing to fight back, only to find that Kelly and I were alone in the room. A quick search of my back with my right hand told me that I didn’t have any external injury, even though the pain indicated that a knife of some sort was still piercing my lower back as if someone was working the knife around trying to increase the pain.
Not wanting to wake my wife, I left the room and went into the hallway. I figured I must be having a kidney stone. I seemed to recall a similar pain many years earlier when I was a boy. At that time the pain didn’t last too long, and I figured that I would just drink some water and hope that it would work itself out quickly.
Some of you who have experienced this pain probably guessed this from the start that I was having a kidney stone. there isn’t much that is more painful than having a kidney stone, especially if the kidney stone is of any size and spiky.
I did finally wake up my wife and tell her that I thought I was having a kidney stone. She is an RN, and I figured she would know what to do if I passed out from the pain. Besides, I didn’t want her to think the house was haunted if she woke up and heard some moaning and groaning out in the hallway.
Luckily for me, the kidney stone was small and without spikes. I was able to pass the stone through the painful stage in less than hour. It felt as if I had dropped a pebble right into my bladder. A quick trip to the bathroom, and I emerged with a little stone the size of a piece of sand.
The next morning (still New Year’s Day), we drove back to Ponca City where we lived at the time. We were only about 3 miles north of Stillwater when all of the sudden, I was hit with another stabbing pain. This time coming from the lower left side. It was that same experience as a few hours earlier.
I was able to pull the car into the gas station at Bill’s Corner. I climbed quickly out of the car, paced back and forth for a minute or two, and then climbed into the passenger seat as Kelly drove the rest of the way home. At some point on the way home. I think it was about the time we passed the power plant, the stone had worked its way down into the bladder and the pain was over.
We scheduled an appointment with a Urologist the following week, and when I arrived at the doctor’s office, I gave him the two kidney stones and he had them analyzed. They were the typical kidney stone made of Calcium Oxalate. The doctor’s advice? Cut down on my calcium intake. Ok. So, I stopped drinking a glass of milk each morning before I left for work.
The result was that every 3 months I churned out another kidney stone. For the next 10 and a half year, every 3 months I had a kidney stone. Sometimes they were easy. Other times they were difficult. It depended on the size and shape of the stones.
Notice the irregular shape of these kidney stones
I began saving them in one of those cases that people use for their contact lenses. The ones that have a side for the left contact, and one for the right contact.
A contact lens case with an L and an R for the Left and Right eye.
I would put the kidney stones from my left kidney in the Left side, and the right Kidney in the R section. How did I know which was which? It was easy. Was I being stabbed in the back on the left or the right.
So, what does this have to do with Power Plant Men? Well, at times the Power Plant men had to deal with me while I was in the middle of having a Kidney stone. Most of the times it was just as a bystander sharing in my misery as they watched me pace back and forth as pale as a zombie. Other times it was riding shotgun in peril of their lives as I struggled to bring my car safely to a stop while writhing in pain.
Here are some instances I remember. One day when Scott Hubbard and either Toby O’Brien or Fred Turner were in my car as we were driving to work, I was suddenly hit with a bat across my lower back. I vaguely remember saying, “Oh No!” I asked Scott Hubbard, who was sitting in front with me to dump the contents of my lunchbox out on the floor of the car.
You see, when a kidney stone is in full swing and the feeling of intense pain begins to build up, there is a plexus of nerves around the kidneys that send a message to the stomach that it would be best if the stomach is empty. Meaning that any recently eaten breakfast should be evacuated as quickly as possible.
I struggled to remain conscious and sane and to keep the car on the road. We were only about a mile from Bill’s Corner (where I had stopped during my second kidney stone on New Years Eve (many years earlier). So, I headed for there as a place to jump out of the car. Only this was a much worse kidney stone that during the last time I pulled into the gas station to switch sides with my wife. I was going to have to turn around and go home. I wasn’t going to be passing this one any time soon.
When I climbed out of the car, I made it to the back of the car just in time to eject the contents of my stomach onto the pavement. When you are sick and you vomit, it usually makes you feel better because that it over. When you have a kidney stone, vomiting is only about as much relief as taking a breathe.
Luckily some other Power Plant Men had stopped at the gas station to fill up their vehicle and they had enough room to take Scott and Toby, (or was it Fred… Fred? You read these posts…. was it you?). I asked Scott to tell our foreman that I wasn’t going to be in for work today.
I climbed back into my Honda and pointed the car toward home. With my Little Playmate Lunchbox open at my side, I drove home. When I walked in the door at home, my wife immediately knew what was happening. She comforted me by saying, “Poor Beast.” While I began the ritual of drinking water and pacing around the house.
A lunchbox exactly like this
You see…. At this time I no longer went to the doctor or the hospital when attacked with a kidney stone. I had learned my lesson many years earlier.
Early on, in Ponca City, when I had a kidney stone, I went to the hospital bent over in pain and having visions of my life passing before my eyes as if I was already in the middle of judgement day. When I would arrive in the emergency room, they would give me a shot of morphine to ease the pain.
The problem with morphine was that I was already using all my mental faculties to suppress the pain, and as soon as the morphine would begin taking effect, it took away my ability to block the mentally blocked pain. I would end up, for about 20 minutes while the morphine was taking its full effect on my senses, climbing the walls in really intense pain. Then eventually they would send me home where I would be sick from the morphine for about a week even though I may have passed the kidney stone in a day or two.
During the worst kidney stone I encountered while I was living in Ponca City, (during the first 3 years that we were married), it took about 5 day to pass this one stone. It was especially rough. Usually the only relief I had from this particular stone was to pass out from the pain. Pacing didn’t seem to work. Drinking water didn’t seem to work. It seemed like this particular stone was stuck right at the bottom of the Ureters. That is, the urinary tract just before the bladder. I knew that if it would only fall into the bladder, the intense pain would be over.
I remember how this passed very clearly. I was kneeling on the side of the bed saying a Rosary (the Sorrowful Mysteries of course). One of the Sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary is to meditate on the Scourging at the Pillar. That was what I felt I was going through at the time, so I had been saying the sorrowful mysteries all week.
A rosary
I finally prayed to God something I usually refrained from doing…. I said to Him. “Father…. this is enough. This is all I can take. Please take this away from me.” Almost immediately the kidney stone dropped into my bladder. Oh my gosh! I climbed up into the bed and fell asleep. The pain had finally ended after 5 hard days.
I was awoken 5 hours later. My Father was calling me from Florida where he was working at a Veterinary Clinic training the employees of the clinic for continuous education. (See the post “I Think I Can, I Think I Can and Other Power Plant Man Chants” to learn more about my Father and Tom Houghton who owned the Veterinary Clinic). He told me that about 5 hours earlier he was struck with kidney stone.
My father, though he had one kidney stone when I was a boy, was not prone to kidney stones like I was. It seemed as if the moment that I was relieved of my pain, my Father had picked up the torch and carried on the pain. I apologized to him, because I had prayed that the pain I was feeling would go away and it seems as if he had to experience whatever pain I was meant to finish bearing. The coincidence was too much to belief. He had just passed the stone and wanted to call me to tell me, since he knew that I was regularly experiencing kidney stones at the time. I resolved from that time on, to go ahead and suffer through whatever pain was being sent my way, because it appeared as if it was for a reason of some sort. I never prayed to have the pain leave again. Only that I was able to endure it.
Back to the Power Plant. One day Diana Brien and I were doing some work in the Coalyard Maintenance building, where the Labor Crew called home. We had driven the electric cart to the coalyard to work on whatever we were working on. The moment we sat in the cart to head back to the electric shop. Wham. I was hit with a kidney stone.
I didn’t want to mention it to Dee. There was no need in worrying her, or embarrassing me, so I just remained silent. I just held onto the side rail on the cart and closed my eyes. As we banged over the railroad tracks and down the gravel road on the hill, I just held on and thought…. “don’t throw up…. don’t throw up….” I concentrated real hard to try and ease the pain.
A yellow electric Cushman cart like this
When we reached the shop, without a word, I walked into the shop and straight into the bathroom, where I began peeling back clothing. That is, I undid my belt, and unsnapped my pants. I paced a few minutes… then feeling the kidney stone hit the bladder, I relieved myself and walked back out into the shop. I figure all the jostling about on the bumpy road in a card with no suspension system helped move the stone down quickly.
Dee and Scott Hubbard knew right away what had happened to me. There was no hiding the pale face and the sweat that was running down my face. I went in the office to rest a while. After a while I was ready to go back to work.
So, for all you kidney stone sufferers, here is a few words of advice. Today I have passed more than 55 kidney stones. I have never had one of them removed by any other means than passing them myself. I have passed very large kidney stones. Some so big you could crush them in your fingers.
My largest kidney stone was almost as large as this one.
First of all. Don’t panic. Kidney stones won’t kill you (at least not right away). The first thing that happens is that the muscles in your back tighten up. This is not a good thing. You need the muscles in your back to relax. Concentrate on relaxing those muscles. I used to use a handheld massager to try to relax the muscles. Now I just concentrate on relaxing the back. Today when I have a kidney stone, even a large one, I am usually able to pass it within hours.
A handheld massager like this
Pace a lot. Drink a lot of water. You will only move the kidney stone down into the bladder by drinking water and pacing (or a massager maybe). I walk back and forth in the house. I have a path that I take. I walk back and forth, then I sip water each time. Don’t worry about throwing up. It’s just part of the reaction to the pain.
I only have about one kidney stone of any size once each year these day. I found that taking a good dose of CitriCal each day (yes. Extra calcium, has reduced the number of kidney stones considerably).
If you are Catholic… then offer the pain up for souls in Purgatory. It is our belief that the painful time that a person suffers in purgatory can be shortened by someone else offering up their pain for someone in purgatory. Note the difference between suffering and pain. Pain is the sensation you receive. Suffering is what you do with it. When you accept the pain and you “embrace” it, then you suffer it. If you moan and groan a lot, you basically pass it on to others. You tell them…. “I am in Pain.” Then they empathize with you and in a sense “feel your pain.” If this helps comfort you, ok. If you want to offer it to someone in Purgatory, then accept your pain in silence (I realize this makes no sense for those who do not accept the idea of Purgatory).
For those Christians that are not Catholic, let me offer you another way to suffer the pain from a kidney stone when it is too intense to bear. St. Paul said the following: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col 1:24). With this in mind, the pain felt during a kidney stone has great meaning. It literally unites you with Christ during his Passion.
I realize this has been an odd break from the usual Power Plant Man Post. The power plant man posts for the remainder of the year will be those posts that include stories from the time that the plant was ruled under the “evil plant manager” Eldon Waugh. Beginning in January, for the next year, the post will be stories during the reign of the plant manager, Ron Kilman (1987 to 1994). During the year 2015, the stories will be during the reign of Bill Green until I left the electric company (1994 to 2001).
Comments from the original post:
-
Kidney stones are evil. I’ve had some, but none since 2009. The one change I made was to drink lots of water. I try to drink at least a half a gallon every day. The clearer your urine the better.
-
Yes Kev I was there and remember it well. Not that you moaned and groaned but when you set up straight in your seat and had a look on your face like. . .something was terribly wrong.
I offered to drive you home but you assured me you would be ok driving home. I did bum a ride with someone at Bill’s corner to work. -
Ouch…
Wise advice for dealing with pain or anything negatively stressful. Not sure all are equally equipped to follow it, though. One of these days, maybe they’ll find a means for rebalancing the chemistry for you… -
This is incredible! I was just talking tonight to another operator at work about passing kidney stones, I have only had two, one was when I was rolling up Valmy 1 steam turbine as a Control Room Operator, I had just started rolling and felt that familiar unmistakable pain, I turned the unit over to my assistant, went & peed out a potato shaped kidney stone about 1/2 the size of a pea & then finished putting the unit online! (Actually the concentration of bringing the unit on, mercifully helped give me something else to think about besides my pain)
Anyway Kevin, this is how I got rid of them. I started taking MAGNESIUM, a small dosage every day, it binds with the calcium & you urinate it out before it can form into a stone, works for me, I haven’t had one in twenty years now. If I feel that familiar pain in my back I know it’s because I’ve neglected taking my magnesium, so I double up for 2 or 3 days & problem solved.
I recommend stopping the calcium & taking the lowest dose magnesium you can get at the vitamin shop & see if the stones don’t stop for good. Take it from a fellow power plant man, kidney stone sufferer, and friend of Jesus 🙂
P.S. I don’t get a chance to read these every day you send them out, the best I can do is save them up & read them at work when I have the time, so I am usually far FAR behind your most recent posts, but I really enjoy them.
-
Wow. You’re very brave! My first thought was, like one of the last commenters-drink about a half gallon + a day, but I’d suggest distilled. Most of the ‘water stores’ where you fill your 5 gallon jugs will offer RO (reverse osmosis ) which still has some minerals, and straight up distilled water.
I drink the distilled like that, (it does taste a little flat, but you get used to it) because according to the ‘experts’ the lack of minerals makes your kidneys work far less hard as the water passes through (no accumulation of minerals possible from it) plus your body really benefits from all the direct and useable hydration….
Wonder if the electrical fields contributed to your condition as well?
Be well, my friend! Thinking of you, for sure!
-
A Power Plant Backstabbing Experience
Originally posted December 7, 2013:
Usually when I write a Power Plant Man post, the story is about the Power Plant Men and Women I worked with during the 20 years I spent at the Coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma. Today’s post, however, is more about a particular experience I had during this time period. Some Power Plant Men at the plant were witnesses to the events, but for the most part, this was personal.
This story begins early in the morning on New Years Day 1987. Some time around 3:00 am. I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night from the bed where I was sleeping at my parents house in Stillwater, Oklahoma where my wife and I were visiting on New Year’s Eve. It felt as if someone had crept into my room and stabbed me in the back with a knife!
I jumped out of bed, flailing to fight back, only to find that Kelly and I were alone in the room. A quick search of my back with my right hand told me that I didn’t have any external injury, even though the pain indicated that a knife of some sort was still piercing my lower back as if someone was working the knife around trying to increase the pain.
Not wanting to wake my wife, I left the room and went into the hallway. I figured I must be having a kidney stone. I seemed to recall a similar pain many years earlier when I was a boy. At that time the pain didn’t last too long, and I figured that I would just drink some water and hope that it would work itself out quickly.
Some of you who have experienced this pain probably guessed this from the start that I was having a kidney stone. there isn’t much that is more painful than having a kidney stone, especially if the kidney stone is of any size and spiky.
I did finally wake up my wife and tell her that I thought I was having a kidney stone. She is an RN, and I figured she would know what to do if I passed out from the pain. Besides, I didn’t want her to think the house was haunted if she woke up and heard some moaning and groaning out in the hallway.
Luckily for me, the kidney stone was small and without spikes. I was able to pass the stone through the painful stage in less than hour. It felt as if I had dropped a pebble right into my bladder. A quick trip to the bathroom, and I emerged with a little stone the size of a piece of sand.
The next morning (still New Year’s Day), we drove back to Ponca City where we lived at the time. We were only about 3 miles north of Stillwater when all of the sudden, I was hit with another stabbing pain. This time coming from the lower left side. It was that same experience as a few hours earlier.
I was able to pull the car into the gas station at Bill’s Corner. I climbed quickly out of the car, paced back and forth for a minute or two, and then climbed into the passenger seat as Kelly drove the rest of the way home. At some point on the way home. I think it was about the time we passed the power plant, the stone had worked its way down into the bladder and the pain was over.
We scheduled an appointment with a Urologist the following week, and when I arrived at the doctor’s office, I gave him the two kidney stones and he had them analyzed. They were the typical kidney stone made of Calcium Oxalate. The doctor’s advice? Cut down on my calcium intake. Ok. So, I stopped drinking a glass of milk each morning before I left for work.
The result was that every 3 months I churned out another kidney stone. For the next 10 and a half year, every 3 months I had a kidney stone. Sometimes they were easy. Other times they were difficult. It depended on the size and shape of the stones.
Notice the irregular shape of these kidney stones
I began saving them in one of those cases that people use for their contact lenses. The ones that have a side for the left contact, and one for the right contact.
A contact lens case with an L and an R for the Left and Right eye.
I would put the kidney stones from my left kidney in the Left side, and the right Kidney in the R section. How did I know which was which? It was easy. Was I being stabbed in the back on the left or the right.
So, what does this have to do with Power Plant Men? Well, at times the Power Plant men had to deal with me while I was in the middle of having a Kidney stone. Most of the times it was just as a bystander sharing in my misery as they watched me pace back and forth as pale as a zombie. Other times it was riding shotgun in peril of their lives as I struggled to bring my car safely to a stop while writhing in pain.
Here are some instances I remember. One day when Scott Hubbard and either Toby O’Brien or Fred Turner were in my car as we were driving to work, I was suddenly hit with a bat across my lower back. I vaguely remember saying, “Oh No!” I asked Scott Hubbard, who was sitting in front with me to dump the contents of my lunchbox out on the floor of the car.
You see, when a kidney stone is in full swing and the feeling of intense pain begins to build up, there is a plexus of nerves around the kidneys that send a message to the stomach that it would be best if the stomach is empty. Meaning that any recently eaten breakfast should be evacuated as quickly as possible.
I struggled to remain conscious and sane and to keep the car on the road. We were only about a mile from Bill’s Corner (where I had stopped during my second kidney stone on New Years Eve (many years earlier). So, I headed for there as a place to jump out of the car. Only this was a much worse kidney stone that during the last time I pulled into the gas station to switch sides with my wife. I was going to have to turn around and go home. I wasn’t going to be passing this one any time soon.
When I climbed out of the car, I made it to the back of the car just in time to eject the contents of my stomach onto the pavement. When you are sick and you vomit, it usually makes you feel better because that it over. When you have a kidney stone, vomiting is only about as much relief as taking a breathe.
Luckily some other Power Plant Men had stopped at the gas station to fill up their vehicle and they had enough room to take Scott and Toby, (or was it Fred… Fred? You read these posts…. was it you?). I asked Scott to tell our foreman that I wasn’t going to be in for work today.
I climbed back into my Honda and pointed the car toward home. With my Little Playmate Lunchbox open at my side, I drove home. When I walked in the door at home, my wife immediately knew what was happening. She comforted me by saying, “Poor Beast.” While I began the ritual of drinking water and pacing around the house.
A lunchbox exactly like this
You see…. At this time I no longer went to the doctor or the hospital when attacked with a kidney stone. I had learned my lesson many years earlier.
Early on, in Ponca City, when I had a kidney stone, I went to the hospital bent over in pain and having visions of my life passing before my eyes as if I was already in the middle of judgement day. When I would arrive in the emergency room, they would give me a shot of morphine to ease the pain.
The problem with morphine was that I was already using all my mental faculties to suppress the pain, and as soon as the morphine would begin taking effect, it took away my ability to block the mentally blocked pain. I would end up, for about 20 minutes while the morphine was taking its full effect on my senses, climbing the walls in really intense pain. Then eventually they would send me home where I would be sick from the morphine for about a week even though I may have passed the kidney stone in a day or two.
During the worst kidney stone I encountered while I was living in Ponca City, (during the first 3 years that we were married), it took about 5 day to pass this one stone. It was especially rough. Usually the only relief I had from this particular stone was to pass out from the pain. Pacing didn’t seem to work. Drinking water didn’t seem to work. It seemed like this particular stone was stuck right at the bottom of the Ureters. That is, the urinary tract just before the bladder. I knew that if it would only fall into the bladder, the intense pain would be over.
I remember how this passed very clearly. I was kneeling on the side of the bed saying a Rosary (the Sorrowful Mysteries of course). One of the Sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary is to meditate on the Scourging at the Pillar. That was what I felt I was going through at the time, so I had been saying the sorrowful mysteries all week.
A rosary
I finally prayed to God something I usually refrained from doing…. I said to Him. “Father…. this is enough. This is all I can take. Please take this away from me.” Almost immediately the kidney stone dropped into my bladder. Oh my gosh! I climbed up into the bed and fell asleep. The pain had finally ended after 5 hard days.
I was awoken 5 hours later. My Father was calling me from Florida where he was working at a Veterinary Clinic training the employees of the clinic for continuous education. (See the post “I Think I Can, I Think I Can and Other Power Plant Man Chants” to learn more about my Father and Tom Houghton who owned the Veterinary Clinic). He told me that about 5 hours earlier he was struck with kidney stone.
My father, though he had one kidney stone when I was a boy, was not prone to kidney stones like I was. It seemed as if the moment that I was relieved of my pain, my Father had picked up the torch and carried on the pain. I apologized to him, because I had prayed that the pain I was feeling would go away and it seems as if he had to experience whatever pain I was meant to finish bearing. The coincidence was too much to belief. He had just passed the stone and wanted to call me to tell me, since he knew that I was regularly experiencing kidney stones at the time. I resolved from that time on, to go ahead and suffer through whatever pain was being sent my way, because it appeared as if it was for a reason of some sort. I never prayed to have the pain leave again. Only that I was able to endure it.
Back to the Power Plant. One day Diana Brien and I were doing some work in the Coalyard Maintenance building, where the Labor Crew called home. We had driven the electric cart to the coalyard to work on whatever we were working on. The moment we sat in the cart to head back to the electric shop. Wham. I was hit with a kidney stone.
I didn’t want to mention it to Dee. There was no need in worrying her, or embarrassing me, so I just remained silent. I just held onto the side rail on the cart and closed my eyes. As we banged over the railroad tracks and down the gravel road on the hill, I just held on and thought…. “don’t throw up…. don’t throw up….” I concentrated real hard to try and ease the pain.
A yellow electric Cushman cart like this
When we reached the shop, without a word, I walked into the shop and straight into the bathroom, where I began peeling back clothing. That is, I undid my belt, and unsnapped my pants. I paced a few minutes… then feeling the kidney stone hit the bladder, I relieved myself and walked back out into the shop. I figure all the jostling about on the bumpy road in a card with no suspension system helped move the stone down quickly.
Dee and Scott Hubbard knew right away what had happened to me. There was no hiding the pale face and the sweat that was running down my face. I went in the office to rest a while. After a while I was ready to go back to work.
So, for all you kidney stone sufferers, here is a few words of advice. Today I have passed more than 55 kidney stones. I have never had one of them removed by any other means than passing them myself. I have passed very large kidney stones. Some so big you could crush them in your fingers.
My largest kidney stone was almost as large as this one.
First of all. Don’t panic. Kidney stones won’t kill you (at least not right away). The first thing that happens is that the muscles in your back tighten up. This is not a good thing. You need the muscles in your back to relax. Concentrate on relaxing those muscles. I used to use a handheld massager to try to relax the muscles. Now I just concentrate on relaxing the back. Today when I have a kidney stone, even a large one, I am usually able to pass it within hours.
A handheld massager like this
Pace a lot. Drink a lot of water. You will only move the kidney stone down into the bladder by drinking water and pacing (or a massager maybe). I walk back and forth in the house. I have a path that I take. I walk back and forth, then I sip water each time. Don’t worry about throwing up. It’s just part of the reaction to the pain.
I only have about one kidney stone of any size once each year these day. I found that taking a good dose of CitriCal each day (yes. Extra calcium, has reduced the number of kidney stones considerably).
If you are Catholic… then offer the pain up for souls in Purgatory. It is our belief that the painful time that a person suffers in purgatory can be shortened by someone else offering up their pain for someone in purgatory. Note the difference between suffering and pain. Pain is the sensation you receive. Suffering is what you do with it. When you accept the pain and you “embrace” it, then you suffer it. If you moan and groan a lot, you basically pass it on to others. You tell them…. “I am in Pain.” Then they empathize with you and in a sense “feel your pain.” If this helps comfort you, ok. If you want to offer it to someone in Purgatory, then accept your pain in silence (I realize this makes no sense for those who do not accept the idea of Purgatory).
For those Christians that are not Catholic, let me offer you another way to suffer the pain from a kidney stone when it is too intense to bear. St. Paul said the following: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col 1:24). With this in mind, the pain felt during a kidney stone has great meaning. It literally unites you with Christ during his Passion.
I realize this has been an odd break from the usual Power Plant Man Post. The power plant man posts for the remainder of the year will be those posts that include stories from the time that the plant was ruled under the “evil plant manager” Eldon Waugh. Beginning in January, for the next year, the post will be stories during the reign of the plant manager, Ron Kilman (1987 to 1994). During the year 2015, the stories will be during the reign of Bill Green until I left the electric company (1994 to 2001).
Comments from the original post:
-
Kidney stones are evil. I’ve had some, but none since 2009. The one change I made was to drink lots of water. I try to drink at least a half a gallon every day. The clearer your urine the better.
-
Yes Kev I was there and remember it well. Not that you moaned and groaned but when you set up straight in your seat and had a look on your face like. . .something was terribly wrong.
I offered to drive you home but you assured me you would be ok driving home. I did bum a ride with someone at Bill’s corner to work. -
Ouch…
Wise advice for dealing with pain or anything negatively stressful. Not sure all are equally equipped to follow it, though. One of these days, maybe they’ll find a means for rebalancing the chemistry for you… -
This is incredible! I was just talking tonight to another operator at work about passing kidney stones, I have only had two, one was when I was rolling up Valmy 1 steam turbine as a Control Room Operator, I had just started rolling and felt that familiar unmistakable pain, I turned the unit over to my assistant, went & peed out a potato shaped kidney stone about 1/2 the size of a pea & then finished putting the unit online! (Actually the concentration of bringing the unit on, mercifully helped give me something else to think about besides my pain)
Anyway Kevin, this is how I got rid of them. I started taking MAGNESIUM, a small dosage every day, it binds with the calcium & you urinate it out before it can form into a stone, works for me, I haven’t had one in twenty years now. If I feel that familiar pain in my back I know it’s because I’ve neglected taking my magnesium, so I double up for 2 or 3 days & problem solved.
I recommend stopping the calcium & taking the lowest dose magnesium you can get at the vitamin shop & see if the stones don’t stop for good. Take it from a fellow power plant man, kidney stone sufferer, and friend of Jesus 🙂
P.S. I don’t get a chance to read these every day you send them out, the best I can do is save them up & read them at work when I have the time, so I am usually far FAR behind your most recent posts, but I really enjoy them.
-
Wow. You’re very brave! My first thought was, like one of the last commenters-drink about a half gallon + a day, but I’d suggest distilled. Most of the ‘water stores’ where you fill your 5 gallon jugs will offer RO (reverse osmosis ) which still has some minerals, and straight up distilled water.
I drink the distilled like that, (it does taste a little flat, but you get used to it) because according to the ‘experts’ the lack of minerals makes your kidneys work far less hard as the water passes through (no accumulation of minerals possible from it) plus your body really benefits from all the direct and useable hydration….
Wonder if the electrical fields contributed to your condition as well?
Be well, my friend! Thinking of you, for sure!
-
Power Plant Catholic Calibrating Cathodic Protection
Originally posted October 25, 2015.
It was no secret at the Coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma that I was Catholic. When I was a summer help and working on the labor crew, I wore a large crucifix under my tee shirt. I had worn the crucifix since I was 13 years old.
I wore a crucifix just like this only one size larger
When I joined the electric shop I had to take it off. Electricians should not wear any kind of metal jewelry for the obvious reason that if it were to come into contact with a “hot” circuit, the effect would be the same as if I wrapped the live electric wire around my neck. In other words… I could easily have been electrocuted.
In place of the crucifix, I wore a Scapular instead. Wearing a cord around my neck was unsafe enough, but it didn’t take much for the cord to break away from the piece of cloth on either end.
The Brown Scapular. It is worn so that one of cloth is in the front and the other is in the back.
So, as I said, most everyone at the plant knew that I was Catholic. It was common for someone to see the cloth with the picture on it sticking out the back of my tee shirt and ask me, “What is that around your neck with the postage stamp on it?” I usually hesitated to answer the question because I understood that living in Oklahoma where there was only a 5% Catholic population, the Catholic Church was greatly misunderstood and I really didn’t want to enter a lengthy discussion about why Catholics do what they do.
Diana Brien (my bucket buddy) helped me out one day when someone asked me why I wore the scapular, and I was hesitating trying to decide if they wanted a short answer or a long one, when Diana broke in and said, “It’s a Catholic thing.” I quickly agreed. “Yeah. It’s a Catholic thing. It reminds me to be good. I need all the reminders I can get. Sort of like ‘Catholic Protection’.”
Before I discuss what a Power Plant Catholic has to do with checking Cathodic Protection, let me just add that though I wasn’t the only Catholic at the plant, I was sort of the “Token” Catholic. Which meant, when someone wanted a straight answer about what the Catholic Church believes about any subject, I was the person that they turned to for answers.
Living in the midst of the Bible Belt, Monday mornings is when most of the questions would be asked. Preachers from various religions would occasionally say something during their Church service about Catholics and their “strange” beliefs. So, the next day, some would come to me to hear the other side of the story.
I will list a few questions…. “Why do Catholics say, ‘Hell Mary’?” “Is it true that the Pope has 666 on his Tiara?” “Is it true that Catholics are not able to say the entire ‘Our Father’?” “Are Catholics really against abortion because they need newborn babies to sacrifice in the basement of their Church?” “Is it true that Catholics can’t say for sure that they are going to heaven?” Aren’t Catholics cannibals by believing they are eating the real Body and Blood of Jesus?” “Don’t Catholics believe that they can do anything wrong they want because they know that they can just go to confession and have it forgiven?”
These are all actual questions I was asked when I was an electrician at the power plant. I understood why the Power Plant Men were asking me the questions, and I respectfully answered them. I would rather they felt comfortable asking me these questions than just going around thinking that I was some kind of barbaric pagan behind my back.
By feeling free to talk to me about being Catholic, I knew that I was respected by the Power Plant Men even though I was from a religion that they viewed as far from their own. There was one day when this became obvious to me.
I was on the second landing on Unit 2 boiler just about to enter the boiler enclosure when Floyd Coburn walked out. He was nicknamed “Coal Burner” partly because he was black, and partly because he worked in the coal yard for a long time, but mostly because his last name was Coburn which sounds la lot like Coal Burner. Someone figured that out one day, and called him that, and it stuck. When Floyd came out of the enclosure he stopped me. He tapped me on the arm and signaled for me to follow him.
We stepped out of the walkway a short distance and he held out his fist in front of me. Floyd was built like a wrestler. Actually, he was State Champion of the 148 lb weight class for 4A High Schools in Oklahoma in 1972 and 1973. This meant a lot because in Oklahoma, Wrestling was an important sport. He also had earned an associates degree at Rogers State College in Claremore.
Not once did I ever hear Floyd Coburn brag about his accomplishments, or even mention them. I suspect that few people if any knew much about Floyd’s background because as much fun as he was to work with, he was very humble, as are most True Power Plant Men.
Floyd was grinning at me as if he was about to show me a trick or a joke or something. Then he opened his fist. In the middle of his palm he held a small crucifix. The size of one on a typical rosary.
A rosary
When I saw the cross I looked up at Floyd and he was grinning ear-to-ear. I gave him a puzzled looked. Then he told me. “I found Jesus! I just wanted you to know. I know you would understand.”
I felt very privileged that Floyd felt like sharing his experience with me. I thanked him for letting me know. I patted him on the shoulder and we went on our way.
Throughout the years after that, Floyd would set me down every now and then and share how he was expanding his faith with Jesus. He finally became a minister and re-opened a Church in Ponca City where his family used to worship when he was a boy. Floyd was the Pastor of the Broken Heart Ministers Church.
I always felt blessed that he came to me to tell me about his journey. The last time I talked with Floyd Coburn was around Christmas, 2005. I had dropped in at the plant to say hello while I was visiting Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Floyd wanted to talk to me about the progress he was making as Pastor of the Church in Ponca City. He explained the troubles he was having and asked for my prayers. He felt as if the devil was fighting against him. I assured him I have always kept him in my prayers.
One day around the end of October 2006, I felt compelled to write to the plant about a Power Plant Man David Hankins, who had died after my first summer as a summer help in 1979. I have always remembered him on November 1, All Saints Day, because I know that he’s in heaven as he had a tremendous heart.
I hadn’t written to the plant for some time. When I did, I received a couple of e-mails back telling me that Floyd Coburn had died on August 25 during his son’s birthday party. He died of a sudden heart attack.
Though I felt very sorrowful for Floyd’s family because of the circumstance surrounding his death, I felt a great relief for Floyd. I know he had a great desire to be united with Jesus Christ.
So. Now that I discussed some of my experience as a Catholic at the Power Plant, let me tell you about Cathodic Protection (that is not a misspelling of ‘Catholic Protection’).
Have you ever noticed on a car battery how one post is more shiny, than the other post? Especially after it has been in your car for a while. It’s not real noticeable so you may not have realized it. The shiny post is the Cathode or Positive post. Well. Cathodic Protection is just that.
You see the main ingredient besides Power Plant Men at a Power Plant is Iron. The boilers are almost entirely made from the stuff. There are underground and above ground pipes running all over the place. Well. You can paint most of the iron that is above the ground to keep it from rusting, but it doesn’t work very well when you bury the pipes and structure in the dirt.
So, how do you protect your investment? The answer is by using Cathodic Protection. There is a grounding grid made of copper wires buried in the dirt that ties to all the metal objects around the plant grounds. This not only helps absorb things like lightening strikes, but it also allows for the seemingly miraculous anti-rust system known as “Cathodic Protection”.
This is how Cathodic Protection works… You bury a large piece of metal in the dirt and you tie a negative DC (direct current) power source to it. Then you tie the positive power to the grounding grid. By creating a positive charge on the boiler structure and the piping you inhibit rusting, while you enhance the corrosion on the large piece of buried metal with the negative charge.
A nifty trick if you ask me. The only thing about using cathodic protection is that you have to keep an eye on it because the large piece of buried metal will eventually need to be replaced, or the charge will need to be adjusted as it decays in order to protect all the other metal in the plant.
A Cathodic Protection Rectifier like those at the Power Plant
The Power Plant doesn’t just have one source for cathodic protection. There are numerous boxes placed around the plant that protected a specific set of equipment and buildings. So, when it came time to do Cathodic Protection checks, we would go to each station and take readings. If there were anomalies in the readings then someone would be alerted, and tap settings may be adjusted. In extreme cases, the large piece of metal would need to be replaced with a new one…. Though I never saw that happen.
Once I understood the concept of how Cathodic Protection worked I came to the conclusion that what Catholic Protection was doing for me, Cathodic Protection was doing for the Power Plant. It was helping to prevent corrosion.
If you don’t keep a close watch on how well your Cathodic Protection is doing, then you won’t realize when it needs to be re-calibrated. I have found the same thing applies with how well I am doing as a person. Sometimes I find I need to do a little adjustment to keep myself in line…
When checking a Cathodic Protection rectifier, when you use your multimeter to check the voltages, you have to put your leads and usually your hands into a container of transformer oil. This is somewhat messy and unpleasant. But we realize that it is something that just has to be done. We may wear latex disposable gloves to help keep our hands from soaking in the oil, but inevitably, I would end up dripping some on my jeans.
It’s the same way when trying to adjust myself to be a better person. It seems a little unpleasant at first, but you know it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes it’s swallowing your pride. Sometimes it’s admitting that you are wrong. Sometimes it is just getting off your duff and stop being so lazy.
This is why I always felt so honored working with such True Power Plant Men. They were the ones that, even though they struggled in their individual lives like the rest of us, they always kept their mind on what was right and used that as a guide to make the right decisions.
“I Think I Can, I Think I Can” and Other Power Plant Chants
Originally Posted on August 3, 2012 (I added a picture of Walt Oswalt):
The second summer as Summer Help at the Coal-fired Power Plant, was when I first worked out of the Automotive garage. It wasn’t finished during the first summer. The second summer when I began working in the garage, Jim Heflin, Larry Riley, Doug House and Ken Conrad were the regular workers that mowed the fields using tractors with brush hogs, as I have explained in previous posts. A summer help that also worked with us from Ponca City named David Foster was also able to mow grass using one of the new Ford tractors that we painted Orange to easily identify them as belonging to the Electric Company in Oklahoma.
I learned to drive the tractors later in the summer when I worked irrigating the fields in our attempt to grow grass (as told in the post “When a Power Plant Man Talks, It Pays To Listen“). The next summer I was able to mow grass using a Brush Hog pulled behind a tractor:
Almost Like this without the safety guards and just about as new
It didn’t take long before I had to mow grass on the side of the dam (and other levies). The side of the dam has a very sharp incline, so while mowing grass on the side of the dam you sat more on the side of the tractor seat than on the seat itself. Heavy weights were put on the front of the tractor and the back tires on the tractor were turned around so that they were farther apart than they would be otherwise. This gave the tractor a lower, wider profile and a lower center of gravity helping to keep it from rolling over sideways down the slope.
Tractor Weights that fit on the front of the tractor
I had watched Jim, Larry, Ken and David mow grass along some very steep inclines the summer before without any tractors tumbling over, so I felt like it must be safe, even though looking at the tractors they still seemed a little “top heavy”.
The dam had a slope this steep but much was taller
It was quite an eerie feeling the first time I actually mowed a slope this steep. I experienced the same feeling as you have on a roller coaster when it hits the top of the hill and flings you down real fast when the tractor tire on the downhill side of the tractor rolls into a washed out spot on the dam causing the tractor to roll over just a little farther than you are used to. It was definitely an adrenaline rush each time this happened, because it felt like the tractor was going to roll over.
That is when I remembered the story about the little engine that was trying to pull the train over the steep mountain, and he kept chanting, “I think I can, I think I can” over and over. So, between each decade of the Rosary that I was saying while counting Hail Mary’s on my fingers, I added in an “I Think I can…” as an added prayer before the next “Our Father”.
The Little Power Plant Coal Train that Could
In the time that I worked as a summer help we never turned over a tractor while mowing on a slope. That isn’t to say that the tractors didn’t start to tip over. It’s just that if you realize that the large back tractor tire has left the ground and is spinning freely, you could quickly turn the steering wheel downhill so that the tractor would turn downhill preventing it from rolling completely over. The weight of the brush hog on the back helped to keep the tractor snug against the sloping dam.
Years later, after I left the Power Plant, in 2006, my father’s best friend, Tom Houghton, a Veterinarian in Lakeland, Florida was killed in a tractor accident at his family’s farm in Polo, Missouri. This greatly effected my father. He has not recovered from the loss of his friend still today. As I was mowing grass and picturing my sudden demise if a tractor were to roll down the hill, my main concern was the sorrow my family would have felt by my death. Needless to say… I never toppled a tractor.
It was during that same summer in 1981 that I first worked with the Power Plant Icon Walt Oswalt. Every plant must have at least one person like Walt. He is the type of person that once he has something in his mind about how to do something, nothing is going to change it. I know many different stories about Walt Oswalt that have been shared with me, but this is one of my own. Walt is a sandy-haired Irish-looking man that always reminded me of the little old man, Jackie Wright, on the Benny Hill Show.
Walt reminded me of Jackie Wright only with more hair
I now have an actual picture of Walt that I found laying around….
Walt Oswalt — See the resemblence? not much more hair
One Saturday while I had caught a ride to the Power Plant to do “coal cleanup” the crew was asked who would like to wash down belts 10 and 11. These are the 1/2 mile long belts that go from the coalyard all the way up to the plant. You can see them on the left side of the picture of the plant on the side of this post. Finding the opportunity for a challenge, I volunteered.
I made my way up to the top of the Transfer tower where I found Walt Oswalt. He was working out of the coalyard at the time and was helping us wash down 10 and 11 belt. Wearing rainsuits and rubber boots we began at the top and worked our way down. It didn’t look like this belt had been washed down for a while. We could blast the tin enclosure with the high pressure hoses we were using to completely wash off all the coal dust that had built up over time. This looked like it was going to be a fun job.
Then Walt pointed out to me that most of our work was under the belt where the coal had built up almost solid up to the belt itself so that the coal was rubbing on the rubber Uniroyal conveyor belt. Remember, if the conveyor belt goes up, it has to go back down also. So underneath the conveyor is where the belt returns. it is a big loop.
Directly underneath this conveyor is the return for the belt
So, Walt Oswalt and I spent the rest of the day laying on the grating so we could see under the belts washing the coal down the slope of belt 10 and 11. Under the conveyor is another set of rollers that the rubber conveyor belt rides on it’s return trip to the Crusher Tower. During this time there were two chants that came to my mind…. One was, “Whistle While you Work”, since we seemed to be in some kind of coal mine working away like the Seven Dwarfs (you know… Walt Disney… Walt Oswalt). The other one was the song, “Workin’ In a Coal Mine” (…goin’ down down).
Disney’s Seven Dwarfs Mining
At one particular spot the coal had built up and packed itself in there so much that one of the rollers wasn’t able to turn and the belt was just rubbing on the roller. After we had washed the coal away we could see that the roller was not able to turn still because the belt had worn it flat on one side.
Walt called the Control Room to shutdown the belt so that we could look at it. We could see that the roller was bad. For some reason the other belt (11) was out of commission so without this belt running, no coal was being sent up to the plant. The coal silos and the surge bin hold enough coal for a while but not for too long during the summer when the units need to run at their maximum rate to supply the electricity needed by the customers. We could have the belt shutdown for a while, but not for too long.
I followed Walt down the belt to the Crusher Tower wondering what he had in mind. He didn’t tell me what we were going to do, so I just gathered my clues by watching what he did. When we came out of the belt and left the Crusher I was surprised that it was already dark outside. When I had left the Maintenance Shop it had been morning. Now it was dark. We had spent the entire day (12 hours at this point) in Belt 10 and 11. I didn’t remember ever taking a break or eating lunch. Just holding the high pressure water hose, directing the stream down under the belt… all day.
We walked over to a new building that was still being built called the Coalyard Maintenance Building. This was the new building that was going to be used by the new Labor Crew in a few months. Outside the building to one side was a Conex Box, as I have described before. This is the kind of large box that you see on the CSX train commercials that are being transported by trains.
A Conex Box
We used them to store equipment used for specific jobs or crews. In this case, the Conex box had conveyor equipment in it. Walt found a long straight roller that is used under the Number 10 and 11 belts and tied it to a 2 wheel dolly. We rolled it back to the Crusher Tower and began the long trek back up the belt. I was pulling the dolly and Walt was carrying some large wrenches.
When we arrived at the spot where the roller had been worn, Walt called the control room to let them know we were beginning to work. We pulled the safety cords on the side of the conveyor to ensure that the belt would not start, even though we were assured that a Clearance had been placed on the breaker in the Main Switchgear (where I began my first war with the spiders a year later. See the post “Power Plant Spider Wars and Bugs in the Basement“).
Walt climbed over the belt and I stayed on the main walkway. We worked upside down for a while unbolting the roller. At one point we decided we needed some more suitable tools and headed back down the belt to the Coalyard Garage where the heavy equipment is serviced and brought back some large ratchet wrenches and sockets with an extension.
Socket Wrench with extension
I think the chant, “I think I can, I think I can” was running through my head on our second trip back up the conveyor belt. I think it was around 10pm. We finished changing the roller and decided to leave the old one laying in the walkway for the night. Walt said he would bring it back to the coalyard on Monday morning.
We made our way back to the Maintenance shop where I took off the rain suit and rubber boots that I had been wearing all day and put my regular boots back on. I went up to the control room and asked if anyone could give me a ride to Stillwater since the evening shift of operators were just getting off at 11pm. I believe it was Charles Buchanan that gave me a ride home that night in his little beat up pickup truck.
I never worked directly with Charles Buchanan since he was an operator. The first impression that one may have is that he looks like a caricature of a construction worker in a comic strip.
First Impression of Charles Buchanan
Charles reaffirmed my belief that Power Plant Men are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. There were a few times when I caught a ride with Charles to or from the plant. Each time I felt honored to ride in his truck. If I think about what chant was running through my mind as we were on our way home at night, I think it would be something like the song “You’ve Got a Friend”: “Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call, Lord, I’ll be there, yeah, yeah, you’ve got a friend….”
That is what all real Power Plant men and linemen are like. Wherever you look in the United States, these great men and women work tirelessly to keep you safe by providing electricity to your homes. Something we take for granted until the power goes out.
Recently when the power went out in the east, the linemen from this electric company drove with pride, eager to help those in need:
A convoy of Electric Company Trucks on their way from Oklahoma to Indiana to help return power to millions of Americans in the dark
Below I have included the lyrics for the song “You’ve Got a Friend” by Carole King and her husband James Taylor. See how well it fits those people that work around the clock bringing the power to your home:
You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I’ll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call and I’ll be there, yeah, yeah,
you’ve got a friend.
If the sky above you should turn dark and full of clouds
and that old north wind should begin to blow,
keep your head together and call my name out loud.
Soon I will be knocking upon your door.
You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I’ll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call and I’ll be there.
Hey, ain’t it good to know that you’ve got a friend? People can be so cold.
They’ll hurt you and desert you. Well, they’ll take your soul if you let them,
oh yeah, but don’t you let them.
You just call out my name, and you know where ever I am
I’ll come running to see you again.
Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you have to do is call, Lord, I’ll be there, yeah, yeah,
you’ve got a friend. You’ve got a friend.
Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a friend. Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a friend.
Oh, yeah, yeah, you’ve got a friend.
Here is a YouTube video of James Taylor singing this song:
If your aren’t able to play youtube videos directly from the picture… here is the link: “You’ve got a Friend“
A Power Plant Backstabbing Experience — Repost
Originally posted December 7, 2013:
Usually when I write a Power Plant Man post, the story is about the Power Plant Men and Women I worked with during the 20 years I spent at the Coal-fired Power Plant in North Central Oklahoma. Today’s post, however, is more about a particular experience I had during this time period. Some Power Plant Men at the plant were witnesses to the events, but for the most part, this was personal.
This story begins early in the morning on New Years Day 1987. Some time around 3:00 am. I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night from the bed where I was sleeping at my parents house in Stillwater, Oklahoma where my wife and I were visiting on New Year’s Eve. It felt as if someone had crept into my room and stabbed me in the back with a knife!
I jumped out of bed, flailing to fight back, only to find that Kelly and I were alone in the room. A quick search of my back with my right hand told me that I didn’t have any external injury, even though the pain indicated that a knife of some sort was still piercing my lower back as if someone was working the knife around trying to increase the pain.
Not wanting to wake my wife, I left the room and went into the hallway. I figured I must be having a kidney stone. I seemed to recall a similar pain many years earlier when I was a boy. At that time the pain didn’t last too long, and I figured that I would just drink some water and hope that it would work itself out quickly.
Some of you who have experienced this pain probably guessed this from the start that I was having a kidney stone. there isn’t much that is more painful than having a kidney stone, especially if the kidney stone is of any size and spiky.
I did finally wake up my wife and tell her that I thought I was having a kidney stone. She is an RN, and I figured she would know what to do if I passed out from the pain. Besides, I didn’t want her to think the house was haunted if she woke up and heard some moaning and groaning out in the hallway.
Luckily for me, the kidney stone was small and without spikes. I was able to pass the stone through the painful stage in less than hour. It felt as if I had dropped a pebble right into my bladder. A quick trip to the bathroom, and I emerged with a little stone the size of a piece of sand.
The next morning (still New Year’s Day), we drove back to Ponca City where we lived at the time. We were only about 3 miles north of Stillwater when all of the sudden, I was hit with another stabbing pain. This time coming from the lower left side. It was that same experience as a few hours earlier.
I was able to pull the car into the gas station at Bill’s Corner. I climbed quickly out of the car, paced back and forth for a minute or two, and then climbed into the passenger seat as Kelly drove the rest of the way home. At some point on the way home. I think it was about the time we passed the power plant, the stone had worked its way down into the bladder and the pain was over.
We scheduled an appointment with a Urologist the following week, and when I arrived at the doctor’s office, I gave him the two kidney stones and he had them analyzed. They were the typical kidney stone made of Calcium Oxalate. The doctor’s advice? Cut down on my calcium intake. Ok. So, I stopped drinking a glass of milk each morning before I left for work.
The result was that every 3 months I churned out another kidney stone. For the next 10 and a half year, every 3 months I had a kidney stone. Sometimes they were easy. Other times they were difficult. It depended on the size and shape of the stones.
Notice the irregular shape of these kidney stones
I began saving them in one of those cases that people use for their contact lenses. The ones that have a side for the left contact, and one for the right contact.
A contact lens case with an L and an R for the Left and Right eye.
I would put the kidney stones from my left kidney in the Left side, and the right Kidney in the R section. How did I know which was which? It was easy. Was I being stabbed in the back on the left or the right.
So, what does this have to do with Power Plant Men? Well, at times the Power Plant men had to deal with me while I was in the middle of having a Kidney stone. Most of the times it was just as a bystander sharing in my misery as they watched me pace back and forth as pale as a zombie. Other times it was riding shotgun in peril of their lives as I struggled to bring my car safely to a stop while writhing in pain.
Here are some instances I remember. One day when Scott Hubbard and either Toby O’Brien or Fred Turner were in my car as we were driving to work, I was suddenly hit with a bat across my lower back. I vaguely remember saying, “Oh No!” I asked Scott Hubbard, who was sitting in front with me to dump the contents of my lunchbox out on the floor of the car.
You see, when a kidney stone is in full swing and the feeling of intense pain begins to build up, there is a plexus of nerves around the kidneys that send a message to the stomach that it would be best if the stomach is empty. Meaning that any recently eaten breakfast should be evacuated as quickly as possible.
I struggled to remain conscious and sane and to keep the car on the road. We were only about a mile from Bill’s Corner (where I had stopped during my second kidney stone on New Years Eve (many years earlier). So, I headed for there as a place to jump out of the car. Only this was a much worse kidney stone that during the last time I pulled into the gas station to switch sides with my wife. I was going to have to turn around and go home. I wasn’t going to be passing this one any time soon.
When I climbed out of the car, I made it to the back of the car just in time to eject the contents of my stomach onto the pavement. When you are sick and you vomit, it usually makes you feel better because that it over. When you have a kidney stone, vomiting is only about as much relief as taking a breathe.
Luckily some other Power Plant Men had stopped at the gas station to fill up their vehicle and they had enough room to take Scott and Toby, (or was it Fred… Fred? You read these posts…. was it you?). I asked Scott to tell our foreman that I wasn’t going to be in for work today.
I climbed back into my Honda and pointed the car toward home. With my Little Playmate Lunchbox open at my side, I drove home. When I walked in the door at home, my wife immediately knew what was happening. She comforted me by saying, “Poor Beast.” While I began the ritual of drinking water and pacing around the house.
A lunchbox exactly like this
You see…. At this time I no longer went to the doctor or the hospital when attacked with a kidney stone. I had learned my lesson many years earlier.
Early on, in Ponca City, when I had a kidney stone, I went to the hospital bent over in pain and having visions of my life passing before my eyes as if I was already in the middle of judgement day. When I would arrive in the emergency room, they would give me a shot of morphine to ease the pain.
The problem with morphine was that I was already using all my mental faculties to suppress the pain, and as soon as the morphine would begin taking effect, it took away my ability to block the mentally block the pain. I would end up, for about 20 minutes while the morphine was taking its full effect on my senses, climbing the walls in really intense pain. Then eventually they would send me home where I would be sick from the morphine for about a week even though I may have passed the kidney stone in a day or two.
During the worst kidney stone I encountered while I was living in Ponca City, (during the first 3 years that we were married), it took about 5 day to pass this one stone. It was especially rough. Usually the only relief I had from this particular stone was to pass out from the pain. Pacing didn’t seem to work. Drinking water didn’t seem to work. It seemed like this particular stone was stuck right at the bottom of the Ureters. That is, the urinary tract just before the bladder. I knew that if it would only fall into the bladder, the intense pain would be over.
I remember how this passed very clearly. I was kneeling on the side of the bed saying a Rosary (the Sorrowful Mysteries of course). One of the Sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary is to meditate on the Scourging at the Pillar. That was what I felt I was going through at the time, so I had been saying the sorrowful mysteries all week.
A rosary
I finally prayed to God something I usually refrained from doing…. I said to Him. “Father…. this is enough. This is all I can take. Please take this away from me.” Almost immediately the kidney stone dropped into my bladder. Oh my gosh! I climbed up into the bed and fell asleep. The pain had finally ended after 5 hard days.
I was awoken 5 hours later. My Father was calling me from Florida where he was working at a Veterinary Clinic training the employees of the clinic for continuous education. (See the post “I Think I Can, I Think I Can and Other Power Plant Man Chants” to learn more about my Father and Tom Houghton who owned the Veterinary Clinic). He told me that about 5 hours earlier he was struck with kidney stone.
My father, though he had one kidney stone when I was a boy, was not prone to kidney stones like I was. It seemed as if the moment that I was relieved of my pain, my Father had picked up the torch and carried on the pain. I apologized to him, because I had prayed that the pain I was feeling would go away and it seems as if he had to experience whatever pain I was meant to finish bearing. The coincidence was too much to belief. He had just passed the stone and wanted to call me to tell me, since he knew that I was regularly experiencing kidney stones at the time. I resolved from that time on, to go ahead and suffer through whatever pain was being sent my way, because it appeared as if it was for a reason of some sort. I never prayed to have the pain leave again. Only that I was able to endure it.
Back to the Power Plant. One day Diana Brien and I were doing some work in the Coalyard Maintenance building, where the Labor Crew called home. We had driven the electric cart to the coalyard to work on whatever we were working on. The moment we sat in the cart to head back to the electric shop. Wham. I was hit with a kidney stone.
I didn’t want to mention it to Dee. There was no need in worrying her, or embarrassing me, so I just remained silent. I just held onto the side rail on the cart and closed my eyes. As we banged over the railroad tracks and down the gravel road on the hill, I just held on and thought…. “don’t throw up…. don’t throw up….” I concentrated real hard to try and ease the pain.
A yellow electric Cushman cart like this
When we reached the shop, without a word, I walked into the shop and straight into the bathroom, where I began peeling back clothing. That is, I undid my belt, and unsnapped my pants. I paced a few minutes… then feeling the kidney stone hit the bladder, I relieved myself and walked back out into the shop. I figure all the jostling about on the bumpy road in a card with no suspension system helped move the stone down quickly.
Dee and Scott Hubbard knew right away what had happened to me. There was no hiding the pale face and the sweat that was running down my face. I went in the office to rest a while. After a while I was ready to go back to work.
So, for all you kidney stone sufferers, here is a few words of advice. Today I have passed more than 55 kidney stones. I have never had one of them removed by any other means than passing them myself. I have passed very large kidney stones. Some so big you could crush them in your fingers.
My largest kidney stone was almost as large as this one.
First of all. Don’t panic. Kidney stones won’t kill you (at least not right away). The first thing that happens is that the muscles in your back tighten up. This is not a good thing. You need the muscles in your back to relax. Concentrate on relaxing those muscles. I used to use a handheld massager to try to relax the muscles. Now I just concentrate on relaxing the back. Today when I have a kidney stone, even a large one, I am usually able to pass it within hours.
A handheld massager like this
Pace a lot. Drink a lot of water. You will only move the kidney stone down into the bladder by drinking water and pacing (or a massager maybe). I walk back and forth in the house. I have a path that I take. I walk back and forth, then I sip water each time. Don’t worry about throwing up. It’s just part of the reaction to the pain.
I only have about one kidney stone of any size once each year these day. I found that taking a good dose of CitriCal each day (yes. Extra calcium, has reduced the number of kidney stones considerably).
If you are Catholic… then offer the pain up for souls in Purgatory. It is our belief that the painful time that a person suffers in purgatory can be shortened by someone else offering up their pain for someone in purgatory. Note the difference between suffering and pain. Pain is the sensation you receive. Suffering is what you do with it. When you accept the pain and you “embrace” it, then you suffer it. If you moan and groan a lot, you basically pass it on to others. You tell them…. “I am in Pain.” Then they empathize with you and in a sense “feel your pain.” If this helps comfort you, ok. If you want to offer it to someone in Purgatory, then accept your pain in silence (I realize this makes no sense for those who do not accept the idea of Purgatory).
For those Christians that are not Catholic, let me offer you another way to suffer the pain from a kidney stone when it is too intense to bear. St. Paul said the following: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col 1:24). With this in mind, the pain felt during a kidney stone has great meaning. It literally unites you with Christ during his Passion.
I realize this has been an odd break from the usual Power Plant Man Post. The power plant man posts for the remainder of the year will be those posts that include stories from the time that the plant was ruled under the “evil plant manager” Eldon Waugh. Beginning in January, for the next year, the post will be stories during the reign of the plant manager, Ron Kilman (1987 to 1994). During the year 2015, the stories will be during the reign of Bill Green until I left the electric company (1994 to 2001).
Comments from the original post:
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Kidney stones are evil. I’ve had some, but none since 2009. The one change I made was to drink lots of water. I try to drink at least a half a gallon every day. The clearer your urine the better.
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Yes Kev I was there and remember it well. Not that you moaned and groaned but when you set up straight in your seat and had a look on your face like. . .something was terribly wrong.
I offered to drive you home but you assured me you would be ok driving home. I did bum a ride with someone at Bill’s corner to work. -
Ouch…
Wise advice for dealing with pain or anything negatively stressful. Not sure all are equally equipped to follow it, though. One of these days, maybe they’ll find a means for rebalancing the chemistry for you… -
This is incredible! I was just talking tonight to another operator at work about passing kidney stones, I have only had two, one was when I was rolling up Valmy 1 steam turbine as a Control Room Operator, I had just started rolling and felt that familiar unmistakable pain, I turned the unit over to my assistant, went & peed out a potato shaped kidney stone about 1/2 the size of a pea & then finished putting the unit online! (Actually the concentration of bringing the unit on, mercifully helped give me something else to think about besides my pain)
Anyway Kevin, this is how I got rid of them. I started taking MAGNESIUM, a small dosage every day, it binds with the calcium & you urinate it out before it can form into a stone, works for me, I haven’t had one in twenty years now. If I feel that familiar pain in my back I know it’s because I’ve neglected taking my magnesium, so I double up for 2 or 3 days & problem solved.
I recommend stopping the calcium & taking the lowest dose magnesium you can get at the vitamin shop & see if the stones don’t stop for good. Take it from a fellow power plant man, kidney stone sufferer, and friend of Jesus 🙂
P.S. I don’t get a chance to read these every day you send them out, the best I can do is save them up & read them at work when I have the time, so I am usually far FAR behind your most recent posts, but I really enjoy them.
Power Plant Men 
Kidney stones are evil. I’ve had some, but none since 2009. The one change I made was to drink lots of water. I try to drink at least a half a gallon every day. The clearer your urine the better.
Yes Kev I was there and remember it well. Not that you moaned and groaned but when you set up straight in your seat and had a look on your face like. . .something was terribly wrong.
I offered to drive you home but you assured me you would be ok driving home. I did bum a ride with someone at Bill’s corner to work.
Ouch…
Wise advice for dealing with pain or anything negatively stressful. Not sure all are equally equipped to follow it, though. One of these days, maybe they’ll find a means for rebalancing the chemistry for you…
This is incredible! I was just talking tonight to another operator at work about passing kidney stones, I have only had two, one was when I was rolling up Valmy 1 steam turbine as a Control Room Operator, I had just started rolling and felt that familiar unmistakable pain, I turned the unit over to my assistant, went & peed out a potato shaped kidney stone about 1/2 the size of a pea & then finished putting the unit online! (Actually the concentration of bringing the unit on, mercifully helped give me something else to think about besides my pain)
Anyway Kevin, this is how I got rid of them. I started taking MAGNESIUM, a small dosage every day, it binds with the calcium & you urinate it out before it can form into a stone, works for me, I haven’t had one in twenty years now. If I feel that familiar pain in my back I know it’s because I’ve neglected taking my magnesium, so I double up for 2 or 3 days & problem solved.
I recommend stopping the calcium & taking the lowest dose magnesium you can get at the vitamin shop & see if the stones don’t stop for good. Take it from a fellow power plant man, kidney stone sufferer, and friend of Jesus 🙂
P.S. I don’t get a chance to read these every day you send them out, the best I can do is save them up & read them at work when I have the time, so I am usually far FAR behind your most recent posts, but I really enjoy them.
Wow. You’re very brave! My first thought was, like one of the last commenters-drink about a half gallon + a day, but I’d suggest distilled. Most of the ‘water stores’ where you fill your 5 gallon jugs will offer RO (reverse osmosis ) which still has some minerals, and straight up distilled water.
I drink the distilled like that, (it does taste a little flat, but you get used to it) because according to the ‘experts’ the lack of minerals makes your kidneys work far less hard as the water passes through (no accumulation of minerals possible from it) plus your body really benefits from all the direct and useable hydration….
Wonder if the electrical fields contributed to your condition as well?
Be well, my friend! Thinking of you, for sure!