Loose Laces

Part Thirteen...

On an April morning in 1971, Sam phoned me. He had enough of NYC he said, and was ready to go back to the valley. I too was getting the burning desire to hit the road after spending a winter at home, mostly loafing. The tires on my car were about worn out and were out of balance, and the engine needed a tune-up, but I was short on money and had to live with it. We met at the union hall and got our referrals to a job near Baltimore. The valley was a little slow at the time, but it would soon be booming again. On the following Tuesday (we always figured anything worth doing on Monday was even better done on Tuesday), I picked Sam up at his home in Bristol, and headed north on I-81. We had to travel slowly because my out of balance tires shook the car terribly when we went more than 60 mph. Somewhere between DC and Baltimore, the ignition points finally gave up. Every 30 minutes or so of driving led to a stop so I could take a matchbook cover and reset the gap. Eventually Sam had enough, and had me stop at a parts store where he bought new points and a condenser. I installed them and we went on our way, but the day was late and we had to find a motel. We pulled into one that had a flashing neon "YES" sign. Behold, right in front of our eyes was the car of another tramp from our own local. It belonged to a man known as "Suitcase" because he mostly lived out of one. He and his tramping buddy were there and on the way to the same destination as we. Sam talked them into sharing their beds with us that night to save us some money, so I ended up "sleeping" on the very edge of a bed in my clothes. Miserable night! Suitcase not only slept in the middle of the bed, he also snored very profusely.

We parted ways next morning, with Suitcase and his buddy heading for the hiring hall, with Sam and I deciding to give the job a look-see before getting our referral from the local. We had heard the project was deep in the middle of Nowhere, Md, and accommodations were difficult to acquire. It was very true. The job was a powerhouse—nuclear, I think—and was near or on Chesapeake Bay. The nearest affordable place to stay was 40 miles from the front gate. We talked the situation over for about ten seconds, and headed back toward Tennessee. Three days later, we were back on the old Morgantown Maryland powerhouse job. They were in the middle of a shutdown for two reasons, one being they were switching from oil to coal for boiler fuel, and the other because bearings in one of the huge generators had seized while running at very high rpm and caused the turbine to shatter its blades. Normally, it is supposed to take a many hours for a turbine to spin down from full blast to slow enough so the turning gear can pick it up and keep it barely rotating. It is a rare thing for one to completely stop once it has initially been put on turning gear during the construction phase. Apparently, this one stopped in less than two minutes. It was a complete wreck.

Anyway, we found a room at the White House motel and went to work installing thermocouples on the first unit's smoke exhaust system (the first unit was still online), and working on the electrostatic precipitators* which removed some of the solid particles from the smoke before it went up the smokestack. Seven weeks later, Sam played a prank on an electrician welder, but the offended party thought I was the perpetrator. He got on the man lift and was at our workstation at the top of the precipitators in a very short time. I was bolting down a transformer, and Sam was underneath me and out of sight while holding the nuts with a ratchet and socket. The welder came storming in, walking as fast as his stubby legs would carry him, and shoved me off my seat and cursed me. I got up and threw a couple of punches, catching him on the chin pretty good. About that time, Sam stuck his head up and told the welder it was himself who had been the prankster. The welder then went after Sam. Before it was broken up, scrawny Sam had the aggressor about half-shoved down the manhole that went to the precipitator piano wire racks while at the same time whooping him on the hardhat with the ratchet.

Next morning, Sam was fired and he drug me up (he told them to get my money too, because I was quitting—what are friends for?). The reputations that we acquired on the Charleston job as "free spirits" were reinforced. At least we were now getting some respect, along with some of our peers whom really didn't even know us, disliking us.

Time out for a fellow I knew.
This fellow was a college dropout and was in his second marriage. He had a daughter by his first marriage, and two more with his second wife. His dad was a local high school coach whom had some friends at the State University. He had gotten his son an athletic scholarship on the Knoxville campus, which actually was to wash jock straps for the athletic teams, a fact that I never let the fellow live down. To say that the fellow liked women is an understatement; to say that women liked him is an even bigger understatement. Once after he had a physical exam, a doctor told his wife that he didn't understand how she could take all he had to offer. I often wondered the same thing myself.
The fellow told me that on the first night of one of his marriages, he was out with a girlfriend for a couple hours. At first I didn't believe him, but after getting to know him better, there was no doubt in my mind that he was telling the truth about his exploits. Once a woman had him, she didn't want to give him up.
He and I got along well, with him being more of a partier than me. One thing for sure, I never wanted any of his leftover women; I would have been a small disappointment for them. I would just as soon read a book than hit the clubs. One time though, we were in a bar after work, and a guy just plain didn't like my looks. He started a fight with me, and I was at least holding my own until one of his buddies jumped in to help him. I hollered at the fellow to get him off me, and a couple more of the guy's buddies grabbed him and asked him if he was with me. He gave the situation a good look, told them he'd never seen me before, walked out the door and waited in the car until I made my escape. Wouldn't of been any use in both of us getting beat up. Stitches and ice had me back at work the next day.


Next stop... O', Atlanta!

*At the time, I was told that electrostatic precipitators are devices used to remove certain pollutants from smoke in powerhouses, etc. They supposedly work by placing a high-voltage negative charge on a grid and passing the smoke through it where the positively charged pollutant particles are attracted by the negative grid and collected there. The ones I'm speaking of here are huge, multi-story metal structures. The grid is a lot of long piano wires suspended from the top to near the ground, with a heavy milk-bottle shaped weight affixed to the bottom of each wire to keep them hanging straight. After operating for a certain time, the electricity to the wire racks is shut off, and a spray of water is introduced at the very top that washes the particles from the wires, where it falls like dirty rain, thus the name "precipitator". I cannot guarantee this description is anywhere like accurate. Google probably is the best place if you need more info.