Part Seventeen...

I wanted to work at home for a while. Tramping is a strain on a marriage and family life, and I had a new kid to go along with the other two. When Sam left Charleston for northern climes, I tried to get into some kind of rhythm, but loneliness set in and I wasn't much of a partier. Stopping for a beer after work, going in and cleaning up, going to supper, and back to the room was getting to me. My own Local had no work to offer other than the Eastman, and no way was I going to work there again.

At least I was home. Like I said, the pay at Magnavox was dismal, but we were treated well. The plant had been organized for several years, but basically the folks who worked there and were members of the union didn't have the right stuff. A few years earlier, they went on strike for more pay and benefits. They walked the picket line for several months and then settled for a penny raise. They asked me to join the union, but I respectfully declined. It was a weak union at best, and besides, I was already paying dues to another AF of L-CIO union.

I hoped to pick up some house wiring on the side to help with bills, but the jobs were few. I went to work on evening shift, where I was the only maintenance man present. After a short while, the evening shift was discontinued and I went to day shift where they really didn't need me, but I was good at the work and was willing to work for very little. My supervisor at Magnavox was a fellow named Charlie Green, a baptist preacher and one hell of a fine man. After I was there a few months, Charlie was laid-off, and his supervisor became my supervisor. The new one was no preacher by any means, but he was also a good guy. I've felt badly about Charlie being set aside; he deserved better. I know I took his job, and I wish they had let me go instead of him.

I met some characters while working there, one being a maintenance helper by the name of Roy. He was a slight man, probably in his forties, and had picked up the nickname "Sue" from the other electrician. He was a good guy, but it was easy to get his goat. His favorite retort when someone was giving him good natured grief was " Why don't you take a flying fuck at the moon?". Another guy I met was a kid maned Mike, not long out of high school. He was the truck driver, and managed to overload two light duty Ford dump-trucks to the point the frames bent. It really wasn't his fault; he was following orders from an idiot. Several years later, I would run into Mike again, and we became pretty good friends for a while.

The most memorable thing that happened to me while working there was during summer vacation while most of the plant was shut down. The maintenance crew was required to work, doing things on machinery that had been running mostly non-stop since the previous year's vacation. One production line was working on a rush order of stereo cabinets. The line supervisor saw that they weren't going to get the product out in time, so he asked the other electrician and me to give them a hand. We politely refused, he called the plant manager, the plant manager came to work and began helping the line folk, which was entirely against the union agreement. He even ordered my buddy and me to help. We did so to keep from getting fired on the spot, but at break time, my buddy called the union steward, who was supposed to be present anyway. He also called our boss and he told us to get back where we belonged doing maintenance. Soon, he showed up after a fast thirty mile drive, and the steward was there by then and a big huddle ensued.. Man, those four boys had it hot and heavy for a while. My buddy and and I didn't do anymore line work that day or any other. Sometime during that week, I put an application in with a new Texas Instruments plant that had come to town, not expecting to hear anything from it.

In late September, I quit the job there. No way was I going to meet my obligations on the small pay. One good thing came from my leaving there; they couldn't find anyone to replace me at the pay scale, so they raised it more than a dollar, with more to come. In early November, I loaded up the Dodge truck and headed to Atlanta where the Local union had work. I ended up in Rome, Georgia, which isn't far from the Alabama line. We were building a new Federal building, including a courthouse and FBI office. On my way from Atlanta to Rome, I saw my first ever and last cotton field. I didn't like the job, and Rome offered few amenities for tramps, and I had to stay in a motel which was expensive. Also, gasoline prices were rising very quickly, leading to the first oil embargo from our dear friends and allies, the Arabs. Just biding my time. Then, Texas Instruments called. I had kept in touch with Charlie Green after he left Magnavox, and he became the first maintenance man at TI. He talked the maintenance supervisor into hiring me. So, on December 19, 1973, I went to work temporarily on day shift. In two weeks, I had to go to evening shift, but at least I was home but only making $5.75 an hour.

Next, my year at TI, new friends, and some self inflicted problems...

Part Sixteen...

The three of us packed up our few belongings and headed west to Parkersburg, WV. The little trailer Sam and I lived in before had been sold, but the same landlord had a basement apartment he let us have. It was one large room except a bathroom had been walled off. He threw in an extra bed at no charge, so we each had our own. The main room was divided by a low divider, separating the kitchen/dining area from the bed spaces. Again I was elected cook, Sam was the dishwasher, and Joe became the house cleaner. Sam and I called him our house whore. His response was "just go ahead and try!". Joe was a big man, with a perpetual grin and a practical joker in his own right. His two favorite pastimes were eating and finding ways to get Sam's goat whenever possible, such as pushing him out the door and locking it just as Sam was getting ready to step into the shower. There were a lot of people around, fortunately all of them adults. Or leaving Sam to pay the grocery bill for all three of us at Kroger when we knew Sam wasn't carrying enough money to cover it. Sam looked like a whipped puppy standing in front of that cash register all alone with the cashier holding out her hand for the money. Sam paid us back at a restaurant, though. He was the first in line to check out as we were leaving, and he cut a silent but otherwise magnificent fart that reached the cashiers nose at the same time we stepped up to pay. Before we could blame him, Sam was out the door and looking back laughing. It was an embarrassing moment, especially for the girl behind the counter. She turned red, thinking that one of us did it, while wondering if the one of us that didn't do it thought that she did. This is when Joe hung the nickname "Wormy" on Sam.

Sam was back at his Thursday night rendezvous with his friend from Charleston. Joe didn't approve, being Sam's neighbor back home and all, but he never said anything to him. Sam would always want to drive the first leg home on Friday evenings, so he could climb into the backseat when one of us took the wheel. He needed to make up for sleep he lost the night before. Joe made sure that sleep never came.

Summer finally turned into autumn, and then the chill of winter set in. Actually, the job was more outside work than inside, and it gets mighty cold along the Ohio river. It was while getting ready to return to work one December Sunday, that I realized I wasn't the tough old boy I pretended to be. There was no doubt I was dieing. Carolyn called an ambulance and they took me to hospital where two days later I passed a bouncing baby kidney stone. It was just barely large enough to see with the naked eye, but that thing sure did hurt. I missed a week's work, Tennessee beat Arkansas in some obscure football bowl game, and life returned to normal, except that over the next four years I would pass six more kidney stones.

Joe and I had saved enough to take off a couple of months, so one Friday in January 1972, we told Sam we were dragging-up the next Friday. He said he wasn't going to do so, and got a little peeved that we were. In fact, he drove up by himself that Sunday, and hardly spoke to Joe and me the rest of the week. On Friday, he too quit. It was the last I would hear from him until June, but Joe told me Sam had gone back to NYC to again work the Trade Center.

In March, I became restless and tried to find something in the valley, but the pickings were slim. On a Sunday morning, I took off to Pittsburgh, PA. I won't say much about my time there except I never did find a tramping buddy, and I did like the hell out of that town. I also joined a nudist colony just south of there in WV, something I had always dreamed of. It was on a dare from another tramp, but I never did go to the compound; I was still a very shy boy. The cost of traveling and living alone, plus the fact that it was too far from home for travel each weekend, caused me to drag up after only three weeks. I returned home and waited for the valley to open back up.

In June, Carolyn told me to get a job. I called around and found work back at Amos powerhouse in Charleston. Once there, I had to stay at a motel until the rooming house we had stayed at before had an opening. One evening, I was at a department store, and ran into Sam's friend, the very same one whom met him each Thursday while we were in Parkersburg. I'd always known she was a looker. Model slim, medium tall with almost black hair nearly to her waist; she was a keeper, for sure. She had her daughter along, and we sat at cafe and talked for an hour while her youngster played on some swings and slides. Soon, she asked me about Sam, and I told her the last time I saw him he was mad and not speaking to me. She invited me over to her home for the next evening, and I went and we sat on a swing and talked for awhile. It was becoming obvious she was wanting Sam back at work in the valley, so to speak. She had tried to get over him, and hadn't had any contact with him since right after he left Parkersburg. I told her I would try to get in touch with him that weekend when I went home. It just so happened that Sam had just quit NYC, and was longing for the valley, again so to speak. I told him I had seen his friend and she wanted him to contact her. That Monday evening, I got a call from him on the motel phone, and he was working in Charleston but at a trucking company that was under construction. Next evening, he moved in with me at the motel, called his friend, and all was right with the world.

Sam finally got referred to the powerhouse, and ended up on the same crew as I, but we had the same foreman as before, and he wouldn't let us work together. We got our old room back at the rooming house, and went into our routine; except for one thing. Once after a hot and dusty day at work, Sam talked me into going into a beer joint with him. I had no intention of drinking a beer. Never had drank one and saw no reason to start. A couple hours later I was buzzing right along on 3.2 Pabst Blue Ribbon. I was hooked, and it changed my life completely.

Stopping at the bar became a daily ritual. Beer was cheap, and we were making good money. Sam was back to his Thursday night meetings and all was well. We stayed together until February 1973, when Sam and his friend had a falling out, and he left for greener pastures farther north. Then in March, I completely lost my sanity and went home to work for $3.90 an hour as a maintenance electrician at the local Magnavox cabinet plant. Except for the money, it was the best job I ever had up to that time.

Next: Magnavox, back to Atlanta, and then home to Texas Instruments...

Part Ten...
Blogger has a new setup where I can write ahead of time and it will publish when I want. Not edited, so excuse the mistakes.

Upon my return to Maryland, I ran into one of my buddies from apprentice school. Sam (not his real name) had been on the job for a week, but we hadn't crossed paths. By now, I had a roomie, a guy from Knoxville whom was a magnificent bullshiter. Sam was staying at the next motel up the road from the White House. He was rooming with a guy from the Charleston, WV local, and it and all the rest of the Ohio Valley locals were still on strike. But negotiations were finally going well, and the situation looked to soon be settled.

Meanwhile, we had a little strike of our own. I don't know what it was over, but it was the boilermakers whom went out at 10:00 one morning. So naturally, the rest of the trades walked. Sam, his roomie, and I spent the rest of the day on the banks of the Potomac talking about things to do in Charleston when we got there. American Electric Power was building a two unit powerhouse just outside of St. Albans on the Kanawha river, and would be requiring over 3,000 tradesmen and laborers. We made great plans for when we got there. Our strike was a short lived affair, and we were back to work the next day.

This Morgantown powerhouse was owned by Potomac Electric Power Company, and was a two unit facility with oil-fired boilers. This was 1970 and just before the mid-east oil situation went all to hell. Not long after the first unit was finished with construction, the oil system was replaced by coal. Needless to say, there was overtime and I went back there for the big bucks.
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Time out... The White House motel was owned by people who lived in New York City, and was managed by a couple from Florida. The managers went on vacation for a couple weeks, so the owners came in to take over. These were die-cast city folk, very wealthy and used to being surrounded by high class society. They were nice enough, but obviously out of place amongst construction workers. One day after work, I went in to pay another week's rent. The lady was behind the desk and sunlight was coming in the windows in such a way that it was lighting my head and shining through my eyeglasses, and of course they were covered with a day's load of construction dust. She gave me a stern look and said "How do you see through those filthy glasses? It is obvious to me that you haven't bothered to clean them in a very long time". She actually didn't understand or have a clue as to what construction work was about, and she figured all of us were third rate people whom hardly bathed and were completely uncivilized. To her, second rate people were her servants and those whom worked for her, and we were way beneath them. By the time she returned to NYC, she had alienated all of us and we were glad to see her go.
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June rolled around, the strike in the valley was settled, so Sam and I drug up (jargon for "quiting a job"), met at our union hall on Monday morning, and got our referral to Charleston. Two more electricians from the local were making the trip up and knew the best way to get there, so on Tuesday morning we were on our way to the valley in a black 1968 Torino following our buddies whom were in a Ford-blue 1965 Mustang. Charleston was close enough to home that we would be able to drive back and forth each weekend without wearing completely out.

We had our first of many encounters with the West Virginia Turnpike, that million-dollar-a-mile two lane toll road that the people of that state were so proud of. At the time it was constructed, it was the most expensive highway per mile to have ever been built in the US.

We finally reached the Kanawha valley. We kept smelling something with the scent of rotten potatoes. Come to find out, it was the Kanawha river itself. Man, was that sucker polluted!

Next... Amos powerhouse

Part Nine...

Soon after returning to Maryland form home, one of the friends I made at the motel was killed on the job at the powerhouse. He was a steamfitter welder, and a pipe they were testing under high pressure air burst and knocked him off the ladder and his neck was broken. The reality of heavy construction work hit me hard. He wouldn't be the last friend or acquaintance I'd lose to vagaries of the tramping live.*

The overtime was gradually being cut out, and I was no longer working weekends, but was still getting four ten hour days and one eight. Being very lonely and homesick led to drinking whiskey, something I hadn't done before. Other than rot-gut wine, I had never consumed alcohol in any form, including beer. My life was about to hit the fast lane.

The first weekend off, I went to the liquor store and bought a bottle of peppermint schnapps. I got sick and puked all over everything and everybody. My "he's a good guy to be around" ranking went to hell in a hand basket. I was a married man with children and responsibilities, but I was a virgin in so many ways. That was on Friday night. Saturday was a day of recovery and apologizing, but Sunday I was at it again with some Tennessee sour mash whiskey. Nope, not ol' Jack, but George Dickel... a half gallon jug that set me back $15.

Also on Saturday, I bought a Hibachi and thick Porterhouse steak for Sunday cooking. The motel had a small refrigerator in a maintenance room where they allowed us to keep sandwich meat, etc. The Lilly boys and some of the other guys also bought steaks, and we had a very good lunch. After dining, I started drinking again, got drunk, dropped and busted my whiskey jug, and decided to puke some more. My friends saw the whole affair coming, and retreated to their rooms.

I stayed 10 weeks in Maryland without going home. On a Friday morning I had the Bird packed with dirty clothes, more root beer, a bottle of George Dickel shaped like a powder horn, along with two miniatures just like it. If you ever watched the tv series Star Trek, Captain Kirk entertained special guests on the Enterprise with a "nectar" from one of these bottles.

Just before turning into the job parking lot, I felt the steering wheel jerk just a tiny bit. Usually a sign of a wheel bearing expiring, or disk brakes worn completely out. When I applied the brakes, the right front squealed with the protest of metal rubbing metal. I was doomed, I thought. I planned on going to the Esso station and getting the car fixed and delay my journey home until the next weekend.

Even as I was leaving the parking lot, it was my plan. But instead of turning right on 301, I turned left, went across the toll bridge into Virginia, and set my eyes toward Tennessee. To say I drove slowly was an understatement. I got off work at 4:30pm, and nearly four hours later I was at I-81 in Staunton. By then. most of the rubbing metal had disappeared behind me in a shower of sparks. No one tailgated me that trip. The journey south on I-81 was a piece of cake, although I did drive much slower than usual because I had little braking of any kind except for the emergency brake. Somewhere around midnight and after hours sweet talking the Thunderbird, I rolled in home.

Next day I went to a brake shop and had the calipers and rotors replaced on the front of the car, and new shoes put on the back. I was ready for the next phase of my tramping experience, one that would soon lead me into the Ohio Valley.

*In 1964, J.L. Pierce—Carolyn's dad—had been seriously injured and his tramping buddy killed in a car wreck near Culpepper, VA. They were traveling the same route I used to get home from Maryland. Another auto accident in 1966 compounded his earlier head injuries, and just after Carolyn's 22nd birthday in 1968, his heart finally failed.

Part Eight...

The next Friday, I collected a full paycheck, which came to well less than $500 after state and federal taxes, dues, and assessments. But that wasn't the big thing for that day; my family was waiting on me when I got to the motel from work and the bank. My dad and mom loaded up the Chevy and brought my two (at the time) kids and Carolyn to visit. They even smelled like home, and that was a very pleasant scent for my senses. We knew I wouldn't have much time to spend with them, because of the hours I was working, and I couldn't afford to miss a minute.

Saturday morning the Bird wouldn't start. My dad hauled me to work, went back to the motel and finally got it started. He took it across the street to the Esso station, where they replaced the spark plugs that had been in it since it was bought new.

My folks and kids left for the hills on Sunday and left Carolyn with me to stay a week as I was to go home myself the following weekend. It may have been for Easter, but my memory fails me here. We spent my off hours exploring around La Plata and vicinity, finding the best homemade root beer I ever tasted, even better than my grandma's. It came in gallon jugs, and a couple of them returned to Tennessee with us.

The Lilly brothers from around Beckley, WV were staying at the same motel as I, and they told me of a shortcut through Virginia that would bring me to I-81 near Staunton. The route took me through Fredricksberg, Orange and several Civil War battlefields, and finally to Charlottesville and across the Blue Ridge mountains, saving more than an hour of driving time.

It would be an understatement to say I was happy when I crossed the Tennessee state line.
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Left photo is the Morgantown powerhouse
Right photo is the White House Motel
Ariel photos from and © by Google Maps.

Part Seven...

Got up next morning and spent a quarter for a cup of coffee at the motel restaurant, and ate a sweet roll from the 7-Eleven on the way to work. Being a complete rookie, I had never dropped brass before. They had given me a number when I hired in, and I had to go by the guard shacks and pick up a piece of brass about the size of a quarter, carry it in my pocket all day, and drop it in a collection box at quitting time. That's how they knew who was at work and who wasn't.

I located my foreman, got squared away with a shiny new white hardhat, and he said we were working the fourth floor that day. This is when I had my first encounter with a man-lift. The lift is a vertical and continuous conveyor belt with a double-sided step about a foot wide and big enough for one person to stand and with a small cupped steel handhold at chest height. It was constantly moving at a pretty good clip, with one side carrying men up to higher floors, and the other carrying them down. It went almost to the top of the building, which was pretty darned tall because of the big boiler it housed. Foreman motioned for me to follow him up on a platform where he stepped on a foot stand, and off he went. He again motioned me to follow on the next step that came by. I sucked it up and stepped out of the real world onto something very frightening for a hillbilly. Man, I got my scrawny body so close to that belt it probably looked like I was making love to it, and held on in a way that only terror can make me do. That was another time where a hat pin couldn't have been driven into any part of me; I was tight. After what seemed like an hour of riding--actually only a few seconds--I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the foreman on one knee at our getting-off place letting me know we had arrived and I should part ways with the belt. Happily, I did so without falling flat on my face. Getting on and off the lift is just a matter of timing. The foreman had a big grin on, and slapped me on the back and told me that about half the newbies either wouldn't get on or were so scared, they couldn't turn loose to get off. If you don't get off, you continue to rise all the way to the top of the framework where the belt goes over a roller and descends. Fortunately for the frozen rider, there is a cut-off emergency stop bar he has to hit before going over the top and descending head first. There are also stairs that one can use to go up and down, but the belt was more popular.

I was introduced to my working partner, a guy from Local 26 and of Swedish descent who was used to working asshole-and-elbow jobs all his life, and he was having a difficult time adjusting to the more laid back and no-one-gets-in-a-hurry industrial construction.

The job was working an odd arrangemnt of hours; four ten hour days, eight hours on Friday and Sunday, and nine hours on Saturday. The eight hour Friday was so we could have time to get our checks cashed at local banks. At double-time for all overtime, that came to just over $600 each week.

I got paid on the first Friday for two hours hiring-in time on Monday, 10 hours each on Tuesday and Wednesday. I made more than I was getting at home for 40 hours.

The following Monday morning the used battery I bought for the Bird died. I took needed funds across the street and bought an new one at an Esso station and barely got to work before the brass shacks closed.

Next, company comes...

Part One...

From March of 1970 until December 1973, my work caused me to be away from home most of the time. I did come in on weekends when I wasn't too far away for traveling. Four to five hours was usually all I wanted to spend behind the wheel twice in two days. I was a tramp electrician and proud of it. We were called tramps because of our penchant for changing jobs and traveling from area to area. Actually, back in the early days of the trade, workers walked or thumbed or took any transportation they could afford to get to jobs. My actual job title was Journeyman Wireman, and I was trained by and worked through the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which began as a trade union for linemen and electricians, but later expanded into factories and any other place that would vote them in, including a lot that had nothing to do with electricity except for flipping on a light switch in an office. I don't think the expansion was a good thing for anyone except the fat cats whom run the union. They soon placed the tradesmen on their short list of people to ignore.

Other than having to leave the family for sometimes weeks, life on the road wasn't too bad; most of the time. If the job was near a good sized town or city, accommodations could be found in private homes or even roadside motels at reasonable prices. The worst places to find sleeping facilities was in the out of the way bergs. The natives usually didn't want "dirty old construction workers" around anyway, and didn't go to any trouble to help us. A few did though, and became much wealthier for their hospitality.

The worst accommodations I had to endure were in New Martinsville West Virginia. I had a bed in a small and shared upstairs room with the only electricity a bare and filthy light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The tiny bathroom was used by all ten tenants, and its electrical offerings were the same as the sleeping room, except it had a plug in adapter which the light bulb screwed into. It had no mirror, so shaving was hit-or-miss. I stayed there about two weeks before I located a private room I could afford.

The best place I had while tramping was called Captain John's, and it was located just across the Tennessee River from Watt's Bar Nuclear Plant where I was employed in construction by the Tennessee Valley Authority. I had a private, two bedroom cabin all to myself. It was actually part of a resort, but the owner let the cabins to construction workers, because at one time, he had been a traveling tradesman and understood our situations. This was later on in 1977-1978, when I had gone back on the road after a brief career as maintenance electrician in some of our local factories.
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I may give you lucky readers the entire tale of my days as a tramp, and I may begin doing so tomorrow... or not.