Part Three...

Some more background...
Tennessee Eastman Company at the time (1965) was a subsidiary of Eastman Chemicals, Inc., which in turn was a division of Eastman Kodak Company. Tennessee Eastman was and is a sprawling multi-building facility along the banks of the Holston River in Kingsport, Tenn. I mean a whole lot of factories in one huge compound. It was started around 1915 or so, and when I began work there it was on the construction of building number 255. This should give you an idea of how large the place is, and it is till growing.
They manufactured various chemicals, acids, and solvents for industrial use, plus such things as food additives and preservatives, synthetic yarns, and dyes for the textile industry. At the time, there were about 11,000 thousand employees working there, plus several thousand outside contractor workers. They were Tennessee's largest employer and had their own RR yard, complete with maintenance facilities that rivaled any in the free world. They had their own water filtration department and waste water treatment plants. They generated their own electricity and steam from three different multi-turbine power plants. They had their own fire and police departments, a refrigeration plant that was huge, two large cafeterias that served excellent food at prices that even I could afford on a few occasions, movie theaters and recreation facilities that were state-of-the-art, and much more. They had their own research and development labs and pilot plants that were larger than most normal factories. As an inside subsidiary, they had their own construction outfit called Bay's Mountain Construction Company that had the finest equipment and as well trained employees as any in the world. Eastman was completely independent from outside needs as possible, except for raw materials and coal to fire the powerhouse boilers. They also paid their employees a much higher wage and benefit package than any company around the area, and they gave them a bonus each March that could be up to $10k and often more.
Into this stepped a 6'5" and very lean 150 pound and twenty-year-old kid that knew exactly squat about anything. Ignorant doesn't come close to whom I was, and especially how I felt. Did I mention that I was extremely shy and self-conscious about being skinny and long-legged? My eye glasses with the black frames added to my nerdish looks. I was required to wear a yellow hardhat, and that didn't help my self esteem knowing I looked like a world class doofus because my head was always one or two sizes smaller than a normal persons. I suppose I looked something like Darth Vader at a starvation convention.
The first journeyman I worked with had just "topped out" from the apprenticeship program, and had never been turned loose on a job where he had all the responsibility. He was a very good guy, and he lived in Johnson City, so we were able to car pool with three other journeymen from Elizabethton. Well, he was a good guy except for one thing; he had a hell of a temper. When things didn't go like he wanted, he started throwing things. Hickeys (hand-held conduit benders), hand tools, even tripod pipe vices were sent flying. Only one time was I hit by one of his missiles; a section of half-inch conduit that wasn't bending to his will. The worst it could have done was knock me off the top of the eight-foot step ladder I was standing on, but it was a glancing blow and I figured no harm, no foul.
Damn, I'm having fun remembering and writing about this part of my life. Later on, my memory won't be so good because of the alcohol and drug fog I forced my brain to live in.

Part Two...

Back then—1965—there were two easy ways to get into the electrical worker's union apprenticeship program; be born into it or marry into it. Due to birth restrictions, I chose the latter. My father-in-law entered into the program through government subsidies after serving in WWII, and spent most of his apprenticeship at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory near Knoxville, Tennessee.
It took Carolyn's folks a year to decide that I was barely good enough to keep on as a son-in-law, and that mostly because we had a new daughter.
I left my job as a mill worker for Burlington Industries in July, and began what was to become a long and winding road through the rest of my life. I had been with the mill since January 1963, and had worked my way from $1.25/hr. to $1.60/hr., which included a nickel per hour extra for working the 4:00 pm til midnight shift. I went to work through the union for Kingsport Armature and Electric Company for $1.40/hr. Doesn't seem like much of a pay cut by today's standards, but twenty cents per hour was nearly enough to buy two tanks of gasoline at .23/gal. On top of that, I had to travel 25 miles each way and each day on a crooked two lane highway, so actually, I was taking an enormous hit in the wallet just to have a possible brighter future for the family. Another deduction came in a two percent assessment coming from my gross pay and going to the local union. Also, there was monthly union dues of $15 to be paid to the International Organization. Then there were the taxes to pay, and after all was said and done, I made enough money to make my car payment and buy gasoline. Fortunately, we were living with my parents and they, along with Carolyn's folks, supported us—all or in part—for several years. At the time, journeyman's scale was $3.50/hr., and that was big money for working people in East Tennessee. In the Ohio Valley—parts of which I would become very familiar with later on—the scale was about $5.00/hr.
After just a few days helping different electricians on small jobs, the company transferred me to Tennessee Eastman Company, where I was to work for most of the next four and one-half years.

The Eastman years are another story...

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.