HOM: Further Adventures

I got another shock while I was at GC. I was out back helping Clarence, the back yard foreman, make septic tanks. There was an overhead crane on tracks that was used to lift and move the tanks, and the controller was a metal switch-box hanging down from the crane motor. It was raining and muddy, and when I grabbed the control box in my right hand I also grabbed one of the crane's steel braces in my left hand for balance. When I pressed the button on the box, a good shot of electricity zinged from my right hand to my left, via my chest. There was a short circuit in the controller wiring. Thud. Crap. Well, my falling down pulled my hand off the control box and this time I wasn't unconscious, but it sure was Deja Vu all over again. The crane was powered off, an electrician called in, and I went inside to work on other projects for the rest of the day. The plant was old and a little run down, mostly a shell built over a dirt floor, but generally things ran all right. Once in a while one of the buckets carrying concrete up would slip off the tracks or something would break, but Dave or Voyle could always put things right. Dave, by the way, showed me a trick that surprised me. The oak tamping stick on the pipe machine would break sometimes or the metal shoe would come loose. When Dave fixed them, he would hammer the screws into place in the wood instead of twisting them in with a screwdriver. When I teased him about laziness, he explained that driving the screws in actually caused them to hold better without working loose. Dave also machined some risers for the boat rack on Gordon's new Jeep pickup. His boat wouldn't fit, but Dave's fix worked great. Speaking of pickups, the door handle on Dad's old International broke. Les Truman had a non-running International truck of the same vintage and gave me a handle for Dad's rig, which Dave installed. International trucks, by the way, were nicknamed "Cornbinders." TBC (Me) (Blacktail Books)