Neanderpundit

both recreationally and as a result of making bad decisions. This is an activity to avoid if possible.

I have also been shocked under several circumstances- the earliest one, repairing the socket end of an extension cord without the presence of mind to have unplugged the plug end first. I was seven. I figured it out pretty quickly.

When I was taking my apprenticeship at Inland one of the things that required constant maintenance were the rail shoes. On each pusher car or larry car or hopper there were two rails that delivered DC power to the equipment. The current draw was merely immense.

The rails were on big steel braces and were insulated from the steel with thick fiber pads. The equipment, which moved up and down on heavy rails of their own, received power from the hot rails by large insulating wooden arms with copper shoes on the end, that were held in place by gravity. The shoes had cables as thick as a man’s wrist, and they went into the bowels of the machine to drive the equipment. The insulating beams were pine, about six inches square and six or eight feet long.

Most of the time this stuff had to be worked hot. You could not shut down to work on anything short of a disaster, so we just had guys who were good at hotwork. To replace the hot shoes we had to have two millwrights and two electricians, and on one day Tiny and I were the millwrights, he the master and I the apprentice, and Charlie and Randy the electricians, Charlie the master and Randy the apprentice.

Charlie had disconnected the power at the copper track shoes and Tiny and I were going to yank them off (They wore through pretty rapidly) and replace the shoes and one of the wooden beams, when Randy walked over and casually leaned on the still hot rail.

We screamed in unison but it was already to late to stop him- Tiny grabbed up a piece of 6×6 in his giant hands and threw it like a javelin at Randy, hitting him ion the chest and knocking him free of the rail. He lie on the ground a bit, smoke coming from his damp clothes and his drawers freshly loaded. He did get up. It hosed his motor functions for a lot of the rest of the day, but he survived.

I saw a powerful lot of people almost die at the mill, and I did see several people die. it is nice to have a memory of someone who survived.

takes a baby in a bay carier out of her car, and PLACES IT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET IN FRONT OF THE CAR? WITH THE BABY SLEEPING INSIDE? Trick question. Apparently women in the local apartment complex do.

I despair of my fellow human.

In other news the daughter’s sploder has some kind of muffler or tailpipe leak, and needs an emissions inspection soon, and the wife’s car just seems to have puked another alternator. Some days I really don’t want to be me, but I can’t get anyone else who will do it.

Been a mean couple of weeks, and a mean couple of weeks coming up. Will continue to scoop out the ice cream as I can, but at the moment the well is almost dry. And so many good friends and or their spouses are having health problems, and then the loss of Jeffro Monday, it’s just been draining. Let’s get through this, people. We need all of us that we can get.