“What do you know about electricity,” the man asked me. I replied, “It hurts.”
I have a memory of an event that I’m unsure actually occurred, but one that has been with me for more than (mumble) years. My father was working on some electrical device in the late 1950s (oops: busted) and there was a sudden bright flash and spark, and he was thrown into a corner. Whether or not that really happened, the event is imprinted onto my memories. Another thing happened that I distinctly remember. I received an electric train set for Christmas when I was about eight or nine years old. I set it up in the living space my family occupied and when I grew bored with watching the train circle the tracks, I used a discarded electric fuse to create an incline for the train to climb. The train got stuck on the fuse, and I could not get it to move. In frustration, I placed my mouth on the tracks and shouted, “RUN TRAIN!” I received an immediate electric shock that burned my gums black and required a hospital visit.
In the early 80s, I drove from Southern Indiana to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to visit my brother. When I got to his apartment, he let me in and returned to the task I’d interrupted: radio repair. I watched as he fiddled with the innards of the electrical device, then tried to remain calm as I mentioned to him that the device was PLUGGED IN! “Yeah,” he said. “That way I’ll know when it’s fixed.” I thought of “jumping Dad” and black gums and slowly made my way to the door. My brother went on to become an electrical repair person and our other brother became a cable installer while I continued to nourish my morbid fear of the invisible magic spark.
In 1981, I decided to quit my ten-year job. I was unhappy with what I was doing and had the support of my bride. I spent some comfortable time sitting on my front lawn, then enrolled in college and allowed my neighbor to recruit me to go to work with an electrical contractor involved with building the Marble Hill nuclear power plant. I did not work with the electricity that was supposed to power the plant; I produced the charts that tracked the installation of electrical lines within the containment towers. Some of my interactions with the people who were “pulling wire” were less than friendly: they did not like that I was an artist and wore no toolbelt. My production of the charts was not viewed as a worthy task for a construction site. The plant could not pass the requirements of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and never went online. When the plant closed, I took my “pencil-belt” to a position as an art director for a Louisville, Kentucky department store.
The singer Marcia Griffiths released a song called “Electric Boogie” in 1982. It is more popularly known as the “Electric Slide.” She sang, “You can’t see it/You gotta feel it…” The man who queried me about electricity works with it and told me some stories of fireballs and exploding transformers. I told him of spending 39 hours without electricity, the result of a tree falling on my street and taking out the power lines. (He speculated that he may have been involved in the recovery of services.) His stories solidified my commitment to avoid tinkering with wires, and should I again be asked what I know about electricity, I will quote the first line of “Electric Boogie:”
It’s electric.
cjon3acd@att.net