Work Adventures

 During my 28 years at Tulsa Winch, I had a lot of boring times but I also had a few adventures.  Let me tell you about four of them.

The Inclined Railway

In chronological order, the first one was probably my trip to Pittsburgh, PA.  We got  a call from the maintenance foreman at the Duquesne Incline in Pittsburgh who needed some help with one of his Tulsa gearboxes.  The only way I can describe this apparatus is that it is like a trolley built at an extreme angle and it traverses a mountainside in Pittsburgh.  Here is a picture of it.

Fortunately, our gearbox wasn't used to raise and lower the trolley but only to change out the cable every so often when the maintenance schedule calls for it.  I don't remember today the frequency the cable was changed but you can imagine that it was often.  It has been in operation since May, 1877 and they have gone through a bunch of cable in that 150 years.

The Coal Mine

The next memorable trip was into a coal mine in southern Utah.  Again, the maintenance people were having problems with one of our products and called us to help solve them.  My memory is somewhat sketchy but I believe the mine was operated by Utah Power and Light.  Of interest was that the coal traveled by conveyor belt directly to the nearby power plant and thus was never hauled by truck or by train.

We entered the mine through a horizontal mine shaft and were riding in an Isuzu diesel pickup.  My escort told me that the reason these pickups were used is because, being diesel, they had no ignition, thereby  eliminating a possible source of coal dust explosion.  We had to drive about half a mile back into the mine and, every so often, we would stop at a call box where my escort would call in and report our location.  The maintenance man told me this was in case there was an explosion or cave-in, the approximate location of everyone would be known.

Before we went into the mine, we had to go through a 30 minute orientation on how to use supplemental oxygen generators.  Fortunately, we needed none of this and I soon had their problem resolved.  I sure was glad to get out of that mine though!

The Drill Ship

Another exciting adventure was my helicopter ride 120 miles out into the Gulf.  Again, we were having a problem with one of our gearboxes on a semi-submersible drill ship, the Diamond M Century.  Diamond M was the name of the drilling company operating the platform.

This journey began by me driving to Houma, Louisiana, and catching a ride in a Petroleum Helicopters Inc. (PHI).  It was a Hughes 500 model and was extremely loud.  In order to talk to the pilot, I had to use a headset.  We landed about halfway out on an unmanned platform to refuel and the pilot told me that I had two choices: either get out and pump the fuel or he could do it but, if he did, we would have to wait 20 minutes for the turbine to cool down.  I decided I could pump the fuel.

We got to the drill ship, I looked at the gearbox and approved their proposed fix, and flew back to Houma.

The Nuclear Power Plant

The last adventure that comes to mind is my trip to Arkansas One, a nuclear power plant located in Russellville, Arkansas.  Once again, they had a Tulsa Winch, in this case a TP1 planetary model, which they were having problems with and asked us to come down and look at it.

In a couple of days, I drove from Tulsa to Russellville and met with the man who had called me.  That's when I found out that the winch was at the top of one of their two reactors, some 200 feet in the air!  The only way up was by climbing a ladder up the side of the vessel (while it was running).  At least there was a landing every 50 feet where you could stop and rest.

Before making the climb, I had to lay in a stainless steel tub and be scanned for nuclear waste.  This scan was repeated after coming back down from the reactor.  We made the climb and, when we got to the top, I discovered that the winch I was supposed to look at was at the end of a 15 foot I-beam hanging from the top of the reactor.  NO way was I going to shinney out on that beam to examine the winch.

I told the maintenance guy that the only solution was to get a crane in there, take the winch down, and send it to our plant in Tulsa.  That's what they did and a couple of weeks later, we got the winch and repaired it.

Friends from the Past

 

There are some friendships that seem less like choices than like the slow, patient work of time itself, laid down year after year until the memory of their beginning becomes almost indistinguishable from the memory of one’s own life. So it was when Jerry and Marlene McCain came to visit us this week, traveling home to Rutledge, Tennessee, after wandering through the vast reaches of Yellowstone, where the mountains and steaming earth must have seemed as old as the world itself.

Seeing them again carried us backward through more than half a century, to Tulsa in 1971, when our lives were simpler in their outward appearance, though no less full of hope than they are now. We lived side by side in adjoining mobile homes, close enough that one day’s conversation drifted almost naturally into the next. Louise and Marlene found in one another the easy companionship that asks for neither explanation nor effort, while Jerry and I discovered the same quiet understanding between us.

Those were years when the future was still unfolding before all of us. Jerry had only recently completed his service in the United States Navy and was studying at the Spartan School of Aviation, carrying with him the determination of a young man intent upon building a life with his own hands. After graduating in 1972, he and Marlene journeyed east to Virginia, where he spent more than forty years with Allied Chemical, remaining faithful to one company until retirement finally called him away from the work that had occupied so much of his life.

Our own path bent in another direction. Louise and I left Tulsa for Detroit before returning again the following year, as though life itself had decided that home was something we would have to leave before we could fully appreciate it. I eventually made my career at Tulsa Winch, working there until my retirement in 1998, measuring the passing years less by the calendar than by the familiar rhythm of work, family, and the friendships that somehow endured despite the miles and decades between us.

When friends such as Jerry and Marlene return, they do more than cross the threshold of a house. They bring with them the quiet company of all the years that have gone before—the people we once were, the hopes we carried, and the enduring grace that allows certain friendships to remain unchanged, even as everything else yields to time.

(AI Assisted)