My grandpa was a very wise man, most of the time that is. He probably forgot more about the cattle industry than most folks will ever know. He lived through the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, postponed his wedding to Grandma because Pearl Harbor happened and he thought he would be drafted into service, served as a founding member of the local fire department and served on the local school board for many years. Throughout all his years, he always had a practical solution for almost every problem. One of his solutions was neither safe nor practical, however. See Grandpa had the only center pivot irrigation system in our part of the county. It was an electric drive system that required a few different components to make it run properly.
Being that the system was three phase and the power supplied by the electric coop was single phase, we had a phase converter installed to make everything run properly. There were two wells tied together to pump the water for the system and as the system got older, it required a little more maintenance and care to keep it running properly. Many times, the problems that arose were electrical in nature. While there are all sorts of volt meters, current testers and tools of all shapes and sizes to tell you whether or not a line is live when you are working on it, Grandpa’s favorite testing tool was a five-gallon bucket full of wooden handled screwdrivers. If you grounded the screwdriver out on the side of the box and the wire and it made sparks, there was power there. Surprisingly, Grandpa lived to be ninety years old, and his electrician skills had nothing to do with it!
One evening in the fall of the year we got a phone call from the custodian at the high school. It seemed the well at the school had stopped and there was no water in the building. Grandpa, my mom, the custodian and I went over to the well pit to see what exactly the matter was. It was dark, I was volunteered to be the gopher in the well pit because I was the youngest, and Grandpa would coach me from above so we could see what was causing our water issue. I checked all the valves, looked at the fuses and made sure that the capacitor wasn’t sweating, indicating that it had gone bad. The pressure tank measured the right amount of pressure, and we finally narrowed our problem down to a faulty pressure switch. Grandpa handed me one of his trusty testing screwdrivers and told me to start taking the switch apart. This particular screwdriver had a crack in the wooden handle so instead of insulating my hand from the 240 volts running through the switch, this screwdriver became a conductor that rapidly brought me to full attention. I saw stars, the ghost of Elvis, could hear my own heartbeat and somehow lost control of my ability to make words. Grandpa was no help, he and the rest of our well-fixing troop were too busy laughing at me to even offer a suggestion.
It didn’t take long after that before I decided I would listen to Grandpa on any subject, except electricity. I bought my own voltmeter and learned it’s best to throw the switch to the off position before you work on anything with power going to it. Especially if you are using Grandpa’s heirloom testing screwdrivers.
That’s all for this week, remember that volts thrill and amps kill when it comes to electricity. Keep tabs on your side of the barbed wire and God bless!