Dad's Stories - Part 4

It's been a while since I've put down some of Dad's stories, so here's the next batch. As always I'll promise that they are all true, or at least that they ought to be.

Dad worked in a shipyard among his many jobs. Since, as I've mentioned before, he had no fear of height at all, his job was to do the fitting on masts and such. This presented a problem at lunchtime, because he was expected to stay on top of the mast until the lunch whistle blew, upon which he'd have to climb down. The climb cut into his lunch break, which was only a half-hour as it was. To get around this he'd have his friend the crane operator swing the hook of the crane over to him, he'd sit on the ball over the hook and ride down on that. This was of course against the safety regulations, and it so happened that the government safety inspector was there one day when Dad took his ride. The inspector suspended him from working at the shipyard for a period of time, but since he was one of the few workers who'd go up the mast he was back at work the next day.

You may think being up at the top of a mast of a ship would keep you awake, but one day Dad fell asleep up there, leaning against the mast inside the crows nest (I suspect he had a long night the night before). A woman in a house across the road from the shipyard saw him hunched over and ran to the shipyard to tell them that their man had apparently died up on the mast. I'd imagine Dad's co-workers weren't to happy when they climbed up there to see what was wrong and found him alseep.

Last shipyard story for now. One day Dad was painting the lifeboat davits (these are the crane-like things that are used to lower the lifeboats). He was priming them with stuff called red lead, it's basically a water-proofing paint. He'd go from davit to davit with a five gallon bucket of the stuff, painting as he went. Well one time when he picked up the bucket the handle broke off, the bucket of paint fell over the side, hit a wooden scaffold (thankfully one that wasn't occupied at the time) which acted like a springboard and sprayed red lead all over the (freshly painted) side of the ship. Dad's foreman blamed him until Dad showed him that he still had the handle of the bucket.

When I was a tyke my Dad worked in a couple of different hospitals (which shall remain nameless in case either of my readers someday find themselves in one of them). He did general repair, from unclogging drains to changing locks. His time at the hospitals gave him a disrespect for doctors, while he admitted that some of them were very intelligent, many of them had no common sense. One of the doctors got a new blood-pressure machine, the type mounted on the wall that uses a column of mercury. It was mounted, but the mercury hadn't been added yet. The doctor decided to fill the column himself, but unfortunately neglected to remove the plug at the top first. Undaunted by the sight of mercury running down the side of the column, he kept pouring until the bottle was empty, then, upon seeing that the column was still empty he called for help. Dad realized what the problem was, and further realized that the mercury needed to be cleaned up. Today a hazmat team would probably respond, but back then Dad went around the floor with a spoon and a tongue depresser picking up globs of mercury and putting it back in the bottle, after which he removed the plug and filled the column without spillage.

Another time Dad got a call of a burst pipe in an area of the hospital, so he went to investigate. Upon entering the office where the leak was, he saw the doctor whose office it was sitting at his desk while having water leak from the ceiling onto his head. The doctor looked up and informed my Dad that there was water leaking from the ceiling (no flies on him!). Dad replied (in his most diplomatic tone) that he could see that, and pointed out that he (the doctor) was getting wet. The doc asked Dad if he thought he ought to move.