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They knew I was dead!
West Plant Re-melter
West Plant Re-melter
Only reason I include this incident is to show that the Lord protected me even before I was a Christian. In 1946 I went back to the West Mill at the Aluminum Company of America in Alcoa, TN as an electrician’s helper. I was nineteen. I was assigned to be the assistant of a Master Electrician who only had one leg. He was a likeable fellow and let me get away with some dumb things.
One day the wire was pulled out of a small “Budg - It Hoist.” It was used to pick up 200 pound “pigs” of aluminum. This hoist ran on a small trolley like the “crane” over old fireplaces. It had a heavy duty rubber cord that carried 440 volts of AC electricity. It was about 14 feet off the floor and could swing in an arc so that the oblong aluminum pig could be hoisted and swung onto a pallet or a truck by the operator.
I got a 12 foot stepladder and put it under the disabled hoist. I looked at the conduit holding the wire. My eye followed the metal conduit. It appeared to go behind a huge furnace. On the other side of this furnace I saw a conduit come through the column into a “Square D” disconnect box. I went over and threw the switch down to disconnect the power.
I climbed the ladder and did not check the wire with a voltage tester as I should have done. Instead I grabbed the exposed metal wires...one in each hand and was immediately knocked off the ladder by 440 volts of electricity. I was trying to catch my breath as I lay on the brick floor. Two workers who were pouring aluminum watched all this. They dropped their handles holding the ladle of melted aluminum and they ran away.
Though shaken I was able to catch my breath and get up. This time I did a more thorough search. Obviously I had thrown the wrong switch. I found the correct switch about 30 feet away on another column. Then I saw a group of men running down through the mill. This was unusual so I hurried over to see what was going on. A man told me, “An electrician was killed here a few minutes ago” I wondered if it was my boss! The group got to the ladder where I had been working and one of the men who fled was saying, “He was lying right here…dead as a door nail, .his eyes looking up at the roof.” Then he spotted me “That’s him!” He pointed at me.
The foreman insisted that I be carried out to First Aid on a stretcher which I really didn’t want to do. They insisted. (I had been flirting with a young lady in the Electrical Department whose job it was to read the output dials and log them.) I lay down on the stretcher and covered my face. I was ashamed of my stupidity. It was shortly after this that I decided I was too careless to be an electrician. I enrolled in the University of Tennessee and left Alcoa.
Proverbs 3:11 “My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD, neither be weary of His correction:”
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