Public Power - November 2008 - (Page 26)

EveryI go to my Tuesday night folk’s house and make them a fish dinner. Salmon, talapia, flounder, sole – we run the gamut. The reasons are simple: we like fish, we hear it’s good for you, and because we finally can. My dad retired a few years ago from a small municipally owned utilities department where he was director of operations (water, electric, road and sewer). I sold my restaurant in August 2007. In the restaurant business, double shifts, nights, weekends and holidays are standard fare—not so different from utilities. There were many nights my dad shoveled down his dinner when he got home at 6:15 so he could be at a board meeting by 7. I worried when he was called out on emergencies, which always seemed to happen between 2 and 3 a.m. Long after I moved out and finished college, he was still keeping a fierce pace. Our weekly suppers are a way of slowing things down and rediscovering ourselves as a family. It’s all about balance. Even in my hometown of only 8,000 residents, there always seemed to be plenty of crises in the utilities department. After bringing my dad a thermos full of hot coffee in a biting ice storm one time, I remember thinking, “This is the worst job ever. You couldn’t pay me enough to leave my warm bed in the middle of the night just to freeze my fingers off.” Funny thing is, back then they didn’t pay much. My dad started as a lineman for Public Service Electric & Gas co. in 1948, working 26 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2008 JOB URNAL JO N EY B Y S U E K EN Keeping a for “peanuts,” as he put it. By 1965, when he became the assistant superintendent for the borough, he still had to work a night job stacking bricks at a local lumber yard to make ends meet. All that is behind us now. The tension, the headaches, the psychology and the life or death of it is at a comfortable distance, and my dad can tell stories about the thrashing from Hurricane Agnes in 1972 or the time a trucker broke a water main by driving over a manhole. The water ran into a storm drain, making the leak virtually undetectable. It took them 18 hours to find it. He shares specific experiences to illustrate a point, or to empathize with what a friend or family member might be going through. Once in a while he’d refer to a “tough time” back in the ’70s. It seems a couple of linemen had decided not to answer their phones during power outages and other emergencies. They staged small-scale “sickouts” to protest if they didn’t care for a particular assignment. They were suspended and eventually fired. Civil service got involved, and there was a public hearing. I had heard the stories before, but never quite got the full picture. So this one Tuesday evening last July when the subject reared its head, I asked him about it. “Did civil service just take your word for what happened?” I asked. “How did you remember all the little incidents in order to make a case?” “Well, I kept some notes. I guess you can read them if you want,” he said. “Notes? What notes?” Without a word, he hobbled toward the cellar door and disappeared (all those years of climbing had finally gotten to his knees). He reemerged a couple minutes later with several small, leather-bound volumes, marked with the years 1972, 1973 and 1975. As it turns out, he kept business journals for every year at the borough, 28 in all. We never knew they existed. Later that night, as I pored over the smooth, worn pages, a picture started to emerge. Some entries were sparse, like “checked pumps” or “checked streetlights.” But when I noticed the dates, Thursday, July 4; Sunday, Dec. 31, they spoke volumes. Other entries were longer – but not by much. There was enough inPUBLIC POWER

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - November 2008

Public Power - November 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions Capturing Knowledge Before It Retires Jackson’s GIS Search Keeping a Job Journal Japan Tackles the Kyoto Protocol Getting to 20 by 10 Damless Hydro Power Earthquake: The Hidden Disaster For Engineers Safety For Governing Boards DEED Hometown Connections Parting Shot

Public Power - November 2008

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