Fried Cloyce

Me Pops liked to tell stories of his days in the field as he put it, his days going out to job sites to work on me Grandpa Joe's welders. They are some great stories, not the least reason because so many are true. Life is fun.

He told me a few times of when he went to pick up an electric powered welding machine which had not yet been unhooked from the power source. He went to find the job foreman, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, to get it taken care of.

It happened that day that Cloyce was in a mood. Everything had been going poorly for him, and that welder still being hooked up was another poke with a sharp stick. He stormed to the tool crib, demanding the crib manger give him a screwdriver. Cloyce was going to disconnect the machine himself. The crib guy smiled weakly as he gave him a screwdriver. Cloyce and me Pops went out to the welder.

Now it should be noted here that those old Hobart electric welders ran off 440, three phase power, about 4 times household current. They could kill you bad if you weren't careful. As such, insulation was important to your work.

Now, Dad had seen that Cloyce had been given a fully metal screwdriver, and the sheepish grin on the crib manager's face suggested that he knew what he had done. So Pops would have stopped Cloyce before anything bad could have happened. Still, he would let things play out.

Cloyce had walked a few feet before looking at the tool he had. Seeing it was uninsulated he screamed, "They're trying to fry me like a piece of bacon!" He stormed back to the crib, slamming that metal screwdriver onto the counter and demanding a new one. All in colorful language.

Pops and the crib manager just smiled.