Rick Ranson

“We were working on the stack up in Flin Flon. Do you know that stack is 750feet high? Anyway we’re working on it and one day we’re going up the man-lift inside and about half-way up the power goes off. Everything shuts down.

“The top of the stack is so far up there it looks like the moon, and the bottom looks like we were flying over the lights of a tiny city at night. We’re about twenty stories up, inside that friggen stack.

“Just sittin’ there. For two hours, just sitting there. In the dark.

“Finally Spindly says; “Fuck this noise. Enough of this horseshit I’m going over the side.”

“He grabs one of the welder cables and starts to slide down the twenty stories. About half way down Spindly hits a patch of grease. He starts to freefall. When he finally gets down his gloves are all ripped, his shirt and pants are all ripped. Even his boots were all ripped.

“Spindly walked away from that cable a changed man.”

 

I was talking to my buddy Roy Ducharme about all my worries. The conversation went like this:

“Jeez Roy, I haven’t heard from my publisher for two months now. The guy that wrote a script based on my book I haven’t heard from in three months. There’s some Hollywood Producer in town looking for sites for a film that that sounds a lot like a chapter in my book…..”

“Never mind, did you hear about Garrett?”

“Garrett the Apprentice. What happened to him?”

“He got kicked in the leg by a cow.”

The Boilermaker Apprentice being a Boilermaker Apprentice farted into the clip-on gas monitor he was supposed to wear clipped to his shirt close to his face. The monitor beeped several times, lights flashed, it vibrated, and finally alarms went off.  Then the monitor died.

The Apprentice laughed.

Then the monitor had to be sent back to the shop to be re-calibrated.

Next morning the Apprentice was called to the General Foreman’s office.  The General Foreman was not known for talking lots.

“Fuck’n around with the safety equipment is a firing offence. Get out.”

“Well how do you know it was me?”

“Those things are downloaded every night onto a computer. We can even tell when you are breathing. You endangered yourself, and the people around you. Like I said, get out.”

And for as long as that General Foreman was working on that site, nobody but nobody touched those monitors, ever.

 

While walking along Osborne Street a street person held up a sign.

Family Killed By Sex Ninjas !

Please Donate 4 Kung Fu Lessons

I had to. I just had to.  How could you not?

 

 

As a Boilermaker you meet some interesting people who have worked all over the world. An Engineer in the oil-sands had this story.

“I was working in Hong Kong, and we were behind on the assembly so the manager where I was working asked us all to work overtime.

I said “No.”

“Why not?” The manager asked. Because as the only foreigner I didn’t have anyone waiting for me back at the hotel anyway.

“Look.” I said.
“I’m married, and my wife back in England will spend one dollar more than I make.” When it was translated I looked around the room and every Chinese guy was nodding. Every one.”