My life story - Henry J Macey (best books for 20 year olds .TXT) 📗

as he put his bare hand on the adjustment wheel, and gave it a tweak. “Just needed a touch of adjusting.” Then as he saw the look on my face said, “what’s the matter something worrying you.”

 

“If I’d had done that with an evaporator without asbestos gloves on, I’d have burnt the flesh of my fingers. Surely that should be too hot to handle, with your bare hands?” “No,” he said, “it’s barely warm, why should it be hot.” “When you boil a kettle it gives off steam, that’s what makes it whistle. The hotter the water the nearer it is to vaporizing if that whey is not red hot it won’t vaporize as quickly as it should” I said.

 

I mean hello knock, knock is there anybody out there, is anybody listening to me. I must be right; it's imposable for me to be wrong, isn’t it. Apparently! I was wrong, his face turned to thunder as he said. “How long were you in the navy working on this type of equipment?” “Five years” I replied. “Well I’ve been doing this job for over fifteen years; don’t tell me how it should be done.” Oh, my goodness, I hadn’t actually started working yet, and I was upsetting a leading hand already. I hadn’t meant to, I was only stating what my training had taught me.

 

The job its self was no effort at all, but eight hours in this spotless white-tiled room. With white-clothed workers, was like nothing I had imagined it would be. So after a few months, I was wondering if I had done the right thing and left the navy. I started looking for an outside job, one in the fresh air where you could see and feel freedom. The factory felt like a prison, I had worked in some tight enclosures before. But all this whiteness was driving me nuts, no wonder some of my fellow employees were uptight.

 

I did get a job outside eventually at the South Western Electricity Board, known to all as SWEB.  I worked there for four years, in the central construction department, which erected overhead cables all over the West Country.  I got a job as a land rover artic driver; these were short wheelbase land rovers with a fifth wheel. And had a twenty-foot articulated trailer, on which we carried the line poles that carried the overhead power cables.  We delivered the poles to the gangs in the field, to be erected and strung with copper cable.  Talk about a small world, I met an old adversary not long after I started. I had pulled up beside a hole in progress when I spied a familiar face. He was to his waist in a hole, now I was really looking down at the kellick.

A year passed by quite quickly because it was a pleasant job and I saw a lot of the west county. Then one day I was called into the office and offered a job driving an Allen trencher. This machine looked like a chainsaw set onto a miniature caterpillar tractor body, that was five foot long and three foot wide that stood four feet high. It would cut a trench six inches wide, and up to two foot six inches deep.  It would be used for the earthing of the transformers that were hung onto the poles, and for laying drainage pipes in the new substations that were being built.

 

It was a one-man job and I would have a Land Rover and pull the digger on its own trailer. I had to pass a test to get my track laying drivers licence, and be taught how to use a meter.  This told me when there was enough copper in the ground, to earth the transformers. It was a good job as I was virtually my own boss, I would be given a list of where the transformers were and left to do the job myself. One job was at South Molton, and I had to return to Taunton to replace my Land Rover with a new long wheel-based one.  I had got to a place called The Wishing well, near Bampton, on my way back to South Molton.

 

It was a bright sunny morning and I had stopped at the cafe there for a cool drink.  As I opened the land rover door to get out, I looked up at a small plane silently circling very low with its engine off.  It came round again, much lower this time.  As the pilot tried to land in the field behind the café, it suddenly dipped and crashed into the trees on the far side of the field. I headed to the crash site in my Land Rover; other people were running there as well.  I shouted to one climbing over the gate, to open it.  He did not stop, so I had to get out and open it myself.  I started up the Land Rover and drove across the field, stopping under the tail of the plane.  It was about ten feet in the air, held there by the thick branches of the tree.

 

Climbing onto the roof of the Land Rover, I tried to pull open the door of the plane, but it was jammed tight.  I shouted to someone, to get me a long crowbar and an axe from the back of the Land Rover.  With it, I wrenched off the hinges and pulled the door away from the plane.  There were four people on board, all teachers, two males and two females. Fortunately, none of them was badly hurt.  I managed to get them into the Land Rover and drove them to Bampton.  As they were local people they were able to direct me to the doctor's home that was also his surgery.  After seeing that the four teachers were all right, I went on to South Molton.

 

Sometime later, a letter came to the office asking for information about a SWEB Land Rover involved in the rescue of four people from a crashed plane.  I owned up to it and was told that the company magazine wanted to write a piece on the rescue, and the people involved wanted to thank me in person.  They wanted to have a reception in my honour; highly embarrassing, but they gave my wife a big box of chocolates.

 

I had bought a vesper shooter for my wife and tried to teach her to ride it. She had no confidence in herself and kept panicking whenever I told her to ride alone. I took her up onto the old Smeatharpe airdrome; ‘you could drive on the old runway then’. With all the space in the world, surely this was the place she could ride without fear of hitting anything. I was sadly wrong, she managed to run off the runway and crash into the only post on the site. She would not ride it after that, so I kept it for myself. I would load it into the back of the landrover, and use it for coming home from jobs where we could lodge out on.

 

The job at South Molton was a big area job; we had strung wire all the way from Taunton to here. An impressive span was over the Dune Valley. It was such a long span we built pylons either side of the valley and used a helicopter to take the cable across the valley. We were working our way down to Cornwall, with another S W E B team from Cornwall working towards us. As I said I rode my shooter home, instead of paying for digs. One cold dark misty night I rode it home from our work site, when I got home I could not get off my bike. I had passed through a bank of freezing fog, and my duffel coat had frozen solid. When we finally pried it off of me, we stood it in the bath to thaw out.

 

In the winter of 1964, I cheated death by the thickness of my clothes!  Two years before, I had bought a nine horsepower 1934 Singer Roadster.  It was hand-built from aluminium and wood and cost me seven pounds, ten shillings.  I had bought it from one of my co-workers; he was a powder monkey and drove a land rover compressor. His job was to blast out holes that had a rock in them. When he showed me the car it was buried completely by snow, because it had snowed heavily the night before. The old leather soft roof had collapsed under its weight, just leaving the pram hood frame standing.

 

We had to dig the snow out of the car and remove the old torn roof before we could put the key in to see if it would start. I was pleased when it started almost immediately, so I gave him the money and drove it home. My wife and I made a canvas roof, using the old torn original as a template. We spent many days hand stitching the canvas together, and when it was finished we were quite proud of our achievement.  It wasn't perfect but it did the job it was designed for, when it was first put on the car it looked nice and taut.  Then when it got wet it shrank, then when it dried out it sagged.  Being canvas it was not totally waterproof, so the water seeped into it and dripped inside the car.

 

We inquired about having a new roof made, but my wages then were about fourteen pounds a week. And that was with all the overtime I could manage to do, we couldn’t afford the one hundred and fifty pounds I had been quoted.  It was a lovely car to drive through, and we went on many outings in it. We even drove to Middlesbrough in it, with my sister and husband.

 

I was doing a job in Bristol, working on a brand new sub-station just before Bedminster. On the A 38 on the way into Bristol, I was there earthing the transformers and doing the land drainage. Instead of living in digs, I travelled the fifty miles each way in my car.  On this particular day, it was freezing, so I had dressed accordingly.  Underwear, long Johns, T-shirt, shirt, trousers, jumper, two pairs of overalls, coat, balaclava and gloves.  Overall this, I had on my old Navy deck watch duffel coat with a hood.

 

It was pitch dark when I reached Sidcot on the A38.  As I topped a hill, I saw headlights approaching me. Then suddenly they were right in front of me, on my side of the road.  I think I braked, but can't remember.  The three-ton truck hit me head-on.  All I remember was being trapped between the steering wheel column and the door.  Placing my hand behind me, I managed to release the door handle and I fell out onto the road but I could not move.  When the ambulance arrived, the driver asked where the car driver was.  The lorry driver pointed to me and said “there.”  “Can't be” replied the ambulance driver; “he could not have survived that!”

I was taken to Weston-Super-Mare hospital, where I was X-rayed and treated for shock.  The X-rays showed I had only badly bruised ribs and lungs, and I was told I could go home.  A person from SWEB had arrived at the hospital.  They were informed of my accident, and he had come to take me back to Taunton.  A nurse brought in my clothes for me to dress.  She held up my shirt, and I put my arm into the sleeve and cried out in pain. I was taken back down to X-ray again, and they found that I had broken my left wrist.  It was plastered and I got dressed again, picking up the pile of clothes that were leftover.

 

The doctor that had treated me saw me leaving and said, “That pile of clothes saved your life.  They must have cushioned the blow of