Jim W, I’m impressed. You say late 1950’s? I was born in 1956. My goodness you do have seniority here Sir!

About electrical work. . .
I work with consultants about 20% of the time. You mentioned working with design engineers. . . Yes, we have them here too but I am not one of them, I do field work as a Project Engineer/Electrical.

The design group designs it.
The construction group builds it.
After it’s completed and it still doesn’t work, they call my group. We get called in to “make it work” only after everyone else has had a chance to snick with it.
As my boss once said to me, “If a project works properly and there is praise due we are invisible. However, if it’s over budget, behind schedule and broken, we seem to inherit all liability”.
Keeps you humble.

To keep things interesting, my wife is a Substation Electrician for the local power company. And no, we didn’t meet on-the-job. When we met I was a full time student and she was an auto mechanic.

You mentioned you worked in electronics. Sounds interesting. If your ever in the mood to populate the Not About Trees section with a few war-stories about your experiences, It’d probably be a cool read for this section!

Electrojake