My first job in college was in the Duke Greenhouses. 

             

Long, long ago, though still vividly recalled, I was a camp counselor on Lake Ontario.

 

 

 

Many years after that I was a counselor once more, this time for a camp that trekked throughout the southwest mountains and deserts. Kurt Vonnegut had once been a part of this trek. From the cook Cameron, who put Tabasco in everything, I learned to love spicy food. 

I worked one summer climbing high steel towers in the electrical switchyard of a hydroelectric plant, where  220,000, 330,000, and 440,000 volts buzzed and snapped all around us as we cleaned off the grease and glopped on thick silver paint while climbing the steel towers like rubber-suited monkeys.

 

 

            

One drip of paint could result in electrocution if it hit a hot wire below. One coworker of mine was knocked unconscious, but fortunately left dangling by his safety belt by just such an errant drip of thick silver paint. Bill, a journeyman lineman and a full blood Tuscarora Indian, literally ran across the high steel beams, 3-4” wide at most, and grabbed our coworker, slinging him over his shoulder and running back across the steel, clambering down the tower to bring him to safety. 

 

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