My Buddy Bob

Many years ago, about 1967, I was an electrical apprentice at General Motors. One of the guys that was an apprentice at the same times name was Bob Pankey.

Now Bob was a bull of a man, or I should say young man. We were about 25 at the time. Bob was a big tough cope chewing weight lifter that nobody messed with. I always got along great with him and actually I screwed with him all the time. I got away with it because we were friends and he was not actually sure if I was nuts or not.

Bob didn't like hights and part of our job as Electrican apprentices involved climbing the steel. Heck, that is where we ran the conduit, up against the ceiling, which was thirty or fourty ft in most of the plant.

We used a crank-up ladder called an economy ladder. I am not sure they are allowed any more, with the stupid Osha rules.

They would crank up to the steel and we just climbed up and then crawled into the steel. Then it was easy to just climb the steel and run the conduit or what ever we had to do up there. Easy for most but not for Bob.

Now when most of us climbed we would say that we used one hand for GM and one for ourselves. Bob usually had two for himself and if GM got any it was purely accidental. It was a chore to get him to do his part if it was higher than his chest. :D

One day he and I were doing some work in the trim shop. I told him his big dumb arse was gonna go up that ladder an as I was tired of carrying his big arse. We argued back and forth and finally he said he would do it.

He had to make a tie-in in a junction box just high enough that he would have to leave the ladder. I cranked him up and he had a deaths grip on that ladder.

Finally I got him to the steel and he slowly crawled off the ladder and started opening the junction box.

I was standing there watching and looked at my watch. Five minutes to lunch. I started cranking the ladder down, with an evil glint in my eye. He looked down and asked what the heck I was doing. I told the boy I was going to lunch. He started doing the Pankey squall. He started telling me that he was gonna kick my arse and rip my head off and to Please let him down, etc. I laughed.

I told him that all he had to do to get to me was to climb down the colum. It is not hard to do, at least it was not hard back then :D But impossible for my buddy Bob. HAAHHA

I went back to the shop to eat lunch, leaving Bob a setting in the steel and squalling. The guys asked where Pankey was and I told them. Now I got a laugh out of that.

Lunch was a half hour or so so I headed back out, half figuring he had found a way back down but there he was setting, like a big pizzed off buzzard. He started telling me he was gonna wup my butt and I just laughed and told him if he kept talking like that I was gonna leave him there for the rest of the day.

I told him if he promised not to wup my poor old arse I would let him down. Now he could have ripped my head off but he was not sure if he could or not. He figured I should have been scared and since I was not, it confused him. He finally promised and I cranked up the ladder and let him down.

All was well but he sure got a ribbing out of it. Geesh, it has been a long time since I have seen him..

Something Jess said about Raymond rang a bell and I thought about Bob