My Tenderfoot Years

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My Tenderfoot Years

Lessons learned: Don’t promise more than you can deliver.
Keep your promises.
Respect the contractor’s work schedule.
Don’t wear fancy clothes and shoes on a jobsite.
Take your lumps when you have to, especially when they’re well-deserved.
And next time, if there is a next time, bring a skyhook.

Read the full story here

dgn

The Boy Scout stories sure brought back some great memories. As a former scout in Nassau County on L.I. we had our Tenderfoots going off for those Skyhooks. However, for our needs we always needed the more specific Left-handed Smoke Shifter -- a much more difficult find.

Noel

Reminds me of new guys on the ship I was on, fresh out of boot camp. We'd be going out for a month, and on the second day or so, the new guy would want to know where to mail his letter to his mother. He'd be told that we pull up to the mail buoy at 0400 so he could send his letter; be on the bow of the ship then. Later in the day, when he complained that it didn't happen, he'd be told that he forgot to account for daylight savings time, it came at 0300.

He'd be on deck at 0300, looking for the mail buoy. Later he'd be sent for a bucket of steam, or 100' of shoreline, or the marine version of the smoke shifter.

The things we do to amuse ourselves...

DanHolohan

I love it. They also sent me for the Cannon Report that day, which the neighboring Scout Master gave me. When I opened the folded report I saw that it read BOOM!

RayWohlfarth

LOL That was great. Thanks for sharing. I was sent for a left handed pipe wrench and older than a boy scout

Pumpguy

And of course there was the machinist apprentice sent to find a brass magnet.

RayWohlfarth

There isnt a brass magnet? LOL

Mad Dog_2

My first day working at Belmont racetrack as a 10 yr old (working papers? Comp? Child labor laws? Phooey!) John Campo's Asst, Bernie said:
"Hey kid, do me a favor and run over and see Pancho Martin and ask if we can borrow the saddle stretcher, ok?" You got it boss and I took off. After I got to the third trainer in a sweat, I detected from the smirk in his face, that they were playing me. I think I did it to another lid the next summer.

So, my first day on a Local 2 Plumbing Job at age 19, I didn't fall for the bucket of steam trick but they tried. However, My Foreman Joe Sadicario looked me up and down in my brand new Osh Kosh overalls and brand new timberlands and smeared his greasy boots on mine and took some gray dope and pasted up my overalls and said: " ok now your now good to go, welcome to the business, kid" mad dog

ratio

I think if someone sent me out for the wire stretcher (I'm an electrician by trade, you see), I'd just go take a nap in the truck before I came back and admit failure.

JUGHNE

Jeep Jokes:
About 45 years ago, I was in the USAFSS, (google that).
Our job was classified until 10-20 years ago.
We were intercept operators. After 3 years on an island in the Med, I was working steady mid shifts.
We would get new guys, "jeeps", as we called them.
They were just fresh from the indoctrination schools of secrecy.
We all had been through that and it was as serious as a heart attack.
They were Morse code intercept operators.
We had an elaborate compound and were able to feed code to this jeep from a master station. You could type messages and have them punch out on paper tape. This tape would be than patched into his rack. The Jeep would get his first assignment, coping traffic between 2 USSR points.
The message he heard and typed out was about him, all pertinent details and numbers etc.....maybe even family names.
Everything we could find in his personal files. (Nothing was sacred then)
Soviet agents had a BOLO out on him!
We all watched from a distance as his face would whiten and body slumping. He would raise his hand, the sign that he needed to be relieved. Some guys would go to see his problem and read his text. They really pumped up the drama and put him in a corner. Within minutes the SP's came in with M-16's and side arms. They and his supervisor escorted him from the compound to the other side of the fence. He was told he was being taken to a safe location. He never noticed that the cops stopped at the check in shack and only he and his super kept going. He was walked up to the post office and was told he should check his mail box, as he was not to be in public for awhile. By the time he got his combination figured out and inside might have been a note that said "Welcome Aboard Jeep".......he turns around and there is no one with him. Most figured they just had the rest of the night off.

These Jeep Jokes made the 8 hours pass a little quicker.
Most of the night shift, including 2nd Lt., the SP and even the postal employee were in on this. As was the custom all things were incinerated every night.

We would have been in the deepest dodo had the day command been aware of this.
The security was very intense in the cold war 1970's.
It was over 25 years before I actually told anyone what I did in the USAFSS.

I am sure every Jeep that went thru this will remember it.

(Just in case some of this is still classified......I read this on the internet)

DanHolohan

Well, that wins. Gosh.