2021 RETA Breeze Jan-Feb

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The Shade Tree Mechanic! – Volume XLVII I want to be Jimmie Johnson

Since Jimmie Johnson wrapped up his last full time season in NASCAR and all, somethin struck me with what that announcer fella said. “Jimmie has earned the right to do what he wants”. So’s I gotsta thinkin, how can I earn the right to do what I want? At my age, 7 NASCAR Cup Championships may be beyond my reach. Quite frankly I don’t want to be away from the bathroom for 5 hours. Not to mention I get nervous pulling into the church parking lot. 200 MPH at Degga, no way! I thought about hittin the lottery. But that hasn’t worked. I just figure there has to be something I can do. Then it hit me. If I can get someone else to do the things I don’t liketa do, then I will get to do the things I want. So I’m lookin for volunteers. LOL (the kids tell me that you should picture me belly laugh’n when I use this LOL thing) Well while I’mwaiting for someone to raise their hand to volunteer to do my stuff, I’m workin on a backup plan. I’m trainin my operators to do the stuff I don’t want to do anymore. For too many years, I’ve thought that I would just do all the stuff. Either because they were busy, or they didn’t know how, or I thought they wouldn’t do it right. Sometimes, I’d do stuff just so I had an excuse to avoid a meetin. (you’ve done it!) No more. If they don’t

know, I’m gonna teach them. If they do know, I’m gonna let them do it. I haven’t figured out how to get themmore time, but I’ll get there. 1st off, it’s time for someone a lot younger than me to pull and clean the mist eliminators on my condensers. I don’t climb so well anymore, but I fall better than ever. I wear all my PPE and I don’t get hurt, but dam it’s embarrassin. So this year, I’m teachin someone else how to do it. It’s not hard. Heck I learned by readin the manual (and a little trial and error). Changin relief valves on top of our big vessels. (See the fallin note above). But that’s somethin that all of my team can do. We have manifolds and I’ve taught them all at least twice how to use them. I just always did it myself. Not this year, I may supervise and I may watch, but I’m not carryin the wrench. Movin the chemical pump to a new barrel. I always feel like it’s Christmas when I open a new barrel. But there is no reason that they have to wait on me to change it. I’m gonna to let them have some fun. Anythin and everythin havin to do with offal pumps, tanks, or pipe repairs. I always did it cause I know I would smell bad when I was done and I wanted to keep the others from smellin bad. But maybe one of the other guys wouldn’t mind smellin like offal. You know, cat people should do that job. Cat’s love the smell of offal. I imagine that if

Bobby went home smellin like offal Mr. Whiskers may just think he was the best pet owner ever. May leave a mouse on his pillow or sumptin. Verifyin line breaks. I know I have a whole slew of fellas that have been doin line breaks for 10 years. It’s time to let some of them check everythin and signoff on the form for the younger guys. Dumpin out the rain gauge. I don’t know why, it’s always been me, but dang, that’s getttin to be a long walk. And to tell the truth there are days I forget what it said before I get back inside to write it down. Some of my supervisors can lead shift change meetins. I still want to be involved, but it seems crazy that they haveta tell me what happened so I can turn around and tell them and the rest of the crew the same thin 15 minutes later. I’ll find out what happened when the rest of the team does. If there’s a serious issue happenin, chances are they will have called me already. And that’s another thing. Maybe I don’t need to be the first one to go in when we have an alarm. I don’t think I have more than 3 guys who have dead started my system. Maybe I need to teach some more. Spread the calls around a little. Doin what I want don’t mean I’m going to be lazy. It just means I should think about what I want to do. Jimmie Johnson deserves to drive

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