I was having seizures at night caused then by a rock climbing accident rock climbing with my father in Chilao in the Angeles National Forest then when I was about 9 years old where I fell and hit my head on a rock and got a concussion which I was never treated for because we generally didn't go to doctors except for stitches and the like then.
So, my father who was valedictorian of his High School Graduating Class was worried I wouldn't be able to go to college because of my night time seizures traumatizing me periodically like I had been murdered periodically.
So, he was starting to train me as an electrician in his Electrical Contracting Business in Los Angeles.
So, I saw this as an interesting event because he was paying me I believe then $2.50 an hour and the minimum wage was likely around $1 an hour. So, as a 12 year old (even if I was crawling under houses pulling wires through black widow spider webs and cat poo I was still making $2.50 and hour which went a long way in buying anything I wanted then too including bicycles, motorized mini-bike with 2 1/2 horsepower gasoline engine that drove 35 miles per hour with a centrifugal Clutch and anything else I wanted to buy including Chemistry sets where I could make fireworks then with my 5 years older cousin. We made gunpowder and mixed this with iron filings to make really great fireworks. another fun thing was to break apart .22 bullets and put the back end (the cap) into fireplaces to scare everyone at family get togethers then.
So, we could have fireworks whenever we wanted because we both owned chemistry sets that were legal then for children to own in the 1950s. The fun one I remember was gunpowder and iron filings that we would put inside a tennis ball which would create a fountain of sparks about 5 to 10 feet in the air but you had to stabilize the tennis ball so it didn't shoot fireworks sideways toward you. We drilled a hole into the tennis ball to make this type of firework and used a piece of paper as a fuse to light it and we would set it off in one of our driveways.
So, I started learning the Electrical Trade one summer day when I was 12. My very first experience was the one where I crawled under a house and could only move by pushing by wiggling my feet. I could only do this because I was only 5 foot 2 then. But, within a year I was 5 foot 10 inches tall and could no longer fit in these small spaces under some houses. But, my very first experience was crawling through cat poo and black widow spider webs to impress my father that I could do amazing things so I could get my father's approval. I probably saved my father about 1000 dollars that day in work by doing this by the way. I remember seeing the smile on my father's face after dragging all these wires under this house and tacking them up to the floor joists under the house. Though this was one of the hardest things he ever had me do psychologically speaking I will ALWAYS remember the smile on his face when I succeeded and he permanently valued me as a beginning electrician ever after. I had a job whenever I wanted it from 12 to 17 and then again at 21 when I wanted to work with him for a while then too in a break during my college years.
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