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Horsin’ Around 7-26-10

Roger Thompson
Fort Collins, Colo.

I feel that I owe everyone an apology … even though I don’t think it was my fault. However I do have a strong feeling of an apology to the Fence Post and my sweet, gentle editor, Amiella Dietz. She has been so good to me over the years. And with this last disaster about two weeks ago … well?

I was about to finish my article a couple of weeks ago when my computer popped and then the lights began acting strange. Some would barely glow, while others were extra bright, then the phone went out and all I had was my cell phone. Now I don’t particularly like cell phones, but it was all I had, so I did find a use for it. First was to stay in touch with my daughter. The other is that I always try to take it with me when I go out to ride my new horse. I have been in enough wrecks to know that it is comforting to know you have a better chance of getting help if you can contact some one in an emergency.

However, calling around, trying to find an electrician was a problem, seems like most of the men I know who do that work were out of town trying to find work some where else. So I finally did what everyone else would have done in the first place, looked in the Yellow Pages of the phone book. I called the first one I came to, but he said he couldn’t get there until about 6 that evening.



Trying to figure out what I should do, I took my little voltage meter to check the plugs around the house. I was getting 150 volts out of some and about 45 volts out the others. Now I am not an electrician but did have a course on it in Vocational Agriculture College when studying to be an ag teacher. But that was about 1951 and a lot has changed since and I don’t even begin to know what I should.

When the electrician got there and checked everything and I told him what had gone wrong he told me that I had a short in the underground wiring and he would do a temporary fix that would only last a couple of days. He said if I dug the trench for the new wiring it would save me some money. So I set out to dig the trench which had to be 2-feet deep but I didn’t last very long.



Then my friend and neighbor, Jim Zimmerman, sent Richard Holms, whose pasture he was haying, to my house with a ditch digger. Richard dug my trench and I paid half the rental. Later he brought me a TV just like the one I had. Then my neighbors Pat and Doris Stratton brought their boys over and hand dug two places where the ditch ended so the electrician could work on the new under ground wiring and hook it up.

I guess what I am trying to say is though I live in the country, rather isolated; it is nice to have friendly neighbors willing to help in time of trouble.

Thank you.

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Prior to his retirement, Roger Thompson was a CHA certified instructor of advanced Western horsemanship and beginning English riding.


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