Sept 30, 2011

American TV: A Ride to remember past lightning

When I was first married I worked as a Television Technician repairing Televisions and installing antenna systems for televisions. The company I worked for was called American Television Service in Orem Utah. As a technician after my initial training I was assigned to cover the outlying areas of the state where we offered our services. One day of the week I would travel to Price and cover calls in that part of the state. Usually they were right in Price, but  I also went south from there to the cities like Orangeville and Ferron. Another day of the week I would travel to Heber, Park City and Coalville. Other times I would go to Salina and Richfield. Then the rest of the week I would work around Provo, Orem and anywhere the boss needed me to go..

It was on a trip to Coalville when the following incident took place. The van had nearly bald tires on it and was soon to have the winter tires installed but as of yet Carl had held off making the change until it was absolutely necessary. I left for Heber early in the morning as usual on these days and traveled to Heber. I don’t recall how many jobs I had that day but not enough to keep me from being able to go on up to Coalville in the late afternoon. I got there quite late in the day and found several jobs there as well. I had one job that I left for last since it required traveling about fourteen miles toward the Wyoming border up a narrow road used only by the local people who lived up the canyon. The job seemed to be a fairly simple job and would probably require a repair of the antenna system but that was usually accomplished by fixing a bad wire or sometimes even changing the antenna. It was getting late and the sun had gone down by the time I went up to the home to make these repairs. It had started to snow a liitle but the road was still OK to travel and did not prevent me from being able to get to the house. A look at the TV quickly confirmed my earlier diagnosis and then a test with the meter confirmed that even more. I did the usual checks of the wiring in the home and all seemed to be OK leaving only the outside part of the system to be checked and repaired.  I went outside and found the antenna mounted on the roof and then to my horror realized it was a steep tin roof. That kind of a covering was required considering the amount of snow fall that they usually had there during the winters but I didn’t like the thoughts of climbing on it during a snow storm even though it was still a very light storm. The only way that I could find to safely climb the roof was to throw a rope across the roof and tie it to the bumper of the van then climb onto the roof with the rope tied to me and taking up the slack with each step. My shoes seemed to stick to the tin OK so I went up very slowly and carefully, changed the antenna which I had also had to pull up with a second rope so that I wouldn’t have to make more than one trip up the roof. I then climbed back down very slowly and carefully. I had never felt such excitement as I went into the house and found a very strong signal, happy customers and then the rope coming down toward me from the roof as I pulled it down.

I then traveled slowly back to Coalville a,nd then on toward Salt Lake City where I had one more job to do before going home for the night.  The roads became better even though there was still rain falling as I got to the appointment in Salt Lake. It was a short repair there and I was soon on my way back to Orem. However it was still nearly 11 pm by the time I got off the freeway in Orem and took one of the back roads to the shop. The storm had seemed to be following me from Coalville but at least I was headed home for the night. It was still raining and there was even occasional lightning strikes followed by the heavy thunder that they created. Then it happened.  I was just 100 or so yards from the shop when out of the corner of my eye I witnessed a very bright flash of light as a lightning bolt hit the power transformer on the power pole I was driving past on the side of the street to my left. The thunder that followed seem to ignore the window between us and I heard it at the same instance I saw the flash of light and it sounded extremely loud and angry. I was so scared at that moment that I literally had to stop in the middle of the road and take a couple of minutes in order to allow my nerves to settle so that I could make the last few yards to the shop safely. That was the culminating event of a day where my nerves had already been on end and at the very end of my rope so to say.  It didn’t take long to unload the van and I was never so happy as to finally be safe back at home a half hour or so later. I was also very thankful to a Heavenly Father who had protected me from sliding off the road with bald tires in a snowstorm, sliding off a steep slick tin roof and not being hit by a lightning that struck so close to my vehicle.