I've worn a lot of hats during my storied career. Been to a lot of places, seen a lot of things. But one place came to mind just yesterday. I was talking to Mom, who could win a gold medal if Hand Wringing was an Olympic event. She's currently worried about my potential exposure to bedbugs. I told her that I take all the necessary precautions and I have faced greater hazards than bedbugs.
I had a project in Birmingham, Alabama in August at a coke plant. Now, just break that down. Birmingham Alabama. Not known for the winter sports activities, not considered a good place to be when months have no "R" in their name. August. Arguably the hottest month of our calendar. And a coke plant. A place that heats coal and converts it to a higher temperature yielding fuel. Coke is to coal as charcoal is to hardwood.
The place was as close to the hinges on the gates of Hell a mortal can get without first dying. My job was to calibrate, place and analyze air pumps to determine the level of toxic gases the workers were exposed to. The pumps are about the sized of a cigar box, fitted with a length of aquarium tubing with a filter cassette about the size of a 35mm film canister.
The pumps had to be placed in areas the workers spent their time. So, the plant manager walked me around the facility and explained the operations there. Coke is placed in what they call batteries. these batteries are arraigned like slices of bread in a loaf, cheek to jowl as it were. They each are about three feet wide and thirty feet square with eight to ten batteries arrayed together.
Coal is poured into the top of each battery and a steel lid is affixed. The narrow sides of the batteries are actually doors so when the coke is ready, both doors are opened and the coke is pushed out the opposite side into a waiting rail car. It comes out red hot, smoking and dirty. Dumped into the rail car, it then goes beneath a spray of water to quench it and prevent it from continuously burning. The sound is deafening, the plume of steam is awe inspiring and the smell... Well, the smell is not one that Airwick would feature in room deodorizers.
We walked beside one of these batteries when the plant manager grabbed my arm. "Wait here just a little bit!" he cautioned with his regional accent dripping with honeysuckle and molasses. I looked ahead and saw one of the batteries spewing gray/green smoke at a prodigious rate.
Suddenly that smoke burst into flame! The flames shot out of the batteries exactly the way I always imagined dragon's fiery blasts would look like. Whoosh! Fifteen more feet and I would have been flambéed.
And Mom is worried about bedbugs.