By Mike Hall, October 4, 2017
The year was 1975 and a very young cowboy was working as an apprentice boilermaker in Kansas City, Missouri. The word apprentice is entirely accurate as the supervisor named Abe had to put labels on the tools so the rookie could recognize them.
We used to do a job in the late spring called a turn around at The Amoco Petroleum Plant just outside Wichita, Kansas. I soon learned that Kansas has some very wicked weather.
It was around 5:30 p.m. after work when the skies were rumbling above the Kansas plains. The locals might have been used to it but this cowboy had never seen anything like it. It looked like the heavens were angry as hell…that, at any moment, twenty of these twisters could erupt and wreak havoc that no one would soon forget.
Luckily, we were spared but a twister did touch down about twenty miles away.
The apprentice decided soon after to leave the business and try his hand at teaching tennis. There’s only one tool and there’s no need to label it unless you want to put a stencil on the strings.
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