Off the Grid.

The Rolling Stones are bigger than life; yet, as comfortable as a good pair shoes.
As I listen to them play I think about their relationships and what makes them so special.
After years of searching for their musical center, I have recently found what has made them so special.  It was just a funny little factoid that I never heard before.  As school chums Mick and Keith toured around as an Everly Brothers gig.  I can hear the harmonies in what they play today. 
The Everly Brothers were BIG and Mick and Keith quickly learned the styles of harmonies so they too could achieve the oneness of a duo like The Everly Brothers.
It was a thrill for them to play as an opening act for the EB.  Later the EB opened for them.
If I told someone that I can hear the beautiful harmonies of The Every Brothers in many Stones songs...they would say I am crazy.  I don't really care as the music means even more now that I know what those two cut their teeth on. 
Everything is a mystery to me and I am either very dumb or very smart, or some way of being both at once like harmonies.
Life seems a never ending river of excitement and I like it very much.
It is funny in a very odd way, that the American Government got completely full of incompetents all at once.
Just ask British Petroleum...bastards!
I worked for Texaco Oil for 10 years. From 20 to 29 years old. I worked as part of the 1500 man team of engineers, comptrollers, chemists, machinist and other maintenance staff, Unit Operators for the refining units, visionary leaders and the totally untrained and incapable Foremen, who were bosses but not very good as one.
It was all about keeping everything running as fast as possible without breaking anything or killing anyone.  They did both regularly if you ask me, as more than twice was too much, yet more came.
I went to work for Texaco during the time of the greatest manpower loss since WW II.  They were always short-handed and I worked 17 double shifts in a row once.
I remember stopping to get gas and had to call home to find out if I was coming home or going to work.  Funny, going to work in a coal mine in the sky. A Delayed Coking Unit that made commercial Coke which is like cheap fast burning coal that we sold to Japan by the 1000 metric tons.
You have these 100' by 36' vessels (4) that are mounted high up on a platform from which you take the elevator to the top. close to 200' high. We also had four derricks over head that went up 140' with lights on top which we had to oil on a regular basis.
Someone heats the crude oil (San Ardo the most toxic crude in the world) to 905 degrees f. and then inject water into it.  Yes, we had very strong lids on both ends with the largest bolts you will ever see.
The next day when the pressure drops below three pound and no more water is can be drained out we start taking the nuts off of the bolts. 48 on the top 3' lid and 144 nuts and bolts on the bottom with a lid so heavy you have to use a special lift to support it.  Everything can go wrong right there and did.
One time a boss named Risley turned the draining water off and we looked down saw it had stopped and went down to unhead the drum.
It was still full of water and I held the controls a half deck higher for a safety margin (nice of them don't you think) when the head busted loose and sprayed super heated water on the three men on my team.  I tried to lift it up and it wouldn't move.  You could not yell loud enough to help them but they knew to run.  The whole place was a mass of super hot steam and I was in the easiest place to get away.  I grabbed the welded in ladder and slid down to the bottom and ran a direction I knew.  Not the first time for running but the first time for this.  The other time was poisonous gas, hydrogen-sulfide.  Man it is invisible and I saw two guys just drop and then a third a little closer me and I ran and hit kill horn.  Sometimes the Foremen world not let you shut anything down until they saw a problem and I had to point out the bodies and then they killed the unit.
It was always exciting and was not for the faint of heart.  One time we were all smoking a dobbie as we had a couple of hours to kill when a tremendous explosion rocked us.  That took power to shake us. We were all cement and steel.  It was the Hydrogen Generating Unit or the Hydrogen Bomb Unit as we called it.  I had to go as I was first take for the Fire Department so I got picked up in 3 minutes and went to the unit. There was no fire.  Never is with Hydrogen. Just boom or one time I saw a leak in a flange (connector) at 1500 lbs of pressure and it was an invisible thirty foot lick of flame which someone would of really ate it if I hadn't seen it happen.
This time a guy I went through training with just evaporated.  We only found a shoe.  He closed a valve he shouldn't of and it was an instant hydrogen explosion.  Now you see them and now you don't.  That is the tough breaks that goes with all the money.  I made huge wages for the time. I made around $40000 in 1969.  I bought a new Camero in 1967 for $1700.00 about $2400.00  out the door with options. $97.00 a month for 3 years GMAC financing.
The refinery was so violent at times you needed you wits about you, stoned or not.  Sometimes we would smoke pot or take Black Beauties to over-come good sense.  No sane person would take the chances as we did for money.
So I went from the labor pool where you did something different every day, sometimes good, sometimes bad, to the Delayed Coking Unit the most dreaded place there.  Then I got a bid on the boiler-house and started as a water tender making thousands and thousands of soft water for the 9 unlimited horsepower boilers that ran the place.
It was here that I had my first lung collapse and first experience with physical problems from toxic exposures.  I was off two weeks and then I got wrote up for absenteeism and they gave me two weeks off for punishment but actually it was was pretty cool.  The beach water was warm and the surf was coming in 4-7 swells at Rincon( not so warm but they had a great curl if you could pull out before you hit the cliffs.)  Huntington Beach was gnarly too. A friend and I just took off for the two weeks and partied on the beach.  What a great time it was. This was the last time I saw my friend Bryce as the Selective Service (draft) was really after him.  I understand that he fought it out with the FBI and would of rather been dead than to have someone tell him to go kill people he didn't dislike.  There is some comfort in that.

To be continued...