After months of communicating with this pastor about the needs of our trailer, we arrived to find a potentially disastrous electrical setup. The pastor had asked an RV dealer how to set things up and had been misinformed from the start. From there, someone in the church volunteered to do the electrical work and his knowledge of electricity was less than desirable, at least for the project at hand. For the neophytes of electrical science, there are some basic principles that are necessary when wiring a receptacle. First, electricity only works in a circle. There is no such thing as running a wire one way and having electricity. Even though you may see only one wire, there are actually at least two wires, one called hot and the other called neutral. Without two wires, there could be no electricity because there must be a circuit. In today’s wiring, there is usually a third wire called a ground that is present. That is why most receptacles have three “prongs”: one hot wire, one neutral, and one ground. When we arrived at this church, there was a 30-amp plug wired horrendously wrong. Instead of there being a hot, a neutral, and a ground, there were two hot’s and one neutral. The problem was that where the neutral was supposed to be, there was a hot wire, and where the ground was supposed to be, there was the normal neutral wire. In short, it could have spelled disaster for us had we just plugged in. Not long ago, I invested in a voltage meter and was able to ascertain the problem before disaster had a chance to strike our trailer. (There was a day in which I foolishly trusted any plug that was present.) We pulled in, unhooked the trailer, and headed out to Home Depot to get the parts to give us power.
It was at this juncture that things began to go wrong. Leaving a sick, feverish, teething toddler with her mother, Josiah and I found the electrical section of Home Depot. In mere seconds we had located the proper plug and gone to the wiring section to pick up another piece of wire. I wasn’t sure at this point that I would need it, but I thought that I would pick it up just in case. After calling and calling and calling over the telephone for someone to help us in the electrical section, no one ever showed up. We waited for half an hour all to no avail. By now, though the trailer was parked, we were without the most basic need of trailer life: electricity. To compound our problems a primal disease was beginning to afflict us, threatening to rob us of reason and turn us all into ravening beasts: it was the disease of hunger. Otherwise happy children would cry at the slightest hint of provocation. Otherwise patient parents felt their fuses shortening by the minute. Reason was taking flight and being replaced by omnivorous hallucinations. Suddenly my son resembled nothing so much as an Oscar Meyer hot dog. My truck magically morphed into a turkey on the table, complete with all the trimmings. I am not the most efficient electrician in the world, even when I am in a healthy frame of mind, but in my current state, the chances of getting much done quickly were about as good as my pregnant wife winning the Boston Marathon. When we returned from Home Depot, I backed the truck neatly into a parking space, only to have the guy wire of a telephone pole hook on my back bumper. I decided to pull up a bit just to better center myself in the space and the wire ripped and bent my back bumper. In spite of the current opposition, I plunged ahead with the electrical project, feeling like a horrible provider while my family sat in the dark, boiling trailer. I discovered that I did indeed need the wire that I had waited for at the store. I would now have to return all the way across town to the slow Home Depot. My wife was able to cook supper without power (no TV dinners tonight) on the gas stove and she insisted that I eat something. As I left the church parking lot, my truck resembling an insurance claim, I made my way toward the interstate that would take me across town only to find the way blocked by a train over 100 cars long, oozing along the tracks almost imperceptibly. I drove and drove, trying to get around it, but to no avail. When I finally got around the train and onto the interstate, I ended up missing my exit. After turning around, I found that Home Depot had shut off all the lights in their parking lot. I almost left without the wire when I noticed people going into the store. I went right back to the electrical department, finding no one. Finally, a woman appeared, though she did nothing for my confidence. I asked if she could get me the wire I needed, and she lamented to me, “I don’t know how to cut wire.” At that point I bit my tongue trying to resist all the chauvinist comments that came to mind, not to mention a commentary on the wisdom of allowing a woman who cannot even cut a wire to work in Home Depot. After another half an hour and two more female employees later, I finally got the wire I needed and paid for it. Of course, it was totally dark by this time and I would have to probe around in the electrical box with the minimal light of the streetlight thirty yards away. The children were both in bed by the time I returned and enlisted my wife’s help. By 11:30 pm, after arriving at 6:30 that evening, we finally had power to our trailer.
If my wife had anything to say about the curriculum of the Evangelist course at Ambassador Baptist College, she would insist that it include a course in electricity with the following inclusions: wiring a hot box, while holding a flashlight between shoulder and chin, squatting in the bushes with twigs raking your legs, the twigs providing a ready bridge for the local insect population – all in the dark. Extra credit might be doing it all in the rain. As for me, I don’t really see much hope for her as an academic dean of the program, but that does not mean that she might not have an occasional great idea.
Paul
