Hi Steemit friends
My name is Bill and I'm about to be 71 years old. My dad's from Alabama and mothers from California, so i'm half redneck and west coast.
I live in Florida, USA and I am both retired (at 55 yrs. old) from a local Electrical Generating plant and own my own Real Estate company here in the panhandle. I have in the past mostly bought Tax Certificates (18% interest), auctioned off county properties, forclosures, and am skilled in all the trades in order to fix up houses.
My early life was moving to the farm in Alabama to take care of grandmother... I was 12 and my sister was 16, with no parents for a full year. I learned my initial carpenter, electrical, and plumbing skills here, as well as driving cars and tractors at 12yrs old. Great times there but am lucky to have to survived with all the freedom, vehicles, and guns around.
From there I worked my way thru 10 quarters at Auburn University in Building Construction and Pre-Engineering, b4 being sucked into the Viet Nam War. I had to join the Navy, to keep from shooting people, and after testing the Navy wanted me to go into Nuclear Power. I did extend my service two years (total of six years) and volunteered for nuclear submarines and two more years of schooling thru the Navy.
At Nuclear Power school in the NE, I fell in love with a Boston girl and we eloped to Hawaii and my first duty station... I was enlisted and was honorably discharged after six years as an E-5 Machinist Mate. We are still married and just passed our 46 yr. together.
On my first 6-month Western Pacific (WesPak) run, during the Cold War w/ Russia, we were tracking Russian subs and shipping in and out of the war zone. Near the end of June of 1970 and 2-3 weeks after eloping, we crashed into a Russian sub, after they executed a "Crazy Ivan" (turned sideways and slowed down, to listen for others like us following them) and we were too close to avoid them. This collision almost sunk our sub, as our submarine Sail (part that sticks up, replete with periscopes, etc) was wiped out, mangled by their propellers, and rolled to one side. We flooded one of our double-hatch protection and compromised our pressure hull, which is designed to go to test-depth. I was knocked out of my rack onto the floor, and briefly thought, "we're sinking and no one will ever know what happen and I may be about to face death," as we experienced a huge down angle (I thought the whole bow compartment was flooded), followed by a large up angle to get closer to the surface, if in fact we were flooding? What made it even scarier was no collision alarm was sounded, as they didn't want to get detected, after all those previous drills. We could not surface tho, as at that time the Russians might just finish us off (hence the name, Cold War) and deny everything. Our sonar recorded them sinking, but Russia has since denied that? Who knows for sure? Everyone had cover stories (even for our wives) and denied anything like this ever happened, during the cold war. Our sub could only go at a slow speed, as it tried to roll over and we could not ballast it out enough to compensate for the rolled over sail, replete with a good proportion of their propeller. If interested, see the following link:
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tautog_%28SSN-639%29)
Re: Blind Man's Bluff, chapter 7 covers this collision. I conversed with the author, Sherry Sontag, and offered some additional info.
After discharge, we had little money to show for the six years and I was hired at a fossil fuel electrical generating plant (they had plans to build a nuclear plant, but never did), where I started in the Lab. The Lab performed chemistry and fixed all the pneumatic and electronic control systems (both turbine and boiler controls). Even tho they wanted me to advance into supervision, my California brain and Navy experience, just could not relate to the good-ole-boy, Donald Trump-like plant manager and the racially prejudice immediate supervisor from Mississippi, who still used the N-word. It was a dangerous place to work with fires and explosions every week or so... at one point blowing the whole office complex up on the end of the plant building even. I had many close calls with death, in various forms, over my 28 years of rotating shift work here. I went from one extreme to the other... highly trained to follow procedures in the Navy nuclear plant to NO proceedures in this poorly run coal burning plant. The pay was good and we had two boys and I had to make a living. Having family in the area, I chose to stay employed there with the idea I would retire as early as possible. I did develop a lot of additional skills, enjoyed the challenge, and engineered or re-engineered many successful construction or pneumatic/electronic control projects over the years... no regrets really.
Ten years b4 retiring I started fixing up house (five rentals to be exact), which allowed me to put both kids thru college and retire at 55 debt free. After retiring, travelling, buying boats, playing golf, and fishing, my wife needed to retire, so I fixed up another six houses to compensate for her lost income.
Today I write letters to the editors about moving Florida towards renewable energy, work on home energy projects, and plan to at some point be off the grid, as solar panels become more efficient and lower in cost. I did apply for a $5,000 grant, which I got, and installed 2,500 watts of solar on our boathouse roof. I also get mostly free hot water, both winter and summer, by two different self-designed systems... solar in the summer and free-standing wood heating during the winter. I added radiant barriers (like impregnate aluminum foil) in the attic and low-E windows across the back to block the setting sun. I also designed a one-of-a-kind solar pressure cooker... gets to 245F and 60+psi, within a stainless gallon container, in about six hours of sunlight. I suppose I'm one who would rather forget about government helping us and live in an environmentally low impact, off-the-grid, manner, and hopefully others will follow? I share as much as possible with the generating plant I retired from and have encouraged them to move towards renewables... currently they are up to 9 % renewables and each year I meet with the upper management team (tmro will be my next meeting), along with other retirees, and they are very open to my letters to the president... even passing them to other departments to help make this transition away from coal, oil, and gas. My point to them is do you want to become an ATT or a Kodak? Get with the renewable program now, while Obama's grants are available, or become irrelevant down the road. My goal is to eventually have free all electric home living, replete with a home battery system and electric car/s... let the sun provide all my energy needs.
Since I don't attend church (I don't judge those who do), except on rare occasions, I do donate my time and money, in order to give back, to xtain non-profits (like Habitat, Family Promise, etc.)... even with renters, I've never raised rents, taken in potentially homeless families for $0 down, worked with renters to develop better habits or financial management when they're struggling or behind, and even sold one house this year to a renter at a low price. With my age, I'm slowly downsizing and moving more into the legacy thingie... thanks for listening and forgive my quick write-up here... hope I didn't make too many mistakes? later!
Give us some good stories , you have them . Welcome
maybe later... too many areas to talk about, since I just finished this write-up, from the Woodstock-like festivals (hippie smokin' pot days in Hawaii), thirteen broken bones over the years, replete with too many close calls with death over the years as well... but thanks for asking!
Welcome to the Steemit Community!
thanks for the replies everyone... I just fixed the submarine link within my posting... it had to be done a different way in order to work... maybe I'll do a picture later? oh well, I'm still not grasping all of this beta site.
Congratulations @billc! You have received a personal award!
Click on the badge to view your own Board of Honnor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about this award, click here