People always get a chuckle as I tell them the story of how I got started on a 22 year career in the nuclear power business in refueling nulcear power plants, so I thought I would share with the world the story………..

I was a 19 year ole freshman in college attending Madison College which became James Madison University in Harrisonburg , Virginia working as a plumber helper in the days and a pizza cook/delivery at night during summer break. An ole aquantince of mine who was the Mom of an ole girlfreind found me at the swimming pool on a Sunday afternoon doing our usual drinking and diving contest and she offerred me a job making $800 for a week of work, in something she described as a janitorial clean up of something called a ”’Nuclear Plant”. Now, in 1977, $800 was probably more in one week than I would make all summer so i said why not and she pulled out two one hundred dollar bills (of course I had never even seen a $100 bill– we were poor folks) and I asked if it was real???? She laughed and wrote a phone number down on one of the bills and said to immediately go home and call this long distance number to secure my position for the week of work in some place called New Jersey.

Got to remember, we were country folks farming and just getting by so $800 was a LOT of money at the time. Of course my mother did NOT beleive my crazy story nor the $200 in one hundred dollar bills so I called anyway and found New Jersey in the encyclopedia and dialed and talked to some crazy loud guy who was yelling over what was obviously a wild party scene giving me instructions. He assured me he would pay me in ADVANCE for the week if I showed up in New Jersey that night. 10 hours later, I arrived in New Jersey without a clue of what was to happen. A wild party was going on at the hotel we were staying at and over 200 people were drinking and eating like it was no tomorrow. I met the ”boss” who handed me $300 more dollars in one hundred dollar bills and I immediately thought all these phoney hundred dollar bills was sort of a scam!!! The buffett food was absolutely delicious and I ate like I had not eaten in a week and was stuffing crab and shrimp like they were going extinct next hour, then the drinking began into the weeeee hours of the early morning……….

Sunrise came up over the ocean at Seaside Beach and we were told to ””Saddle Up”’ and begin the drive to work……..well, I was so plastered and hammerred, I thought it was a joke and piled in the back of a rental car and an hour later woke up in the parking lot of a big thing that looked like something from outer space called a nuclear power plant, Oyster Creek Power station, a dirty GE designed pathetically operated and more horribly contaminated power plant in Toms River NJ.

We survived 8 hours of “”On the Job Training”’ somehow in between naps and before you knew it, I was “”"Homer Simpson 1977”’ in real life. That night, I ran into a guy wearing a Virginia Tech T Shirt and never before has my own Virginia Tech T Shirt changed my life………..the guy shouts across the hotel pool, “”YOU go to VT”’???? I replied, “”Nope, Madison College and he of course wanted to know why I had a VaTech T Shirt on and I replied ”’they play real football and I love Tech Football”” and we were instant buddies. He was a VaTech Engineering student in something called “”Health Physics”’ which basically translates into the study of how much radiation and contamination you can give a guy in a short time and still be above the federal guidelines in something called 10CFR, the Code of Federal Regulations for the nuclear business.

My new buddy from VA TECH found out I was a ”’hot body”’, ie they were going to fry my ass in a very short time with high levels of radiation to earn that $800 and I would be gone in a week. Once he found out I had the gift of southern gab to very cute New York women down at the beach on summer vacation, well, he made a few phone calls and told the boss HE was going to take me under his wing and train me in a new job that entailed math and physics. Well, I was definetly up for whatever ”’job” they were planning for me especially if I got to stay and drink at the beach and make $800 a week.

My new job started the next morning and I learned I was going to be in charge of something very very serious and very dear to every member of our 200 person work force, the “”"Lunch Run” and the “”Gambling Accounting””, ie they gambled on anything and everything so I took the bets and basically became the “”bookie”’ of the nuclear power plant while running lunch orders for 200 hungry hungover folks working long hours. I worked 8 weeks that first summer taking sub orders and gambling …….it was quite the summer and this was my ”first job” being Homer Simpson that I played off and went onto 22 years of intense nuclear refuelings and shipping radioactive waste all over the country.