1989 Divorce and NYSEG

At this point, I have to get personal. My life outside the job was in chaos. Dan, my husband, apparently hadn’t paid US taxes in over 10 years. He married me in January 1988, we filed joint taxes in April 1989; the IRS swooped in and closed our joint checking account. I have no idea why he didn’t tell me or why he put me in such a vulnerable position. I was young and naïve is all I can say in my defense. He immediately high-tailed it back to Canada where he re-married his ex-wife. To this day I am not sure we were legally married, or if he was a bigamist. I do know that his three children looked at me as his wife and their step mother. In fact, I married him because I was 30 years old, liked his family, especially his mother and sister, and of course the children. They lived with us (at different times) over the 8 years we were together and I still feel a very strong connection to them. The divorce was quick, but painful. I had to pay the IRS half the equity of my home, plus half the joint credit cards. Thanks to my mother, I was able to pay the IRS and worked out a payment plan with the credit cards. I swore I would never let my finances get tangled up with someone else’s ever again. At the same time as all this was happening, the job at the prison ended. I was immediately sent to work at NYSEG in Ithaca for a Binghamton contractor. It probably saved my life. The foreman, Lou Woods, was simply wonderful. He laid out the work to do and we did it. He always had the material and tools there. Anything we didn’t understand, he explained. He was also very forgiving of me. I am afraid that drinking problem from my old boss had transferred over to me. I stopped at McAnn’s Inn in VanEtten almost every night. The nights I didn’t stop, I would play softball with the girls from the Homestead Inn in Southport. For the first time as an adult, I had a crowd of women whose company I enjoyed. While I was drinking a lot, I also developed friendships that last to this day. I also met my future husband who played for the Men’s team. To be honest, I don’t remember much of that job, except for Rick C. and his wife. I was about 5 years younger than Rick and apparently that bothered his wife. Shortly after I started she showed up on the job at noon to check me out. I am not sure what I said, but by the time she left, we were friends. They only had one car so I started picking Rick up so she had something to drive during the day. One time, Rick told me she was having a problem with an old employer. Being a good guy, he sent her flowers to make her feel better. When I dropped him off at home that night, she came out and thanked me for the flowers. I laughed and promised it was his idea. When that job ended, we were sent to another job at Cornell. The Theory Center is a tall curving building that is located between Tower Road and a creek. We were installing the heating system which was long sections of fin tube along the walls. When copper is heated it expands. Therefore, you must allow for it in installation with either space consuming loops or mechanical joints. The General Foreman, Jim S-ski, decided that he knew more than the engineers and ignored their specification for anchors and guides and loops. Two weeks after I started, on the day of the company Holiday party (which our old boss insisted we attend), Jim decided to add the hot water to the system. The water went from 40 degrees to 140 degrees and pipe started to expand. Pipe was popping off hangers, bursting where it hit dead ends, and spraying water everywhere. Despite the total mess, or maybe because of it, I waved toodles and headed to the party. I was laid off less than two weeks later.