When I started with OG&E, the only transmission line they had was from Enid South to Oklahoma City and our district went as far South as Kingfisher.  The only load we took care of was, well I believe we took care of Okarche if there was any load there at that time.  Later on I remember that we did.  We had a small 66 KV substation at Bison, Waukomis and Hennessy.  At least at that time.  Later on at about 1921, we started to expand a little but first I believe I will say something about the old plant.

 

At the plant there were 3 200 KW generators driven by Coreless Steam Engines.  There were 4 of them then.  Later on though one of them was removed to make space for what we called the big generator which was a compound Coreless Engine driving a 1200 or 1250 KW generator at about 100 RPM.  It was about 72 pole.  I can't remember exactly.  Any way, it was a biggie. I remember the first time that it was synchronized, Wm. (Bill) Lauppie was our Chief Engineer then and he didn't hit it quite right and it made the big belts on the other generators (which were 2 or more ft. wide), all shriek and it caused a big jar on the concrete foundation of the generator.  

 

During all of this period of time in the early days there, I did just about everything there was to do for the company.  I started in digging post holes and then acting as groundman, (grunts they called them). Then I started testing meters & read the power meters and shot trouble on primary meters, that's 2300 volt meters using instrument transformers and I read meters sometimes and made house tests of meters.  The biggest test I had to make was testing 550 volt DC self contained meter on the street car circuit.  I had I believe about a 400 amp meter & I would test it by taking it out of service and getting a big barrel of salt water and a couple of copper bars about 3 Ft long by 1/4 inch thick and 4 inches wide & have a water rheostat to put load on it.  I would get about one test on the meter and I would boil the water out to about a foot below the top of the barrel and would have to fill it up and put more salt in it to start the next test.  I used to have lots of experiences in these substations back in the early days they would have lots of lightening come in on the substation and blow the fuse and sometimes burn out the coil in the transformers.  We would have to take the transformers out and take them back to the little transformer shop we had and put in new sections of coils.  

 

I remember one time at Bison I was up on a platform where the fuses were pretty close so you could refuse the station and the primary meter outfit was up there too. The fuses blew and when we tried to fuse it up they were old fan filled fuses and when run at 66000 they would arc across there and continued to supply current to the faulty transformers and a person was likely to find shelter where we could.  I remember later on when Coleman was there, they accused me of trying to climb into the primary meter box. I intended to continue from that talk on the old Model T Fords and say that one can see what kind of experiences we had back in those old days when we went out of town to service these old substations and run complaints and test meters and all that sort of thing, also repair lines for that matter, but anyway it all began with these things I just mentioned on the 66KV line to Oklahoma City.  One time I was testing a meter at some kind of an industry near the Arctic Ice Plant in Enid and there came a tremendous flash of lightening.  I had been ordered to test the meters at this location.  It was a 3 Phase load and I had removed the fused in order to disconnect the load while I was testing the meter.  That was the custom back in those days.  While I was making the test on the 220 volt 3 Phase circuit this lightening picked up enough inductance on the line that these 2 inch gaps right across the fuses flashed over right in front of my face. That pretty well scared me out and I quit work for the day there.  I went down to the plant and found out that the DC generator at the plant which was driven by a 2300 volt generator running as a motor, about a 400 KW outfit, grounded on cast iron rails about 6 inches x 6 inches but not in that shape.  They had broken into 3 pieces where this lightening had come in on the generator and caused it to stop suddenly burning out.  Of course besides getting new rails, we had us a job of replacing the generator coils.  The same lightening I found out just a little bit later had come in and hit the corner of the convention hall knocking a bunch of stone off of it.