Electrifying Events Edify

Electrical issues around the church building are alternately infuriating and amusing. It is an old building. 'Nuff said. Whatever previous electrically-minded people have done there in the past, they got it wrong. I know this from present electrically-minded people who say so. I have heard the word 'jerry-rigged' several times since coming to Smalltown. When Tom Harvey, a gifted church handyman, came by to work on the air conditioner wiring in my office yesterday he used the same word. It had been a rough week for Tom already as he had had two flat tires on his trailer full of cows. He noted that he broke off a screw head while repairing the wiring because of the way the circuitry had been put together 60 years ago. This forced him to replace jerry-rigging circa 1950 with jerry-rigging circa 2010. I have a creative set of wires in the house too, but I have been assured that those are not dangerous. Just funny looking. One or another of the electricians usually says something like, "If only that de-sprocketized nail had been re-springulated and not been criss-crossed with the master fuse, we'd be all right. And by the way, if the male and female parts were parallel and fitted snugly together, we'd have a much better situation."