I personally want to see the plastic lawn jockeys riding the flamingos. I was born August 11, and in 1965, I was driving a bulk oilfield acid truck to Allied near LAX when the riots in Watts started, the National Guard was working with .50 cal mounted on the back of jeeps, ever hear one in your neighborhood? You could hear them from the freeway. All over a traffic ticket. Equality will come when we are all the same color and sex.
Annnnnd we have a brand new sport. Programming begins this March on ESPN17 - Home of Extraordinarily Strange Sports (R). Will there be pari-mutuel wagering?
Nope, Kent State. The Weekend Warriors were firing 800 grain armor piercing rounds through old wood structure buildings, I was carrying a thousand gallons of 100 percent HF acid, guess you had to be there. Three months later, I started a four year hitch in the Navy working on nuclear weapons; it is amazing we are all still here. Really. Sex, drugs and ten kiloton tritium enhanced thermonuclear weapons. Missed Woodstock, did get to see Rachel Welch and Bob Hope.
The company I worked for was called Corrosion Controls and we were in Taft, California in the oil patch. I was 18 at the time; we were told the HF we got at Allied Chemical was 100% and was a liquid when we got it, if it was a less percentage, my ignorance, but the engineers calculated amount that went into tanker trucks and then mixed with water, it was pumped down hole in wells to "stimulate" them open the perforations in the casing as the crude in the local fields was heavy. We also used HC, which was less volatile; we only transported the HF at night, when the HF had been in the hole long enough, an arresting agent, looked like animal fat, was pumped into the hole to stop the reaction or it would consume the casing.The tanker truck always left before sun up and the mix down hole quickly. The only thing it wouldn't eat was plastic and wax. The fumes would blind you and scar your lungs, eat your boots, pants and if you got enough on your skin, you got to see bones. One night leaving Allied Chemical, the discharge valve at the back of the truck sprang a leak and I burned up a bunch of the freeway. the Allied loading crew didn't secure it. I assumed it was 100% as it was always diluted before use.
You might want to check the BP on that again. It's real easy to keep liquid, even when it's anhydrous. You hardly have to press on it at all. Just DO NOT use your thumb. Or anything else you're attached to.
When I dropped the truck to be loaded, the Allied guys always showed up in space suits. I didn't have one. First day on job, I was pranked; told to hold a water hose in the port hole of a tanker; as the tank filled, the HF vapor came up and over the opening, lighting up my legs, eyes, and lungs. I jumped between the truck and the dock and vomited for a while, ended up with blisters on the legs, such kidders.
Ah, hazing, another of the traditions that made our nation great. And if one or two newbies end up blinded or maimed, well, there'll always be new hires to replace them. I assume you weren't enough of a sissy to let a few intentionally-inflicted second-degree chemical burns run you off the job, right? Not going to call in those OSHA SJWs to interfere with real men's business? Sorry, sore spot. I certainly don't blame you for anything, and I'm glad you recovered.
The fellow who pranked me, had an ear permanently affixed to the side of his head from a splash. The learning curve was steep, but the money compensated for the danger; at this time, with twenty hours overtime a week, I was approaching my father's income. No OSHA, if you called anyone you were black balled, or EPA at that time, the chemicals we used were dumped in unlined open sump holes, but gas was around 25 cents a gallon. My 1A draft notice ended the job for me.
There is no evidence that he didn't like moneychangers. What he objected to was turning the temple itself into a marketplace rather than a place of worship. He didn't drive out just the moneychangers, he drove them all out. I wasn't putting down the fact that the boomers did some good things, just pointing out that not everything they did was positive. But frankly the stable boy statues (not jockeys) on the lawns has nothing to do with civil rights.
Gosh, no affront taken, I am one of the original Boomers, I believe I conceived within hours of my father leaving the Navy as I was born in 1946 and this generation had the privilege of growing up in the prosperous time in America, we were spoiled. My parents grew up in the Depression when folks starved to death, but they made sure I didn't want for anything. Not having to want for anything Boomers were able to push all the boundaries as we didn't have to wonder where the next meal was coming from, so you get all the social experimentation, good and bad. We are tossing off our mortal coils quickly and leaving it our children and their children. I just hope you don't hurt one another while you are figuring it out. I am sad and apologize for some of the leaders my generation has offered up, but am encouraged by the upcoming generations.
Ah, the good old days, I stand corrected about the fact that it is a gas at normal temperatures, it boils at 67 degrees Fahrenheit, so it would JUST be a liquid at nominal room temperature. Really awful stuff though, as far as I know, very toxic. One place I worked, we got small bottles of 70% in and I was delegated to dilute it to the concentration our people worked with. They told me to have the lab clear and CAREFULLY work in the hood. Ah well, what do THEY know.
So, you were only allowed to work with it in places like Downtown Detroit, East St Louis, Gary, Indiana, etc? ..must be bad stuff.
OK THEN... Going back to my original intention of my thread Here is another non mint error "Mint error"
The most dangerous part of a job was breaking down the hoses from the pumps, you never knew how much was still in them or if they were under pressure. Spills on the ground would catch desert rodents, not pretty. Think "Breaking Bad" I do remember 67 degrees F as a key temp and it was called a fuming liquid, the full trucks were never allowed to sit in the desert sun. Part of every job was to take a sample of the batch back to the shop to be recorded, plastic bottles specific to the task were used, and once a hand didn't have the right bottle and used glass, it burst in the truck cab. We got the plastic sample bottles in batch, they were a nice shape and some of the guys would use them for coffee or soda; I often wondered about a mix up. Oh, to be so young and so stupid again.
That is one of the interesting characteristics of HF is that it dissolves glass, so it is commonly used in plastic containers. Despite the fact that it dissolves glass, is very dangerous and very corrosive, it is a weak acid. The definition has to do with how much it breaks up in solution.