Newspapers / The Badin Bulletin (Albemarle, … / June 1, 1920, edition 1 / Page 12
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Page Twelve WHEN IT IS NECESSARY TO MOVE HOUSES FAST, THE COMPANY KNOWS HOW TO GET IT DONE a mathematical standpoint) it is a cross between a D. C. motor and an A. C. generator, or you could call a rotary about a dozen different names, includ ing some not fit to print, and still have a rotary. Like all other hybrids, you can’t tell what it will or won’t do. One of the chief characteristics of a rotary is that it has a disposition like a mule, and will buck over on any and all occa sions without the least provocation or help whatever, and will buck the longest and the loudest at the very time you don’t want it to (which is all of the time). The man that made the first rotary said to his friends: “Oh, look! What a nice machine I have made.” He went on to explain its merits, and stuck out his chest, and his head swelled up about eight inches while he let go his bazoo in all directions. Just then his rotary bucked over. Right then he decided he had a rotary and something to boot, so he set about trying to get rid of the “boot,” or “buck” as it is now called. Thousands, including “Pussyfoot” Johnson, have tried since; but we still have the buckover. For the benefit of those who don’t know what a buckover is, we will try to explain, as follows: Pot puncher No. 1 is working on one side of a pot room, and pot puncher No. 2 is working on the other side. (Pot puncher No. 1 and pot puncher No. 2 don’t punch pots as long as they can keep from it.) No 1 gets mad at No. 2 for swiping his carbon stretcher, and he wants to do him some bodily harm, so he decides to hit him a little love lick up side of his head with a crowbar (he doesn’t mean to hurt the boy). He waits for his chance, and throws the bar at him, but unfortunately—or for tunately, we don’t know which—he is not as strong as he thinks he is, and the bar falls across the bus bars, or the big copper bars that carry the elec tricity (and amperes) to the pots. Now when the bar falls across the bus bars it cuts the current off of all the pots between the bar and the end of the pot room, and just leaves a few pots con nected in the circuit. Now the rotary that is furnishing cur rent to this pot room is “putting out” a lot of current. It puts out enough to light about eighty thousand 100-watt lamps, and is not pushed at that. When all of these pots are cut out, this im mense quantity of electricity has to go somewhere, so it comes out from under the brushes on the rotary in form of fire. The current from one brush arm flows out through the pot room and back to the rotary on the next brush arm, so you can see that if the fire reached from one brush arm to another that all the current would come together on the brush arms instead of flowing around the pot rooms. When this fire joins, unites, connects, or to be plain gets to gether, right then something gets ready to start, to commence, to begin to hap pen. What happens is a much disputed point, but to the best of our knowledge the whole station gets full of fire. It goes up in the air, down on the base ment, all over the floor, and from what spectators on the outside say it comes BADIN BULLETIN out through the windows, ventilation doors, cracks, and smokestacks. Now from all this fireworks there is bound to be some noise, and to be sure there is. It sounds about like a magni fied thunder storm, and can be heard for miles. When you stop to think about it, a “buckover” wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t happen so suddenly and make such a fuss. Under these conditions, a person will jump when one happens. Some people do worse than jump. Some run, some pray, some shout and rave, and some cry; but to make one point clear—they all clear out and give the rotary plenty of room to “buck” in. We know of a case where a woman saw a “buckover,” and was speechless for seven years. Her husband sued the Company for damages. Poor fool! He didn’t know what luck was. Barnum was right when he said there was a fool born every minute. This man should have paid the Company for doing this favor for him- Just think, not to have his wife bawl him out for seven years. Gee Whiz! That's luck! Then he sued the Com pany. He should have been made to sit in the Electric Chair and count volts. But to get back to the “buckover.” If the rotary kept on bucking, it would burn down, and be a total loss. As the buckover gets bigger, it takes more current to keep it going. Now all rotaries are equipped with relays to stop them when they get too much cur rent. We also have operators to operate the rotaries; so as soon as one bucks, the operator, or the relay, one of the two, sometimes both, will open the switches; so when the rotary can get no more current it stops bucking. Sometimes it burns a rotary very badly to buck, and some it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, we just put it back on, and keep it going (the rotary, not the buckover). If it is hurt, we have it repaired; but any way after all this excitement is over and everything is going nicely we promptly forget about that “buckover,” and get ready for the next one. We don’t worry about not having any more. We know we will have them as long as there is a rotary left; and may be if we can keep on working in a rotary station for the next four thou sand years we won’t jump when one bucks. So why should we worry and sit on the porch and die by the yard? Note—If there is a man in Badin whose wife talks too “dad-blasted” much with her mouth, and he would like to have her hush, we could arrange for her to see a buckover, for fifty dollars
The Badin Bulletin (Albemarle, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
June 1, 1920, edition 1
12
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