Our house on Lee Road, near Michigan Center, had aluminum siding. It was the newest thing. Before that, there was only wood siding or brick. Aluminum is an excellent conductor of electricity as we would discover.

My father had wired our home at Pulaski. He was an electrician, but had passed on by the time we moved to Lee Road. The lumber yards were not yet selling how-to-it books. Anyway, my husband would never admit he didn't know how to do something. He just tried to bull his way through a problem. Pug wired our house on Lee Road.

We had lived there a while before the problem became noticeable. I would sometimes get a shock when I touched the aluminum siding. Not all the time, just when I was grounded, it seemed. Pug, my husband, laughed at me when I mentioned it. He said it was all in my mind. I knew better.

Tired of being ridiculed, I figured out a way to check it out. In the tool box was a light bulb with black and red wires running from it. I remembered my dad using it to check for an electrical current. I touched first one wire to the siding and then added the other one. Bingo! The bulb lit up. I was right. Electricity was flowing through the siding. The siding of the entire house was hot with electricity! That could be dangerous.

That afternoon when Pug came home from work at VibraDamp, I was ready for him. “Remember me telling you about my getting a shock from the aluminum siding?” I asked him. He replied to the effect that I was stupid.

With him standing there laughing at me, I proceeded with my demonstration. As I touched the second wire to the siding, the bulb lit up. His smirk disappeared. Pug tried it with the same results. He quickly went around the house touching the wires here and there, always lighting up the bulb.

Next was the problem of finding the source of the electricity. It took some time for him to do that. He searched and searched with no results. Finally, somehow he found the problem. It seemed that while sheathing the house, he had punctured the electrical wiring with a nail. I don't remember how he found it, but when he removed the nail, that removed the electrical short.

This was just one of the many mistakes Pug made in building the house on Lee Road. My dad wasn't around anymore to supervise his work. My husband thought he knew it all. Dad, we needed your help.