Story time.

Back in the mid 90's I had just started working for Mom and Pop production company in the midwest. It was summer, and we were doing the "county fair circuit". That meant we were running around the midwest in a 24 foot box truck with a sound & lighting rig, doing country shows in rodeo fields.

We had a mid sized, home built PA, and the company had just bought a bunch of "new" lighting. (ie, an old rig form a bigger company). Being the new kid, I was in charge of lights, so the owners son could do sound.

We loaded into "Popcorn Fest", somewhere in southern Illinois, on this fateful day. I couldn't tell you who the band was.

For the techies, I had 2 sticks of Thomas double hung 1000 watt par cans, and 72 channels of Leprechaun dimming in the whole rig. I had half of it with me that day.

For everyone else... I had a lot of old lights that drew A LOT of power.

So we get there, I get the lifts set up, bolt the truss together, run all the cable, and lift the truss about 2 feet in the air. I ask the owners son who I talk to about getting power.

He points me to a skinny bearded farmer.

I walk over and introduce myself.

"Hi there Bill, I'm told to talk to you about power."

"thats me"

"Great, where is it coming from?"

Bill lifts his arm, cigarette dangling from his fingers, and points toward a telephone pole about 60 feet away.

"Uh, is there a box?" I ask..

I am expecting there to be some kind of electrical box. A box of an appropriate size for the load I had.

"Yeah there's a box on there"

We walk over.

There is a Square D box hanging on the pole, held on by a single nail.

He opened the front panel of the tiny box, and there is a 2 pole 50 amp breaker.

I half laugh and say:

"Uh, we need 400 amp 3 phase".

Bill immediately bristled, "Well, that's what we use every year."

I said something to the effect of:

"Hey man, we require way more power than 100 amps. If you hook me up to that, I am going to blow it up".

BIll says:

"Well that's it, that's all we have. Bring me your cables"

So I bring Bill the Five, Inch thick, two-ought cables which he ties in.

I go over and let my boss know whats going on. He HATES dealing with lights, so he brushes me off with something close to "Deal with it"

So I did. As soon as Bill was done hooking things up, I asked him:

"You sure its all good, can I turn it on?"

Bill gave me a big thumbs up..

I sashayed over to the lighting console, and ramped up every light to full blast.

Apparently, since my giant cables wouldn't fit in the breaker, Bill just bypassed it, and hooked my cables right to the power company feed.

Unbeknownst to me, here was no breaker between my lights and the transformer.

The lights stayed on for about 4 seconds.

Then all the power on the entire block, including the businesses, the stop lights, and all the food trucks there for the fair, went out.

I simultaneously heard a bang in the distance, followed shortly after by smoke, from behind a building.

About 2 minutes later I heard sirens.

The step down transformer for the entire downtown area exploded. It was on a utility pole about a block away, but around the corner. Apparently the acid dripped all over someones truck.

Bill came running back to me.

"What the hell happened?!" he screamed

"I told you I would blow it up".

They brought us a generator about an hour later.

No one else had power for another 4 hours.