Tim Laur

It started when I was about ten years old.
I was biding my time in the basement, of our home in Rockford, Illinois. I came across a lamp laying in the corner and started taking it apart when I found that the switch on the socket was not making the clicking noise, just spinning around, and I wanted to see why.
I found that I could remove the assembly out of the socket, and then went to another lamp laying in the corner, that had a bad power cord. I then took the good switch assembly from the broken cord lamp and put it inside the lamp with the good cord. I put a bulb in, plugged it in the wall and turned the switch. Light! And my ego was lit up as well!
I was proud of my achievement, and went upstairs quickly to show my mom how nice the broken lamp worked. She was rather displeased and was not shy about sharing her annoyance with me. She asked me, "Why did you ruin my favorite lamp in order to put good parts in that old ugly lamp?"
Well since I had an electrician's mindset, and knew little about interior design, I was quickly deflated. Then I went downstairs again, and back to the drawing board, like Thomas Edison. I was determined to solve the problem and took the entire lamp apart and rewired it and brought it to my mother who was cooled off by now. She was also cool about having her lamp back because she had nowhere to put it.
So it went back to the basement until another day.

I tell this story because I wanted to relate to you about how I found out I liked to work with my hands. I liked to make things better, or make things by myself.

I started working for my dad and grandfather, after moving to Milwaukee WI with underground lawn sprinkler installation. This was a great trade because it included electrical timers, with plumbing fixtures and heads that sprayed water and turned. Many things could go wrong when a kid installs underground sprinklers, and usually did. However my dad was a patient man and he endured my tinkering on the job.
The underground aspect of the irrigation systems train one to become a troubleshooter. You need to decide where to dig, and if you even need to dig, before you go get the shovel. Or else there is a lot of wasted time and the manicured lawn gets to looking like a minefield. Then more time wasted cleaning up the mess.

The industry was seasonal and allowed me to persue many other trades such as masonry, drywall and carpentry, working with s