You know you are in a crew house when ...

[Go Juice]

You got aluminum foil for shades.

[cdnpilot77]

8 people in a 2br house and everyone gets a bed

4 people around the kitchen table with a pot of hamburger helper in the middle and only 2 spoons

[meflypretty]

You have to go wake up the guy who invited the bar home. Yeah, we're talking about you Chris.

[Liftdump]

When there is a dirt bike going down the hallway(single wide) or while you were on a trip
the cable company has cut up your cable in 6 inch pieces after you and others shinnied up the pole at night to steal

[North Shore]

It's right next to the perimeter fence, and has been condemned.

Used to be a nursing station, but got too run-down, and is haunted

[square]

Had to repost this when I saw the topic!

Anyone with pictures of the staff house for the original Norcanair in Uranium City's Beaverlodge Lake?

In the style of a scene from the TV series "Mash," it was known as "The Pit." There was good reason for the name.

The best part about "The Pit" was the mouse infestation ....dozens and dozens ... if not hundreds of mice .... so many, they would come out in the daylight and scurry across the kitchen floor while you were eating the pilot's staple food .... Kraft Dinner with a peanut butter sandwich on 3 day old bread. If it was within a week of having been paid, you might still have some Mock Chicken left over that had a slight greenish yellow tinge around the edges.

We'd sit at the kitchen table after flying was done for the day, and drink beer ..... not that the practise is unusual in bush flying outfits .... but the fun part was shooting the mice in the kitchen with a pellet pistol after baiting them with cheese and peanut butter.

The shooter would retain the pistol and could shoot as many in a row as possible, as long as it was a clean kill and the rascally rodent didn't make it back to the hole. That made for lots of arguing when a mouse would barely crawl an inch inside the hole and then die ... it was a hard defeat to accept as you gave up the pistol to someone you knew was a lousy shot and was going to blow a great opportunity rather than you carrying on keeping the world safe from Communist insurgent rodents.

Some of man's best bits of entertainment .... drinking, and playing with guns. If there had only been lovely females involved, it would have been a perfect life for a summer.

There were maybe 6 to 8 pilots, one typical scuzzy 4 burner electric stove with a burned out element, a refrigerator where the never defrosted freezer was almost always stuffed to overflowing with something local that was still covered with fur and congealed blood, and the washroom was like an average 2 bedroom home .... so with 6 semi-domesticated pilots living there, it was gross. Wiping the rim of the pisser was considered to be only for namby-pamby southerners.

We never figured out who it was, but somebody used to get up in the middle of the night and pee into the toilet and not flush to mark his territory ... he must have been related to a skunk, because his pee was super powerful .... a wonderful greeting first thing in the morning. It used to reek of piss like a cheap Mexican bar's "restroom."

Going to sleep at night with the sound of mice scratching away in the walls was a fun thing too .... I always wondered if I was going to be awakened by a rodent gnawing away on my toes.

Of course, someone would always leave the door open, and the place would become one huge live trap for mosquitoes and other biting insects. Just before bed, it was a ritual to go through the place with a big can of Raid and heavily spray every nook and cranny, then sleep in that stuff ... you could still feel the micro-sized droplets raining down on your face as you climbed into your fart capturing sleeping bag to try and catch some rest.

Before long, somebody would come stumbling in during the night with his latest conquest from the bar of the Uranium City Hotel, and the symphony of sounds consisting of creaks, squeaky bedsprings, giggling, headboard slamming against the insulation free wall, heavy breathing, grunting that reminded one of pigs at feeding time, and moans were heard.

Then after some squeals and muted screams, the local cutie would need to be driven home, the sound of a mufflerless pickup grinding gears because the clutch was faulty could be heard for miles as it faded into the distance, and the pilot delivered his now dripping conquest to her residence.

The next day, he would deny any knowledge of who or what he had dragged in...... but .... some huge guy from the local mill would come around looking for him for a week to punch his lights out. We'd always make like he wasn't around.

The rooms were very narrow .... an already too small bedroom had been divided into 2, maybe even 3 subdivisions, and even a slim underfed pilot would have to turn sideways to slip between the mice infested wall and the single person cot. A bare bulb would swing from a non-UL approved extension cord, and would vary in wattage from a 25 watt refrigerator light to a 150 watter that would leave you with retina damage if you glanced at it.

The slaves that built the pyramids likely lived in better conditions. But hey .... I was finally flying "A big airplane" ... the mighty deHaviland Single Otter.

That's another series of stories in itself .... the only airplane in my career I absolutely hated working on.

The Old Fogducker

[xsbank]

Makes me feel all nostalgic (or should I say fuzzy, as in warm and, but fuzzy means so many different things when you refer to crew houses) for the house in Buffalo Narrows, a beautiful setting in the trees on the point next to the base, patrolled by a maniacal Crown-Royal-fueled base manager named "Morris..." except that I have to go to work. Anyone want to take over?

[sheephunter]

Liftdump, that's too funny. I was going to put down the dirt bikes in the hallway. Maybe we were the same place or I guess it just might be that common to staff houses? Was the sauna overflowing after the bar closed? Going to bed to the scent of Mosquito coils and raid. Trying to find the company truck in the morning. Yep, putting in 16 hr days and trying to back it with 12 hr nights. Hell 24/7 nothing. Who gets to change the honey bucket??? Oh yes, and how about waking up in the morning to police in the kitchen asking questions about new bullet holes in the walls... slept through that one. That was a long time ago, maybe 1983 or 84. I don't expect much has changed.

[go_fly]

when you have to make sure your rubber boots are ready in the middle of the night, so that you can walk through 6 inches of water to go to the bathroom.

[ilovelamp]

You know you are in a crew house when: A few of the local girls are on the Company phone list even though they aren't employed with the company.

You know you are in a crew house when: You are sick the first 6 months of your stay and then never get sick again afterwards.

[Johnny#5]

....you meet your future wife

[co-joe]

Plywood floors,
40 knives 50 forks, but not a single spoon,
teflon frying pans it looks like somebody tried to clean with 50 grit sand paper.
80 porno mags under the sink in the bathroom,
furniture from the dump, computer from the dump.
various items stolen from wherever as decorations...

[i-vtec]

there is a candy dish full of condoms and its perfectly fine to be in the middle of the coffee table next to the stolen wings magazines from the local FBO.

[r22captain]

there is a candy dish full of condoms

that all expired 7 years ago, cause no one gets any because there are 8 guys in a 2 br house, and 80 porn mags, and 2 spoons in a mouldy pot of hamburger helper

[Rowdy]

The dispatcher wakes up with the fridge blocking his door.. in the basement! Holes at the base of the stairs from 'surfing' ceremoniously covered with random magazine posters.. Two caped crusaders waking everyone up at 2am with buckets of water and flour... The damn pan rinser in the sink with a rubber band on it. I cant even remember how many got had that way.. endless pranks, local girls, numerous burnt pots and pans, a couple food fights, a quote board thats probably still covering a third of the dining room wall. I cant say we didnt have fun... and..... I dont know what you're talking about

[Siddley Hawker]

How about one with a hand-lettered sign out front that announced "Bording House." Drinking water in 5-gallon buckets, and don't look too closely because there may be little wiggly things in there. In the winter, crapping out where the huskies are tied up and making sure you stayed better than a chain length away from the nearest one.

[Sulako]

A fridge full of tupperware containers that belong to the last 6 guys who quit.
Old graffiti in the front porch that directly involves the local girl you are now 'dating'.
Mysterious stains on the mattress, walls and roof in the room of the bunkbeds you are assigned to sleep in.
Mice who have names eg. "Don't kill that one, his name is Frosty and he's my friend".
Random empty shell casings in the living room from that party that got completely outta hand last summer.
Getting phone calls from locals looking for their daughter(s) "Can you just look through the rooms and see if she's staying there? Tell her to come home before 8 tonight because bingo is on tv and she's got the cards".
A vacuum-tube TV with a built-in VCR in the living room, to play the VHS copy of Top Gun that someone left behind in 1986.
Every bed has its own mosquito netting.

Been there

[swordfish]

You go to the fridge to retrieve a Millers Light you bought 6 of yesterday, to find the empty box staring at you with a silly smirk on it.

[Troubleshot]

-little hotel shampoo and conditioner everywhere in the bathroom
-several jugs of laundry soap by washer and dryer (sometimes with "Mike's -don't touch")
-BBQ with several layers on the grill and only one working burner
-key hook by door has several layards from multiple airlines hanging off it.

[Expat]

Pin up pictures in the toilet are WAC charts,

Toilet paper is an old AIP manual,

Clothes line full of pristine white shirts and stained underwear,

Pilot watches are used as a hammer,

Post-it notes are hanging on the fly catchers,

[laticsdave]

- You have a game of Indoor Cricket, using a chair leg as the bat (chairs still work with 3 legs, so long as a wall is used as the 4th!), and empty beer bottles as the ball (they break less often than you'd think).
- After the game of cricket is abandoned due to bad light (the sole light bulb having valiantly, but unsuccessfully, tried to catch the "ball"), it is later discovered that on of the visiting "team" members has laid a 3-coil steamer in the corner of the lounge, and wiped his arse on the only matching pair of curtains in the house.
- The broken frosted glass on the bathroom door is replaced with newspaper and duct tape - this comes in useful when it's time to get revenge on Dickie, the 3-coil cuplrit, who while having a dump in the proper place for once suddenly finds the bathroom door "window" soaked in lighter fluid and ignited (he managed to get up a fair speed exiting the log-cabin with his pants around his ankles).
Okay, so this was actually a student house at university, but the same bunch of misguided fools inhabit it!

[all_ramped_up]

The dispatcher wakes up with the fridge blocking his door.. in the basement! Holes at the base of the stairs from 'surfing' ceremoniously covered with random magazine posters.. Two caped crusaders waking everyone up at 2am with buckets of water and flour... The damn pan rinser in the sink with a rubber band on it. I cant even remember how many got had that way.. endless pranks, local girls, numerous burnt pots and pans, a couple food fights, a quote board thats probably still covering a third of the dining room wall. I cant say we didnt have fun... and..... I dont know what you're talking about

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAH

I was going to post a picture of that.





Yes... a Fridge and a DRYER! Wasn't exactly what I was expecting to wake up to at 0500 before my shift.

I think I have a video of the Egg Slingshot from the back porch somewhere too.

[GoinNowhereFast]

-Locals have threatened to burn it down multiple times
-It's the biggest house in your community
-Driveway has several company trucks in it, none of which are supposed to be for personal use
-Kitchen window is a opaque sheet of plexi-glass
-it gets broken into at least once a year, but nobody understands why because there's nothing worth stealing
-entire house is routinely "hot boxed" with mosquito coils that specifically say "not for indoor use"
-there are 3 fridges and none of them work very well

[Panama Jack]

- You've never met all of your roomates before
- Fury handcuffs on the ceiling fan.
- You feel like its deja vu from the Three Bears: "who's been sleeping in my bed?"

[Liftdump]

Never be a newbie in a crew house and tell the cagy vets not to
use your microwave oven,for I know from experience that if you put 6 apples
in said unit place on HIGH for 1 minute it looks Fuckin awsome and when you are hammered its even funnier.