Going To The Translator With Dad (Part 3 of 6)

It seemed that for the longest time we drove through flat land I
mean, I could see there was a mountain up ahead, but we weren’t climbing it yet. All we did was go in and out of ravines, go over dry creek beds, and travel some generally bumpy roads. Finally, we started to go up the mountain. I wondered why we weren’t taking a more direct route. I asked my dad, “How come we’re going this way?”
“What way?”
“All these zig zags. Why don’t we just go straight up?”
“These are called switchbacks. It’s too steep to go straight up so we go back and forth slowly up the side of the mountain.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Even this is too steep sometimes.” He shifted the third lever of the transmission. “This is called ‘grandma gear’ when the hill gets steeper like it is now, we have to go slower so we can make it.”
Every time I went with Dad to a new mountain, it seemed to take forever to get to the top. But on my repeat trips, I became more familiar with the terrain and could tell when we were reaching the top. In my mind, It didn’t take quite so long as the first time.
Finally, we reached the top. The Levan translator station was impressive to me. Usually, a station was housed in a tiny shack, if that at all. But Levan had a rather large building, about the size of a small house.

As we came up and over the final hill and my dad drove toward the building, the first thing I would notice was the array of communications dishes and antennas on the roof. The dishes would pick up the weak television signals from Salt Lake and feed them to the translators where they would be rebroadcast via the antennas to the people of Levan and the surrounding communities. I learned from my dad later, that Levan was a “hub” for KSL’s translator network. Other stations picked up Levan’s signal and gave it another boost further along the line. Since other Salt Lake TV stations used the same building for their translators, the roof was packed with dishes and the antennas. There was even a radio tower in back of the building, although I didn’t know what it was for.
I could see a wind operated circular vent on the roof of the building spinning wildly in the wind. I noticed for the first time the wind was blowing fiercely. I would roll down my window and feel the cold gusts they seemed to say, “Stay off this mountain! You belong down below.”
Dad parked the Jeep close to the door of the building. We got out and braved the wind. There was a key attached to the key ring for the Jeep. Dad used this key to open the pad lock on the door. After a few seconds of wiggling and jiggling, Dad finally got the lock open. He opened the door and we walked in.
It was dark until Dad found the light switch. A few red lights shone brightly through the darkness, indicating that the translators were in operation. The first thing I noticed was the “electronics smell” -- The smell of hot vacuum tubes and other electronic components in the building’s equipment. I also heard the low hum of all the transformers in the building.