Christmas doesn't mean day off for all

Christmas Day is business as usual for workers with jobs most don't give a second thought to, unless something goes wrong. They operate answering services and plants for water or sewage treatment or power production.

"We're call ourselves 'the quiet company'. We hardly ever see anybody," said Jim Baylor. For nearly 30 years, he's reported to the city of Cape Girardeau's waste water treatment plant, located so far down Sprigg Street, "most people that show up by the plant are people that got lost," he said.

Baylor is in a 365-day-a-year business, one far less visible than those held by police, fire and other emergency services workers; gas station and convenience store cashiers; movie theater attendants: bus, taxi and tow truck drivers; funeral directors; computer technicians; plumbers; electricians; furnace repair specialists and veterinarians.

Baylor and four others ensure the 6.7 million gallons of water leaving the biggest treatment plant between St. Louis and Memphis are free from disease-causing agents. They watch five creek monitors and radio signals from 27 lift stations, which help move water and sewage over hills when gravity isn't strong enough. The plant also processes sludge into a farm-quality biosolid.

Working Christmas is "not really too bad," Baylor said. In fact, it's gratifying because he's "keeping the environment safe."

Tomorrow Greg Kile will spend 12 hours monitoring Cape Girardeau's drinking water. Kile, one of Cape Girardeau's six water treatment plant operators, shrugs off having Christmas Day duty for five consecutive years.

"It's the luck of the draw," he said. "I'm single with no kids, so it really doesn't bother me that much."

Every two hours, he tests the Mississippi River water coming into the plant for turbidity -- relative dirtiness -- and makes a series of adjustments to clean it up, using chlorine, water softeners and other chemicals. Kile doesn't dwell too much on the relative importance of his work.

"When nobody's going to the hospital having a waterborne sickness, that's because I'm doing my job," he said.

For three of the last five years, Marcia Ridenour has worked on Christmas Day at her Cape Gir-ardeau company, Answer Direct, which serves 161 companies.

Christmas is "busier than I ever thought it would be," she said.

She said at least three of the company's nine operators work Christmas Day, ready for an onslaught of calls between 7 a.m. and noon, "mainly just emergencies" often from mothers with sick children or older people with chest pains.

"The colder it is, the more calls we get for heating and transportation," she said. Operators' shifts are shortened for the holiday and Ridenour treats them to a meal, "usually in the afternoon, when the pizza places open."

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127