When I was a lowly technician working part-time to finance my college education, I wired a lot of equipment. My boss, a bull of a man named Ira Zeeman, looked at my early work disdainfully and said, "Wood, that sh*t looks like a rats nest!" He then showed me how to "dress" wires; that is, after connecting them to their terminals, to arrange their paths so they look neat and orderly.

Properly Dressed Wires

Ira's criticism stuck with me . Forty-five years later, I still react to poor wiring. No wonder this lamp post jumped out at me when I was walking through Parque Juárez the other day.

A Rat's Nest

The mussy appearance of this rig is extreme even for Mexican wiring, which I have observed rarely rises to North American or European standards.

A closer look reveals more than appearance problems. Check the splice between the white heavy-gauge wire and the three orange ones. No insulation, not to mention that the twisted connection is likely to fail over time as the wires move in the wind. Other splices on the same pole have been protected with black electrical tape. Not good: that stuff won't last a year in the hot sun and the rain.

Safety isn't as big a concern in Mexico as other places. Here in San Miguel de Allende a couple of years ago, a little girl was electrocuted during a rainstorm when wiring like this failed.

Once I watched an electrician lean out over Aldama street from a rooftop, reaching for overhead wiring. He licked his fingers to improve conductivity and touched the wires to see if they were live! OK. Those of us who did electrical work for a living sometimes did that kind of thing when we were young and foolish. But today I find it hard to watch.

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Safety issues aren't confined to outdoor wiring. Consider this heater, provided in my room in an expensive hotel.

For some reason, the power cord had been cut and spliced, then insulated with that unreliable black electrical tape.

The tape is coming unstuck with use. This story will end some cold winter night in a shower of sparks and the smell of burning insulation. If the guest to whom this happens is not some uptight safety-obsessed gringo, he'll probably just calmly call housekeeping and ask for another heater. No big deal.

Up north, hazards like this were more common up when I was a little boy. Today Norteamericanos live more secure lives. But sometimes I think we've all become a little paranoid, as in the case of the elementary school administration that prohibited children from bringing flowers to school—because some child might have an allergic reaction to them.