This reminded me of the short story I wrote about my dad. Who left my mum and me (aged 4) with a pile of debts and never gave us a penny. He was a chancer. And by chance ended up in early 80s America in Illinois where they were building the biggest nuclear power plant in the world. I barely knew him as a child but went to spend the summer with him at the end of my first year of university.
I had a great time, genuinely. There's been movies made of it. In fact Neil Simon's near contemporaneous “I Ought to be in Movies” with Walthar Matthau just about covers it. Anyway, he was paid good money. The cooling towers were so huge they could be seen from all over the state. They had warning lights that blinked every few seconds to warn aircraft of their presence.
One night I was cleaning my teeth and could hear him in his own bathroom. For he knew his worth. For he had been doing his sums. Every time the lights on the cooling tower blinked I heard him saying “Two cents...two cents...two cents..."