Dawg Story #2

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Dawg story 2 (compiled from 8/24/07)


Note: This was cobbled together from several posts on Talksmack from August 24, 2007

Where do we start? ...Doing a head-first swan dive through a hole in the floor into wet concrete eight or ten feet below (1977; Actually I was two years old when I went into the concrete. I have no first-hand memory of it.), nearly falling off a 94-foot waterfall near Mt. Washington in New Hampshire (1988),sliding my car sideways through a 20-foot gap between a telephone pole and guardrail before barrel-rolling down a snow-covered hill (1994) then waiting six years to tell my folks what happened...need I go on?
I only hope I have as many lives as AJ.

The burned eardrum. I wear ear protection if I have to weld overhead NOW. Before April 9, 1994 I didn’t. I was welding up an exhaust system under a car in front of the shop when part of the molten weld dropped from the workpiece (the exhaust pipe) and down my right ear, burning a hole in my eardrum. I have to admit that was a little bit painful. I could feel the piece of steel, about the size of a BB, go all the way down and burn into the eardrum. It’s not like burnin your hand or something...you’re talkin right next to your brain...And I never have regained much of the hearing in that ear.

The log splitter accident It happened in November 1995 when I was using a spring-loaded lifting device to help get a log on the splitter. It was a cold and rainy day and my foot slipped, the steel lifting ramp came up and hit me in the mouth. A half inch higher and I would’ve lost my bottom teeth. After making sure my teeth were there and finding my hat and glasses, I looked down and my shirt was covered in blood. All I really got was a scar and a story. Since nobody else was around, I kept workin’ ’til the job was done.

The Lightning episode of 2003:
I was hit by lightning on Friday August 1, 2003, when it hit a tree next to the old shop, arced over to a metal exhaust vent on the roof of the shop, came down and hit a piece of equipment I was pushing (the war wagon), went through me and burned out one of my MIG welders. I didn’t see a thing. I just heard a loud, metallic-sounding explosion, like a steel tank exploding, just as I got a jolt up both arms that knocked me off-balance and I went down, but never lost consciousness. It happened so fast, there wasn’t time for fear to be a part of it at all. My dad was working in another shop nearby and saw the fireball-looking flash on the roof of my shop, then ran over to find me on the floor, dazed. Instead of stopping my heart, which happens a lot of times, mine sped up to at least 200 beats per minute, but I could not take a breath. It was about fifteen minutes before I could breathe, and the next morning my muscles were all stiff and it took something to get moving. It felt like I’d been beat on with a sledge hammer, especially in the joints.

Monday, I took the welder in to be looked at. It was fried so they sent it out to be rebuilt (the warranty had expired and it cost me $600 to get the durn thing rebuilt), then went home and put a lightning rod at each end of the shop. No need in trying to get lucky again. That was when I saw the six or eight-foot strip on the tree where the bark was blown off. My business was hit two other times, but I was only personally involved once. And I went to a doctor about it -- two years later, when I noticed an irregular heartbeat (which turned out to be just stress-related). The doctors gave me a scalding for waiting two years to do anything...

And, yes, when thunder clouds gather, people do tend to get away from me.
One thing I forgot to mention -- in August 2005 I set my hair on fire with a Plasma cutter (it was a new machine and I was tryin to figure the settings out on it... and had a Michael Jackson flashback. (And yes, I had a welding hat on; I’d needed a haircut and wound up getting one, but not as I’d prefer.)
I wouldn’t make this stuff up. By the way, none of these stories make me cringe...I already dealt with whatever pain there was. But if somebody else told me the same stories, I’d be climbin the walls...

One thing I HAVEN’T done is fall out of an ultra-lite and have it land on top of me, but I shook hands with a man who did.

A Redneck’s Last Words: "Hey, Ya’ll Watch THIS!!!"

I know my going on about some of my "moments" makes me seem like an arrogant, egotistical, self-centered son-of-a-swamp-sow. Sorry, it’s just that I can’t always take off the self-promoter’s hat (boy, that came out right). I always am talking up my business and I prefer to talk about what I do (welding, fabricating, ornamental ironwork) than go on about myself. See what happens when there’s no racing?



That’s that. Now IT’S TIME TO GET BACK TO RACING.


Never been a horse that couldn’t be rode, never been a cowboy who couldn’t be throwed...