Armco Steel - part 2

Continuing with the story of working at Armco, I'd like to share the worst day I had there....and maybe one of the worst days of my life.

I got assigned to do some brick work at the basic oxygen furnace.  This furnace was an odd contraption that looked for all the world like a giant thermos bottle. It was about 30 feet tall with a bottle shape and about 10 feet in diameter.  It had a narrow neck at the top, and they used it to burn the impurities out of the molten iron.  First they'd fill it about half full of molten iron, then insert a big metal tube into it and blow pure oxygen in.  It looked like a giant fireworks display when they did that, because the oxygen would cause anything other than iron to burst into violent flames and sparks.  The iron would get white hot too....so the heat was intense and almost overpowering.

To protect the furnace bottle floor on the inside from melting too, they had a layer of protective long bricks made of a mix of asbestos and silica.  They were unique in shape being narrow on one end, but then expanding towards the outside of the vessel.  They were each about two feet long, and maybe 3 inches square on the small end, and six inches square on the big end.  They nested together in a very interesting spiral pattern that looked a lot like the seeds of a sunflower when you looked down into the bottle.  As they used it, the bricks would slowly burn away and eventually they all needed to be replaced.  They had two basic oxygen furnaces, and so could shut one down while the other was still operating.

My job was to do down inside the bottle, tear out the old bricks at the bottom and then lay new ones.  Access was a challenge because of the narrow neck, so they had designed a special open cage elevator that a crane would drop into a vertical bottle.  It was just big enough across to ride in if you kept your arms at your sides to fit into it.  Some of the guys were too big around to fit, so they picked us smaller people to do the down side work.  They used the elevator to drop us in, and all the tools and materials we needed too.  We would load up the platform with broken brick in buckets and they would take it back up again.  It was not a place for anyone who is uncomfortable in small tight places.  I have to admit that it did bother me a bit, especially when I looked up a the little opening far above me.

I got assigned to this detail three days in a row, and so got pretty good at it.  We got the old bricks out quickly, and then started dropping in the new bricks.  Te ensure they were solidly in place, we used a dry mortar approach.  They would send us down bags of very finely powdered sand and asbestos.  We would put a couple of the bricks in place, and then slowly pour a little of the mortar powder into the cracks between them.  This way the molten iron could not flow between the bricks and get the to outside steel vessel walls.

All was going smoothly until the unexpected happened.  Someone who was loading up materials on the topside stacked a bunch of bricks into the elevator, and then a bunch of mortar bags on top of them.  As the elevator came down with that load, the pile of stuff slid sideways.  A couple of bags of the dry mortar first hit the sides of the elevator cage and then slipped over some more.  They got caught on some exposed angle iron near the top of the vessel, and it cut the bags wide open.  Immediately all the contents spilled out into space and the whole place was filled with dense white fog of fine sand and asbestos powder.

It's hard to describe just how bad it was in there.  We were in a total white out, but our eyes were blind anyway from the dust and tears.  Then we started breathing the dust and we all coughed until I thought we'd lose our lungs on the floor.  We put our hands over our mouths in a useless gesture to cut the dust.  Then the worst thing of all happened.  The elevator ground to a halt about half way down, still spilling large quantities of dust into the air. 

We were trapped and couldn't see and couldn't breathe.  I pulled my kerchief out of my back pocket and wrapped it over my mouth.  There was a lot of profanity flying, and I'm sure I was helping.  The guys on the topside started yelling too.  They told us to hold on and tried to reverse the direction of the elevator, but it was totally stuck.  The dust had spilled into the gears and it wouldn't move up or down.  It was stuck firmly half way down, but way above our heads.  The full impact of our situation began to sink in.  We were trapped in a place where it was almost impossible to see or breathe.

I had to try very hard not to panic, and worked on slowing my breath and keeping my eyes closed.  After what seemed like forever, another crew came to help out the topside people.  They couldn't get the elevator to work either, and so finally decided to call in a crane and pull the whole unit straight up out of the vessel...leaving us behind below.  They really had no other option, but it took them a long time to get a crane in place and then pull the elevator up and out.  Once it was gone, I was hoping for some fresh air to come down, but it didn't seem to help a bit.  We were all gasping for air, coughing, and one guy was throwing up from coughing so hard.  We all had tears streaming down our faces and couldn't see much of anything.

At first the top crew tried to figure out a way to get us out of there, but didn't have ladders or lines that would work.  They finally decided the only option was the get the elevator working again.  So, they got busy with air hoses and brushes and finally got the gears all cleaned.  They did a quick power check to see if it was working again, and then dropped the elevator back down into the bottle.  They could only take out one of at a time, and it seemed like forever before I got my turn...the last one out.  They put us all into the back of a pickup truck and drove us over to the infirmary.  They washed out our eyes with something, and let us take a shower to get all the powder off us.  They said we'd be fine, and just take a day off.  I didn't know any better, and this was long before people understood the impact of asbestos on lungs.  Two days later I was back at work again.

I remember being tired a lot after that, but gradually recovered.  It took weeks for the cough to totally disappear.  One thing that I really noticed much later though was that I wasn't as good at distance running as I had been before.  I just wrote it off to lack of training and getting older.

Years later I got a great job at Boeing, and when I went into Field Service they subjected me to the first indepth physical of my life.  I got my first chest x-ray and the doctor came out to ask me some questions.  He said I had a lot scarring in my lungs and wanted to know why.  I was at a loss for awhile to explain it, but finally made the link to Armco.  The body is smart and when your lungs get bad stuff in them, it puts scars around it to protect you.  So...my body did it's job, and now I've got a bunch of nice scars in my lungs as my souvenir of Armco.  Of course asbestos exposure can cause lung cancer, but I'm just hoping that it stays right there where it belongs, totally surrounded and isolated from the rest of me.

I don't worry about it much, figuring that if it was going to cause cancer I'd already be dead.  But I can't help but count my blessings for having survived that awful day.  Many times when I go outside I take a full fresh breath of air, and am so grateful that I can do that still.  So, here again I'm feeling thankful for air and life on the eve of Thanksgiving.  I do wonder at times if the other five guys who were down there too are as lucky as I am......

Lessons learned:  Never take the little things in life for granted, they can be taken away in a single second of surprise.  Enjoy the moment, it's all we ever have anyway.

Armco Steel - part 1

Sign at the Main Entrance

One of my more interesting and challenging jobs was working at Armco Steel in Ashland, Kentucky.  My younger brother Ed and I got jobs there one summer with the help of a family friend.  The pay was amazingly good, but the place was filled with ways to get hurt or killed.


We got temporary summer jobs called vacation fill in.  Vacation fill in means that each day when you punch in for work, you also get a pink card that tells you where in the plant to report for work.  Pretty much every day or night was a different job, but a lot of the time we did the worst of the worst kind of annual maintenance work.  Like climbing down into deep concrete wells and pumping out hydraulic fluid and other junk that had fallen in.  It was kind of like the scene in the first Star Wars movie where they were all trapped in the garbage collection area and the walls started closing on them.  It stank, it was dark, and if you got the skydrol on your hands, the skin would peel off.  Nice.

The Tipple area where the iron ore was delivered by trains

Steel mills are tough places to work, and Armco was no exception.  Their primary idea for an employee safety program was putting a big illuminated scoreboard at the main gate.  It was just like the kind you see at football games, except this one was a bit more personal.  They posted three different numbers for the last 12 months...Minor Injuries, Major Injuries, and Fatalities.  There were no zeroes in any of the three, including the fatalities.  I think there were three people killed the summer we worked there.  They seemed to think that posting the scores would scare people into being more safe...but it sure didn't seem to have much effect.

We were required to join the United Steel Workers Union to work there, and they had one particular practice that drove me nuts, but made Ed smile.  When you hired in, you got a seniority number assigned.  It was based on the date, and also the order you hired in on a particular day.  In our case we were hired in the same day in alphabetical order.  Meaning that Ed was the person who got hired right before me.  That was ok, except he was my younger brother.

The full impact of the seniority system didn't take long to rear it's head.  When we'd both get assigned to the same fill in detail, we would often be assigned slightly different jobs.  Like the hydraulic pit clean up job.  For that job, two people were required.  One had to climb down into the pit, and wade around in hip boots in smelly, caustic junk...and the other would lower down a big bucket, that the down side person would load with junk.  So the top side person would then pull up the bucket and dump it into a loader, and lower it again.  Clearly the top side person had the much better of the two jobs, so it went to the person with the higher seniority...in our case to Ed.  Ed was good about it and never rubbed it in, but he would always have that quiet smile on his face when I got the worst part of every assignment, and he didn't.

We had many really dirty, hot, smelly and dangerous jobs there.  Without fail, the foreman would always ignore all the posted safety warnings and never issue the required safety equipment.  On one job we both were working on the roof of the basic oxygen furnace building to sweep and blow off iron ore dust before it got so heavy it would collapse.  Since heat rises, it was about 130 degrees up there, and we wore face masks, big smelly rubber gloves and walked around with a huge vacuum hose to pick up the piles of drifting dust.  There was a large sign that said "Natural Gas Hazard Area - Oxygen Masks Required at All Times".

Of course they didn't give us the masks, and I got concerned.  When you use natural gas in a residential setting they add that wonderful aroma to it so people can smell it in case of a leak.  However, in industrial use, it is completely odorless, but just as deadly.  So, being a bit concerned, I pointed at the sign and asked the foreman, where were our masks.  He frowned and said "We ain't got none son.".  Pressing the point, I asked about how we can know we will be safe.  He paused, and then wet his finger in his mouth and stuck it straight up into the air.  I thought he was pointing to God as our protector, but he had a brilliant plan.  He was checking for which way the wind was blowing.  He then asked the most senior person on the crew to move to the upwind side of the building and watch us all.  He told him that if any of us collapsed, his job was to call for help on the radio.  Unfortunately, the foreman's radio wasn't working...but at least he made an effort, and none of us did collapse.

At night it seemed like a set from the movie Alien

We got this same foreman a number of times (maybe he was being punished), and so got to know him pretty well.  I think his name was John, and he rolled his own cigarettes.  Fascinating but disgusting at the same time.  But I learned to appreciate his dry wit, and especially his ability to act fast when needed...and that time came one day.

Ed and I had been operating jack hammers inside a large bathroom complex, and so got pretty good at it.  Don't know if you've every used a jack hammer, but they weigh around 100 pounds, shake the crap out of you, and will deafen you when you start them up in a tiled room.  Not to mention the chocking concrete dust they blow everywhere since they run off of compressed air.

So we were both happy to get cards one day that told us to report to a closed building for jack hammer work.  At least we wouldn't be in that bathroom sounding like a war zone.  John was our foreman, and he had us walk up several flights of stair to the very top of the building lugging our hammers and hoses.  They had big steel beams, laid in pairs that crossed just under the ceiling at regular intervals.  The one foot space between each pair had been filled with reinforced concrete, and it needed to be broken out so they could take the beams down.  They were remodeling it for some purpose that did not require ceiling cranes.  So, our job was to keep our left foot on one beam, our right foot on the other, and use the jack hammer to break out the concrete in between.  All this was done while we were about 60 feet in the air above a concrete floor.

Of course there was no safety equipment...no ropes or harnesses to catch us if we slipped.  And slipping was easy.  We walked backwards down the beam pairs, and would set the hammer down on the concrete to break it free. When the concrete broke, it would fall to the floor below with a crash, and the jack hammer would try to fall too.  It was a fine art to know just when to pull back hard on the hammer to keep you and it from going down with the concrete.  And the longer we worked and the tireder we got, the more likely an accident was.  I knew if we made a mistake on this one, we would show up in the Fatalities section of the scoreboard.

At first it went fine, but both Ed and I had some near misses.  We learned very quickly to be slow and methodical.  I got my beam pair done first, and was standing back on safe ground watching Ed get to the last five feet of beam before he too would be done.  John had been watching us the whole time, rolling and smoking, but not saying much.  He moved over to stand behind Ed, and watched him slowly backing towards him breaking out the beams.  I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but suddenly Ed lost his balance forward as the concrete broke.  His jack hammer dropped about half way down through the beams, and Ed was clearly going down with it despite his strength.

Just like a miracle, John quickly reached out one had and grabbed Ed's belt in the back, and reached back with his other hand to grab a piece of pipe attached to the wall.  He was now holding Ed and the jack hammer both, and swung them both back to the platform on which he was standing.  Ed and I were both totally freaked out, knowing how close he'd just come to dying...but John just smiled and said "Sure wouldn't do for you to work alone would it boy?  Next time just let go of the GD jack hammer.".  My heart was beating so fast I felt like I was going to throw up...and I think Ed felt even worse.

So...John let us take a break, and then we went back to work again...more slowly and carefully than before.

I learned a lot from working there, and in part 2 of this story will share how I still carry a souvenir of one of my worst days.  It wasn't all bad though.  I loved working with Ed.  He had a nice 57 Olds, and would would take us both to and from work in it.  We got so filthy dirty there that he had to put blankets in the car for us to sit on to keep from ruining the seats.  Our faces and clothes would be black, which made it all the more fun to see each other smile and laugh as we'd talk about our day on the way home...totally exhausted but proud of the hard work we'd done together.

I also learned the value of a good job, and to appreciate one when I had one.  I have a lot of respect for the people who actually made a life career of working at Armco.  I knew that I could never do that work for long, but some of them had been at it for 30 years.  They were tough, still hard working, and very wise in their own way.  They are the kind of people, like miners, who gave their lives to make a living for their families and to help build this country.

So, I give thanks to each of them on this day, but am especially thankful to foreman John....I love my brother Ed, and without you John, he wouldn't be here with us all today.  Thank you!

Life after Death

In my last blog I described how it's possible to fly down stairs with only minor injuries.  This blog of a different sort, and describes the accident that most changed my view of myself and my life.  I've had a lot of accidents in my life, but have only had one turn out to be fatal...and this is the story of that event.

When I was 14, I got one of the dumbest ideas I've ever had - and I consider myself world class at coming up with dumb ideas.  The dumb idea?  I decided to get Red Cross certified as a life guard.  That's something thousands of people have done, and maybe it doesn't sound so silly.  But, I was about 4 foot 9 inches tall, and weighed maybe 80 pounds after a big meal.  So, physically I would have struggled to rescue a small wet dog, much less a real person.  The second thing is that I'd never had a swimming lesson in my life, and didn't know the first thing about proper swimming technique.

None of that deterred me in the least, especially since my big sister Ingrid was taking the class too.  We went to the local pool the first evening, and signed up with 40 other people to take the class.  The instructors were interesting - two big beefy guys just out of the Marines, and right away I could tell they were wondering why I was there.  I think they thought I was the kid of one of the real students at first, and that I was just going to watch from the sidelines.  I made sure very quickly that they understood that I was there as a student, and that I had every intention of completing the classes and getting that treasured certificate.

The Red Cross offers a standard curriculum for training life guards across the US, including a nice book and handouts that tell you all about how to save other people without getting yourself drowned in the process.  Not getting drowned is the biggest challenge when you try to save someone.  Drowning people are always in a panic, and they will literally climb up on top of you, or get you in a death grip if they can.  So, a big part of the training is how to approach a victim, get them into a hold that is safe for both of you, and then swim you both to safety.  It's not easy- especially when most of the people are about twice your size, but I did surprisingly well at it..

About a third of the way through the class, when everything was going swimmingly well (sorry), the two lifeguards got bored.  They decided that the standard classes were just not challenging enough to prepare us for the real world.  They introduced a very difficult training regimen into our evening sessions.  We had to be either swimming, running or doing pushups/situps all the time.  They said that endurance and strength were critical to our future success.  That's when people started grumbling behind their backs and some people quit.

I have to admit it was hard work...harder than anything I'd done before, but I wasn't going to give up no matter what.  And besides, if Ingrid could do it so could I.  After an evening session, we would walk home together and eat a whole loaf of bread between us.   We were like starved animals all the time, but the exercise was starting to have it's effect, and we got stronger and better at our swimming and rescue work.

The real downward spiral of our class began when the lifeguards once again reviewed what we were doing, and had a brilliant idea (at least they thought it was brilliant).  They decided we should wear clothes while we did our training - tennis shoes, blue jeans, and a long sleeved sweat shirt.  The swimming and exercise was already hard, but doing it fully clothed was incredibly difficult.  I think that their experience in the Marine Corp had caused some significant skewing of their view of what was normal and expected.

The very first evening of when we were to begin our training this way, I brought my clothes in a brown paper bag, and my dinner in another bag.  I was very worried I wouldn't be able to swim with the clothes on, and I asked them if I could practice in the pool before class began.  The way it worked is that the pool closed at 6 pm, and the classes started at 7 pm.  So they had a one hour break for their own dinner and paperwork between.  They said ok, and then went to the pump house office to do their daily work and eat their meal.

There was no one else in the whole pool complex and the water was glass smooth.  I put on the clothes, and got into the shallow end of the pool.  It just felt wrong to be in the pool with shoes and clothes on, but I forced myself.  However hard I thought it was going to be, the reality was worse.  It was very hard to kick effectively and swim, and just try raising your arms out of the water to swim a crawl when you have a sweat shirt on.   I finally decided to move to deeper water and try swimming all the way across the pool.  I did fine for a bit, but was getting very winded and losing my rhythm.  Somewhere in the middle of the pool, I did a very bad thing.  I took a full breath while my face was in the water...I still don't know why.

Taking a full breathe of water is usually not a good idea, and in my case was no different.  I realized immediately that I was in serious trouble.  I fought my way to the surface to yell, but couldn't make the slightest sound.  I couldn't breathe, couldn't call for help, and in very short order could not even stay on the surface any more.  In total panic I sank towards the bottom and knew I was going to die.

I continued to thrash around ineffectively for awhile, but gradually my movements slowed, and I came to a complete stop.  I remember my feet hitting the bottom, and a great sense of peace replaced my panic and fear.  Things got dark, and I couldn't see anymore...but I really didn't care.  Then I heard an amazing sound.  It grew louder and louder, and completely filled me with it's vibration.  Much later in life I heard Tibetan prayer bowls, and realized they are very similar to this sound when you "ring" them by rubbing a stick around the rim slowly.

The sound was like a magnet, and in total darkness I started moving towards the sound.  Not swimming, but somehow just moving because I wanted to move.  As I moved that way, I saw a dim light ahead.  The closer I got to it, the brighter it became.  It was a golden, yellow, warm light...and I was totally drawn to it.  At one point I felt like I was being pulled along down a shimmering tunnel of light, and then I came out on the other side.  I immediately realized that what I had seen was not a light.....but an entire universe of lights.  These lights were orbs of the same golden color, each shimmering and radiating their light.  It was their individual lights that was creating the light I had seen from afar.

The other thing I felt immediately was being totally bathed in complete, unconditional love, bliss, and connection.  I realized that each light was in fact another person, and that they were welcoming me home.  I knew I'd been here before, and recognized many, many beings there as people I'd known before.  I was also filled with a huge relief that I was home again after a tough journey.  I continued moving slowly through the lights, and knew that I was a light just like them.  It's hard to describe just how wonderful the experience was, but it is forever burned into my brain and heart.  I don't know how long I was there, but it seemed like days.

Then without warning, I was moving very rapidly backwards out of there.  I awoke lying in the grass beside the pool with my face in the dirt.  I was scratched and bleeding from being pulled up over the concrete edge of the pool, and had been throwing up water and my recent dinner.  I was completely confused for a few seconds, and then realized I was back here and had left the other place behind.  I jumped to my feet, and have never felt such rage and anger in my life at being brought back.  I was a very well mannered, quiet boy...but not then.  I screamed at both of the lifeguards, calling them bad words I didn't even know I knew, and started kicking and punching them both.  I don't need to get into all of it, but I'd had some really challenging times in my life, and was extremely unhappy to be back here again.

Clearly they were caught by surprise - after all they had just saved my life.  They just kept pushing me away, and then one of them got me in a bear hug and lifted me off the ground until I stopped struggling.  At this point, I was so filled with sadness for the loving place I'd just lost that I just went limp and sobbed with my hands at my sides.  I'm sure they must have thought I'd gone totally insane...and maybe I had. 

They then told me their story.  After I said I was going to swim, they went back into the pump house.  Some time later, one of them said he felt something was wrong.  He went outside and looked at the pool and the area around it.  He said the water was calm, and that I was nowhere in sight.  So, he decided that I'd changed my mind about practicing and had gone home for dinner.  He went back inside and continued his paperwork.  About 5 minutes later, he again got a strong feeling that not all was well, and went out again to look around.  Still not seeing anyone, he walked over to the deep end of the pool, and saw my body at the drain in deepest water.  Apparently, my body had slowly drifted down the bottom to the drain.  He called for help, and they jumped in, pulled me out, and were able to revive me after a lot of work.

As I regained my senses and my temper, I went into a form of shock.  Shock from being oxygen deprived for so long (they estimated 15 to 20 minutes under water).  But also shock at being back from a place I so loved, to one I didn't love so much.  I began to wonder if maybe what had happened was just a crazy dream of some sort, but I knew in my heart it was very real.  Maybe even more real than here.  But I just kept my mouth shut about my experience, and instead asked them if there was any way they'd be willing not to tell my parents about it.  They readily agreed, and I now understand it was because they knew they'd get in a bunch of trouble if anyone found out they'd let me swim without any supervision...and I'd almost drowned as a result.

By the time they revived me, I had to have been dead for at least 15 ro 20 minutes...plenty of time for brain damage which starts after 2 minutes.  I'm pretty sure that I did suffer some brain injury, but one of the nice things about brain damage is that you don't really know you have it.  I do know I had a much better memory and total recall before that day, and I wasn't so good at that after.

The impact of that evening has continued to change me throughout my life.  I didn't tell anyone about what happened for 25 years or more, but I couldn't help but see my life and the world in a very different way.  I was no longer afraid of death, and understand that it is just a transition to a much better place.  But at the time some of my experience was very troubling for me.  How could I have known so many people there, and why did I know I'd been away before and come home before too?  

We were raised in a traditional Christian family, and I'd never heard the word reincarnation before.  But when I came across it years later, and I knew that's what it was about.  Not in the way that many might think though.  The "me" that went through the tunnel and went home was not so much like the "me" here.  The essential elements are the same, but the personality I have here just dropped away, much like my scrawny little body did too.  I also understood that all people are connected through love and compassion there, and that we search for and long for that connection here.  That sure knowledge of the love that awaits me has been a lifelong comfort to me here.

In my own lack of understanding and maturity, I decided at that age that my religion was just wrong about too many important things.  I stepped away from it, and began studying every other religion to see which one was "right".  I didn't find one that matched my experience, so I rejected them all for awhile.  Then I finally realized something.  I was studying religions like I was panning for gold.  Except that I'd throw the whole pan back in the water because it contained some sand, and was not all gold.  Now instead, I see that every religion has gold nuggets, and all do also have some sand.  So they are all good in some way - and not so good in others.  All can be helpful for our growth and betterment as human beings - and learning to understand what is true or for ourselves.

I'm not trying to say anyone's religion is better or worse.  I just think they all are doing their best to describe the same thing from different perspectives, and do so in different ways.  One thing I am very sure about though is that the ones that think they are the only ones with a ticket to heaven are seriously confused.  There were no Christians, Muslims, or Jews where I went...only wonderful caring beings who hope for nothing more than to love and be loved.  I hope this doesn't offend any of you who might read this, and I'm only describing own personal experience.  I respect and honor everyone else's point of view, and I've found that arguing or debating doesn't help or matter.  After all, we are all taking whatever we believe on faith or our own experiences.  The most important thing is to do our best to help and love each other while we are here, and to give that love unconditionally.

So...back to the lifesaving class before I end this.  I did end up learning to swim with the clothes on without drowning, and eventually completed the very difficult test at the end to get my treasured certificate.  We had to swim three miles in our final exam in our clothes to prove we were worthy.  In the end, only three of us out of the originally 42 graduated.  My sister Ingrid was one of the three too...so don't ever underestimate just how tough and determined she is.  The two lifeguards were fired at the end of the season for changing the training to make it so hard - the city got a lot of letters of complaint from the people who dropped out.

To this day, I don't remember the names of the two teachers...and I'm ashamed I never said thank you for saving my life.  I was angry for a long time at having to be here again, but now I know that they gave me a great gift by bringing me back - even though I thought it was against my will.  Now I do my best to spend each day in gratitude that I did get to see what I saw, and that I still have a chance to experience each day here as the treasure that it is.  I'm not in any hurry to die, but know that one of these fine days I will be going home again...and I will smile all the way there.

Lessons Learned:  Life is simple, just listen to your heart.  Sometimes when you sign up for a lifesaving class, you get exactly what you signed up for.

C&O Railroad Hospital

I've worked many different places and had many jobs in my life.  Last count was somewhere around 35 - 16 of which were when I worked at Boeing.  I liked most of them, and learned a lot at each one.  Some of them mostly taught me to appreciate a good job when I had one.

When I was 16 years old I got a job at the C&O Railroad Hospital in Huntington, West Virginia.  You may have heard of Huntington...Jamie Oliver had a reality show about it on TV last season because it was named by the CDC in Atlanta as the most unhealthy city in the US.  The railroad hospital is long gone, but I'm guessing it could have won that same unflattering award for hospitals in the US.

When I started at the hospital I got a job as a janitor.  It was a good job, and paid very well - $1.72 an hour which was a whole bunch better than I had been making at MacDonald's.  MacDonald's had paid me the current minimum wage, but it was only $0.90 an hour for the food service industry...because they figured people would make extra money on tips.  At MacDonald's?  But I digress...that's another story for another time.

The hospital was four stories high, with a north and south wing.  I don't know how many beds they had, but it was a good sized place, and there were about 15 of us in the custodial crew.  I was working the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, and was pretty much a runt.  I had just passed the 5' 1" mark, and weighed in at around 100 pounds.  Our high school was almost completely white, and there was not a single African-American there.  So, when I found out I was the only white person on the custodial staff, it was very interesting.  They were nice to me for the most part, and started calling me "Slim"...which I didn't mind.  They didn't have any uniforms my size, so all my clothes just hung off me.  Good thing that the shirts just hung over the pants they gave us, because I had to pull my pants up the my armpits to keep the bottoms from dragging the ground.   The TV show Erkle hadn't come out yet, but I knew a fashion disaster in the making when I saw one.

They had a nice system for assigning work at the hospital.  We would rotate to different floors each week, and we also had a list of maintenance and cleaning tasks we did at various times.  There was enough work and variety to keep me busy, but not so busy that I couldn't stop to chat with the staff, and especially the patients.  I met a lot of great people, and made so many friends.  The really hard part was when they died sometimes...but I knew how wonderful it was going to be for them when they moved on.  So, I was sad to not get to see them again, but full of joy for them for the next part of their journey.

I had a lot of things happen at the hospital - way too many for one blog.  So, I'll just start somewhere and come back to this place several times in the future.

One of the period cleaning jobs was to sweep, mop and wax the stairwells at the north and south end of the hospital.  We didn't have to do it often, so when it came my turn to do it - it was my first time.  As you can imagine, it's not a very challenging assignment.  Sweep everything clean, wet mop the floors and stairs, and then wax the floors on the landings (but not the stairs).  So, as I did the north stairwell, I kind of settled into the zen janitor space where your body just does it's thing, and your mind goes where ever it wants to go.  Before I knew it, I was done there, and so bundled up all my equipment and headed for the south stairwell.

I started on the top floor because you know the old saying "dirt rolls downhill"?  Well, that's not exactly the saying but close enough.  So, I swept the fourth floor and then swept my way down the stairs to the third floor.  As I was standing on the third floor, I looked to the side and could see what some janitors unflattering called "crow row".  On the other side of the glass doors and glass walls, there was a row of wheelchairs, all in a side by side line.  Looked like vehicles in a parking lot.  In each chair was a very old, feeble man.  Each had a belt strapped around them to be sure they didn't fall out.  All of them were in some state of stupor, and no wonder.  They pretty much spent all day in that row, except for meal and bathroom time.  The idea was to get them out of their rooms, and give them the opportunity to talk.  But most of them were too far gone to talk, so mostly they sat quietly, heads and eyes drooping.

I'd seen them many times before, and even tried to engage some of the more lively ones in conversation.  Some actually could talk, and loved to tell stories of steam engines and their adventures on the rails.  Some of the stories were a bit beyond belief, but they were all entertaining.  Mostly I just enjoyed seeing the light come back into their tired eyes as they relived a part of their lives that was far away now.

Anyway, I trudged back up the stairs to get my mop and fresh bucket of hot water and cleaner.  I started on the part of the landing away from the stairs, and began swiping the mop back and forth in a familiar rythym as I walked backwards.  The stairs were the usual in commercial buildings.  There was one long flight all the way down to the third floor landing, and the steps had rugged steel edges to prevent wear and damage. 

As I mopped, I went back in to the zen zone...not really thinking anymore about what I was doing.  All of the sudden my silent meditation was disturbed when I took a step back with my right foot and landed on....nothing.  In a sudden panic, I realized that I'd walked backwards off the landing and was surely going to fall down those steel edged stairs.  I figured that I'd probably be seriously injured, and wouldn't stop bouncing until I got all the way to the bottom.

Everything went into very slow motion at that point.  I considered my options - falling backwards, or trying something else.  It occurred to me that if I jumped backwards as hard as I could off my still-grounded left foot, that maybe just maybe, I could clear all the stairs in a single bound and come down on the landing on the fourth floor.  There were two major issues with this plan though.  First, it was a good 12 foot drop to the landing below, and second the ceiling was sloped down following the descending stairs.  I couldn't remember just how high that ceiling was, and knew that there was a very good chance that I would ram my head into the ceiling and then fall the rest of the way down the stairs.  Hmmmn....

After what must have been only milliseconds of thinking, I decided to chance the jump rather than just letting myself fall.  So, I jumped as hard and low as possible backwards off the landing and began my descent towards either doom or salvation.  I remained in the same super slow motion mode, watching the wall and railing fly by, and feel the top of my head ever so lightly brush the ceiling as I gathered speed.  I set my legs in position to land, and suddenly I was down to the landing.  I hit pretty hard, and staggered back just a bit, but I was safe and totally amazed that it had worked.

Well....almost worked.  I had a nagging feeling that I'd forgotten something important.  Still in slow motion mode, I looked back up the stairs and what I saw was not good.  In my right hand, at the end of my full outstretched right arm, was my trusty mop.  Only it wasn't looking so trusty any more.  It was flying down and coming at me like a spear.  I tried to deflect it, but it had way too much speed and inertia.  I only managed to change it's direction slightly...and my arm folded against the force of it as the end went straight into my gaping mouth.

Sometimes when we get hurt under stress we don't feel it, but that wasn't the case this time.  It REALLY hurt as the mop handle smashed my lips against my teeth, and then continued on into the inside of my mouth.  It hit the roof of my mouth, and knocked my head dramatically backwards.  It stopped finally and I yanked it out of my mouth and the blood started to pour onto my hospital blue shirt.

It was at this point that I looked to the side to see if anyone had been watching.  I'd completely forgotten about the crow row, and as I looked at them, they were to a man all wide eyed and staring at me with expressions of disbelief on their faces.  I suppose it was an appropriate expression, because you don't often get to see someone flying backwards down the stairs and then catch a mop in their mouth.  Anyway their heads had snapped up, and their mouths dropped open.  They looked at me and then each other, and then back at me again.  Many of them began to smile, like they'd just seen a great circus trick that they'd love to see again.

I dropped the mop, and headed towards the doors to the landing.  I didn't want to tell anyone what I'd done (this wasn't my first injury there and I was on their "watch" list already), so I figured I'd go to the washroom and see if I could get the bleeding stopped and get a clean jersey.  As I got to the glass door, who should appear but my family doctor, doing his monthly day of doing rounds there.  His shocked look was revealing, and he said "What in the hell happened to you son?".   I just mumbled that I'd had a mopping accident..and I quickly moved past him to the hall and bathroom.

I was so embarassed at it all, and hurt too.  While I was washing the blood out of my mouth and off my face, I thought again about what had just happened.  How had I forgotten that stupid mop?  I finally realized that holding onto the mop was a critical part of why I'd been able to make the whole escape work.  It had stabilized me during the jump, like feathers on an arrow, and without it in my hand I'd most likely tumbled in the air, and then come down even harder than if I'd just let myself fall.  My mop was completely trusty again.

I stepped out of the bathroom to get back to work, and saw that the men in crow row were all still wide awake and watching me keenly to see if I had any other tricks up my sleeve.  As I got up to them, I stopped and gave them a grand bow, and they laughed.  I smiled too, but it hurt.  I grabbed my mop off the floor, told it "thank you" for saving my life, and went in search of a clean shirt before I got into trouble again with the staff.

Lessons learned:  Pay attention to the moment.  Sometimes even the best plan is made to succeed by small mistakes.  It can be good to bring joy and happiness to other's lives, but choose your method carefully.

My Story

This post is a bit different.  I came across this story on the web...had forgotten about it.  The author was a really nice guy from Purdue University, where I finally received a degree after previous enrollment at Marshal University and West Virginia University.  He wrote this in 2004 about a year before I retired.

The author's a better writer than me by a mile, and I think he captured some of my life story pretty well.  So, I am hoping to still be modest, and include it as a blog.  :-)

Hank Queen

Vice President, Engineering and Manufacturing

Commercial Airplanes Group

The Boeing Company

BSAE ’74

For his outstanding engineering leadership within the world’s largest commercial airplane manufacturer, and for his service to Purdue University, the College of Engineering is proud to present the Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award to Hank Queen.

His Eyes on the Sky

“I’m one of those people that whenever an airplane flies over I stop and look up,” Hank Queen says. “It’s just in my blood. All my life I’ve been challenged and interested in all things mechanical, and I particularly loved airplanes. I can remember even being three years old and looking up at an airplane and wondering how it does that.”

As Vice President of Engineering and Manufacturing at Boeing Commercial Airplanes—a global organization of over 40,000 engineering personnel, with an annual multi-billion-dollar budget—Queen has plenty of opportunity to stop and watch the giants of the skies.

Both Queen’s father and grandfather were miners, and Queen grew up in a West Virginia coal mining town called Lando Mines. When the mine closed, the town was bulldozed to one end and burned by the company, and the Queen family moved to Huntington, West Virginia.

Queen studied engineering at the West Virginia University but chose not to finish his degree there. “I quit school the last semester of my senior year,” he says, “and I decided I would never be an engineer.” He followed his family to Indiana “because it seemed like an interesting thing to do,” Queen says. “I had never been that far west.” He then transferred to Purdue to finish his education.

A Passion for People

Queen began his career as a tool designer in Columbus, Indiana, before taking a job as an engineer for Boeing. At that time he had no desire to work in a management position.
“I had a stint in management about five years into my work at Boeing,” Queen says, “and I found I just didn’t like it.” So he returned to engineering, but it was the interaction with another employee that changed the direction of his career. “I worked with a guy that, for the first time, helped me understand that you can do engineering and make a significant contribution,” Queen says, “but you can do that with other people, not just on your own.”

This gentleman’s name was Mac Kiyono, a first-level manager at Boeing. “He was just such a neat leader,” Queen says. “He had a terrific perspective on life, and people and leadership. And he inspired me to want to be more like him.”  And there was some quality that Kiyono noticed in Queen.
“He told me, and remember, I was just an engineer at this time, ‘You’re going to be vice president of engineering someday.’ And I said, ‘Mac, you are out of your mind.’”

But when Queen returned to management in 1987, he found that his friend and mentor had been right after all.  “I didn’t really know that I had it,” Queen says, “but I have a real passion for people. I really felt good about watching other people be successful, which is at the heart of being a good manager, because your success is when other people are successful.”

A Tale of Two Feelings

Queen flew through the company ranks. He has worked as a service engineering manager for the 767 fleet, as a chief project engineer on the extended-range version of the 767, and as the director of the Twin-Aisle Airplane Program, which oversaw the technical integration of the 747, 767, and 777 family of airplanes. In 2000 he was named vice president in the Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group.

“A lot of my job is coaching and mentoring and developing and understanding human dynamics,” Queen says, “because people in a way are a large-scale systems problem. It has such a personal deep meaning when things go well.

“But things don’t always go well.”

The years since the 9/11 tragedy have been hard on the air travel industry; over the last three years, Queen’s organization has dropped from 22,000 people to 15,000 people. “And it’s just been a heartbreaking thing to have people come into your office and cry, knowing that you can still have respect for people and treat them with dignity and value their contribution. So it’s been the best of times and the worst of times—it’s been a tale of two feelings.”

Throughout his career, Queen credits his training as an engineer as a keystone to his success.

“That same rigor and understanding how to go about identifying what’s important and what’s not important: people, process, products, and performance—not to blow Purdue’s horn, but the quality of the staff, of the professors, of the people, I felt so fortunate that life led me to graduate from Purdue, because they taught us how to solve problems. And that was much more valuable than just learning a lot of technical things.”

Career Summary

2005 Retired

2004 Vice President of Engineering and Manufacturing, Boeing

2001 Outstanding Aerospace Engineering Award, Purdue

2000-04 Vice President, Engineering and Product Integrity, Boeing

1999-2000 Director of Engineering for Twin-Aisle Airplane Programs, Boeing

1997-99 Chief Project Engineer, 767-400ER Program, Boeing

1995-97 Chief Project Engineer, 767 Program, Boeing

1990-95 Service Engineer Manager, Boeing

1982-90 Electrical and Avionics, Service Engineering, Boeing

1975 Engineer, Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group

BS Aeronautical Engineering  ’74, Purdue University

Falling into Massage Therapy

The year when I was 12 was challenging in many ways.  I've already described my head sawing accident, but that wasn't the only one.  The scars from that one are almost invisible now, but with this next incident, I ended up with some lifelong issues and an amazing gift.

We were living in Huntington, West Virgina.  Our next door neighbors were the Kings.  Yes, they really were.  I know it's crazy, but we were the Queens, they were the Kings, and the Princes lived across the street.  The mailman used to say that they should have named our street Royality Row instead of Waverly Road.

The Kings had two kids...Rick and Paula.  Paula was about the same age as Ingrid, and Rick exactly the same age as my middle brother Ed.  Rick, Ed and me used to play together endlessly during the summer.  One of our favorite games had no specific name I can recall but was pretty simple.  One person was "it" and had a ball.  The object of the game was to be the only survivor, and the way you survived was to hit other people with the ball.  That was pretty straighforward except for one additional rule.  If someone threw the ball at you and you caught it, the thrower was out, and you became "it".  So you had to weigh your odds of catching the ball, or running and ducking to get away.  There were no limits on where you could run or hide, and that made it interesting.

In the Kings backyard, they had a very tall, broad maple tree.  Rick's dad was in the military and so was gone alot.  Mrs. King was busy in the house a lot and we hardly ever saw her.  So Rick got away with a lot of things we wouldn't dare to try...but we'd do them at his house because we never got into any trouble there.

One day we decided to build a tree house.  Lot's of boys and girls do this in their childhood, and we were no exception.  We did do something a bit unusual though.  Rick had a nice crosscut saw, and we climbed up near the top of the big tree - maybe 25 feet up.  We cut the entire top of the tree off, and it came down with a crash.  The trunk left behind was still at least 18 inches across, and flat now.  We took a half sheet of plywood left over from when we had built "The Building" in our back yard, and we cut a two foot diameter hole off center.  We hauled to plywood up to the top, and maneuvered it on top of the flat trunk.  I stood on a limb and moved up through the hole, and was able to nail the plywood horizontally onto the top of the tree.

We could climb the tree, get through the hole, and then stand on the platform on the very top of the tree.  We had an amazing view from up there, and it was taller than Rick's house which was a one story home.  We could play all kinds of pretend games there, and my favorite was to be in the crows nest of a big sailing ship looking for pirates, whales, and island paradises.

So...back to the ball game.  I decided to hide on the top of the platform, when Rick was it.  He had a good arm and was using a football that day for ammo.  He could throw plenty hard enough to make it hurt, and that's what his real goal was.  He had a bit of a mean streak and liked to hurt other people when he got a chance.  I was laying low up there, but somehow he figured out I was there and yelled at me to stop being a chicken and come down.

Now I knew he couldn't hit me up there from the ground, even though there were a couple of angles where he could get a pretty clear shot.  I also knew that if I came down through the hole and started climbing down that he would be able to nail me good...maybe even knocking me out of the tree.  I for sure didn't want that because at the base of the tree was a big pile of broken bricks and broken window glass.  They had been remodeling their house, and piled up all the broken stuff there for some reason.  Falling on that pile would have meant serious injury and cuts.

So, I just yelled back that if only he could throw better than a sissy he wouln't need me to come down to hit me.  Rick hated it when I called him a sissy, and invariably would do something dumb, or mean.  I was taking my chances this time, but thought it might be worth it.  He did just what I hoped he would do.  His face got all red, and his eyes all squinty.  He yelled something unintelligible and threw the ball hard up at me.

I jumped to my feet and moved quickly to make a perfect catch of the ball.  I crowed with triumph that he was out...which didn't happen very often.  My delight didn't last long as I quickly realized that all was not well.  In order to catch the ball, I'd moved to my right and back.  I now found myself standing with the football tucked in with my right hand, my left toes on the back edge of the board, and my right foot coming down behind me on nothing...nothing but air anyway.  There was no way to stay on the board, and I started to fall backwards, still holding the football, and wondering how I could be so stupid.

Everything went into super slow motion.  By now I was horizontal, and my body was rotating so I would be falling head first down to the ground 25 feet away.  The first of the limbs and leaves brushed the back of my head and now my feet were directly above me as I picked up speed.  I remembered the pile of broken bricks and glass, and knew I was going to do a head plant right into that pile.

Years later I read about how your brain operates under stress.  There are three levels of operation: normal, alpha state, and beta state.  We're all in the normal state right now (most likely).  When something serious happens where your life may be in danger, your brain goes into alpha state.  The world slows down as your brain speeds up.  You can think much faster and something figure out things that will save you.  Many people have this experience during auto accidents.  However, if things get extremely serious, your brain can go into beta state.  This state is reserved for only the most life threatening events.  When this happens you lose all connection to the outside world.  Your concious mind is cut off from everything.  Your brain does this because it knows your best chance is pure instinct at this point, and that if your concious mind is engaged it might not do the right thing to optimize your chances for survival.  For example, you might not run through a fire to get out because your concious mind would stop you from getting burned.  But if that's the only way to save yourself, then you would die.  Kind of makes sense.

So...my brain went from normal (at least as normal as my brain every gets), to alpha state, to beta state.  I can remember when it all went black....I was now falling head first and branches were slapping me hard on the head and shoulders as I fell towards certain death.  My sight closed like a tunnel and the last things I saw were my own sneakers against the sky and branches above.

The next thing I knew I was hanging from the last branch above the broken pile with my right arm, and had the football tucked into my left arm and side.  I was bouncing up and down wildly as the branch absorbed my considerable kinetic engergy.  I looked to the side that there stood Rick and my brother Ed.  I don't think I've ever seen anyone more astonished than the two of them.  Eyes wide, mouths hanging open, and both let out a huge gasp of air.  They'd had been holding their breaths as I fell, and it was clear that whatever I'd done to save myself was remarkable.

Well, it wasn't that remarkable I guess.  I'd just gone into a tuck, transfered the ball to my other hand, and then shot my right hand out at just the right time and place to snag that last branch.  Maybe it was a miracle, but I'm pretty sure most monkeys would have yawned and been underwhelmed.

For about 5 seconds, I got a huge smile on my face as I realized two things.  First, I was still alive, and second, and almost as important, Rick was out.  I swung side to side so that I could drop and miss the pile, and that was when the pain hit me.  My right shoulder suddenly felt like someone had shoved a hot poker into my armpit and out the top of my shoulder.  I couldn't stop sudden tears, and gasps of pain as I hit the ground.  Now I did drop the ball, and grabbed my shoulder.  It didn't help and I doubled over with the pain, and thought I was going to pass out for a bit.

Of course, I'd dislocated my shoulder by grabbing that branch.  It was a good trade compared to smashing my head on bricks and glass, but probably one I wouldn't have made if my mind had stayed in alpha state.  Now though I had a serious problem, and so started to run for home.  I gave up on that idea quickly though, as the running jarred my shoulder and sent even more pain shooting everywhere.  So, I walked very carefully, but quickly towards the house bent over in pain and holding my right arm against my chest.

When I got inside, I found my mom.  She asked me what was wrong, and I gasped that I'd hurt my shoulder.  I didn't tell her the whole story because I knew that would lead to more trouble.  She put her hand on my shoulder and I cringed in pain and pulled away.  Mom said "So, it hurts to touch it?".  I nodded and stepped further away, afraid that she would want confirm her statement by touching me again.  But she didn't move, and just said "Well, then don't touch it.".  I said "Ok"...and the diagnosis and treatment were over.

Even though I couldn't use my arm all week, couldn't sleep with the pain, mom stuck to her usual routine of avoiding doctors, and never asked me about it again.  I didn't know anything about shoulders or dislocating them back then, but at least it had popped back in when I let go of that branch.  I wasn't so lucky later that year with another dislocation, but of another joint (perhaps I'll tell that some othe time).  As the days went by, my shoulder gradually stopped throbbing and hurting so much.  I eventually could raise my arm over my head again, but never could throw a ball very good again after that. 

After many years, I popped that shoulder out of joint a second time, and it hurt just as bad all over again.  That time I did see a doctor, and then finally a wonderful massage therapist, Sara, who fixed it without surgery.  She was so good at her work and loved helping people so much, that I became a massage therapist too.  Who would have thought that a tag ball game combined with my monkey brain would result in me becoming a massage therapist one day?

Lessons learned:  Gravity works, and I'm glad my brain is smarter than I am.

Head Cheese

When I started writing these posts, I just figured I'd begin at the beginning.  So...that's what I've done, but I've written 13 stories, and am still only up to when I was four years old.  I'll never get done at that rate, and besides, my mind wanders.  From now on, I'm going to just jump around in time and space for no particular reason..and see how that goes. :-)

One disadvantage of growing up in rural West Virginia was the absence of medical care.  There was no doctor anywhere in our area, and it was a two and a half hour drive over mountain roads to get to one.  As a result, you had to be pretty darn bad off before you made the journey to see a real doctor. However, I am probably one of the most accident prone, most injured people on planet earth.  By now most people like me are long ago dead for one reason or another, and I know that surviving to my advanced age is only a result of balancing my stupidity with extraordinary luck, and toughness.  I'll describe some of my misadventures in other postings, but would like to jump a bit into the future for this one. 

This lack of local medical care worked fine for my mom anyway because she held a very dim view of modern medicine and doctors in general.  She said that you should only see a doctor two times: once to sign your birth certificate, and once again to sign your death certificate.  This perspective worked most of the time, except for having me as her son.

Since she didn't like doctors, she preferred to handle medical matters on her own.  She always used the same protocol no matter what.  She'd start her analysis by asking "Does it hurt?".  If you said no, then that was the end of the conversation.  If you said yes, then her next question was "Does it hurt when you touch it?".  She asked me this one a lot because most of my pain events were caused by obvious injuries, and not illness or other problems.  If you answered this one yes, then her analysis again ended when she'd declare "Then leave it alone!".  If you answered "No - it just hurts all the time", then her analysis ended with "Well...let's just wait and see what happens!".  In some rare cases we'd get an aspirin, or a band aid to staunch the flow of blood.  But mostly we'd just go our way, try to forget about it, and it would eventually stop hurting and heal.

Here's a simple example of what I mean.  I used to have a little hole in the bottom of my lower back where fluid would leak out.  I don't remember just how I found it, but when I did...I was curious.  It wasn't exactly like water...clear and slippery to the touch. So, I asked my mom...."Mom why does water come out of my back?" Her response "Where does it come from?".  I showed her by pointing, but she didn't take a look.  She started her diagnosis.  "Does it hurt when you touch it?"  Me - "No".  Her - "Then leave it alone.".  Me -"OK".

Quick, simple and often effective.  I found many years later that I was born with a condition known as spina bifuda.  It is a birth defect related to the mother not having sufficient folic acid in her diet. The severity of impact varies, but it can be fatal to babies.  The defect causes a problem because the spine doesn't completely form before birth.  In my case, only the bottom disc in my spine (L5) is affected.  It's like a "C" with the open part to the rear, instead of like an "O".  So, my spinal column is exposed there and any sharp blow could cause permanent paralysis.  Also in my case the casing surround my spinal nerve column didn't close fully, nor did the muscle/skin over it...so I had a small hole that leaked spinal fluid.  It eventually sealed up...and although my spinal column there is still unprotected, and my spine only partially supported...I no longer leak...which makes me ever so much more socially acceptable.

So, I got hurt a lot, and never saw a doctor.  However, I do recall a time when we were living in Huntington, West Virginia, and were no longer such a long way from doctors.  My mom's attitude about doctors was strongly fixed in all our minds.  So even with a family doctor only half a mile away, and a hospital about 5 miles away, visiting either was not really an option.

I was about 12 years old and my cousins were visiting.  We were running all over the place playing tag, and I ran into my dad's workshop - also known as "The Building".  It had a concrete floor covered with loose sawdust, and so I managed to slip and fall while running.  Now there's nothing much unusual in me doing this, except that this time I ran my head into my dad's table saw.  Not just anyplace on my head, but directly into my right temple.  I don't remember much except hearing a noise very much like a loud Chinese gong, and then doing a face plant on the concrete floor before I blacked out.

I've never taken wood working shop, but my daughter did.  In fact, I still have a wooden paper towel holder that Abbey crafted for me.  I do know that they warned her a lot about minding her fingers and even arms when operating a saw.  They didn't 't have much to say about keeping your head out of a table saw, probably because they never imagined anyone sticking their head into one.  But, then again they don't know me.

Back to me slicing my head. By the way, I called this story head cheese because that's what came to mind...cutting it just like cheese.  Heads may be tough, but a table saw just goes right through them like cheese.  You may have thought I was referring to the "food" called head cheese.  My dad used to bring it home once in a blue moon.  I ate some, and actually kind of liked it.  It had pepper in it, and a bunch of bits of stuff embedded in what looked like brown jello.  I thought it had a funny name, but figured that "head" was like a brand name.  When I learned to read well enough, I made the mistake of looking at the ingredients label one day.  Need I say more?

Anyway, when I came to, my cousins were standing around me and yelling to high heaven about something.  I was pretty confused, and it took me awhile to understand that they were alternating between yelling at me, and then about me.  Finally my mom and dad showed up, and the blood drained from their faces.  Like I said, I'd decided to lead with my right temple.  It had a very nice sharp groove cut into it along the side of my head - maybe 4 inches long.  It had started to swell rapidly, and the skin was parting as a shape looking for all the world like a shelled, boiled egg started pushing out.  The most amazing thing was that there was hardly any blood.  I've cut my head many times, and in many ways, and there's always a flood of blood to contend with.  But this time it was different.

I put my hand on my temple, and felt the open wound, and the egg swelling rapidly.  I pulled my hand away, and it had only a little spot of blood on it.  So, I thought "Great...I hardly hurt myself this time".  But the reaction from my mom and dad was not reassuring.  Dad bent down to get a closer look, but my mom was holding her hand over her mouth, and taking big breaths.  Mom was not good at triage and wound treatment, and dad wasn't a whole lot better.

So, my mom finally dropped her hand and started down her usual path.  "Does it hurt?".  My dad's head whipped around to stare at her with an open mouth.  He looked at her, then at me, and it was like I could read his mind for a little bit there.  I could tell he thought her question lacked a bit of insight on her part.  He said of course it does...but I just answered "No".  It actually didn't hurt, but I was in shock and already beginning to feel thankful that I hadn't put other parts of my face or head into the saw.  Like my eyes, or an ear, or my nose.  I was already ugly enough, and that would have probably caused babies to cry when they saw me.

Dad just said, "He's not feeling it yet Lou".  My mom's name was Louella, and dad called her "Lou".  They made a nice couple - Lou and Kell.  Mom said, "Well it can't be too serious then if it doesn't even hurt."  Again my dad gave her a very odd look, and said "Look how big that lump has gotten just while we are talking."  He then said the dreaded words..."I think he needs to see the doctor".  I felt like it was a death sentence.  Mom had always been so negative about doctors, and often said that people would go see them for a cold, and the next thing you know, they were dead because the doctor made a big mistake.

Besides, my head really was beginning to hurt now, and I felt like I'd had all the punishment I deserved for running near a table saw.  But dad insisted, and my now got mad.  She said something like "He's always hurting himself, and never needed a doctor before."  I think somehow that she felt that dad was making her look bad by wanting to take me the doctor.   Dad took another look at my head and gave me a wet wash cloth to hold over the wound.  I think it was more so they wouldn't have to see it, than it was to help me feel better.  He said without looking, "I think he needs to go this time"

I looked at my mom hopefully, just knowing that she'd be able to carry the day, and keep me away from a death sentence visit to a doctor.  She screwed up her eyes, and open and closed her mouth a couple of times.  I could see the gears turning, and waited for her sage arguments to flow forth.  However, she just said "Uh........OK."  I was in shock all over again.  How could this happen!?  Mom was supposed to save me, not toss me to the wolves.  With that "OK", my dad pulled me to my feet, and started walking with me to the car.  I know it was the last time my dad ever held my hand as he walked with me.

We drove the long drive, and I was feeling pretty darn bad by the time we got there.  I suspect I'd done more than just sawed a slot in my skull, because I'd also slammed my head hard enough on the metal table to knock myself out.  Not that I hadn't done that before, but it felt different this time.  My eyes kept not wanting to see just one of things, and I'd have to try really hard to not see double.  And I was getting very nauseated too.

We finally got to the doctor, and I stumbled inside.  I don't remember much of what all they did.  I do remember them telling me that it would hurt when they started sticking needles in my head to numb the wound.  But it didn't hurt...just made a crunching sound each time the needle went into the bone.  Then the pain stopped, and I just kept my eyes closed.  The doctor came in to look, and the nurse made clucking sounds.  The doctor said to her "This is odd, how did he get hurt".  She said "The dad told me that he ran his head into the table saw.". The doctor laughed before he could stop himself...and then said something about how dumb can you be?  I felt some anger and tears at this comment, but realized that he was right.  It was pretty dumb, and I was lucky it wasn't worse.

So, he got out his curved needle and thread, and started sewing.  Or at least tried.  He was soon cussing under his breath, because the "egg" had swelled so much that the edges of the wound were almost an inch and a half apart at the center.  He put the thread through one edge, but then couldn't get the other edge to close.  He finally yelled for the nurse again to get him some pliers.  Between them, they used the pliers to pull the skin back together enough so that he could sew the edges together.  I don't remember how many stitches, but I could hear every single one of them going in as the thread would feed through the hole.  Made a really funny sound, and kind of tickled too.

Finally it was over, and they were done.  I realized that my hands were like claws and every muscle in my body was fully tensioned.  I relaxed and fell back onto the bed.  As the doctor walked away, I was totally amazed and happy that I was still alive and hadn't been accidentally killed somehow - despite everything my mom had told me.   As we drove home late in the evening, I reflected on what had happened.  My mom had been wrong about the doctor, but I thought maybe I'd just gotten very lucky.  So, I swore that I'd be more careful in the future, and so wouldn't have to take a chance on seeing a doctor ever again.

Lessons learned:  Don't eat head cheese (or at least if you do - don't read the label), and keep your fingers and head out of table saws.

Hard Choices

I'm pretty sure that most of you have seen or heard of the 1957 movie "Old Yeller" staring Fess Parker of Daniel Boone fame.  I think I was around 11 when I first saw it, but when I did, it was like a painful reliving of what happened one summer in Lando Mines.

Now with that introduction, you know this can't have a good ending...and you're right.  But it did teach me something very important about life, and my dad.

When I was about two, I got a brand new suit to wear to church.  My mom called it a suit, but it was really shorts, a jacket, and a nice bow tie. I thought I was pretty hot stuff, and you can see from my picture that I was looking sharp.  I don't remember much about church at that age, except that when everyone stood up to sing a hymn, I suddenly felt like I was in a forest of towering, singing, giant trees.  For some reason, it scared me, and even though my mom let me stand up in the seat of my pew, it didn't help much.  I can remember wanting her to hold me, but knowing that would be acting like a baby.  And I knew that babies didn't get to wear grown-up suits to church like me.  So, I'd just look at the floor until they were done, and then I would heave a sigh of relief and sit down again too.

Hank in his Sunday best at Lando Mines

But this story isn't so much about church as about our dog.  We had a mongrel, brownish yellow dog that I loved dearly.  Her name was Missy, and she was our first dog...or at least the first dog we had that I could remember.  Dad got her from a neighbor who was moving away, and she came with her name.  She was big, compared to me, and yet gentle enough.  She loved to play fetch, and I'd throw sticks and an old rubber ball for her and she'd always bring it back and drop it at my feet.  She seemed to understand that I was just a little kid, and so had great patience for the throws that sometimes went flying in an entirely different direction than either of us had hoped.  Once I hauled off and threw the ball really hard, only to have it hit her in the rear end as she waited for me.  She looked back at me with an odd expression - a mix of patience, pity and love.  She turned and picked up the ball and dropped it at my feet so I could throw it again.

We played a lot together, but she was an outside dog and never allowed in our house.  Dad really liked her too, and clearly had a very soft spot in his heart for her.  She'd greet him happily every day when he'd come home from working down at the mines, and wag her tail like crazy.  I learned quickly to move aside, and also never be directly behind her when she got happy, because that big wagging tail of hers dumped me onto my own behind a couple of times.

I remember clearly the first time I realized something was wrong.  Missy had a water bowl outside by our little shed, and when it was empty, I'd ask mom to get her some more water.  She was always thirsty, and drank lot's of water.  It was warm weather, and even I was hot outside.  I checked her water bowl and it was full.  Not that unusual, but a bit odd.  I looked again later, and it was still full.  Missy was sitting over in the shade of a tree, and panting....looking hot and uncomfortable.  As I approached her she gave me a strange look, but didn't move.  Something stopped me...just a funny feeling.  I went to her water bowl, and thinking to get her to take a drink and cool off, I lifted it up, and walked unsteadily towards her.  As I got near, I slopped some water on the ground, and she jumped up and moved away from quickly.  As I moved towards her again, she moved away again too.  I couldn't figure it out, so just put the bowl back where it belonged and forgot about it.

Over the next couple of days, Missy also pretty much stopped playing with me, and mostly just lay in the shade panting.  She also stopped greeting my dad in the evenings, and so when he came home I could see him talking to her and looking concerned.  She was clearly uneasy with him petting her, but she let him do it anyway.  The next day was the first time I saw her with the gray foam around her lips.  She had a funny look in her eyes too, like she didn't know me anymore.  I just didn't see my good old Missy in her eyes anymore, and I started to get a bit scared of her, and kept away.

By Saturday, things were much worse.  She lay on her side a lot now, and the foam and heavy breathing was worse.  Whenever we'd move in her direction, she would lift her head and growl at us.  She even growled at dad, and when he kept coming she got up, and snarled at him in a very wild and scary way.  The ridge of fur down the middle of her back was up, and her lips pulled back away from her teeth.  Dad yelled at me to get in the house, and so I ran up the steps and waited on the porch.   Dad went to our little shed, and opened the door.  He pulled out the yard rake, and turned back to Missy.  She was still on guard, and looked ready to attack anyone or anything.  Dad eased around to her side, and she turned to face him.  He slowly moved towards her holding the rake in front of him.  She darted forward, snapped at it and then backed up.

Dad kept moving in and backing her up, until it was obvious what he was doing.  He was trying to get her into the shed.   At one point, she just turned and ran inside the shed by herself...then turned at the door to defend her territory. Dad moved quickly now...holding the rake with one hand, and then grabbing the door and slamming it closed with the other hand.  Misty immediately went berserk, and I could hear her snarling and throwing herself against the door.  Dad's hand shook as he latched the door hook, and then he jammed the rake against the door as added protection.  He turned to look at me, and his face was white.  He said "I thought I told you to get in the house!", but I could tell he wasn't angry...just really upset.

That night after dinner, I could hear mom and dad talking quietly.  Dad's voice was sad, and mom's was too.  I heard her ask at one point "What are you going to do Kell?"  My dad's name was Henry, but he didn't like it much either.  We both have the middle name of Caleb, and the short version is Cal.  If you say that with a West Virginia drawl, you'll get something very much like Kell.  I couldn't hear clearly what dad said back to her, but when she asked again, he just said "I don't know." in a very forlorn voice.

So, the next morning we got up early and I got dressed in my new suit.  My mom was acting all funny.  Pretending like she was excited and happy to be going to church, but somehow we knew she wasn't.  We all  knew something was really wrong, and so did our best to behave and not be any trouble.  Mom got me dressed up first, and I wandered back to my mom and dad's bedroom while mom set about getting Ingrid ready.  I didn't make much noise, and so caught my dad by surprise.  He was sitting on their bed and had his hunting rifle out.  He was wiping down the barrel, and deep in thought.  He realized that I was there, and his head whipped up.  I could see the misery in his eyes, before he turned away again, and told me to go back to mom.

As we went down the steps and into the yard on our way out, I looked at the shed.  The rake was still jammed against the door, but there was no sound from inside.  I was so worried about Missy, and so started to walk in that direction.  As I got close to the door, all hell broke lose.  I've never heard a dog go so crazy wild as she did.  She was growling, snarling and barking in a total frenzy.  She was slamming herself against the door again, and this time the whole shed shook.  My mom yelled at me to get away, and grabbed my arm and snatched me back.  She looked back at dad standing up on the porch, and he just shook his head slowly.  We left in a hurry after that, and dad stayed on the porch watching us go.

After the usual boring and hot session in church, we came home.  I noticed right away that the shed door was partially open...and the rake was on the ground.  Nobody was in sight...neither dad or Missy.  I started to run to look in the shed, but mom told me to get in the house and change my clothes.  It was silent and dark in the house.

After I changed, I went outside looking for dad and Missy.  I didn't find either one, so went around back.  As I came around the side of the house, I could see my dad coming towards our back fence across the field.  There as a bit of an open area there, then a small stream and all trees on the other side.  Dad was carrying a shovel, and walking like he was as old as my grandfather.  He was dusty and dirty, and I could see white lines running down his face.  As he got closer, I could see that he'd been crying and that the tears had washed little tracks down his cheeks.  He didn't see me yet, and I was totally confused.  I'd never seen my dad cry, and it had never occurred to me that grownups even knew how to cry.

My heart jumped, and I knew something really bad had happened.  Now dad saw me, and swiped his sleeve across his face.  He tried to put on a smile, but just couldn't do it.  As he came up to me, he picked me up in his free arm and carried me back to the house.  I didn't know anything about death then, and don't think I'd ever even heard the word.  But somehow I knew that Missy was gone...where I didn't know...but gone for sure and gone for good.  I asked dad quietly "Where's our dog?".  Dad looked at me and then away again.  He didn't say anything for a bit, and then still looking away...said "She's gone to heaven son" in a tight, strained voice.

I hadn't paid much attention to what went on in church, but I knew they had talked about a place called heaven.  From what I could understand, it sounded like it was a nice place...maybe even as nice as Lando Mines.  So, I asked dad..."What's she doing there?".  And this time he spoke easier.  He said "Shes doing everything she loves best son."  I knew he believed what he said, and also knew he didn't want me to ask any more questions.  So, I gave him a hug around his neck, and he hugged me back and then put me on the back porch and patted me on the head.  He disappeared around the house to put the shovel back in the shed, and we never talked about Missy again for a very long time.  However, I put the whole memory into that "mystery unsolved" storage box kids keep in their brain.

After I saw the movie "Old Yeller" I finally put two and two together, and realized that Missy had gotten rabies.  All the memories of the week, and that awful Sunday came flooding back, and I cried hard.  I finally understood just what my dad had done that day, and why he cried too.  Dad was faced with an awful situation, and he could have made a lot of different choices.  He did what he did out of love for us and for Missy too.

So, dad...this one is for you.  For all the times you did the hard things, but right things in your life...I thank you with all my heart.  I don't know if I believe in heaven, but I do know you are in a much better place.  I sure do miss you dad, and love you too.  Here's to you and Missy doing everything you love best wherever you are.

Lesson Learned:  The measure of a good person is having the sense to know what's right, and the strength and courage to do it....even when it can be the hardest thing in the world.

Feuds and Fishing

I've talked a bit about our house in East Kermit before, and there were several events there that stuck in my mind.  The houses were brick, and all identical to each other.  We had the first house in the row of four, and our next door neighbors were the Web family.  They had two boys, but they were both a bunch older than all of us. The youngest of the two was Butch, and he had one brown eye and one yellow eye.  The yellow eye was almost identical in color to the eyes of their pet cat.

We moved to East Kermit from Lando Mines when I was still three - almost four, and my sister Margaret was born.  The house at Lando wasn't big enough for us all any more.  Me and Ed shared one bedroom, and Ingrid and Margaret another.  We had a huge garden out back, plus a chicken coop with about 10 hens and one rooster.  I loved gathering the eggs from the nests everyday...sometimes they were still warm from the hens sitting on them.  The coop had an nice earthy, straw smell that I can still remember today.

Down the hill from our house was the Tug river.  Actually it was officially the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River, which was way too many words.  On the other side of the river was Kentucky.  The river was kind of famous in those parts because it separated the Hatfields from the McCoys...the families that had one of the most notorious family feuds in US history.  Our family was on the side of the Hatfields, and our great uncle Willis Hatfield was the last surviving person from the feud.  He'd been a boy of six when his dad, Devil Anse Hatfield had led his family in the shooting war with the McCoys.  You can see Willis in the picture below...he's standing on the far right, with a .45 revolver in his hand and his dad Devil Anse is to the left with the rifle.   He loved to tell us stories about the feud, and as he got older, the stories got wilder and wilder.  When he was in his 80s, National Geographic featured him in a story about the famous feud.  The feud began in 1863 and ended in 1891.

The Hatfield Family

Sometimes when I'd go down by the river, I'd pretend I was shooting at McCoys on the other side.  In reality, at least one McCoy had actually been killed there on the banks of the Tug.  I was only allowed to go down to river with my dad, and that wasn't very often.  Usually we'd fish and talk quietly, catching the occasional catfish or two.  Catfish don't have scales like other fish, and my dad showed me how to skin them.  We would make a cut in a circle all the way around the base of the head and then use pliers to pull the skin off.  You had to be very careful of the sharp barbells that stuck out of their face like whiskers.  I got stuck once, and it stung like a bee, and took a long time to heal.

I loved fishing there, and just never got to go often enough.  So, I decided to solve that problem.  Me and Ed's bedroom had a window that opened to the rear of the house.  I made a plan to sneak out after bedtime and go fishing on my own.  I figured that now that I was four, I was all grown up and could do my own fishing.  So, I put all my fishing gear at the base of the window outside one evening, and then went back in the house.  We all went to bed soon after it got dark, and I just acted like usual that evening.  When Ed was sound asleep, I got up and went to the window.  It slid up easily, and I swung my leg up on the sill, and pulled myself up.  Next I held on the sill with both hands, and hung down as far as I could outside the house.  My feet didn't reach the ground, and I got scared that maybe I'd have to fall a long way.

It was too late to change my mind, because I wasn't able to pull myself back up....so I finally just let go.  I didn't think things through very well, and I landed on top of all my fishing gear, making quite a racket.  I held my breath, and waited for someone to come running out of the house...but nothing happened.  I got up, and dusted myself off.  Now another poor bit of planning became evident...it was so dark I could barely see.  I felt around on the ground, found my pole, and then the little tackle box that dad had given me.  Picking up both, I started moving slowly down the way toward the river.

As some point the clouds parted and some moonlight came through, making navigating the path a whole lot easier.  When I got to the muddy bank, I was feeling the excitement of the night air, and the anticipation of maybe catching my first fish on my own.  I baited up and threw my line out into the slow current.  Then I squatted down to wait.  No bites for a long time, so I reeled in and saw my bait was gone.  So, I repeated the cycle, and this time dragged up a piece of drift wood to sit on.  I had just sat down when I got a nice bite, and I yanked the rod hard.  I had a fish on!  I got really excited and started laughing as I reeled that fish in.  It was a small carp...not a fish you could eat, but it was the very first fish I had ever caught alone.  I shook it off the hook, and started to bait up again.

I heard the rain coming before I felt it.  It was blowing in up the river towards me...not a downpour, but raining plenty hard enough to get me wet.  I decided that it was time to head for home, and picked up everything and started up the bank.  With the fresh rain, it was slick and I fell - smearing mud all over my hands and pants.  Ugh!  I wiped my hands on the grass and got going again.  As the rain came down even harder, I picked up my pace to almost a run.  With the clouds back over the moon, I couldn't see much, but knew the way by memory.

As I got near the house I slowed down, and looked.  No lights on, and dead silence.  I walked over to the open window, and my heart dropped into my stomach.  I looked way up at the window sill, and realized that there was no way in the world that I could climb back up there.  I looked around for something to drag over and climb up on, and saw an old bucket.  I turned it over, and stepped on top of it.  I could just barely reach the window's edge with both hands.  I jumped up a bit, and grabbed on hard.  I tried to pull myself up, and used my feet against the wall to help.  But they were slick with mud, and kept sliding off.  I finally got tired and let go - dropping back to the ground.

Now I knew I was in real trouble.  It was still raining, and my warm, safe bed was a world away from me.  I thought about going to my mom and dad's window and yelling for help, but knew that would lead to even more trouble if I got caught outside alone.  So, I walked to the back porch and sat down with my head in my hands to think.  Nothing brilliant came to me, so eventually I got up and tried the handle on the back door.  To my surprise the handle turned and the door opened.  I was saved!  I stepped into the kitchen quietly, and paused to listen.  Not a sound from anywhere.  I sneaked down the hall, opened the door to my room, and slipped inside.  I'd never been so happy to be in my room in my life.  I pulled off the wet clothes and shoes, and climbed into bed.  It was only a matter of seconds before I fell into a deep sleep.

When I awoke the next morning, I looked down at the muddy mess of clothes and shoes on the floor, and tried to think of what to do.  I scrambled out of bed, and scooped them up and put them in the clothes hamper.  That would have to do for now.  I got back in bed, and waited until I heard my mom up and moving around in the kitchen.  Then I got up again and rubbing my sleepy eyes walked out of the room.  I was trying hard to look innocent and calm, but when I got to the kitchen my mom had both hands on her hips and was giving me "the look".  You know that look that only mom's have when their eyes are like x-ray machines, and they can look directly into you heart and mind, and see every little thing you've ever done wrong.

Mom started tapping her foot, and said "Henry?  Is there something you'd like to tell me?".  I thought hard about what to say, and tried to figure out if my mom knew about my midnight fishing trip, or was it something else.  I for sure didn't want to start explaining how I sneaked out, if that wasn't what she was wound up about.  When I didn't say anything right away, she pointed with the spatula in her hand at the floor.  There on the floor, clear as could be, were a set of muddy footprints coming in from the back door.  I knew it was useless to pretend ignorance, and said I'm sorry mom.  She looked at me closely, and asked "When did you go outside?"  I gulped and didn't say anything.  She asked me the same thing again a little louder.  I was really scared by now, and so stammered a bit, and then told my mom "Last night".  She looked surprised at first, and then narrowed her eyes, and said "Ok...tell me everything".

So, I did.  The whole story from beginning to end.  At first, she seemed to doubt what I was saying, and so took me outside to look at my window, and the side of the house had a bunch of mud smeared under the window, and the bucket lay there on it's side.  Mom's face got pale as she realized that I really had sneaked out and gone down to the river in the middle of the night all alone.  She said I could have drowned, and as she talked her face went from pale to red.  Now her voice got loud, and she "You know better than do a fool thing like that!  You could have drowned, and we'd have never known what happened to you!".

She was still holding the spatula in her right hand, and now she grabbed me with her left hand, and I knew I was going to get spanked with the "egg turner".  My mom would always say "Do I have to get my egg turner?" when we were getting rowdy...and we'd all settle down right away.  But she'd never actually used it on us before.  I knew I deserved what was coming, but wasn't going to go down easy.  As she pulled it back to whack my bum, I ran forward.  Her swing missed me, and so I kept running.  I was running in a circle around and around her as she kept swinging and kept missing me.  At first she was mad, but the whole thing was so darn silly, that her anger turned to laughter.  She stopped trying to hit me, and just let my arm go.  She stood there laughing a little more, and then got tears in her eyes.  She bent down and pulled me to her, and held me really tight.  She was crying now, and so was I.  She said "Please don't ever do anything like that again....you scared me so much.".  I think I finally understood just how much of a risk I had taken, and how lucky I was that nothing bad had happened.  I felt so bad that I'd made my mom cry.  So, I hugged her back as hard as I could and promised that I'd never do it again.

Lessons Learned:  If you are going to do something stupid and dangerous, then at least plan ahead well.  There really is no place like home, and a loving hug from mom.