Fall on a Spring Day

This is a story from many years ago, concerning a fall on a spring morning. It's told from three different points of view. First my own voice, remembering, then what I recall from my father's memory, and finally, my mother's own voice.

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One spring day, my father woke me up early, and asked me if I would climb up a telephone pole near our house (seven miles out of town) and do a repair. Most likely I complained because sleeping in was my preference. I remember it being a beautiful spring morning, just before sunrise, but already quite light outside. There was plenty of time to do the repair, then get ready for school and catch the number six school bus into town.

Dad drove a three ton truck beside the pole, set up a ladder, in the truck bed, leaning up towards the top of the pole. I strapped some spikes* onto my legs. This was pretty exciting, as I had wanted to use these before, but had never been allowed.

I climbed to the top of the ladder, then put a strap around me and the pole, dug in the first spike and climbed to the top**. It was quite heady to have two spikes holding my weight while I leaned back into the belt. And pretty exciting too, to be 30 feet above the ground. The last thing that I remembered was pounding on the nails in a wooden bracket at the top of the pole with a hammer.

I awoke in a hospital bed, and the first thing I told the nurse was that I had done it to get out of going to school. I remember some friends from school visiting me during my hospital stay. In the end, all that was wrong was a few cracked ribs.

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Talking it over with Dad later, he said he was working across the road and heard the distinctive squeak of a barbed wire fence being stretched. He looked up and the pole was gone!

After running across the road, he found me, still strapped to the pole, which was on top of me, but with my back bent over backwards on a ditch bank. He thought that I was dead and held me in his arms. Since I was still breathing, I was taken to the hospital.

Talking it through, we decided that I must have fallen down on top of the pole, because it fell away from the side that I was facing. The pole must have bounced, possibly from hitting the barbed wire, and paused long enough for my body to slide around to the bottom side of the pole, which then landed again on top of me. It would be hard to imagine surviving a more direct fall.

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My mother wrote the story herself, this way:

My husband "was the trouble shooter for our local telephone line but because his leg was in a cast, he was not able to climb the telephone poles to repair the lines. The next spring ... the line was down at our own house, south of our yard. [He] asked our son Bruce if he would climb the pole and do the fixing. Bruce was reluctant because he had never done it before, and I thought, 'There he goes like a lamb to the slaughter!' He had to put on some heavy metal climbers and a heavy leather belt to fasten himself to the pole."

"We didn’t know at that time, that in the spring time, poles are unstable under the ground. As I watched from the window, when Bruce got to the top of the pole, I noticed that the pole was starting to fall sideways. Bruce was strapped on but his weight made it so that the pole would come down on top of him."

"We had a tradition in our family that whenever there was some special need, someone would say 'family prayer' and we would kneel on the floor together wherever we were and have a family prayer. And I think in the kitchen that day, we were on our knees before the pole hit the ground."

"I thought surely he would be terribly hurt or killed but miraculously he wasn’t. He was taken to the hospital and was told that he would be in bed for a few months. Instead it was just a few weeks and he was recovered and back to school. I know it was through prayer and priesthood blessings that Bruce recovered so quickly and I’m so thankful for the blessings of our Heavenly Father."

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*Something like these:

**If you haven't ever seen this done, there are some images on the Internet of others climbing in this way:

Friday Flashback: Music

A few years ago... No, many years ago, I had a life-altering experience.

It happened in the mountains of southern France, specifically the range known there as "la Montagne Noir." For geology buffs, this is a small range at the very southwestern tip of the central mountains in France, "le Massif central."

How I happened to spend some time there is another interesting story. I was on vacation from my job in Paris. My wife and I were in Béziers, visiting her parents. Towards the end of the two week vacation, I got quite sick, and they took me to the family physician, Dr. Attal. I don't remember the diagnosis, but he began writing a prescription for two weeks of bed rest. Christine (now known as Marie) piped up and said the family was going to visit her grandmother in the mountains. Dr. Attal, said, okay, two weeks of rest in the mountains. I sent a copy of the prescription to my boss in Paris, and we drove up to the mountain village of Arfons. (Pictured here. The mountains in the distance are the Pyrenées.)

Arfons, photo by Alain Couzinié, courtesy WikiCommons

So, that's how it came to happen. Exactly what happened is the rest of the story.

I took care of myself and mainly stayed in bed. But during our stay there was a day of festival in the village. As a part of this, some village musicians got on a flat wagon drawn by animals and went from house to house performing. At each home, they were thanked and given gifts of produce.

How this changed my life is that I realized that this was a centuries old tradition in the village. By that time of course, music could be heard at will, through radio, records, or magnetic tape. But for hundreds of years, most villagers could only hear a performance of music during the festival time, when the musicians came door to door. Hence the lavish gifts.

Today, everyone can have their own music. And you hear people speak daily of "my music" which they can listen to whenever they want. Do we realize how fortunate we are?

As a child, growing up, we listened to certain radio programs. We had a record player, and a few well-loved records. My mother would perform sometimes on the accordion or piano. Later, we got television. Later still, I acquired a reel to reel tape recorder.

Photo courtesy WikiCommons

But I couldn't afford many tapes, so, again there were a few well-listened to pieces, such as my favorite at the time, In A Gadda Da Vida by Iron Butterfly.

Music through the centuries. Now more readily available than ever...

Knowing and Caring

Way back when I was a professor, teaching Computer Science, there was a favorite saying on my bulletin board. It was in a place that I could see easily, as a daily reminder, intended for me rather than for my students.

It is a simple, and relatively well-known antimetabole that goes like this:

"No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care."

Looking at it reminded me to care about my students. Caring about the attendees at my recent presentation reminded me of the saying.

Writing this reminds me of a student I met for the first time just after I had posted the final grades for a largish class.

He fingered his name at the bottom of the list and addressed the "F" next to it. He begged me to raise his grade to a "D-" so that he could keep his scholarship and not have to go work for a year in the oil fields.

I countered by gesturing up the list from his name to the nearest "D-" and suggested that it wouldn't be fair to all those people to raise him up above them. They had at least taken a quiz or two, or handed in an assignment or two. They had at least attended class one time.

His shoulders slumped as he agreed.

I was very happy to see him in the hallways a year later. Not only had he survived a year in the old fields, but he had learned a valuable lesson. And earned some credit in the school of hard knocks.

Nut Case

I have long been fond of having a bowl of nuts-in-the-shell and dipping into it to crack open and enjoy.

The other day, I came across an odd walnut. Usually, a walnut shell has two halves (each one of which can make for a fun sailboat).

This walnut, shown on the left, has a shell with three parts. For comparison, a normal walnut is shown on the right.

Has anyone else ever seen one of these anomalies? I'm a bit reluctant to crack it open. Could this be a new walnut defense mechanism? If so, its working for me.

2009 Vacation Trip

I attended a conference in Philadelphia last month, and Sara and I decided to travel there by train. She had not been on the east coast, so we decided to turn it into a vacation.

The final itinerary ended up including Chicago (to change trains), Boston, Mystic, New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Chicago again. We left on March 14 at 4 a.m. and got home on the 29th just before midnight. We didn't take along a computer, so we were disconnected from the Internet for two weeks.

While waiting in Chicago, we left our bags in the Metropolitan Lounge, and hopped on a bus to go down towards Lake Michigan. It was a cold day, so we walked from the bus stop until we could see the lake (from Millennium Park), and then headed back to catch the next train. (more pictures)

On to Boston, where we really liked Hotel 140, which was within easy walking distance of the Back Bay train station, and the least expensive of any we stayed at on this trip. We visited the Museum of Fine Art because Sara's dad's cousin, Jonathan Fairbanks, had been a curator there. Unfortunately, he was out of town, but we met a docent who knew him well (pictured here with Sara, and items collected by Jonathan). 

It was Sara's first time to ride on a subway, so that part of it was a lot of fun.

After the museum, we took the subway to the harbor, then walked into the city and came upon huge crowds of people (mostly in pubs or waiting to get in) celebrating St. Patrick's Day, pictured here. (more pictures)

After a second night in Boston, we caught an early train to Mystic, Connecticut. Its famous train station pictured here.

We celebrated Sara's birthday there, and enjoyed staying at the Inn at Mystic, pictured here.

The next day we went on to New York City. And, yes, we saw the Statue of Liberty, pictured here. (more pictures) 

Wow, what a vibrant place New York City is. Besides two days of open-to-the-air bus tours (freezing), we took in two evening shows, The Fantasticks and The Phantom of the Opera.

After 48 hours in the big apple, we went on to Philadelphia, where Sara rested and I attended the conference.

The last two days were spent in Washington D.C. The first day was quite cold and rainy, but the second morning was great. The second day, we were in the subway at rush hour, another new experience for Sara. We took trolley tours both days, and saw the sites. (more pictures)

Finally, three more days on the train, pictured here in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. (more pictures)

We're glad to be home.

Golden Walls

A few years ago, I read the novel, "The Discovery of Heaven" by author Harry Mulisch.

It is rather a long book, and whatever value it might have as a novel, I was deeply influenced by one small part of the story, in which Onno, a politician at the time, describes a treatise he is thinking of writing.

"In front of the Golden Wall it's an improvised mess; people teem around in the noisy chaos of everyday life, and the reason things don't go haywire is due to the world behind the Golden Wall. The world of power lies there like the eye of the cyclone, in mysterious silence, controlled, reliable, as ordered as a chessboard... At least that's the image that the powerless in front of the Golden Wall have of it... But anyone who's actually been behind the Golden Wall, like you and me, knows that it's all a sham and that in there, where decisions are made, it's as improvised a chaos as in front, in people's homes, at universities, in hospitals, or in companies." pp. 553-554

This concept fascinates me. This passage and the ones that follow resonate with my personal experiences both outside of and inside of various golden walls.

People are people, whether they are are in positions of power or not.

As my dad used to say, "they all put their pants on one leg at a time."

Lesson from a barbed wire fence

It was my first job after high school, working for the government irrigating sheep pastures.

My friend, John, and I, along with an acquaintance whose name I forget, reported for work early one summer morning. Since there wasn't room in the shift rotation just yet, the foreman, Frank, drove us out to where a new barbed wire fence needed to be erected. He showed us the materials and where the fence needed to go, and drove off.

Photo from the Wikimedia Commons

Though this was my first job outside the family farm, I had worked with my dad most of my life. The main cash crop was sugar beets, which need a three year rotation. The other crops were wheat and alfalfa. We sold the beets and wheat, but made hay from the alfalfa two or three times a year, and used it to feed a small herd of beef cattle.

Where there are cattle, you need good fences, and my father taught me all about putting up a good barbed wire fence.

With that experience and knowledge, I naturally led out as my two friends and I started in on the new fence for our summer job.

We worked at a steady pace, as I taught them tricks for digging the post holes, tamping* the dirt around the pole, stringing and stretching the wire, building strong corners, and so on.

My family had always enjoyed some laughter and jokes as we drove past government jobs, where, typically, one man was working for every two who were leaning on their shovels. With that in mind, I kept the work going at the pace that we used on the farm.

In a few hours, we were done, and looked back on our work with satisfaction and sore muscles. It was still a couple of hours before Frank would be back to pick us up, so we horsed around the prairie and had a good time. I felt a bit guilty, because my father had always taught me to work for my wages, but we had done the required work.

When Frank drove up and saw the fence, his jaw opened wide. After a moment, he mumbled something about how he'd allowed three days for that fence and didn't know what he was going to have us do the next two days. We were pretty proud.

The next morning we found out that we would spend two days picking up trash that had been blown by the wind into a line of small trees that stretched off for miles. As we did that work, in the heat, the wind and gritty dust, stabbed by twigs and poked by thistles, my friends reminded me of how hard I had pushed them the first day.

Suddenly I understood the men I had laughed at, leaning on their shovels. It doesn't pay to work harder than your employer expects.

*My father taught me how to tamp the dirt around the fence post. Use the handle of the shovel, with the shovel turned upside down, to tamp. You get it really tamped well at the very bottom for six inches or so. Then fill in to within about a foot of the top of hole, tamping every so often, but not so hard. The top of the hole, you tamp really well; use the heel of your shoe, too, and put your weight into it. A post put in this way won't wobble back and forth.