Monday, October 14, 2013

Like a stick in the eye.

My dad used to have a business building barbed wire fence, corals, and other enclosures for livestock. In high school and college I would often come home on the weekends, or during winter breaks, and build fence to make a little extra money.

Building fence requires huge amounts of physical labor, and often times the weather is either blazing hot or freezing cold and you can usually count on the terrain being quite rugged.  There are also the usual irritations associated with the outdoors such as ticks, mosquitoes, and the occasional venomous snake. Besides all of the environmental hazards, anyone who has ever worked with barbed wire can testify that it is impossible to avoid getting poked, cut, or gouged by the needle sharp steel barbs. Of course these are all minor infractions. I have witnessed on at least three occasions a coworker catching a steel barb at the wrong angle and having a large chunk of flesh excavated from their body, requiring a trip to the emergency room for stitches. However, despite all of the opportunities for injury afforded by the task of building fence, my most significant impairment didn't happen performing the job, but on the walk to the job site.

One cold winter morning, I was home from college on winter break. I woke up late as usual and was in a big hurry to get going. Unlike most job sites that required a fifteen to thirty minute drive out to the middle of nowhere, the fence that we were replacing was within walking distance of my parent’s house.

I got my boots laced, found my hat, and shuffled out the door. Across the road from our house was a wooded area with a steep grade about 30 feet tall that once served as a railroad bed. On the other side of the hill was another fifty yards of wooded area, then open pasture where we were working. There was a heavy frost on the ground that made the leaves I was walking on quite slick. As I began climbing the foot of the old railroad bed, I slipped, my feet came out from under me, I fell forward, and as my momentum took me face first into the ground, a small pointed stick burrowed deep into my left eye.

The pain was instant and excruciating. It felt as though a knife had been stabbed through my eye and into my brain. Tears were flowing from my eye like a fountain, and every time I blinked the entire left side of my face would scream with pain. I could not see anything, and I had every reason to believe that I had completely disemboweled my eye.

I sat down and held a handkerchief to my face hoping to ease the pain. Gradually my eye stopped watering and although blurry, my vision began to return. A few minutes more and the sharp pain subsided to a dull ache in the back of my eye. Finally, I felt the worst was over and I climbed the rest of the hill and hiked on over to where my dad was working.

Assuming I was just late from sleeping in, upon my arrival my dad asked me to bring over a pile of steel posts that I would pass on my way over. I did as I was told and loaded the posts up into my arms. The physical excursion once again caused the sharp pain to return. I walked over to where my dad was standing and explained what had happened. He walked over to get a closer look at my eye and I immediately knew by his reaction that my eye did not look well.

“You have a hole in your eyeball!” my dad proclaimed, “Get in the truck we’re going to the emergency room!”  

So off to the hospital we went. This happened at about eight in the morning. By four o’clock in the afternoon having been examined by three doctors, an ophthalmologist, a CT scan, x-rays, and countless eye tests, it was determined that the stick had made contact with my cornea, and then slid down to the sclera (white part) before penetrating into my eye, thus saving me from being permanently blind. For a couple of days after, a dull ache remained behind my eye but nothing worse than a slight headache, and by the end of the week I was as good as new.

To this day I still flinch from time to time when a tree branch hits me in the face, or I slide down a creek bank.

Man that hurt.




Wednesday, June 12, 2013

On A Dime

The summer before my junior year in high school, I worked as a cook at the local Pizza Hut. When I wasn't working, I would spend my evenings doing the things most sixteen year old kids did. I played catcher and center field on the local baseball team, basketball with my buddies at the park, and chased girls around town. At the end of the previous school year I had secured a loan to purchase my first car. It was a 1987 Honda Accord hatch-back with two 12” sub-woofers in the back. My friends and I spent hours cruising a loop between the local Pizza Hut and Sonic.  Life was good, but as I once read in a favorite Stephen King novel: "Life can turn on a dime".

I'm not sure when fishing became an addiction. Judging by my Grandfather's habits it could very well be hereditary, but by the time I had reached high school, fishing was a full blown passion. It's never been the act of fishing that drives the adoration; I believe it's the anticipation. The feeling that every time you cast into the water something big might grab your bait and give you a fight. Even if you cast ninety nine times with no success, it's the anticipation that the one hundredth cast might just be "the one".

It was a hot, muggy, night in mid-July. The kind of Kansas weather that made you sweat the second you broke out of the air conditioning, and you never really stopped sweating until you found air conditioning again.

My buddy Mark and I, like many times before, by the light of our flashlights, worked our way down the dam of the Cedar Valley Reservoir, to the spillway below. Mark and I normally fished alone, but this particular evening, my Dad decided to bring my ten year old sister along.

About midnight we saw some headlights sweep across the otherwise pitch black night, then we heard a loud "TWANG!" ring down through the spillway pipe that lead from where we were sitting, through the dam, and opened again about fifty yards out in the middle of the lake.  Assuming it was the local police cruiser on patrol, we thought nothing of the lights, and the loud sound was a quickly passing mystery, until we heard someone yelling from the parking lot. 

"Brandon!" yelled a voice at the top of the dam. 

Expecting one of my friends to be playing a joke, Mark and I continued stringing up our first channel cat of the night.

"BRANDON!" came the cry from the parking lot, only this time sounding a little more frantic. 

Although the humidity remained high, as the night grew older a cool breeze began filtering down from the lake, and my sister was starting to catch a chill.

"I'm gonna go up and grab your sister a blanket from the truck" said my Dad, "While I'm up there I will see what all the yelling's about"

As my father approached the top of the dam, we could hear him talking to someone, but were unable to make out what he was saying, until he too began to scream.

"BRANDON, GET UP HERE NOW!"

Having just hooked into my second catfish of the night, I was hesitant about leaving, but when my dad screamed my name a second time, Mark and I grabbed our flashlights and ran to the top of the steep hill!

At the top of the dam I was met by my dad and the two guys that were doing all the yelling. I knew their faces well. They were a couple of guys that were a grade older than me. They were both white as a ghost, and their eyes were as big as hub caps. It was as if they had seen something horrible, and I could see the fear on their faces even on moonless, pitch dark night.

"Brandon! A car went into the lake and there's somebody in it!" was my greeting as I peeked the dam.

The lake rested about 75 yards below the crest of the dam. The dam itself ran down at about a 30 degree angle and was completely covered in bowling ball sized boulders to keep high waters from eroding its walls. Adjacent to the dam stood limestone cliffs that rose from the water to about forty feet into the air. Small to medium sized cedar trees dotted the top of the cliff like candles on a giant birthday cake.

It was 1999, and cell phones existed, but at this time they had spotty service and were generally reserved for business people. They certainly weren't available in the quantities that now fill the pockets of teenage kids.

"I'm gonna go call for help, get your ass in the water!" yelled my father as he was already running for the truck. 

"It's Jenny!" The two guys screamed! "She was in the truck! She was trying to get out before it went off the cliff I don't know if she made it out!"

I was a strong swimmer, and without a second thought I sprinted down the dam to the water and dove in. There was debris everywhere. You don't realize how many loose items there are in vehicle until they are all bobbing around the surface of lake. I swam around to every piece of trash while the three other guys shined flashlights across the water.

"JENNY!" They screamed, "JEEEENNNNYYYY!"

I kept swimming, checking every piece of debris that floated around hoping to find the girl and bring her back to shore. I kept swimming, and they kept screaming.

Fearing the worst, I started diving down to the bottom of the lake in search of the truck. To the best of my ability, I held my breath and dove as deep as possible. I dove until my ears built up so much pressure I couldn't stand the pain any longer. On the cliffs above me the other guys kept sweeping their flashlights across the brown water screaming "Jenny! Jenny! Jenny!", but between the calls for her, there was nothing but the sound of waves lightly splashing against the base of the limestone cliffs.

After what seemed like years instead of minutes, we heard the sounds, and saw the lights of a rescue vehicle. It was Joe, the dad of yet another classmate, who had recently received his certification in water rescue. Without even putting on his wet suit, Joe strapped on his air tank and diving weights, and stormed down the dam and into the water. We all hoped for the best, but by this time nearly twenty minutes had passed, and even the best divers in the world couldn't hold their breath that long.

Life seemed to stand still as we waited for Joe to surface again, praying that somehow miracles did happen and that somehow he would come up with a scared, but safe teenage girl. This didn't happen. About the time the ambulance arrived, Joe surfaced with the limp body of the younger sister of one of our classmates. Unable to lift her out of the water with his scuba gear on, he handed her up to me waiting on the small lip at the bottom of the cliff. I held her under the arm and swam her over to where Mark was waiting to help. With his assistance we pulled her from the water and the two of us carried her up the dam, over the bowling ball sized boulders.

Her eyes were wide open, and she had vomit running from her mouth and nose. She had a large gash on her forehead that still trickled a little blood, but not much. Other than her clothes being soaking wet, she looked like she could be walking down the halls of school. She was wearing a white tank top, blue denim shorts, and leather sandals. She had bracelets on both wrists and big green earrings that matched her big green eyes. 

Two days later after having written statements for the local police, I got a call from Jenny's sister. She invited me over to her house where I took on the daunting task of retelling the nightmare to her Mom and Dad, Brother, and a variety of other relatives. There was food everywhere in their house. They had folding tables set up in their living room to hold all of it. I told the story. They all cried and thanked me for telling them. They said that "They just had to know what happened". I guess I don't blame them. I would want to know too. I omitted some of the details that I am writing now. They told me that the doctors were able to harvest her eyes and kidneys to transplant into patients that could use them. This made them feel a slight degree less sad somehow.

 Mark and I attended Jenny's funeral. Quite honestly we did not know Jenny too well. We knew her sister much better as she was closer to our age. They had all of the people that attended sign her closed casket. Mark's dad didn't think we had any good reason to attend because we didn't have an "emotion attachment" to her. I felt like that night somehow linked us to her forever in some small way. After the funeral we went to Pizza Hut with her family. After that day we never really talked about it again. 

I don't know how the truck ended up rolling off the cliff with her inside. I used to ponder this daily. I don't think I care anymore. Some things can never be explained.

-Do not complain about getting older. Too many are not afforded the opportunity. 
    -unknown



   

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Skunked At The Skunk Hunt Part IV


A cold wind swept across the lake where we stopped to discuss our predicament. At the end the dirt road, all of our gear lay in the middle of a field. The only thing that stood in our way was two cops who felt like they had done enough work for one night. From a distance we could tell they weren't going anywhere. They sat in their vehicles, quietly idling with their lights on, playing solitaire on their computers.

“Just leave it down there” Chad argued, “I will get it in the morning when I go to work”

“No way!” I rebutted. “I’m going in.”

Chad driving, we cruised south toward the country side.  It took us about ten minutes to find what we were looking for. We hung a left and cruised back to the east until we reached a point on top of a hill. We stopped on the road adjacent to where we thought our gear would lay, about a half of a mile to the north of where we were.

Jumping out of the car, Karen and I plunged into the pitch black woods that lay between us and the golf course. Taking our time, we carefully and silently worked our way through the trees and down the hill toward our objective.

As we approached the dead end road, we could see the two sentries standing guard. Navigating with only the moonlight, we crept through the brush and across the road where the two police officers sat. We knew our gear lay somewhere in the grassy field about thirty yards out, but without lights it was very difficult to transverse the hazardous terrain.

Silently combing a pattern under the watchful eye of our silent guardians, we cross hatched our way across the field until we finally found our stash. As carefully as we moved in, we gathered our things and slipped back into the night the way we had come. After a far less stressful hike back to the top of the hill, we found our brothers in arms waiting for us in the car where we had left them.

By the time we got back to Chad’s apartment it was about 5:00am and we were too tired to discuss much of what happened. The next morning we packed up and drove back home. We did not complete our objectives, but we did get out with our clean records.

The End