A Summer Job

The chill of the morning reminds me that winter is closing in on us, and as a result, opportunities to barbeque at KC's Korner will soon be dwindling. As a barbeque professional, this development is somewhat disheartening because it means that I will soon have an aboundance of time on my hands. Consequently, I've begun looking for other opportunites to occupy my time.

In my long career, I've had a variety of jobs. One of the first I had involved pouring concrete for the 'new' Library at Arkansas State University. Of course, this 'new' library was being built in the summer of 1976. My job was to help pour concrete into forms for a concrete column. The columns were roughly fourteen feet tall and two and a half feet wide on each side. A huge crane would lift a steel bucket containing one cubic yard of wet concrete, and I would climb up the 2x4s that braced the forms and were held in place by things called 'froglegs'. Standing so that my waist was at the top of the form, I would reach up and guide the huge steel bucket so that it was over the top of the form. When the bucket was positioned just right, I pulled the release bar down, and a gate on the bottom of the bucket opened, allowing a stream of concrete roughly twelve inches in diameter to flow down filling up the forms. For all the construction jobs I had had to date, this was the best. No sweating....No lifting....No hauling..,..Three dollars an hour to climb the forms and pull the lever. Sweet.

Usually.

As with all sweet gigs, sometimes things go badly. One day in the heat of the summer, I was standing on top of the forms, and the crane operator, Bozo, had a bad day. Actually, his day wasn't all that bad, but mine got dramatically worse very rapidly.

As Bozo manoeuvred the bucket containing a cubic yard of wet cement toward the column I was standing on, something out of the ordinary happened. The bucket suddenly dropped about 2 feet, and swung rapidly to the left, toward the form I was standing on. A cubic yard of cement in a steel bucket has a good amount of kinetic energy. It was barely moving when it bumped the form, but it was like a freight train bumping a litter basket, the litter basket loses.

The form, originally made up of 2x4s and plywood, instantly turned into splinters. It wasn't a gradual thing. It was a 'touch' thing....like when you turn on the light switch, the light is 'on' right then. Well, when the bucket contacted the form, the form was shattered right then.

I had that Wiley Coyote feeling. The form I was standing on was no longer there. I was fourteen feet in the air, looking for something to grab so that I did not fall onto the concrete pad that the forms for the column rested on.

In a crisis, your mind works so fast that the world seems to slow down. As gravity took hold of me and started pulling me toward the concrete pad, I reached out for the bucket. If I could just get a hand on the metal rim around the bucket, I might be able to hang on.

I stretched with my left hand as far as I could, and just as my feet felt the forms fall away, I got a grip on something. I swung my right hand over and also got a grip. The forms crashed to the pad below, and my momentum caused me to swing toward the bucket, and then, unfortunately, I swung under the bucket and I realized that I had not grabbed the bar around the rim of the bucket. I had grabbed the release bar.

As I swung beneath the gate at the bottom, my weight on the release bar caused the gate to open, releasing the concrete. One cubic yard of concrete, in a 12 inch diameter stream hit me in the chest. I lost the grip I had on the bar. I fell fourteen feet, landing flat on my back on the broken remains of the forms, and was promptly buried by one cubic yard of wet concrete. The guys on the crew immediately jumped into the pit and began digging me out of the concrete using shovels.

That was the last time I climbed a form.

The Saucon Valley Country Club

As we continue to rehabilitate the basement from water damage incurred during August's Hurricane, I am finding interesting items long forgotten and stored in remote regions of the basement. With each item, there is usually some memory attached that brings a smile.

The other day, in the back of the storage room in the basement, I came across Landi's golf clubs. When we were dating, we used to play frequently, but we haven't played for years. Her clubs were in the corner of the storage room and I checked the bag for water damage. As I inspected the bag, on the shoulder strap, a smear of mud caught my eye, and I remembered the last time we played golf.

In the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, there is a wonderful Country Club called Saucon Valley. It is a beautiful, high end country club that, were Landi not associated at the time with Bethlehem Steel, we would never had had occasion to visit or play. However, through a Bethlehem Steel event of some sort, we found our selves at this incredible golf course.

Landi was beautiful that day. She was wearing white shorts and a blue knit top of some sort. She had a white visor, and white golf shoes. Her golf bad was white, as was her golf glove. She had her hair in a pony tail, and a late summer tan. I wore dockers and a polo shirt.

Saucon Valley's course is one of those courses where the fairways are better than a lot of greens that I grew up playing on. We played our round with another two-some associated with Bethlehem Steel. They were much better golfers than us, but we were better looking.

The 18^th hole, was a long, down hill dog leg par four, with a small stream crossing at the bottom of the valley. Both of the other golfers in our foursome drove over the stream and into perfect position. I bearly cleared the stream, and Landi came up short. I drove her to her ball, and she asked me to go ahead and find my ball, that she would walk to me. I drove the cart to the little bridge over the stream and began looking for my ball.

Landi swung, and her ball flew towards the green. I still can't find my ball. I saw the other two golfers waiting, so I told them to go ahead and hit. I had lost a couple of balls already, and I didn't think I had another with me. So I kept looking for it, and I looked up just in time to see Landi kind of hop over the stream. It was a short hop. An easy hop, really. Actually, it was more of a long stride with just a little extra umph at the end, and she very gracefully cleared the stream without any distress at all.

The ground on the side she what coming from was firm, solid and dry. The other side of the stream was not. It was utterly saturated. Her lead foot landed on the soft green grass on the other side, and she sank up to her knee in muck. Her trailing leg completed the stride across the stream, and had no place to go but also knee deep into the muck. At this point, only her golf shoes were muddy.

I viewed this from a short distance away, and immediately came to her assistance. I remembered the old Tarzan movies where one guy stuck in quick sand quickly drags another to his doom too when he is pulled into the quick sand. No way, I thought, I was getting into the mud.

All thing considered, at this point, Landi was doing well. She was stuck in the mud yes, but she was calm. I grabbed a golf club to use to help pull her out. By having her grab the golf club, and using it to pull her out, I hoped to be able to stay on solid ground, and avoid the mud. She took hold of the club and I started pulling, but the mud on her hands caused her lose her grip. Because she was pulling so hard, when the club slipped out of her hands, she flopped backwards and sat down in the mud. When the club slipped from her hands, I was straining, pulling the club trying to lift her out. Suddenly losing that resistance, my hands, clutching the head of the 3 iron, crashed into my nose, which began bleeding profusely.

I ventured closer, and extended my hand to her, and again we pulled and strained, and the grass beneath my feet gave way, and suddenly, I was flat on my back in the mud. Landi's calm was wearing thin. I got up, and I grabbed her under the arms, and using brute strength, tried to lift her out of the mud, and again, my feet slipped in the mud and I went down. I sat down in front of her, and reached out to her, and tried again. Her leg was slowly coming free, and suddenly she shouts, STOP!

What's wrong? “I'm losing my shoe!!” Screw the shoe. I'll get the shoe in a minute. We kept pulling and straining and after a great sucking/slerping sound, her foot came free, and we rolled into the more firm grass. We were tired, exhausted really. Finally, after catching our breath, I started to head to the golf cart.

'My shoe?”, Landi reminded me.

I walked back over to the mud pit we had created. It was a hell of a mess. The groundkeeper was going to wonder what the hell happened here. I found the hole. I got on my knees, and stuck my arm down until I felt the golf shoe. I pulled it out of the muddy water, held it aloft, and watched as what looked like Hershey's Syrup poured from it. I looked over at Landi, and she looked like she had been dipped in Hershey's Syrup. I had to smile.

The other two players in our foursome had finished the hole, and were sitting on the patio at the Club House when we arrived. When they last saw us, we looked like we could have been in a photo shoot for a golf magazine, but that had changed. Both of us were covered from head to toe in a dark brown mud, and were coated with an abundance of grass clippings. Blood from my nose spattered on my shirt and pants just added a special ambiance.

I wish I had a picture of the looks on their faces, and the faces of the others at the patio bar. This is one of the most exclusive Country Clubs in the United States, and this golf course has hosted many a PGA,and LPGA event. We walked dripping mud and trailing grass trimmings into the patio bar, and sat with our friends, who had a truly horrified look on their face. They were staring, slack jawed and silent.

The manager or waiter approached, looking very apprehensive.

“Can I help you?”, he inquired.

I wiped at my nose and looked to see if it was still bleeding, “Tough hole.” I said casually.

Moments of Inspiration

Every now and then, you experience an extraordinary moment of creativity. It happens in a flash, and you just have to take advantage of it when it happens. My first true moment of abstract, and somewhat malicious, creativity struck me years ago. I was working for a computer firm in Memphis, and the lady who ran the place pissed me off. I was working my ass off, maintaining all the internal computers, as well as her laptop, generating billable hours and she was screwing me out of my commissions. I wasn't really in a position to 'push back' so I just had to take it....for a while.

This was in the mid 80's, the days before multi-taking Windows was introduced. It was the days of MS-DOS - Microsoft Disk Operating System. There were some computer programs called 'TSR's...Terminate and Stay Resident. The first one was 'print'. I got a hold of a paper by some guys who had 'reverse engineered' 'print', and figured out how to make a program stay resident in the computer's memory. I used that paper to figure out how to write a program that would cause my computer to display a clock with the current time in the upper right hand portion of the screen at all times. It was pretty cool.

While stewing over my 'lost' commissions and having cocktails in a bar called The Bottom Line, I had an epiphany. It struck me out of no where. I couldn't make her pay me my commissions, but I could make her crazy. Just ask any of my X-wives. I can make women crazy.

If I used what I had learned about writing TSRs, and wrote one that used a random number generator to randomly trigger a video swap, I could have some fun. So, I wrote a program, driven by a random number generator, that would seize a block of memory identical in size to video memory, and in that space write in large block letters the work "BITCH". Next, the program would copy the contents of video memory to another location. Finally, it overwrote video memory with the contents of the first location (the word BITCH), and .25 seconds later, put the original contents back. The result was that the screen flashed "BITCH". Did I mention that I maintained her computer?

The nice thing about this, was that it did not happen often. She would just see it every couple of days,but when she did, she would scream, and everyone would go running into her office to see what had happened. She would tell us that her computer just called her a bitch. We'd hang around while she tried to recreate the 'flash', but of course, it wouldn't happen because it wasn't triggered by her. It was driven by my random number generator. Most of the office snickered some and thought she was nutts. I just kept my mouth shut.

After a couple of months of this, she bought a new laptop computer. It was a brand new Toshiba. She called me into her office and after going on and on about how the old laptop was calling her a bitch, she told me to install all the software from her old laptop onto her new laptop. When you are the low man on the totem pole, you have unique opportunities.

I installed the software....all of it.

A week later, a scream shattered the silence in the office again, and I smiled...Sweet Moments of Inspiration.

A word to the wise....Don't piss off your systems administrator.

A Peaceful Morning

In the peace of the morning, and before your mind is cluttered with the chum of the day, there is time to contemplate 'things'. Yesterday, Landi and I began discussing Thanksgiving. As some may remember, last year I recorded some tips for frying a turkey.....and for putting out the fire. Landi has made a request this year that I refrain from setting the backyard on fire. I really going to try to comply. As this turned over in my mind this morning, it occured to me that while this did involve a good amount of excitement and fairly large conflagration on the back deck (concrete), it was an inadvertant aberation and it did not involve any of our local emergency services.

Contrast that with Catfish. He has always been a unique boy. At 3, he called and tried to order the Phonics Game because he didn't feel that he was 'reading at his grade level'. Arround this same time he tried to buy homeowners insurance on the Lego Harry Potter Castle he built. He once asked me if I wanted to lose "ten pounds of unsightly fat". A few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, he emerged from the basement to tell me I was needed on the phone. It was the 911 operator who told me that Catfish had reported a 'dead soldier' in our basement. G.I. Joe's head had come off. The South Plainfield SWAT unit is very responsive. A year or so after that he attempted to warm a bagel in the microwave. Five minutes into the process, the bagel burst into flames, the fire alarm went off, and he began running arround the island in the kitchen hollering 'Fi-yr! Fi-yr! Call 911! Call 911' He used to claim that Buckwheat, our black lab, put poop in his diaper. At the spring Parent/Teacher conference in his kindergarten year, we were amazed to discover that Catfish had explained Judiaism to his school mates who were primarily Hindu, Muslim and Christian. I told the teacher that 1) we were Episcopalians, and 2)I've heard him explain things before. He probably created some misconceptions.

So, in this very peaceful morning, I'm wondering what adventure awaits Landi and me. Hopefully it won't involver emergency services or a flaming backyard, but it will probably involve Catfish. He's 14 now, and understands that he reads well, and understands that he doesn't need home-owner's insurance. He can warm a bagel without setting the house on fire. Though we did it at gun-point, he is potty trained, and understands that he is Episcopalian. It's gonna be a great day.

It's Different Below the Thermocline

There are times when you are really proud of something you kid has done. I was proud when Jenn graduated from Mount Holyoke, and I was proud when she decided to attend law school. She works full time as a paralegal, goes to law school at night, and in her spare time, is a cheese monger at Whole Foods. The thing that makes me super proud is that even with all that, her GPA is floats somewhere between a 3.5 and a 3.75. Pretty impressive, eh?

Jordan, too, has set the bar pretty high. Graduating with Honors in Economics from Tulane, and getting a full ride to UMass for her Masters. She reluctantly left the land of gumbo and helecopter sized mosquitoes and headed to the frozen wasteland of Massachusetts in persuit of another level of education. Today, she has her Masters, and is doing well in Indianapolis. She works for the government, and she really is there to help.

So, now we get to the Fish. He's a freshman in high school, and we haven't seen any grades yet. He plays on the school soccer team and he plays hard, and has a lot of fun. On weekends, he tells me his friends from school video games. His weekend was different.

Last Feburary, he began training to be a PADI Certifed Rescue Scuba Diver. That's a diver who is trained in how to rescue a diver in trouble. That diver may be on the surface, or 100 ft down. That diver may be unconcious, or he may be paniced, or he may just be exhausted. The diver may be lost and in need of being found. What ever the situation, the Rescue diver locates the diver in trouble, and gets that diver out of the water, and under the appropriate level of medical care as quickly as possible.

This past weekend, Catfish completed his final dives for certification. In one of the dives, he was acting as divemaster, and had to direct 6 adult 'inexperienced' divers in a search for a lost diver. He deployed his divers along a line and the 'lost' diver was quickly found, lying motionless on a slope at 65ft. The diver was unresponsive, and Catfish being the only 'trained rescue diver', had to lift this diver from the bottom and do a controlled assent to the surface some 65 ft above.

The female victim was 20-30 lbs heavier than Catfish. He ensured that her regulator stayed in place as he struggled to lift her off the slope. They slid down the slope to the bottom at 75ft. Silt filled the water and reduced visability. He stayed with it. They began to rise, then after coming off the bottom, she slipped from his grasp. He went completely upside down, holding on to her with one hand and ensuring her regulator stayed in with the other while she dragged him back to the bottom. Silt billowed around them. Back on the bottom, in visability approaching zero, he fought his way around behind her, and clutching her tank between his knees, with his arm reaching under her arm, and holding her regulator in her mouth, he again began surfacing the victim. He emerged from the clouds of silt with his victim and made a perfect assent. On the surface, he established boyancy and began rescue breaths.

I knew he could learn the skills to be a Rescue Diver. He's a great swimmer, and a good scuba diver. There was no question in my mind that he could do that. I was concerned when he was asked to act as the divemaster on the exersize because that's a tall order to ask of a 14 year old kid. How many kids do you know who are comfortable giving orders to adults? Well, he wasn't comfortable either, but he got it done. I'm sure he wasn't comfortable directing the search, but he got it done. I'm really sure he wasn't comfortable when we found the victim on the slope, and she slid down to the bottom. Hell, it was 43 degrees there, and he has zero body fat. He wasn't just uncomfortable, he was freezing his ass off, but he hung in there. In zero visability, 43 degree water wrestling with a motionless woman he was not only uncomfortable, he was magnificent. He did the things he had been trained to do, and did them calmly and confidently. He safely overcame every obstical, and did every that was possible to "save" the victim.

He's not just my boy. He's a PADI Certified Rescue Diver.