Having recently been squished like a bug against the hard expanse of a steel slab after part of a World War II era crane fell on me, I was recovering at home. For the previous couple of years that voice in my soul had been hollering for me to “Run! Get out! Leave!” the trades. With children depending on me and an angry, hateful wife to keep fed and watered, I was reluctant to leave my job with no alternative income source in sight. I didn’t know where to go, so I’d applied for scholarships thinking that further education might make a difference.

Freshly home from the hospital, I got the call from Larry. I was still very sore and wasn’t capable of working anywhere doing much of anything yet but expected to return to a full time job and expected it would involve computers. My butt was entirely purple from bruising consequent to the mode of taking me down that was used by the falling crane. Larry was the deep pockets that got a local company started and he invited me to a power lunch. But first, let me return to that crane.

Cranes lift things. To do that they have a drum that rotates and upon which a cable is coiled. If the drum rotates one way, the cable pulls up. When it rotates the other way, the cable descends. Connected to the end of the cable is a hook. With this and braided wire slings and some gripper devices,  heavy objects that need to be repositioned can be attached to the cable and moved.

To control the up and down movement there is a button box. That is connected via a long thick cord all the way up to the protruding boom of the crane where an angle iron hangs out from the drum far enough to keep it out of the way. That dirty angle iron is what got me when the crane fell. I could just as easily have been killed, paralyzed, or unharmed depending on where the thing got me or if it had missed.

As it happened, it pulled into my back and snapped off ribs. One of those tore open a lung. More damage was done as the descent continued and then it reached my belt. Here is a situation where a girly elastic belt might have saved me some trouble. Instead, I had a manly thick leather belt and when the crane came down, it pulled on the belt, which refused to yield. So the belt went down also and this caused a strain on my skin until it ripped wide open, fully exposing the top crown of my hip.

I landed on my tail bone, which according to the Doctor who wrote and oversaw my treatment plan, “jellied” it. The impact on the unforgiving steel slab caused a bruise I hope to never rival. The cable whipped wildly as it uncoiled from the drum slicing through my clothing all over my back.

Oh that hurt! For months it hurt. My back still hurts.

You don’t know how central your hind end is until it’s compromised. When it hurts you can not get away from it by sitting, by standing, or even by laying down. There is no escape.

It was during the last few months before being released back to the fabrication shop when Larry called me and asked if I might like to work as a programmer.

“Maybe,” I replied.

He came by in his Acura and we did a power lunch on his dime. Burger King.

He let me order anything I wanted off their expansive menu.

Later I analyzed this experience and realized that even the act of ordering from the menu had communicative value to my potential future employer.

If I ordered the best most expensive *phud on the menu, it would indicate that I expect to be treated well in setting the wage. If I order the least, then I could be had for cheap.

I ordered only a hamburger, no drink and no fries. This indicated that I could be had cheaply but also showed that I could be frugal and disciplined.

It was determined that we would come up with a deal.

Meanwhile I continued with my recovery. Unwisely, I constructed the frame for a concrete pour in the back yard so there would be a place that would not get muddy at the stairs to the back door of the house. When the guy poured the concrete and then drove away, I began to surface the cement, only to discover the serious limitations my condition had wrought upon my physique. What should have been no big deal, just hard labor, became nearly impossible but the cement was setting up rapidly. To get the surface smooth, I had tools including a long board that I would saw across the forms to leave the surface smooth and flat. This proved nearly impossible even though I’d had three months of recuperation.

The wife watched from a window. I wished I’d asked someone to come help. She’d methodically driven most friends away, leaving only herself but this work was too complex and difficult and she declined to help.

The pour was eventually flattened by such effort as I could summon, but it never looked as good as I’d envisioned.

When I was released to go back to the job where the squishing happened, I am convinced that they were strategically managing their risk. This began the same day as the crash when they had every bit of the wreckage cut up and sent as quickly as possible to Schnizter steel to be recycled, believing that I would likely die and the widow would do what mine would do in a heartbeat: profit off the tragedy. The evidence had to be destroyed. Every bit of it. All the crane parts had to go.

The fellow who ran the company was a German with an accent and incredibly strong aftershave. You could smell him coming from the moment he stepped out of the office five bays away. He snapped many photos of the carnage.

Now back to the power lunch.

 

We ate our vittles and sealed a loosely defined deal without a handshake. Shortly afterward, Larry got me a lunch box 286 PC loaded with R83 Pick operating system “to play with” in preparation for an eventual place on his payroll.

Meanwhile I was on disability insurance payments while getting  better. About that time a letter arrived confirming that I’d won a full ride scholarship to the local community college. That would certainly go a long way toward my retraining! But it was not to be. The Labor and Industries lackies determined in their infinite wisdom that if I had the ability to attend classes then I was able to work and if I accepted the scholarship, their monthly payments would cease.

One would think that the push would be to encourage the retraining while I recouped my health, but in typically government brain think I could only repair physically if I did nothing mentally. The big concern was probably that I could potentially become dependent on government subsistence permanently, but not if I were educated and could support my family. Rather than lose the house and put the family in short term jeopardy I declined the award. That was unwise, as it turns out. The bitter wife could have gotten a job and I could be home with the kids, thus ensuring their safety.

I’d never owned a computer or used one. Around that time, I got one made, paid for by the in-laws. It was a 286 with a 40 meg hard drive and 640k of ram. One of the first programs I installed was a typing tutor to get my typing speed up from 5-6 words per minute with 60% accuracy.

In case you’re so young that you don’t know the early history of the IBM PC, it came out using a programmable Central Processing unit known as an 8088. That was improved upon with the 8086 shortly afterward. The next CPU was a huge leap forward and was called a 286. It was so fast that comments were made by industry leaders to the effect that it was far beyond the needs of a home computer user and would mostly work as a server.

Mine had a Hercules graphics card and an amber monochrome monitor with old fashioned phosphor image creation. That sort of monitor really did benefit from the so called screen saver software because if left alone for long periods of time, the image could get burned on to the screen permanently.

Not long after that, I upgraded to the new VGA, opting to pay the little extra to get past EGA. It slowed the computer down  noticeably, but looked so much nicer!

When I mention the risk management at my then current employer, I think of their strategy. They could assign me to the tool crib where I would hand out supplies and check out die grinders and consumables to the welders but that would put the one they already had out of work. I doubt the fellow was good for much anywhere else so I wasn’t going to be part of that. This is no insult to him, but just an acknowledgement that he had his limitations  in attitude and therefore in potential. He’d be destroyed or have to step it up.

Their strategy, I am convinced, was to scare me into quitting. The first job they gave me was the welding of some super heavy bits that would have to be frequently positioned by jib crane. The weight of each unit was near the design limit of the crane.

My only concern was that due to the serious throbs of pain and the fatigue, I could not weld the long strings that I’d previously been able to do.

I completed the jobs, but just more slowly than normal for me which meant slightly faster than what could be expected of the normal welder in that setting.

So they had me weld some even larger units that required that i crawl underneath them and weld overhead from a sitting position. Now that was painful!

Meanwhile, I prepared for office work by studying the pick database structure and learning how it’s operating system could be managed. There was a room behind my garage which was very rough and had only held firewood. I gutted it and prepared it to serve as an office. Getting sheet rock on the ten foot ceiling by myself was particularly challenging but in the end I had a sheet rocked, wired, heated office with secure outside access and secured access via the garage.

 

I’d worked another month and a half at the ironworks shop when I quit to work for Polar Software as a developer and software support person. I’d been in the trades for twelve and a half years.  As a unique irony, I worked from home until Independence day, taking an office in the new location for Larry’s business just over a year after the squishing took place.

 

 

*phud: consumable and digestible items believed by many to have legitimate food value but which are maligned by the health-purist regimists as “bad” and “poor” nutrition. So called fast food, chips, and all comfort foods fall into this category which means they are to be loathed. Now that you’ve seen the light, I’ll take your share of that fried chicken as a favor to you. I care. The tater tots too, thank you.