Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Mechanic
Thirty years of mostly heavy manual labor (commission) and my own business where you pack as much into an hour as possible then using my forehead to knock the windshield out of a 71 Datsun 510 when the city decided to strip the pavement off a street and leave 3.5 inches of the manhole casement sticking straight out of the road (no apron just vertical steel wall) which hit my left front wheel and I did a Joey Chitwood across the two oncoming two lanes, hit the curb, flipped and landed on the roof of a Dodge Dart, then the car caught on fire. A kind stranger (Mom sent him a thank you note) pulled me (at 180 pounds) out of the passengers window almost 6 feet off the ground and they gave me two units of plasma on the way to the hospital. Next day I was black and blue down my whole right side from my ear to my ankle. They stapeled the 6 inch gash (to the bone) in my head using only novicane (doctor said I had been scalped). I did not request any pain meds until the next afternoon. Poor Mom had to sit down in the elevator when she left the hospital to keep from fainting. Looked like the Jolly Green Giant had used my right side for a flyswatter, but not one broken bone and I was back at work in a week. The hang glider crash didn't help, cracked the helmet I was wearing. Falling out of a tree didn't help either, higher than the lowest wires on the telephone pole. Landed in a horseshoe pit with the stake between my chest and right elbo. Ran into the kitchen gasping for air and Mom blew me up like a balloon.
Doc told me a couple of years later that I would have chronic pain until they put me in the ground but I could still live to be a hundred (good genes).
I got a new Doctor who had been my customer when he was going to med school. Maybe I can get that mistake fixed but I guess stupid has it's price.
The city did the same (stripped pavement, samespot same road) thing 15 years earlier and it ripped the differential out of a Chevy Vega. Hit the ring and pinion housing, bent the rear wheels in 45 degrees per side and yanked the driveshaft right out of the transmission.
I guess I'm a pretty tough nut, but I have not hit another member of the human race in anger since 1963 when I laid a back hand chop into a freind who had hit me from behind and watched him gasp for breath. Thought he was faking it until he started turning gray and I have avoided getting physical ever since. I could total loss a car with my bare hands.
regards
Mech
|
The first rule of life is to live it. People forget that. You obviously didn't.
More power to you for avoiding narcotics.