At 19 for a summer job i hired on with a pos construction co to take up an old pipeline out of Pleasonton. After a few weeks the weilder got smashed when the pipe busted him in the face before he made it through the cut as there was pressure on the pipe down in the trench where it was bent to go deep under a highway.
I took his place at much higher than my previous pay. A Transcontinental co. Guy tried to keep me from getting killed as there was still a lot of distillate in low
spots in valleys and under highways and creeks, but he couldnt stay around all the time. Also, he taught me to go way up the line making cuts in the pipe at the spots it had been previously welded to let hydrogen sulfide hopefully burn out over the night. Also, to hold my head to the side and start my cuts on top so if gas flared through the cut it wouldnt get in my face. My hlpers used hammers to beat most the tar and paper wrapping off from around the old weld. Best to keep any fumes burning to prevent breathing any gas, of course, and if i was ever to pass out the helper was to cut the acetylene and blow oxygen into my face fr8m the cutting torch.
When me and my helper would get to the end of where the pipe wss skidded out of the trench to allow cutting, i would walk back to where they were loading the cut pipe. A caterpillar with a side boom would hook it on each end and lift it and lower the boom, extending it over a big truck with a big flat trailer they stacked the pipe on.
I had noticed the old cables to the boom were in bad shape and told the boys from the local high school gang i wouldnt walk under that boom.
One day as i was walking back to them the boom fell as a guy walked under it. Thankfully, about the time it hit his head it also hit the pipe stacked on the trailer. The guy was flopping around on the ground like a neck whacked chicken.
I ran and got in the pushers old torn up dodge and headed for the nearest dirt road to a farmhouse a couple miles away. I got there and they called an ambulance in pleasonton but they couldnt figure how to find the place. I told them i would meet them on the highway at the road turn of about 10 miles south of town. It was a few miles from the farmhouse.
I did and they followed me back to the pipeline and loaded him up. For sure nothing like now days. I got in the back with im and we headed to town. The driver and his sidekick didnt seem too concerned Or much of a hurry.
As we travelled and they shot the crap i noticed the kids lips turning blue. Stated doing chest compressions on him for nothing better to do.
All of a sudden he started violently comming to. I couldnt kerp them up with him fight and spesking in spanish. He was white and a star athlete in Pleasonton. As i held him down on the stretcher and him not breathing he soon calmed down and passed out again. I let his lips start turning a touch blue and repeated the process, as soon did he.
I was amazed the hearse helper was not interested in getting involed as the processe was repeated until we got to the hospital. I was seperated for a good time as they had him on O2 and strspped down and apparently eventually calmed down. Dr said he was ok after he quit cussing and raising hell in spanish. I had not been asked by dr or nurse what had gone on. IIRC the family denied he ever spoke or knew spanish. I cant remember if they got there in time to hear him or not. It was a lot of water under the bridge ago. I told the dr about it and he then decided to get xrays and wondered why i hadnt told him of thix before and let him know i wss not allowed around.
As far as i can remember he wss back to work in a few days and didnt know a lick of spanish.
I finally quit that job two weeks before college classes started after that same guy and my welders helper, who was sitting in the middle, played chicken with the accelerator one day after we left work for town.
They had never been out the caliche road back to the highway to town the work had finally progressed to and it had a slight bend in it a mile from the jobsite and the highway. To be continued
Continued.
I was tired, sitting in the bed on the side rail behind the kid who i had saved and in his truck. I wss resting, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees. A mexican was inside the passenger door and one opposite me on the other side of the bed.
As we sped down the road i remembered a curve was somewhere ahead. I had gone out that way a couple days before after travelling up the covered pipeline and using a metal detector to spot mark it for the ditching machine which would soon follow.
I looked up and saw the curve close and figured we would die when we hit the outside bank but i thought if i did the right thing i might live. I jumped down in the floor and straightened out with
my feet up and against the cab.
when we hit remember thinking 'Damn what a jar'. When i came to i thought i was dead as i couldnt move or feel anything. Finally i got my eyes open and could see sky and clouds with my left but only light with the rt. I finally got an arm moving and found i was hung horizontally barbed wire fence. I finally got untangled and out of the fence and my rt hip had broke a 4 inch thick creasote post.
Folks were screaming and crying and hollering. I am just now rememberijg some of this for the first time in many years. I was pissed at the driver i had previously saved. I got to the drivers open window and rared back to bust him in his left jaw as he looked at me stunned and opened his mouth to say 'no'. Blood and teeth came gushing out. He had lost all his front teeth on the steering wheel. Passenger went through the windshield and wasnt moving.
I walked a mile to the highway and croseed and set down. Covered in blood from the cut in my right brow and it hanging down. Holding my pant up with both hands as all the seams were busted except the rt belt loop that held my striker.
Finally i laid down by the road and when i hesrd a car coming i waved an arm. A pretty yellow buick with a white top or 4 door pontiac pulled up and stopped. 2 well dressed mexican couples looked down on me and hauled azz. I got up and walked a goodly way to a house on up the highway and knocked on the door. Lady fainted and hubby caught her. They finally got me to come in to wait for the HP and ambulances. I wouldnt go in at first as i wss such a mess. The even made me sit on a cloth couch.
I got stitched up at the same hospital as before and a compression bandage and went to the hotel we were boarding in.
A while later the girl i was dating there came in and was for the first time ever going to make me forget my pain.
Soon after they brought my bandaged up welders helper in and she and he had a big argument and she left. Story of my fuggin life. I was too dumb to go rent another room or i had to save all i could for college i guess. I cant remember. I had breathed so much burning tar and gas off the pipe i was having splitting headaches most the time anyway. Great job for someone who as a kid who frequently woke up under an oxygen tent and whose parents had been told by Dr Wolfe at Scott and White i wouldnt surve to see school.
I left for home in Refugio the next day. I needed to fish and flounder Copano bay with my little brother some before college and see my little sisters after being gone all summer anyway.
Last edited by eyeball; 04/26/15.
