AKA "A Louisiana Hayride"
AKA "Just hanging around"
I am lucky to be alive.
No, really, I feel like a cat with nine lives.
Growing up in Southwest Louisiana, I had more than a few misfortunes that, thank the Lord, didn’t cost me my life or a limb.
There was the time I was about 13 or 14 years old and I was riding our brand-new yellow Yamaha three-wheeler down Murphy Lane going to Grandma Coonies House. As I was speeding down the parish road, instead of watching where I was going, I glanced backward to see if any cars were coming. BIG MISTAKE.
The next thing I knew, I'm opening my eyes while lying on my back in the marsh beside the road.
Apparently, if you’re hauling ass on a three-wheeler, veer off the road, and hit a fence, the chances of you flying over the handlebars and landing in the mud are pretty damned good.
I was lucky I didn’t break a bone or even get a scratch.
No helmet. No supervision.
Those were the ’80s.
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| Big Josh and Granny showing off the Yellow Death Machine. |
Then there was the trampoline we owned.
We all hear stories now about kids and adults breaking or dislocating something at these trampoline parks. Well, we had a rectangular trampoline in our yard. Yep, a weirdly shaped rectangle trampoline, not one of these modern round ones with a safety net going around it.
We jumped on that thing every day— we would do flips, wrestling with each other, or trying to double bounce somebody else as high as we could make them go.
I can’t tell you how many times I fell off that thing and hit the ground. Or, even worse, one time I missed the edge and got caught in the springs, hanging upside down.
Again, not a broken bone or a scratch, but let's just say I sure am lucky I was still able to have kids.
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| Two Bros on Death Trap- Me contemplating my life choices while Jimmy Noe does his ventriloquist dummy impression. |
Now, the fence-post driver was a totally different story.
My grandfather, J. Berton, raised cattle. If you have cows, you have fences. And if you have fences, you’re going to spend a good portion of your life fixing them.
Rotten post. Broken posts. Broken barbed wire. It was always something.
Well this one time when I was about sixteen, my dad, my grandfather J. Berton, and I were repairing the fence in our front pasture beside the main highway. We were using a two-man post driver to pound wooden fence posts into the ground.
That thing probably weighed thirty or forty pounds. One person stood on each side of the fence, and together we’d lift it and pull it down over the post.
After about six or seven hits, the post had gone about a foot into the ground. We lifted the driver for over last swing, but this time it caught on the top edge of the post.
Well, gravity and momentum do have an effect on moving objects.
Of course I was the shortest one and also standing on the lower ground. When I pulled down, that driver tilted and came right in my direction, landing right onto the top of my head.
No hard hat. No safety equipment. No OSHA standards.
Just me and about thirty-five pounds of post driver.
It didn’t knock me out, but I saw stars and spit out a few broken teeth.
J. Berton never missed a beat.
He grabbed the next post, and they got back to work.
I slowly walked home, staggering and weaving. The next day, I went to the dentist and had several teeth patched up.
Forty years later, I’m still paying for that one. Several root canals and crowns later, the fence post incident lives on.
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| Modern Day Fence Post Driver AKA "The Head Knocker" |
But one incident I remember best happened when I was about seven.
J. Berton was getting ready to pick up hay from our pasture and store it in the barn to feed the cows through the winter.
A neighbor would cut the grass, let it dry for a week or so, then come back and bale it.
The square bales would drop out of the baler in rows across the pasture. A crew of men followed with a truck pulling a flatbed trailer. Some walked alongside, throwing bales up, while somebody on the trailer lined them up and stacked them.
By the time they finished a load, there might be twenty-five or thirty bales on there.
The trailer sat about three or four feet off the ground, with the hay stacked another ten or twelve feet high. From the top of that load to the ground, it might have been twelve to fifteen feet.
When the trailer was full, we’d all pile into the back of the truck or ride on top of the hay and head to the barn to unload.
On one of those trips after filling the wagon, there I was, sitting on top of the load, living my best seven-year-old life.
To get back to the barn, we had to pass through a gate. Beside that gate stood a pine tree, probably fifty feet tall. One of its limbs stretched right across the entrance, about fifteen feet above the ground.
Now, a seven-year-old sitting on top of a load of hay doesn’t spend much time thinking about consequences, geometry, or the future.
As we slowly rolled through the gate, I reached up and grabbed that pine limb.
Physics was not yet in my vocabulary.
As the trailer kept moving forward, I did not.
That load of hay slowly moved out from under my nice, comfortable rear end, leaving me hanging from the tree.
There I was, dangling above the ground, watching my ride slowly sail off toward the barn.
To this day, I’m not sure how I managed to hold on. I didn’t slip, and I didn’t let go.
Thank the Lord.
Somehow, they got the driver’s attention. They turned around, came back, and picked me up from the tree.
Through all those adventures, I never broke a bone or went to the hospital, although I probably should have gone a time or two.. or five.
I did learn one thing on that hayride, though.
Keep your hands to yourself.
It’s safer that way.
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