Family Friday Tales

 Here is another story from my childhood.  

Last week I spoke about the cellar walls and the field stone foundation.  One year our father decided to put in good cement walls on the other side of the cellar so he could divert the stream safely around the end of the house.  To do this he dug out around the front of the house and installed concrete forms (made out of plywood or whatever wood forms were made out of back in the old days when this happened) prior to using the cement mixer.

The project took quite a while to get set up since there was milking of cows to do plus haying plus cleaning out the barns, etc.  My younger brother was somewhat of a curious boy and pretty much a daredevil. So...he took it into his head to jump from the pile of dirt onto the top of the cement form and started walking along the top, like a tight-rope walker.

You need to understand that there was some distance between the dugout dirt, the form, and the foundation of the house.  ALSO the forms were about 8 feet tall.  So picture this boy...maybe ten years old...jumping onto the form, then tight-roping along it for a while.  Sadly, he lost his footing and fell down into the hole.

While falling he tried to save himself and caught his middle finger on the splintering wood...jamming a quarter-inch-wide splinter all the way to the second knuckle on his hand! Oh my gosh!!! Just sitting here remembering makes my knees jiggly and my stomach weak.  It really was dreadful.  He did survive, however.  I don't remember how he was removed from the hole. I just remember that awful sliver.  Someone got it out.  I don't remember that, either, just the fact of the sliver and seeing that he could not bend his finger....

This is probably one of the reasons why I, myself, did not grow up to be a daredevil nor much of a risk taker at all.  He did survive but...This is probably also the reason I never wanted to be a nurse.  I could not bear anyone else's pain or discomfort.  Patients would not have felt better with their nurse dripping tears all over them.  Teaching was a much better career for me!  TOTALLY!