The Accidental Barn

How do you buid a barn by accident?  In my case, it happened like this.  My Dad was working at a rock quarry near Dewey, Oklhoma.  One day, he was replacing the fan belts on a front end loader.  Front end loaders are so large that you don't have a good view of the engine compartment from the operator's position.  I say that because in my Dad's case, that's what caused his accident.  Dad was installing the new belts, when the operator returned.  Not seeing anyone working on the other side of the machine, he hit the starter switch.  That minor lapse of safety set the pulleys and the belts in motion, just as the manufacturer intended, along with Dad's hand, not as the manufacturer intended.

That fraction of a second ran Dad's hand through the pulley, crushing most of the bones.  He was rushed to the emergency room, and sent home with a cast on his hand.  He was off work for around six weeks, waiting on the bones to mend.  My Dad could never sit still for more than an hour, so he started thinking about things that needed to be done around the farm.  One of his primary goals was to build a new barn, but that's a little tough to do with your hand in a cast, unless you have some help.  His help looked a lot like me, so we started, and completed the project with time to spare.  Dad mostly pointed, and measured, and I put the boards in place and hammered in the nails.  I'm not convinced that he was satisfied with his assistant, but he never said a word about the quality of my work.  I don't have any pictures of the barn, and that's probably a good thing.  I still love working with wood and the barn is probably not an example of my best work.

The time we spent building the new barn was probably the longest period of time that I can remember spending with Dad.  It was hard work, but it came with the satisfaction of a job well done, and I couldn't have asked for a better boss.