Episodes
Monday Feb 11, 2013
I Lit The Stage On Fire
Monday Feb 11, 2013
Monday Feb 11, 2013
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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I Lit The Stage On Fire
This particular story is an adventure that I had that an audience got to share. This is at the University of Utah a good thirty years ago. I really only had one interesting incident that endangered my life, but also threatened the entire audience. My wife and I were in "Romeo and Juliet". It was being performed on the main stage of the Pioneer Memorial Theatre. It's a great stage; it's got a loge; it's got a balcony; seats hundreds of patrons. The seats have the names of pioneers on the armrests, so that's why it's called the Pioneer Memorial Theatre. I'd never even been to a show in that theatre before; I didn't realize that's why it was called that.
The best news is that since it's an Equity stage, as students, we got paid - in the form of free tuition for the semester. We were acting with some really great actors I have crossed paths with again and again since then. It was a great experience and we still laugh about the night I lit the stage on fire.
Really. It was a small flame, but it was a small fire. The audience knew it was a fire. I knew it was a fire and had to make a decision.
I was playing Balthazar, just a small speaking part who is the servant of Romeo. I was really excited because the whole play turns on the speech I give to Romeo, telling him Juliet's dead and the audience would go completely silent anticipating how the play was about to become an incredible tragedy, caused by a simple speech by a servant who thought he was telling his master about his wife.
I felt really bad in this production for the guy playing the apothecary scene right after mine. He had memorized his part but since we were running a little bit long, cut the scene three nights before the show, and that was after all the costumes and sets had been built for this scene and I don't know how he felt, but it would have crushed me as an actor. I'm glad my part didn't get cut.
I was playing a scene with two of the leads, Mercutio and Benvolio, Max Robinson was playing Mercutio and if you saw his performance of that you know what an exquisite thing he was able to make out of a character who dies in the second act. These are two of Romeo's best friends and as Romeo's servant I was carrying this torch with these two guys as we searched for Romeo. Now, he's slipped off to see Juliet, but we're wandering around, boisterously making our way home calling out his name. The scenery department had built this great wall which was about 4 feet high, and we were to lean over the wall into the Capulet's orchard. The prop department had arranged for us to use live flame on stage, which is illegal now unless you have the proper training and certificates. But they had taken some gel sterno that's usually used for warming trays underneath food and stuck some in a tin can on the top of a stick. It was a great prop, and it was a little dangerous; sometimes a little smoky.
We were constantly having to refill the tin cans, and as the stuff heated up it would liquefy. So one night, as we leaned over the wall and called for Romeo, I stuck my torch on the other side of the wall to light the orchard as we searched for Romeo. The torch dipped, and the liquid sterno dropped out of the tin can into a small puddle on the floor, which would have been fine.
But it stayed lit.
Now there was a small flame; it's about 3 inches tall on the stage. We could see it; we could tell the audience could see it because there were some murmurs in the crowd. Everything got silent. We had a little short, stocky stage manager. She was ready to run on stage with her fire extinguisher when I motioned to the other two actors to lift me over the wall. I was going to stomp on it when I got to the other side of the wall, and if I climbed the wall on my own, there was a chance the Styrofoam would fall over and maybe get on the flames.
Scott Wells was playing Benvolio and he and Max Robinson lifted me up. They unceremoniously dumped me over the wall. I landed on my feet, and one of my feet serendipitously landed on the flame.
There had been an extended silence in the audience while this was going on. "Was it a real fire?" they're wondering. "Was it planned?" I looked down at my foot for the flame, and seeing none, I lifted up one of feet to look at it.
The audience started to laugh, and they knew everybody was all right. I started to climb over the wall and Scott and Max grabbed me and we beat a hasty exit.
When you do a live stage production, people can listen downstairs on monitors so they know what's going on with the show. So those listening downstairs were wondering what was so funny about Mercutio, Balthazar and Benvolio looking for Romeo. We'd never had any laughs in that part before. We decided we didn't want to get laughs that way again. So I made sure that every night after that my torch had as little liquid sterno in it as possible.
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Friday Feb 17, 2012
An Evaluation of English by Dane Allred
Friday Feb 17, 2012
Friday Feb 17, 2012
WORLD OF HURT
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Dane Allred's World of Hurt
An Evaluation of English
Shouldn’t we say evaluation the same way we say evaluative -- with a long a, evaluative?
After a careful evaluation, I found the evaluative conclusions to be correct.
It doesn’t sound right unless you use an English accent -- I found the evaluative conclusions to be correct.
But it also sounds right if Bobby Ray says it that way -- I found the evaluative conclusions to be correct.
I feel sorry for someone trying to learn English. Evaluation, evaluative, evalu-A-tive.
Shakespeare probably used an accent closer to the Appalachians than today’s clipped and proper English. It is easier to understand if Bobby Ray recites Hamlet.
Ta be or not ta be, that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposin’ end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
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SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Click on the player below to hear the audio version of this piece.Saturday Dec 24, 2011
St. George Groanings
Saturday Dec 24, 2011
Saturday Dec 24, 2011
ST. GEORGE GROANINGS
If you ever have the occasion to run a marathon, I would suggest you run the St. George Marathon. It's an incredible adventure and really, really fun. It seems like the entire city shows up to cheer you on, and the course is spectacular.
Racers are asked to gather at six A.M. in downtown St. George, and it is a strange sight to see people in running shorts and sweats gathered in October that early in the morning. It really looks like a lot of ghosts floating toward the same destination. They load you up on busses and drive you out to the starting line, twenty-six point two miles away.
As you are riding out on the bus, you can look around and see people older, younger, fatter and thinner than you. You get to wonder who will make it. People talk about other races they have done; if this is their first marathon; most of us look scared.
The bad news about being transported to the starting line is that you realize as you travel for 45 minutes that you have to run the entire way back, and you start wondering how much farther the bus will go. The farther the bus goes, the farther you will have to run. In my second and third marathons, I realized it was better to distract yourself somehow rather than consider the distance the bus was traveling.
When you reach the beginning of the race up Snow Canyon, you are a mile and a half higher than when you boarded the bus. That is both good and bad. At least you are running mostly downhill. During the next week, I will feel it in the bottom of my knees.
At the starting line there are massive fires burning at the side of the road. Music plays and porta-potties line the way. There are thousands of similarly crazy runners huddled around the fires since it's about 40 degrees or less outside. After a mile or two the temperature will feel great, but the race people do their best to keep you toasty before the race. Around the communal fire, the passion of running sparkles in the eyes of those gathered.
If you have worn sweats, they allow you to bag them up and put your number on them. Then they don't have to gather thousands of pieces of clothing along the 26 mile course since runners tend to shed clothing without a thought when they start heating up.
You throw your bag in the back of a big Ryder truck and the hundreds of bags are transported to the finish line and stacked by number on the tennis courts.
Then the race begins and if you have listened to instructions and followed the signs, you line up by the time you expect to finish. This avoids crowding the starting line, and when you are going to run for hours, being back from the starting line is not so bad. It might be 3 minutes before you even see the starting line after the gun if you run as slowly as I, and what's 3 minutes spread over 4 hours anyway.
Most of us don't start our watches until we cross the starting line anyway. That explains how our unofficial times are slower than the officially listed finishing time. We want the fast runners to get out of the way so we can concentrate on the rest of the course.
The only good advice I can give about running I learned from reading a jogging book, and it seems to work no matter what race I am running.
There is a volcano called Veyo in the first part of the race, which means we will be running uphill for a while. I run so slow uphill it may be mistaken for a stroll. I may be the only one who knows I am still running, which can be evidenced by my continually pumping knees. But I am not walking - I am running very, very slowly.
The hill usually kills most of us. But the secret to the hill is on the other side. We tend to have an established pace when we run on level ground, and most people keep up this pace on the downside of a hill.
But the advantage of gravity can give you a great boost when you are running a race. It doesn't take as much effort to run downhill, so most people rest on the downhill.
One of the greatest feelings in the world is to be doing well while others are struggling. With this technique, you really aren’t running faster, but just taking bigger steps.
It may be a small difference, but maybe what is eluding most of us is keeping up the same pace, but just taking bigger steps.
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Click on the player below to hear an audio version of this piece.Wednesday Dec 07, 2011
More Hiking Stupidity
Wednesday Dec 07, 2011
Wednesday Dec 07, 2011
MORE HIKING STUPIDITY
My journey up the mountain behind our home wasn’t just about bees and wasps.
Another surprise of the hike was on one of the crags that line the ridgeline. It was one of the topmost and had a large flat area where you could stand and look out over the entire Utah Valley, and even see some of Juab County. Just next to the edge of the outcropping I noticed a small brown circle which looked out of place in the natural setting.
After I looked closer, I could see that it was a penny. I picked it up and looked closely at the date. It was from the 1940's, and for all I knew, had been left there by some past hiker fifty years before me. I thought a second about leaving it there for some future hiker, but it was too irresistible to pass by. I only wished I had a new penny in my pocket to replace it.
To tell you how unprepared I was, I had taken a baggie full of ice and drank the water as it melted, and soon was out of water. Fortunately this was June, and as I climbed higher I found patches of snow where I could renew my water supply.
The really idiotic thing about this whole adventure is that no one knew where I was going. I hadn't left a note saying where I was, so if I got hurt there would be no rescue party. I had on the wrong shoes, and I hadn't brought enough water. But still I climbed on, because “it was there”.
I have always wondered about that phrase and mountains. We climb it because it is there. But I can tell you that it really is true. I kept climbing because there was more mountain in front of me.
Farther up the mountain I finally came to the first of the ridge tops of the mountains. From here it would be easy walking across the ridges from mountain to mountain, and at the top of each mountain there seemed to be another mountain which was just a little higher. If you are going to climb that far, you might as well reach the mountaintop. I knew I had to start down pretty soon to beat darkness before I got to the bottom. So I went to the second tallest mountain which was next to Buckley, I think. It probably would have taken another thirty minutes to go to that other peak, but I decided not to press my luck and started down.
The hike down was not the same path I followed up, since I had climbed a few small cliffs which were not higher than ten feet. I had fallen ten feet enough to not worry about falling that far, but I didn't want to be falling down then on purpose.
So, on at least two of the parts of the downhill journey I found myself faced with two decisions. Slide down the rock slide or walk through the thick underbrush.
My shoes had almost completely fallen apart by this time. The soles were flapping from the uppers, and they threatened to come completely apart at any minute. When I got home later that day I simply threw them away. They were totally thrashed.
Sliding down a rock slide on purpose is very fun, but I strongly caution anyone who hasn't survived at least twenty-five mishaps like I have, not to try this at home. The loose rocks had made a five- foot slope of small pebbles and stones. They were loose enough that as you stepped onto them, they would slide under your feet and you would actually be surfing the rocks. I had to be careful I didn't get going too fast, and from my skiing experience, I knew when and how to slow up and then when to stop. My ankles did get banged up by a couple of larger rocks, but I have never experienced anything like that since.
I made it back and immediately collapsed into bed. I had been hiking for seven hours, and had gone from about forty-five hundred feet elevation where my house is to about eleven thousand feet at the top of the mountain and then back down again. I don't know how many miles I hiked that day, but I had hiked over two miles straight up and down. I once tried to figure it out on a topographical map, and it seemed like it was about eleven miles total.
I slept for about fifteen hours straight and woke up about noon the next day. The family was away, so there was no one around to complain about how foolish I had been or how late I was sleeping.
Stupid? Yes. A great adventure? Absolutely.
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The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Click on the player to hear an audio version of this episode.Monday Nov 28, 2011
Three Kinds of Buzzing Insects
Monday Nov 28, 2011
Monday Nov 28, 2011
THREE KINDS OF BUZZING INSECTS
I don’t know why I thought I would be a good beekeeper. But once I read the classified ad that offered a complete beekeeping setup for one hundred dollars, I was hooked.
I plunked down the money and got bee boxes, a bee suit, and a beekeeping helmet. Now all I needed was the bees. Believe it or not, you can order bees through the mail, and you pick them up at your local post office. It was a small box filled with bees, and a special holding area just for the queen. I picked it up at the post office and started my beekeeping adventures.
It really isn’t hard to do, since the bees do all the work and you can harvest the honey of their labors. However, gathering the honey is something that was beyond me. Every time I tried to get to some of the golden nectar, I was repeated stung.
As secure as you try to make the outfit, the little stingers find a way in, even if you have tried to quiet them down with a little smoke.
I guess smoke makes them worried about a fire close buy, so they hunker down and act a little less frantic. I wish I had video footage of me running from the backyard to the front slapping myself in the various places I was being stung.
I finally was able to harvest some honeycomb, but had no idea how to extract the honey. I kind of sucked some honey out of the waxy honeycomb, and even chewed on a little of the sweet wax. But that was the only production from my beekeeping efforts, and I was such a bad beekeeper that either all the bees died by the next year, or they got tired of stinging me and left for sweeter pastures.
Another stinging insect I encountered resided in the hills behind my home. I have admired the mountains behind Springville for several years, and they have a beautiful ruggedness that calls for someone to climb them.
I was only wearing jogging shoes, and I guess I was thinking there would be a beaten path all the way to the top. But surprisingly few people have ever climbed any but the most popular mountain trails around here, and I doubt fewer than a hundred have climbed where I went. The top of the mountain is called Mt. Buckley, but I went sideways up the mountain from the subdivision above us.
This route probably added miles to the hike, but it allowed me to go up the mountain through a wide pass I had been looking at for years from my backyard. From my house it looked like there was a five foot tree in the middle of the pass, but when I got to it I realized this tree was more than 30 feet tall and about 50 feet around. I have no idea how long it had to be growing there in that dry wash to reach that size.
As I climbed the ridgeline looking for places to climb higher which didn't require scaling cliffs, I passed by an amazing hillside. The dirt had sloughed off onto the mountain below and there was a wide and a long bar of dirt facing south. It must have been fifty to seventy-five feet tall, and over 200 feet long.
But the most amazing thing about it was that it was completely inhabited with thousands or perhaps millions of wasps. We have had wasp problems at my house for years, and I used to try to eliminate them. Now I just tolerate them unless they are building nests on the porch. There is no way we will ever be rid of wasps there, because buzzing in front of me was the mother lode. None of them bothered me, and I determined not to bother them by hiking up a little higher before I went farther north.
Along the way I encountered a beautiful meadow full of yellow flowers and one huge plant with hundreds of bumblebee-like insects buzzing around it. They were huge, and I was seriously tempted to touch them, just to see if they were real. I couldn't resist, and so I put my hand up to the plant and the bees climbed on my hand and flew around my body. They didn't seem threatened, since I doubt they had ever had many encounters with humans at all. We were two hours away from the nearest other human, and all they did was buzz around me and crawl on my hands. I don't know what I would have done if they had stung me and I had suffered from an allergic reaction.
I think I like wild flying insects better than the domesticated kind.
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Click on the player below to hear the audio version of this episode.Saturday Nov 26, 2011
Film Follies
Saturday Nov 26, 2011
Saturday Nov 26, 2011
FILM FOLLIES
None of the film stories I'm about to relate have any sort of injury involved, so for the squeamish this may be your favorite part. If you have sadistic tendencies and have been enjoying the details of my pain and suffering, you may want to skip this section.
I decided late in life to start my cinema career. Early on I had gone to Suzy McCarty as an 18 year old, and she quite correctly told me there were way too many 18 year olds who wanted to be in films in her agency already. So I waited until I was 38, and then I started looking for film work.
I was working as an extra for a woman named Elizabeth and I can't recall the agency, but she did get me lots of jobs as extras in locally filmed TV commercials, television series and even some nationally released movies.
I recall one of the first films I worked on was called "Divided by Hate". It was directed by and starred Tom Skerrit, who decided like many others that Utah was a great place to film for not much money.
Where else could you get idiots like us, who were willing to show up and play cops and even do some of our own high speed stunts. I'm not kidding. We were a group of police trying to get a fundamentalist preacher out of his house, and for some reason this called for us to drive down a dirt road at seventy miles per hour while only feet from the bumper of the car in front of us. My car even caught on fire as the bubblegum machines used for my cop car were wired wrong.
We did get to see some cool explosions, and I was even mistaken for a real cop as someone pulled up delivering some bottled water for the cast and crew.
You really don't understand the power you feel in a uniform until you are dressed like a fake cop and someone asks your permission to park their car. In the middle of a field. Just until the water was delivered.
There were reasons for me to explain to this delivery person that I wasn't really a cop, and that he really didn't need to ask me for permission to park, especially in the middle of a field in Payson.
But the easy way out of this was to just tell him it was all right. It was a great feeling, and I didn't even have to fire my fake gun.
We must have looked imposing because there were about 15 of us fake officers standing around. The extra-coordinator decided we looked tough enough that she convinced someone to take a picture of us surrounding her. She told us to look mean, and aspiring extras that we were, we did our best to look surly. After the picture, she wrote a note on the Polaroid to her ex, stating that these guys would have something to say to him if he ever bothered her again.
I hope she mailed it.
This was an eye-opening event in my life, and besides the boredom of sitting around for most of the twelve hours the standard contract calls for you to be there, I was learning all kinds of new things. Like the way to get the birds in the tree quiet for filming was to shoot some blank shotgun shells next to the tree.
They would be quiet for a second and then start chirping again, usually after the scene was shot.
I got my first big break in this film as I was called back for second day of shooting over by the Scera pool in Orem. This time I was one of the guards, and I was to look tough guarding one of the non-descript doors to the compound. That was how the cinematographer shot it. When Tom Skerrit realized how boring the scene was, he directed me to be tying my shoe until he showed up at the door, whereupon I was to snap to attention. I thought it was a much better shot.
I even got to play the vice-principal once at my old high school, which would be disturbing to the vice-principal who was there when I was a student.
I sat in the former offices where I had done announcements as a senior, I looked up my father, my aunts and my uncles in the old yearbooks they had brought in for props. I laid the books out on the table and took a picture.
It’s a sweet memory from a place that no longer exists. A property improvement is now in the place of that old high school. I don’t know if I think it is better. Maybe just different.
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Click on the player below to hear the audio version of this episode.Wednesday Nov 16, 2011
Broken and Bloody
Wednesday Nov 16, 2011
Wednesday Nov 16, 2011
BROKEN AND BLOODY
I must have learned something about falling while I was in "The Desperate Hours". In this show, my job was to appear with a gun and as I was drawing my weapon to shoot the invaders, get shot and have to collapse as I did a forward roll down three wooden stairs. Then after landing face down on the floor, I would reach up and puncture a blood pack under my shirt and then be escorted out the house moments later with blood running down my chest and dripping between my fingers.
It was a pretty dramatic scene, but I found after playing this role that I really didn't like playing ingénues. While it is fun to be the love interest, there really isn't much challenge. I guess all of my experience falling during my formative years must have helped me stay uninjured during the show. Even though I repeatedly flew head over heels down the lightly padded wooden stairs, I never remember getting any bruises from the stair somersaults.
My luck wasn't always so good in college. I still have a kink in my neck from playing some pickup soccer. I really hadn't played that much, but there must have been someone I was trying to impress because I jumped up to save my side from a possible goal by kicking wildly in the air. The problem became evident when I landed on my neck. Then I decided soccer wasn't my game.
The only other problem I remember from Utah State was that I was getting a lot of roles as old men. Egeus (Hermia's father) in Midsummer Night's Dream and Fender in the Bespoke Overcoat. Egeus doesn't get what he wants, which is for Hermia to marry Demetrius. The funny thing is that both of these actors were at least three years older than I was. Fender was so old that he dies during the play. Luckily, I get to come back in that show and get the coat I've already paid for. But the future didn't look bright. I was playing characters who were so old they died of old age in the show. I began hunching over and walking slowly at times when I didn't need to, and one day as I was walking to the dorms, I noticed I was hobbling across the lawn like I was ninety. I stopped and looked around to see if anyone was looking. Then, just in case someone was watching, I ran the rest of the way. I’ve already told you about injuring my ankle playing a jester at a Tupperware convention. I made twenty-five dollars, but injured myself yet again.
After getting an ankle cast, I also got to see how fast I could run with one ankle immobilized. I made the mistake of showing my wife her birthday present before her birthday, and she grabbed it and ran down the street, pretending to open it. I think I believed she would actually open it since she had confessed to opening her Christmas presents early as a little girl and then carefully rewrapping them. I ran after her as fast as I could hobble, and as she ran faster, I tried to run faster, too. The cast broke right at the ankle as I grabbed the present and her.
The recasting of the ankle didn't get properly billed from the old Budge clinic and my wife and I got our first taste of a credit report problem. After I found out there was a problem I went and paid the bill which stopped my wife from opening her present early - - only ninety dollars.
Even when I do something as non-threatening as trying to start a tiller when I’m gardening, I usually find some way to injure myself.
Just this week I was trying to get the old Sears tiller started up. It was working just last week, and I was able to get some good tilling done. But when I tried to start it yesterday, it wouldn’t start. I’m pretty stubborn, so I like to keep trying when most people would have had the sense to stop.
The more I pulled, the more I wanted it to start. But it just sat there mocking me. As I got more worn from pulling the rope, I started to get careless.
This tiller has a handle that curves back to the front, and there is supposed to be a cap on the pipe handle. Of course, it was missing, and when I pulled hard but kind of sloppy, I rammed the back of my hand into the pipe. I scraped my hand pretty hard from the wrist to my index finger.
It’s okay. I’ve had fake blood run between my fingers. It hurts less than the real thing.
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SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Click on the player below to hear the audio version of this episode.Monday Oct 24, 2011
Swan Dive
Monday Oct 24, 2011
Monday Oct 24, 2011
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I was staying with my Dad one summer, helping him remodel a house. I was all right as a helper, but I really don't think I did much that made a difference, but it was nice to spend time with Dad. I was a scrawny twelve year old, looking for girls and hoping they were looking at me.
It was a fun summer and fairly safe, unless you count the incident at the local pool.
There was a girl there that day who I really wanted to impress, although what happened next completely wiped my memory of what she may have looked like. It doesn't matter that I can't remember; it's just that the traumatic events jarred them right out of my brain.
Just like every other stud at the pool, I did dives off the high dive, and not just the wimpy feet first dives. I could do a nice head first dive, and even managed sometimes to not slap my calves on the water so hard they would shine bright red. And make a stupid slapping sound.
I was watching closely to try to time my dives so we could meet innocently enough on the ladder of the high dive. I would have liked to have been behind her, so I could strike up the casual conversation, like "Hey, nice dive." But fate said it was not to be.
As I sauntered up to the ladder, she hesitated to speak to someone, and it would have looked stupid to wait for her to get on the ladder and then climb up after her. She probably would have thought I wanted to check her out as she was climbing the ladder, and she probably would have been right. So now that I had committed, I had to climb the ladder without hesitation or looking stupid.
As luck would have it, she climbed up right behind me. Maybe she was checking me out!
Then an inspiration struck me. Why not get to the top, and then let her go first like a true gentleman? Then I could chalk up some points for courtesy, and get to watch the heavenly dream walk past me on the board and dive in front of me. It seemed to be the perfect way to get a conversation started.
I got to the top. I stepped over to the side and told her she could go first. I was holding onto one of the silvery poles that flanked the board, to stop people from falling to the cement below before the dive. She was impressed and flashed me a smile that wiped all common sense out of my brain.
I was mesmerized by the glance, and it pulled me from my logical and sensible brain right onto the side that said "Follow". So I followed her. At least my feet followed her onto the board, while my two pathetic hands held onto the silver barrier.
As she dove, the board bounced down and she dropped into the water. My feet were still on the board as it traveled up boomerang-like from the sudden release of weight. My legs must have been locked because I immediately began an upward trajectory, with my feet passing my head before I knew what was happening. I was upside down on the rail, and the momentum carried me further. I was now swinging pendulum-like away from the board, on the other side of the rail. I had enough sense to hold on rather than plunge head first, but there was no way to keep my grip and simply hang from the rail.
With a slight twist of my wrists I was free from the rail, the board and any other solid object. I had dreamed of flying through space often by this time in my life, but there was nothing ethereal or pleasant about this flight. My body continued turning as I descended, and without further ado, I landed smartly on the cement - on my butt.
It was a solid landing. A good jolt to the spine, and if I remember, I landed on my right cheek. From 10 feet up, I had plopped onto solid cement, stopped only by the skimpy flesh of my rear. It really hurt, but again, miraculously, I was not seriously injured. People started to gather around to see if there were broken bones, or better yet, broken bones that were sticking out through my skin.
I didn't give them the satisfaction of helping me up. To add injury to injury, I slowly and painfully rose to my feet and noticed a gash across my arm.
I limped to the dressing room and went home.
I hope she was worth it. I can’t remember what she looked like. After all, I landed on my brain.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
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Click on the player below to hear the audio version of this episode.Tuesday Oct 18, 2011
Broken Leg
Tuesday Oct 18, 2011
Tuesday Oct 18, 2011
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BROKEN LEG
I dream funny things that could never happen. In the dream it seems so real, but when I wake up I realize how strange it all was. Some people put great faith in dreams, seeing them as prophecies of the future. I dreamed I was putting Christmas tree lights in the walnut tree in the front yard. My wife doesn't really like the white lights on it during Christmas, but I thought with just a few more strands, it would be just perfect. In the dream, I am stringing lights from limb to limb, and then I fall out of the tree. Maybe one of these days I will learn to listen to warnings.
So when a warm November night came, it was too much to resist. Armed with just the right lights, I climbed to the lowest limb and began the adventure. I had been much higher in the tree before, as much as thirty or forty feet off the ground, and had never encountered a problem. But just ten feet off the ground, I fell straight down into the flower bed, bending my ankle and putting enough pressure on the bottom of my leg to crack the fibula. I've fallen farther before, and landed harder, but I twisted my ankle a bit on landing, and slipped sideways.
I lay in the flowers for just a second and limped into the house quickly, hoping no one had seen me fall out of the tree. I told my wife I had just fallen and thought I may have broken my leg. But since I was hopping around on it, we both assumed I was all right, just like always.
I had been cast in the musical "Oliver" and we were having our first read-through and cast meeting later that morning. I went to the theatre and listened to the details, but told the director and a couple of the other actors I thought I had a broken leg and needed to go to the hospital. Everyone laughed even me, since I was just hopping around -- how could it be broken?
At the hospital I was in for a long wait, although the staff did give me some ibuprofen for the pain. A major wreck had happened on the freeway south of town, and the nurses and doctors were very busy taking care of people who were much more seriously injured than I was.
As a non-emergency, I sat in the emergency room for about six hours while they took care of the people whose lives were in danger. As they passed my cubicle, they must have thought to themselves, "Oh, yeah. It's that guy who fell out of his walnut tree while putting up Christmas lights. We'll have to do something about him eventually." With all the pandemonium going on and the people who were really hurting, I almost felt like sneaking out so they could focus on the people who needed it.
After a couple of x-rays, the doctors weren't convinced there were any broken bones. But after I told them there was a pain a little higher in the leg than they had been looking at, another x-ray showed a hairline crack in the fibula. I had broken my leg falling sideways after landing, and the twisting had sprained my ankle.
I was expecting a cast, but everyone told me the bone didn't carry any weight, so it would heal fine by itself. I moaned enough that they gave me an ankle brace I wore for a couple of days.
The real worry they had was the ankle. I had to visit an orthopedic specialist, and as I looked at the team photos of past football stars hanging on the wall, I was duly impressed. Unfortunately, the doctor wanted to put a screw or pin in my ankle to hold it in place!! He said he would like to wait for a couple of weeks and check it then, and to keep wearing the ankle brace the hospital had given me. I was starting to be worried. I was almost afraid to ask the doctor about the broken leg, fearing another pin or screw higher up in the leg.
My luck held. After two weeks I went back and the doctor said the healing in the broken bone was amazing, and that the ankle was going to be fine.
I have since taken down the lights on the tree using a ladder and being very careful. The tree is old and it may not be around many more years, but when I cut it down, I think I want to save that one special limb, which broke one of my limbs.
Maybe I will carve it into a walking stick.
Or maybe a pair of crutches.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Click on the player below to hear the audio version of this episode.Tuesday Oct 11, 2011
Automotive Repair
Tuesday Oct 11, 2011
Tuesday Oct 11, 2011
AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR
Why does society allow someone like me who has dozens of accidents to keep driving? Another automotive adventure was with the Mazda RX-7 which we had bought from my mom. Debbie drove the car during her cancer treatment and even jumped it over some curbs somewhere when she was on morphine. After the chemotherapy, she thought the car smelled like the drugs they had injected her with, and she couldn't drive it anymore. I got to drive that car into almost total collapse, and loved every minute of it.
When it first decided to quit working on me, I was driving up the hill in Payson and had just made it past Smith's. I was in the left lane ready to turn, and almost to Payson High School, when a black cloud emerged from under the hood. I was in the middle of the road, and the car had stopped running, but not smoking. I looked ahead and there was nothing but smoke, and a quick check behind me showed the coast was clear. I quickly decided to back down the hill against traffic, go across the southbound lane while northbound, and swing the car into the Smith's parking lot. Coasting backwards downhill was challenging and the turn into the parking lot was also in reverse, so I hoped anyone pulling out was paying attention. I coasted to a stop right in a parking spot. The smoke continued to pour out. I grabbed the window washer fluid from the back and popped the hood. The engine was in flames. It was from a broken PLASTIC gas distribution piece which is mounted right on the engine. I’ve heard this is a common problem with these cars. The rest of the windshield washer fluid I had in the bottle was just enough to put it out, and the bag boy who had ran from the store with an extinguisher was amazed I had put it out myself.
I had to wait to visit a couple of different auto shops to finally get the car fixed, but the good news is that it did run again. Did you know that if your mechanic parks your car illegally on the street, you may still be expected to pay the fine? At least that’s what I learned in Provo court. I even got the chance to drive it one entire winter without heat and to replace the heater control unit the next summer. Eventually it wouldn't pass inspection and I had to sell it.
I was parking it illegally on the street and moving it every few days. I wanted a thousand dollars, but it probably wasn’t worth that much. Here’s a negotiating tip. Show up with cash.
The two Hispanic gentlemen who showed up to buy were two hundred dollars short, but as soon as the money came out of the younger one's pocket, in CASH, I knew I had seen the last of the Mazda.
It made me think back to the good old days when I could fix the stuff I drove. One night during my high school years I was going up Parley's Canyon to Vernal. I was cutting pine poles and pine posts for extra money, and Dad had helped me buy an old truck and put an old bed on it. As I neared the top, the accelerator flipped to the floor but the engine went to idle. No matter what I did with the pedal, the engine just putted along. I had to pull over to the shoulder and try to figure what was going on.
Without a flashlight.
As I climbed into the engine, I could get the engine to rev by pulling on the throttle, but the accelerator wasn't working. That means there was something wrong with the linkage. I could feel where the problem was, and it seemed to be a part missing between two holes. Now if only I could find a piece of wire, and join those two parts, then I could be on my way. If only I could find a piece of wire.
Without a flashlight.
Luckily it was dark and deserted enough that night I don't think anyone saw me crawling along the freeway groping in the gravel for wire. But then I found a piece!
I fixed it after another half hour of cursing the darkness before it all worked. I made it to Vernal that night, and I don't remember ever buying the correct part for the engine. It was working fine, and I was convinced that if it ever happened again, I would be able to fix it, even in the dark I wonder what kind of demand there is for blind mechanics. I really think I could do it if I had to.
.
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SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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