Only my arm would have been torn off

Drilling with a psychopath

We were tripping in one night near Taber. Alberta. Though I did not realize it at the time, hindsight has informed me that our driller was a psychopath.

So there we were, tripping in. I was spinning the chain. When the psychopath, a very strong man, slammed down on the Johnson bar, sparks and the smoke of burning steel pin-wheeled from the pipe and chain. The chain ripped around that pipe. We were pushing the envelope, speed-wise.

There was some machine on the floor that was leaking hydrolic oil all over the place. Including my chain.

So, I put the four, (or was it five?) wraps on the pipe and the roughneck stabbed the pipe. I whipped the chain around the pipe and the driller pounced on that Johnson bar with a power only psychopathic rage could summon.

The entire length of chain splipped through my hands in a split-second. It ripped around the pipe as the loose end clipped the roughneck’s helmet twice before it landed a blow on the back of his neck. The makeup tongs, also connected to the chain, flew back toward the driller and hit him in the knee. Sadly, he was not seriously injured.

I didn’t think about what happened at all. But I guess it stuck in my mind, because twenty or thirty years later that memory flashed through my mind. That was when I realized how close I came to dying that night, had that chain caught me in a cat ass situation. Either my arm would have been ripped off, or my whole body would have been yanked around that five-inch pipe and squashed to pieces by those four (or was it five?) wraps.

As I play that scene out in my head, I think it’s unlikely I would have been sucked around the pipe, although, stranger things have happened. No, it would not have been that bad. Only my arm would have been torn off.

Thankfully, that chain gave me mercy that night.

*****

Retired Taxi driver Hans Weinhold is listed in his biography as simultaneously a Welfare Recipient at Senior’s Welfare; Self-Employed; and also, a Climate Scientist at BS Detective Services.

Confessions of a Hamilton Cab Driver, available on Amazon in five languages.