finally i am over it all, well not quite

Part 4

Conclusion – things that go bang

planting trees on reclaimed stripmine land at hellbender park , beaver creek

        I am sure he meant, and I am assuming it was a he, shotguns, pistols, etc..  But when someone says that to me, one of my first thoughts is something like dynamite or a really big bang where you see hundreds of thousands of tons of earth lifting into the air and crashing over against a strip pit wall. Boulders the size of trucks hurtling through the air and the rumbling noise, much like a thunderstorm rumbling below your feet as the dust settles and the landscape is forever changed . All the flora and fauna temporarily killed, that took millions of years to evolve and is piled in stockpiles to be spread in a thin layer to reseed later. Trees, some older than most of us, earlier chipped or lumbered. The devastation on the likes you have never seen before, hiding just up the mine entrance road. And now this need to pull coal from the ground to light our lights, and power our days managed to get me, to shut me down in my early days and permanently change my way of life, some of it for the good, and some for the worse.

     The pain was persistent and running down both legs , and I had a time getting out of the semi-trailer and kind of half dragged myself to the office and went in to see my supervisor and informed him I was hurt , and needed to see a doctor and that I was headed home. He headed to the back of the office and talked to the site manager, and after about fifteen minutes returned, and asked how bad the pain was. I told him it hurt like hell, and it was affecting my legs. I needed to go to the doctor.

     His response was that they had a delivery this afternoon of about 3 ton of dynamite and he was wondering if maybe that I sat around and did some light duty work that I may feel better by the afternoon, and they would send someone with me to help unload the boxes of dynamite.

     Again I asked him to go to the doctor and again he came back with the lame excuse that if I left my job, I may be in jeopardy as they had no one else qualified to drive dynamite to make the delivery. He said as soon as I was back that I could go to the doctor if I wished. I told him I would try. And he went and found me some paperwork to do and I sat in a chair till around noon as I had been at work only about a half hour, when whatever it was in my back snapped as I didn’t know at the time.

     Around noon they had the truck loaded and reports of an approaching snow storm and hazardous conditions was expected and conditions there at work were already bad. I expressed an interest in seeing the doctor again and forgetting the trip as the roads was bad and I was justified in not making the delivery due to road conditions. Again I was left with the impression that the Amish needed their dynamite to blow up stumps in Berlin on a snowy day as he was handing me my paperwork to head out the door.

     He said as I was about to walk out the door, “Oh by the way, have a safe trip out there.” I kind of leaned in the door way allowing the snow and wind to rush through and just looked at the dumbass, and shook my head and turned and embraced the wind.

     I climbed in the truck and a friend of mine Dave Gintz was riding with me and I asked him if everything was checked out. He was concerned about me and my back and rightly so. I briefed him on what they had said to me and how it might be my job if I was to not make the trip. I could hardly shove the clutch in and engage the gear as we took off. The roads were as bad as the warnings and the closer we were to Berlin out Rt. 39 the worse the road was. This was back before the new four lanes went in. trekking slowly as I never knew when you might encounter a slow car, or a horse and buggy heading up the slow winding roads , and the lack of salt and slippery roads made travelling in a truck especially worse when hauling dynamite to boot.    A car sliding sideways on these hills was a possibility and I without the momentum of travelling forward would be dead in the water in the middle of the road. At least I had part of a load and weight over the rears for traction, coming back I would be empty and conditions would be worse. I discussed that maybe we should just go in the ditch and see how Atlas is going to respond to that when the State Highway Patrol hears that they forced an injured driver on to the road in a known snowstorm with a load of dynamite on. Dave and I laughed about it, but I would never have intentionally driven off the road to prove a point.  

       I managed to get to my destination and we unloaded and at times returning I felt the truck sliding as I maneuvered it up and down the hills at almost a crawl by now. The roads had been salted but slush was building up. It was making my trip harder and my legs weaker as I drove along. Finally I managed to pull the truck into the yard and we parked it. Dave asked if I need a ride to the doctor. I said thanks no, I just drove a truck full of dynamite 60 miles through the snowstorm ,  surely I could make it 7 miles to the doctor in a car. I went into the office to turn in my paperwork and they still wanted me to sit around and wait till quitting time. At this point I was dragging my right leg as my back had swollen and the pain was worse than I had ever experienced.

     I told them I did as they asked but I needed to see the doctor as soon as possible that if I waited he wouldn’t have office hours and I would have to go to the hospital to seek treatment. They finally let me go after telling me to make sure that I checked out early on my time and to note my timesheet. They never did pay me for the time I went to the doctor. And I had to provide my own transportation as they surely were not prepared to lift a finger to help me.

      The doctor x rayed me as soon as I arrived and sent me to the hospital that night telling me I had ruptured a disc and that I needed traction. i called my house and I was married at the time and told them I needed to go to the hospital and to get things ready. In an hour I was at Aultman and in a bed in a room with weights hanging off my legs. I had my wife call my foreman and explain why I would not be at work tomorrow and she did and he said that I was to call when the doctor released me. The doctor never released me for a year and a half it took to get me to any kind of a point that I could drive again as a commercial truck driver.

    I called them about returning to work and in the meantime by now I kind of had an idea what their response was going to be after denying my Workmen’s Compensation for over a year requiring me to obtain a lawyer and in the meantime force my family on welfare and food stamps to get along with a meager living allowance and no money to buy anything. Didn’t really figure they gave a shit and they didn’t. But I needed to go back and see what their response was before anyone would help me. They said at that time the only job they had available was a semi driving job and that they would check me out on it.

     It was a waste of time as they had no intention of hiring me back on, as these guys had found a way to get rid of me. I was given the chance but it was up to my foreman as to my driving abilities and he said that I wasn’t a good enough driver to operate a semi. Good enough to carry dynamite on a public road with passerby’s much like you in a snowstorm with bad road conditions and a bad back.  Did I mention the bad back? But suddenly not good enough to drive for them, anymore. I should have dumped that truck in the ditch and hauled the dynamite into the field and then called the State Highway Patrol , I am sure Atlas would have done anything  that day to make it all go away. But I in fear of losing my job didn’t realize I was going to lose it anyhow, so I tried to help them out and myself I thought at the time and do the job.

volunteers all trying to make a difference on some reclaim

      Their response was typical of most businesses and now there is some legislation that will allow one to seek punitive damages if the employer acts negligently in causing your accident. They exacerbated an already inflamed injury by trying to postpone my visit to the doctor.  My lawsuit was filed before this legislation took effect. Admonished by Workmen’s Compensation privately in the case files was the worse they received. In the meantime I lost my job , my house , my ability to bring home a decent pay , my patience with just about everyone close to me, and started spiraling even further down with prescription drugs and booze.

     I managed to finally take control of my life after about 2years after my accident after receiving help to return to college to be retrained. At first they said I was untrainable due to my experience. But finally after convincing them I was unable to return to truck driving full time that it was the worst thing for a back on a log term basis, and then they figured I was worth a shot and finally helped me get into Civil Engineering at Stark Tech. This was where I started to finally turn myself around. Eliminated some problems and moved on with my life.

      Since that day from hell 125 though there is not one minute I haven’t felt pain of some kind in my back. You learn to accept and move on. I just hope in reading all this and what went on with me , that some manager or some worker or some friend,  will after having been injured , seek help to see how bad you are before playing games with your life or someone else’s. It wasn’t just my injuries that day that was affecting me but it was everyone on the road that day and there was plenty, as well my captive friend Dave that I allowed to be put in danger not knowing the extent of my injuries, and driving down that snowy road. For what?  I still lost my job by no fault of my own. My life was wrecked for a while and  for what? So Atlas‘s profit margin was still in the black.

    Stuff happens when you work and it is all how you react and your employer reacts, that either makes it a problem or a solution. Solutions are always much better as they require cooperation of both parties. I had no choice but to lawyer up when they refused to pay me Workmen’s Compensation. I was just trying to live. They were pretty well off and flourishing.

     Also don’t know what someone does with more than one gun, I guess sit around and clean it and hope you can use it someday to kill something. I mean what other good are they. You set up targets to shoot holes in them. They represent death and destruction to me much as the real bang of dynamite signals to mark the destruction of thousands and if not millions of acres annually that are being turned upside down and inside out in the name of progress. It all signals mankind’s death of our planet to some extent. Whittle a piece her and a piece there and eventually we have nothing to whittle on. If buying guns is your thing, have at it, to each his own. But to me I believe in living, not only myself but everyone around me. Even my enemies or the guy that buys things that goes bang. We all should live a full life as much as the animals that are out there. We are all part of something bigger and we are not making any more planets. So we better take care of the one we have, as long as we have it. How many things do you need that go bang?         

     Apparently quite a bit, I see it all the time on craigslist. Seems to me with all the crime, Craigslist might be the first place a sheriff sitting alongside the road talking on a cell phone might look to find what was missing last night. A maybe something that goes bang.