November 24, 2007

"So then I realized I was in trouble."

Matter of fact recognition of what you have to do to survive.

Just started cutting the meat away from the bone...

Wow! What a great guy!

11 comments:

PeterP said...

No way am I going to play that video!

And anyway who was doing the filming while he was doing the cutting?

Shouldn't the cameraman have stopped shooting and helped the guy?

I blame YouTube.

Ruth Anne Adams said...

"And that's when I knew I was in trouble..."

That moment came way later for him than it would have for most folks.

Unknown said...

Well, maybe his definition of trouble was different. He had already been cutting off his hand when he got to that point :)

Joan said...

Peter, the video is entirely safe. Uplifting, even. This isn't (yet) "I Shouldn't Be Alive," which routinely freaks me out.

He really is a great guy. What a fantastic attitude.

Dad Bones said...

In the 1950's I used to see a lot of farmers wearing silver prosthetic hooks where their hands/arms used to be, or I'd see hands with any number of fingers missing. The rollers on those old pickers would pull them in before they could let go of the jammed stalk they were trying to pull out.

Safety programs and the retiring of the old pickers (which Parker unfortunately had) pretty much eliminated that problem.

john said...

Reminded me of the slot canyon hiker in Canyonlands Utah, where a disloged rock pinned his arm. Stuck for three days, he finally broke the bone and cut himself free.

His take was interesting: if he had succeeded in cutting his arm off the first day or two, he would have bled to death. By day three his arm was dead and cutting it off at that point was somewhat easier, and probably safer, because at that time rescuers were already looking for him. He was found a few hours later, as I recall.

Like this farmer, a very uplifting story. I was hoping he would do advertisements for Barlow Knifes in Outside magazine.

The Counterfactualist said...

Despite the kaleidoscopic variety of the multi verse, there are no parallel worlds in which I would ever for my livelihood farm. Were it to be the case, though, that a mechanical contraption gnashed my hand to pulpy hash as I set about my farming duties, I imagine I would refuse to draw my pocket knife for the purpose of sawing clean my arm from its snare. I would simply die. Thank God the Lord didn't make me a farmer.

Bob said...

You'll see stuff like this more in rural areas than urban/suburban areas, for a couple of reasons: 1. there's less opportunity to work with heavy equipment capable of maiming in the city, and 2. most city dwellers are not accustomed to carrying pocket knives, having been disarmed in school and oftentimes prevented by city ordinances.

We often forget that, in addition to guns, the various branches of government have been remarkably successful at demonizing and restricting knife carry in this country.

ricpic said...

Why didn't you show the video on Breitbart of the cop punching the professor? Now that was inspiring!

PeterP said...

That moment came way later for him than it would have for most folks.

"At this point... I must have lost my presence of mind..."

The Bricklayer's Story by Gerard Hoffnung.

Anonymous said...

This doesn't happen as much in the city in factories also because most machinery that can maim a person has equipment guarding and lockout/tagouts that force workers to turn the machine OFF before working on it. But I knew to turn off the lawnmower and the weedeater before unjamming even before I worked for a manufacturing company, so maybe it's not that complicated.

Still, some people can persist. A guy at the company I used to work for was determined to lose his arm, so instead of turning off the jammed machine as he had been trained and instructed many times to do, he got on the floor, slid his arm underneath the chain-link fence that guarded the feeding mechanism, and tried to pull the jammed box blank out. The machine yanked his arm off. And the company had to pay lots of workers' comp.