'Home' from SeanM: So a Funny Thing Happened...

So this one needs a bit of 'splaining.

So why is this seemingly dead man by a wire fence evocative of "home"? Pull up a chair, youngins, Pappy Sean has a story from the old days on the farm!

So the missus has a great idea, let's surround the scrub lot with a T-post fence so we can let the sheep and goats nibble it down to a golf course. Serves two purposes; first is it provides some free food for the livestock; second, it allows us to clear out the scrub and nettles to access all of the old tires and scrap lumber the previous tenants left behind. The catch, because there is always a catch, someone has to pound fifty+ T-posts into the ground to hang the fence from. That's where I come in.

So there I am on a hot humid Ottawa summer's day, pounding away with the thumper, setting each eight foot post two feet into the ground. Now, being the thrifty farmers we are, we've got out hands on a good batch of used T-posts. T-post goes into the ground, the fencing is secured with three strands of locking wire, move over 10 feet, start over. However, the missus couldn't get enough used posts, so she had to buy some new ones. And bless her soul, she found a new type, with some built in hooks to hold up the fencing while you tie it in place.

A 'T' Post

So on the very last "thump", on the very last post, I manage to unseat the thumper, and bring it down with all of my might on the top hook. The thumper (the thirty pound, grey, steel tube with handles seen discarded by the fence) ricochets back into the next most dense object in close proximity - my head.

While I did not lose consciousness, like the subject in my somewhat stylized terrain piece, it was a close thing, as I do have a small spot of missing memory. I must have thrown that tube 10 yards, cursing with all of the words I had learnt up to that point as a sergeant in the Army, then making some new ones up. I felt like I needed a tall glass of water, as sweat was dripping into my eyes, but it was a much more crimson fluid that was leaking from my melon. Head wounds are the worst, so stitches were required, and showing up in the sergeant-major's office to explain why the top part of my haircut was missing did not make matters better.

So, not a diorama of some poor soul cut down while emplacing wire, but my efforts to get one step closer to becoming the War Amps poster child for Farm Safety.