by Doug Draper
His plan worked except when his father had time off from his job at the dealership. On those days, Ben helped his father fix cars, trucks, and anything mechanical for a variety of businesses. Al often struggled to complete these projects as quickly as he wanted and became irritated when that happened. At those times, Ben served as the anger release valve, which kept him on his toes—ready to jump out of the way when his father’s frustration led to a tool being thrown at him.
Ben made it through the summer without many bruises, but one of Al’s flare-ups delivered a blow that soared to the top of the pain meter. While working in the family’s barnyard, Ben struggled to rake a mass of wet, heavy cow manure into a pile at the edge of the corral. He needed to move the manure to a place where he could load it into a wheelbarrow and take it to the dump zone. Being small, he lacked the strength to move the large amount of manure quickly. To offset his disadvantage, he dragged it one “pie” at a time.
Through this approach, Ben made progress in getting the job done, but it happened too slowly to satisfy his father. After seeing Ben’s technique, Al walked briskly toward him, muttering profanities as he came. Ben anticipated a head slap or kick in the pants. Instead, Al reached around him and grabbed the rake out of his hands.
“Let me show you how to do it. Why do you always make the simplest things look so hard?”
Before Ben could move away, Al yanked the rake backward and drove the end of the handle into Ben’s belly. The blow caught him by surprise and pushed deep into his relaxed stomach muscles. It felt like he had been impaled on the rake. Ben cried out in pain before remembering that he should never give that reaction.
“Quit crying, you sissy!” Al shouted and then roughly pushed Ben out of the way, so he could rake the manure at a furious pace.
“There, did you see how easy that was? If you put your back into your work and give it more than a halfhearted effort, you’ll get a lot more done.”
Without warning, Al finished his demonstration by throwing the rake at Ben. After dodging the flying tool, Ben scrambled to retrieve it while watching his father in case he had more “discipline” in mind. Instead, Al cooled off and merely ordered Ben to “get with it.” That ended the lesson in how to rake cow manure.
CHAPTER 22
At school, Ben showed up every day expecting pain and humiliation. At home, he received the same and usually worse. To keep going, he tapped into the occasional moments when “fun Dad” showed up. On those days, Al tossed aside his view of Ben as the “stupidest and laziest boy in the world” and trusted him to help achieve the impossible. One of them happened that summer.
Al had offered to trim three branches from a tall oak tree next to his father-in-law’s two-story home. Joe and Ben volunteered for the project and rode in their father’s truck for the short drive there, chatting about how much fun it would be to work as lumberjacks. Ben begged his father to shout “Timber!” when the branches fell.
When the “lumberjacks” arrived at the house, Grandpa Thorne pointed out the branches to be cut. He needed them taken down because they touched the house’s roof and rubbed on the shingles when the wind blew. Al studied the situation for a half minute and then announced confidently that his crew could handle the job.
“Boys, get the saw and axe. We have big things to do.”
Al decided to start with the two smallest branches as a warm up. To reach them, he drove his truck under the tree as close to the trunk as possible. Next, he placed a long extension ladder in the bed of the truck, which allowed him to easily reach the first branch.
To cut the branch, he used a bucksaw with a three-foot blade. After getting the cut started, Al tied one end of a long rope to the middle of the branch and then tossed the other end to Joe.
“Now, boys, I want you to stand behind the truck and pull on the rope as hard as you can when I give you this signal,” he said, waving his left hand above his head. “That’s when you’re going to play tug of war with the tree. You need to pull the branch away from me and into the back of the truck. Are you ready?”
Joe, the optimist, said, “Sure. We got it.”
Al resumed sawing the branch while Joe and Ben gripped the rope.
“Dig your feet into the ground,” Joe said. “Good footing is the key to winning at tug of war.”
Ben followed his big brother’s advice, twisting his sneakers on the patchy grass until he could feel the firm, flat ground underneath them.
In less than a minute, the branch cracked, and Al gave the signal to pull.
“Go!” Joe shouted, and the boys leaned back, tugging the branch with all their strength. Popping free, the branch fell into the truck while the boys’ momentum carried them backward to the ground.
Al celebrated the achievement by waving the saw over his head.
“Bravo, boys! We did it!”
Joe and Ben giggled, feeling giddy that they had pleased their father. Grandpa Thorne watched the victory from a safe distance behind the truck.
For the middle-size branch, the crew repeated the process. This branch fell faster than the first one and bumped Al on the way down, causing him to lose his balance. He dropped the saw and grabbed the tree to avoid tumbling into the truck bed with the branch. The ladder briefly danced under his feet before he stabilized it. The saw fell and bounced off the side of the truck, leaving a dent and scraping the paint.
Al pulled up his shirt and showed his sons a large, bloody gash on his ribs and stomach where the base of the branch had speared him. “Boys, this is what happens when you do a halfhearted, miserable job. I wanted you to pull it away from me, not into me.”
It surprised Joe and Ben that their father didn’t jump off the ladder to give them a kick in the behind. Al often made the boys pay when they had nothing to do with him getting hurt and, this time, they might have been able to prevent his injury.
Ben recognized that they had struggled with the second branch because it weighed much more than the first one. Based on that experience, the size of the next one deeply concerned him, but it didn’t deter his father. Al fully expected his sons to defy the laws of physics and worker safety.
Grandpa Thorne shared Ben’s concern and said, “Al, I’m getting a bit worried about what you’re doing. Perhaps I should hire a professional.”
“Nonsense,” Al said. “The boys just need a little more grit. Besides that, we only have one more to go and I’m barely bleeding.”
Al studied the third branch—the jumbo version—and decided that he needed to move the truck to a better position. Even then, the ladder wasn’t tall enough to reach the third branch. When Al described his plan for getting higher, Grandpa Thorne grumbled that he couldn’t watch “this insanity” another minute and went into the house.
Undaunted, Al pressed forward with his plan, setting up the ladder on the truck’s cab to gain an extra four feet of height. Now, Al could reach the jumbo branch, but the cab’s rounded, slick surface provided an unsure foundation. Ignoring the risk, he climbed to the top of the ladder—about twenty-five feet off the ground—with the bucksaw and rope in hand. There, he reached out as far as he could and tied one end of the rope around the branch. He tossed the other end to Joe.
“Wrap the rope around your waist and tie it in a knot that you’re sure won’t slip,” Al said. “You’ll need to put all of your weight into pulling this one. I don’t want it to land on the cab and knock my ladder over. From this high up, a fall could be the end of me.”
Joe tied the rope around his waist and then positioned his little brother to stand between Joe and the branch. Ben would provide some pulling power, but Joe would be the anchor—the one his father counted on to keep him from falling.
“That’s looking good,” Al said. “Now, give it all you’ve got.”
Satisfied that they were ready, Al began sawing the branch. It took about five minutes before the branch cracked. Al paused briefly to see if the branch was ready to go, but it remained firmly in place and he resumed sawing.
A loud crack suddenly ripped through the yard, and the branch started to fall before Al could give the signal to pull. Startled, he shouted his favorite cuss word and grabbed the tree trunk when the falling branch swung within inches of the ladder. The severed end missed the cab and fell toward the house. The leafy end, which rested on top of the house, kept the branch from falling straight down. Like the fulcrum in a teeter totter, the edge of the house lifted the leafy end skyward and sent the heavier end plummeting toward the house.
When the branch fell, Joe echoed his father’s profanity and ran away from the branch. Ben went with him. Their teamwork slightly changed the direction of the branch, but they quickly lost the battle to a bigger, swifter foe.
As the branch swung toward the house, its unrelenting momentum jerked the rope out of Ben’s hands and knocked Joe off his feet, dragging him toward the house. Joe flew past Ben, sliding on his back. He had tied a first-rate knot because the rope remained tight around his waist.
While Joe didn’t control the branch, his dead weight dragging on the ground caused it to slow down enough so that it didn’t slam into the side of the house. The swinging motion ended less than a foot before the branch hit the house and the heavy end fell straight down. It momentarily looked like a small tree planted at that spot. The impression didn’t last long because it began tipping over toward Ben.
From having dodged airborne tools, the slowly falling branch proved to be no match for Ben’s quick feet. He dashed away from it, peeking over his shoulder to make sure it would miss him. Ben escaped, but when the branch slid along the side of the house, it snapped a black, plastic-encased wire that ran between the house and a nearby telephone pole. A short section dangled from the house while the rest dropped to the ground next to Ben, looking like a long, black snake.
Al reacted with rapid-fire instructions. “Joe, untie the rope from you and the branch. Ben, get the electrical tape, needle-nose pliers, and dikes out of the toolbox—pronto!”
Ben glanced at Joe, pleased to see that he had escaped being hit by the branch. He jumped over the wire and ran to the truck where the toolbox was buried under the first two branches that had been cut. Al scrambled down the ladder, not showing any concern for how much it wobbled during his descent.
Based on Ben’s experience in fetching tools, he knew that his father planned to strip, splice, and tape the severed wire at the break. Relieved to find all three items quickly, Ben ran with them to his father who was positioning the ladder against the side of the house. Al extended the ladder to the point where the wire had been snapped.
“Joe, hurry up with the rope! I need one end of it tied to the wire.”
Joe worked on untying the rope from around the branch. He had already removed it from his waist and Al grabbed that end.
While Joe tried to complete his task, Ben handed his father the electrical tape and tools. Growing impatient, Al told Joe to “hustle up” and then dashed to the broken wire on the ground, dragging the rope behind him.
When he bent down to pick up the wire, Ben shouted, “Stop! You’ll get electrocuted.”
“Relax,” Al said. “It’s just a telephone line. I might get a bit of a tingle. That’s all.”
He proved his point by tying the rope around the wire without getting zapped. “And keep your big mouth shut. I don’t want your fuddy-duddy grandpa coming out here and asking what’s happening. We need to fix this problem quickly and quietly.”
While Al climbed the ladder, he used the rope to pull the broken wire back to the point where it had previously been connected to the house. Then, he exposed the wires inside the phone line, twisted them together, and wrapped the splice in electrical tape. Finishing the job in minutes, Al quickly moved the ladder while Ben put away the electrical tape and tools. Grandpa Thorne walked outside moments later.
“I’m glad to see all three branches down and nobody is dead,” he said. “Please come inside for a piece of pie to celebrate.”
“That’s tempting, but your daughter is waiting for us to come home for our family dinner,” Al said. “We should get going as soon as we’re done loading this last branch into the truck.”
Seeing the disappointment on Ben’s face, Grandpa Thorne promised to send a pie home with him. After finishing more of what Al called “waste-of-time chitchat,” the crew went back to work. Al cut the large branch into three sections and Joe and Ben loaded them into the truck. Al tied the ladder to the top of the truck cab and wrapped more rope around the mass of branches in the truck’s bed. The load looked ready to fall out if the truck went around a corner too fast.
Before leaving the house, Joe complained about the rope burns he received when being dragged across the yard. He lifted his shirt to show the red marks across his belly and back. Al looked at them briefly and then unveiled his wound again.
“Look at this. I got it worse, and you don’t hear me complaining. So toughen up and stop whining! And let’s keep all this a secret, especially the broken telephone line.”
Joe and Ben nodded in agreement, understanding that being quiet would make things better for them. When their mother asked how it went, Joe and Ben replied “Fine.” She smiled and didn’t ask for details or notice Joe’s rope burns or Al’s bloody gash.
About two weeks later, Joe and Ben faced Grandpa Thorne’s questions about how the telephone wire outside of his home ended up being cut and then wrapped in electrical tape. “We were having problems making phone calls after you boys were here with your dad for the tree-trimming project,” Grandpa Thorne said. “When repairmen from the phone company came out to see what was wrong, they told me that it looked like someone had cut the line and then taped it together. Because of the poor job splicing the broken line, our phone stopped working. Do you boys have any idea about what might have caused that problem?”
Joe skillfully shrugged off Grandpa Thorne’s questions with a simple “Don’t know.” Ben came up with a story that seemed plausible to him but not his grandfather.
“When we were working here, I saw three men from the telephone company cutting wires in your neighborhood. I asked them why and they said that they were checking the wires for rust. I bet that’s what caused the problem.”
CHAPTER 23
Growing up with a trained mechanic gave Joe and Ben firsthand experience in how to use tools to build and repair many things. Some of their best lessons came through working side-by-side with their father on innovative projects that taught them valuable lessons in creating a design to best fit the need and selecting the right materials to implement it. One of the most memorable learning experiences resulted from their participation in something else with a huge influence on their lives—scouting.
As with most Mormon families in the 1960s, the Bakers embraced Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. Rachel helped her sons get off to a fast start by serving as their den mother when they were Cub Scouts. In her role, she helped plan a chariot race to create fun competition between the three dens in their cub pack.
Al’s face lit up when Rachel mentioned plans for the race during dinner and he jumped into design mode. “I have exactly what you need—an electrical wire spool that would make perfect chariot wheels. I’ve been saving it for something special.”
His designs usually involved junk salvaged from a construction site or vacant lot. When driving around Alma and neighboring communities, he would hit the brakes and back up his truck whenever he spotted something that might come in handy later. That’s how he found the wheels for the chariot race.
After finishing dinner, the entire family walked to Al’s dump site behind the barn where he pulled the spool from underneath other garbage. He smiled while presenting the spool as if it were a priceless heirloom. “Can you imagine the chariot we’ll be able to build around these wheels?”
Rachel moved a little closer to the spool and examined it carefully. She knocked on the top piece, treating it like the door of an outhouse and grimacing at the thought of what she would find inside. “
Well, it certainly would be solid,” she said. “But I don’t understand how you can turn this into a chariot.”
“There’s nothing a man can’t accomplish with a little know-how and a generous scoop of elbow grease. Boys, am I right?”
Joe and Ben excitedly nodded in agreement, already imaging themselves as Ben-Hur winning the race with their magnificent chariot. Their father’s plan sounded ideal and they wanted to get started that night.
“It seems a little too heavy for the boys to pull,” Rachel said.
“There’s your negative thinking again,” Al said in a harsh tone, tossing an old board across the junk pile to express his frustration. “You never get it. Quit second-guessing me. You might be stupid, but I’m not.”
Rachel looked away to hide her tears while Joe and Ben wrestled the spool out of the garbage pile. They pretended to not hear the insult or see their mother cry. At times like these, they had learned to shut their mouths and put smiles on their faces.
The next evening, Al and his sons started working on the chariot. Al’s inspiration—the spool—resembled the small spools used to hold sewing thread, but it was giant-sized and had held heavy duty electrical wire. While driving home from the station one evening, Al along with his sons had found it on the side of the road where the power company had left it after replacing a line.
“Is it all right to take this without permission?” Ben asked.
“Of course, we’re doing the power company a giant favor,” Al replied. “They would have to pay someone to haul this junk away and we’re doing it for free.”
Despite Al’s justification for taking the spool, he still painted over the highly visible warning on both sides about it being property of the power company. When doing it, he said, “We don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression about where this came from.”
Breaking off the ends of the spools created two wood discs about four feet in diameter and two inches wide. Al connected the wheels with an axle and created a cart that would sit above the axle for the rider. While doing this work, Joe and Ben struggled to hold the wheels in position for their father while he connected the other pieces of the chariot to them. It became obvious to the boys that the weight of the wheels would make it difficult to pull the chariot when completed. Not wanting to be accused of negative thinking, they buried their concerns.