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The Fence

 

     The other day I was talking to my neighbor while putting up a chain link fence. He mentioned that an auger would save me a lot of effort and time. Not wanting to spend the extra money to rent one and only having about ten holes to dig, I used a post hole digger. My dogs loved being able to run around in the back yard once I had it up. Thinking back on my neighbor's comments about an auger reminded me of the time dad and I put up a new fence to keep the cows and horses from getting off the property. They had started getting through the barbwire fence and dad believed that an electric fence would work better.

     We had a lot of Cedar trees on the property and dad cut several down. I removed the bark with a bark stripper then dad split them giving us several posts. Once the posts were stripped and split, we had to dig the holes. The land was a little rocky and along with posthole diggers we also had to use a bar to loosen up the rocks that were in the way. This was a lot of work and took some time to complete. We strung the wire connecting them to the insulators then dad hooked the charger up and turned the juice on. The fence work and the animals remained inside the fence. Having put it up did cause another problem though.

     The area where we put up the fence didn't have a water source and dad had to build a trough. He decided that he would make it automatic by putting a toilet float in it. He got a large tub and we took it to where he wanted it set up. This required us to dig a trench to run a water line to hook it up to. Naturally I got to help and a couple of days later after much use of a pick it was done. Dad laid the waterline down and I covered it up. He then went about hooking up the toilet float.

     I wasn't required to help with this and I was getting bored. As I mentioned earlier there were a lot of rocks in the area so I picked up a few and started throwing them out into the field. They'd kick up small clouds of dust where ever they struck and I'd imagine they were tiny explosions. I even was adding a few sound effects.

     I had thrown several rocks when I heard my dad grunt, so with a rock still in my hand I turned and looked toward him. He seemed angry and scolded me for throwing rocks saying that if I continued I'd be punished. Not wanting to incur dad's wrath I stopped and went over to where he was working. Dad was having a little trouble getting the float hooked up and was twisting around a lot trying to find the right position. I heard him grunt again and he stood up looked around then at me with an embarrassed expression and said one word, "Sorry". Dad was a man of few words at times.

     What dad thought was hitting him in the head wasn't a rock at all. Now dad was bald headed and most always wore a gray ball cap to protect his head. This cap had a metal button on top and when he was leaning over this cap button came into contact with the electric fence. This sent a jolt of electricity through the cap right the cap onto his head and must have hit him rather hard. I guess dad realized after getting hit in the head a second time and I wasn't throwing rocks there must have been another cause. I was off the hook about the rocks and vowed that I'd avoid ever getting into the electric fence.

Randall J. Beers
© April 13th 2000

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