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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
January 22, 2012
Published as Family History in a
Gramma Letter dated January 21, 1997.
© 1997 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Ahi, 1977
© 1977 by Bud Grossmann
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BOYS AT PLAY
Tuesday, January 21, 1997
Dear Gramma,
Fishhooks are designed to stay stuck. You know this. There were times, when I was a kid, when I had to ask your help in prying a barb out of the meaty mouth of a thrashing, spiky-finned, slick-skinned, bullhead. Brute force and long-nosed pliers were the things you took to your task. I’m glad fish express their complaints so quietly, or someone might have reported you to the S.P.C.A.
Once on a Sunday afternoon I watched an emergency room team take a hook out of human flesh. I expected the medical method to be more elegant than wrestling a fish on the plywood bottom of a rowboat, but the differences turned out to be slight.
A Humpty-Dumpty fall—not a fishing accident—had brought my wife and me, with our son, David, to the E.R. He was four years old at the time. We had been at a birthday luau in Kaneohe when David toppled off a lava rock wall about as high as my waist, and thunked his head on a concrete walkway.
He wasn’t bleeding and he didn’t lose consciousness, but I thought we should get some x-rays despite the assurances of another luau guest, a silver-haired, well-dressed gentleman wearing a pager on his belt. “He’s okay. He’s going to be fine. This little guy’ll be just fine,” the man murmured as he ran his fingers over the scalp of our wailing and sobbing little boy.
“Sir, are you a physician?” I asked.
“Me? No. I’m not a doctor. But I was in ’Nam. I saw head wounds all the time.”
Fran and I drove David to the nearest hospital. A pickup truck arrived at the emergency room entrance at the same time we did. Its cargo was a man in short pants with a fishhook in the calf of his left leg. Gramma, this guy had been pierced by nothing so ordinary as those No. 6 hooks you and I used for catching bullheads, but by a gleaming crescent of stainless steel big as my palm, with a shank half as thick as a pencil. The hook’s eye was snugged up against the skin at the back of the man’s lower leg, and the barb had erupted out the side, trailing a nasty knot of glistening meat.
The fisherman and David were assigned to adjacent beds, separated by a filmy white privacy drape. Dave’s vital signs were stable, so the doctor went first to the fisherman. I asked if I could watch; no one objected.
The man’s pals told their story. Several miles offshore they had hoisted a hundred-pounder into their boat. The fish hit the deck in such a frenzy that the hook flew from its mouth, took one bounce, and in an instant did its damage. There was no dodging it, they said.
“Hmm!” the doctor mused. “I wish I had bolt cutters to nip this barb!”
“I have a pair in the truck!” said one of the fishing guys. While he went to get it, a nurse painted the wounded leg with antiseptic and injected it with Novocain. When the fellow returned with the monstrous scissors-like device, the doctor swabbed the blades with alcohol and positioned them on the hook.
“This should do the trick,” said the doctor, admiring the size of the bolt cutters. But when he tried to squeeze the handles, they wouldn’t budge.
“Let me try,” offered a big-armed fisherman. With a grunt and a groan, accompanied by a sharp gasp of pain from the injured man, he sliced through the stainless steel.
The nurse and I were standing at the other side of the bed, with our backs against the privacy drape. Something sparked between us. We turned and saw that the sparkle was the barb—it had missed our faces by inches and had stuck in the drape at our eye level.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” said the doctor, shaking his head with embarrassment. “I haven’t done one of these in a while. Proper procedure,” he explained, “is to place a towel over the situs to prevent a projectile from causing a concomitant contraindicated condition.”
We all chuckled with relief, even the wounded guy.
I’ll save the rest of David’s story for another day, dear Grandmother, and bid you for now goodbye.
Love,
Buddy
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Thanks! BUD GROSSMANN
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This page was updated Sat, Jan 21, 2012, 10:30PM CST
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© 2012 by Bud Grossmann
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