This was posted on Badger Pond by Joe Pack.

With his permission I have added it here.

Responding to Peter's bio below, I couldn't help thinking about a true experience from my teenage years. I just had to share it with friends.

When I was 18 years old I took a job helping a family friend build garages. Matt, the fellow I was working for, worked like he was fighting fire. He was down off the ladder, had a bundle of shingles on each shoulder and was on his way back up by the time I was down and to the stack. The only thing he did faster than nail boards was talk, which was non-stop. This was a good thing, since Matt was a lay preacher at our little country church. When he got worked up that man could have made the devil himself serve him ice water on a silver tray.

One day we were putting decking on a roof. Matt must have gotten his nail holding hand hung up, because his hammer holding hand slammed down before the thumb was out of the way. With Matt's 26 oz. framing hammer (spiked face, don't you know) and his "one tap to set, one smash to drive home" technique, you can guess the result. Blood literally flew when he "drove her home." And the first words out of Matt's mouth were "Thank ya' , Lord, Thank ya' Lord, Thank ya' Lord!!!)

Immediately I went to take care of him, helping stop the bleeding and offering to take him to the hospital to get it taken care of. He would have nothing to do with it! "We got work to do," he said. "Get me a board."

We worked until lunch time, Matt doing more work with one hand than I did with two. When we sat down to eat lunch, I just had to ask him about his choice of words when he smashed his thumb. "Matt, how in the world could you start yelling 'Thank you Lord' when you just made hamburger out of your thumb?" He replied, "Well, that's easy, honey (Matt called everybody 'honey'). I was thankin' Him for all the times I DIDN'T hit it!)



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Ian () Robertson
"We do good turns every day"