Categories
Manly Stuff Paint me surprised by this Real men

LIFE IN THE ASYLUM by Will Dabbs MD

     I was working nights in the ER at the Level 1 trauma center in Jackson, Mississippi. For a time Jackson, Mississippi, was, per capita, the most violent city in America. Places like Chicago and Detroit had larger body counts, to be sure. However, if shredded meat per unit population is your metric, Jackson eclipsed them all.

I never did a full shift in the ER without at least one gunshot wound. My personal record was seven. Once you got the holes plugged these unfortunate folks were surprisingly pleasant company, often even polite. The shooters weren’t typically psychopaths, not by a long shot. To an individual, they all just had poor impulse control.

The capacity to control one’s emotions is arguably the single greatest predictor of success in life. It isn’t money or race or social status. Most everybody I encountered shot up in the ER angered easily. Prisons are replete with such people.

Our hero was maybe eighteen or nineteen. For reasons that should soon become obvious, documenting his birthday was not our top priority. Our first inkling something was amiss was a frantic radio call from the ambulance. This young man had run afoul of some unlicensed pharmacist over turf, the exorbitant price of illicit pharmaceuticals, or the conflicted affections of some young lady. Eventually somebody slapped leather. He had been shot about fifteen minutes before reaching the ER.

It took five of us to hold him down. This guy was thoroughly jacked—think an anorexic Arnold Schwarzenegger circa 1984. He was also liberally festooned with gang tats. As they rolled him off the truck he was fighting like a Norse berserker—screaming, shouting, and cursing at all of us. All he wanted to do was to go home. He told us as much with great verve. How much of that was exogenous drugs, an innately fulminant personality, the intensity of the moment, or some toxic combination I shall leave to the philosophers.

We finally got him strapped to the bed and went to work. Once he realized he was not going anyplace he calmed down enough to speak. More to serve as a distraction than anything else, I innocently inquired who had done this to him. It didn’t matter at all. The perp was the cops’ problem, not ours. However, anyone in extremis benefits from a little redirection. They all wanted to share their stories. If I could get him focused on ratting out the guy who shot him he might not fight us so fiercely if we needed to start a central line. Panting from the exertion, he gasped sincerely, “It was Some Dude.”

The entire room erupted in marginally-restrained laughter. We weren’t trying to be cruel or make light of this poor guy’s sordid state. It was simply that his answer was so monotonously predictable. They all claimed some variation on this theme—“There I was, sitting on the front porch drinking iced tea and reading the Bible to my blind grandmother, when Some Dude jumped out from behind the bushes and busted a cap in my ass. It was dark and he was wearing a hoodie, so I couldn’t tell who it was, but he was packing a Glock nine…”

They all said that. If the local constabulary could just lock up Some Dude then Jackson would be instantly transformed into Mayberry. Mr. Dude was a bloodthirsty brigand indeed.

We got his clothes cut off easily enough. This guy was well and truly ripped. He had clearly logged some serious time with free weights. The external stigmata of his injury were deceptively benign.

There was a single black hole in his anterior chest roughly equidistant between the sternum and the right nipple. There was surprisingly little blood. There was also no corresponding exit wound.

Bullet holes are a special kind of black. They’re a bit like that inky dark spot between the stars on some warm spring evening bereft of overcast. Bullet holes seem to suck in both light and hope. This one was also sucking in a little air.

In my experience, thugs use whatever assortment of ammo they’re able to steal—sometimes it’s high-end, sometimes it’s crap. Cop bullets would reliably shred dudes. Thug rounds most typically just punched tidy little holes. However, just like real estate, the name of the game was location, location, location. This location was bad.

I’m expanding the timeline a bit. What happened here happened quickly. We were all working frenetically to keep this kid from dying. However, we were soon to be overcome by events.

I knew this guy for maybe ten minutes total. During that brief time he underwent the most remarkable transformation. When he rolled into the ER he was profane and venomous. He snarled at us, cursing and thrashing. He told us in no uncertain terms what he was going to do to us if we didn’t cut him loose and just let him go home. And then something creepy happened.

Gradually his demeanor thawed. He began begging us. He offered us money or drugs, anything we wanted, if only we would not let him die. This went on in the background for a few minutes, and then he ignored us altogether. That’s when he began to pray.

Maybe the guy grew up in church. Perhaps he had a Godly grandmother. At this point, our hero started praying like a nun at a Black Sabbath concert.

“Please, God, don’t let me die! Lord God Jesus, please don’t let me die! Oh, Jesus God, please don’t let me die!”

His voice got higher, and he struggled against his restraints. Then he arched his back and blew great gouts of blood out of his mouth and nose. It went all over the place. And then he died.

We worked on him for a while after that, but there was no fixing that much broken. We postulated that the round had likely perforated his pulmonary vasculature. These large-caliber vessels carry vast quantities of blood, particularly when you are properly tooled up. Most of your chest is empty space. Every second after he had been shot, he had been bleeding into his lungs.

A typical adult human carries around five liters of blood—two and one-half two-liter Coke bottles. Lose a liter of that in twenty minutes, and normal people are flirting with unconsciousness. Make that two liters, and it becomes life-threatening. There is surprisingly a lot of space in your lungs to park blood.

The support staff in such a world—the nurses, respiratory techs, and the like—are all of them maniacs. That’s the only reason anyone might voluntarily work in a place like that. They goaded the surgical residents for not cracking the guy’s chest right there in Trauma 1. However, the surgeons had all done this before. That’s not something sensible folk aspire to do.

I washed up and took a minute, actually about five. While we were dealing with our condemned thug, life went on in the ER. That meant sewing up lacerations, stabilizing broken bones, and valiantly battling the scourge of venereal disease one shameless John at a time. However, my heart wasn’t really in it. The rest of the night was a bit of a blur.

I had a half-hour drive to get home. I didn’t want my family to live in the kind of place where I worked. The parts of Jackson I traversed going home looked like Mogadishu. Some of the street walkers and drug dealers I saw in the ER likely plied their trades around my daily commute. By the time I got home the sun had come up. I pulled into my garage utterly spent.

My first stop was the laundry room. There I found Samantha, our golden retriever rescue. She was a simply magnificent dog—affectionate, loyal, and without a mean bone in her body. The fact that she was in the laundry room meant that she had been a distraction. My wife homeschooled our three kids. Whenever Samantha’s presence began adversely affecting the kids’ school work, she got banished. The same thing happened to me from time to time.

This time I needed her. I rubbed her ears and accepted her unqualified affection with gratitude. That’s the great thing about dogs. They love you when you’re tired, grouchy, and smell bad. Unlike humans, canine love does not come with preconditions. In this case, Samantha was showing an unnatural interest in my shoes. That’s when I realized it.

My sneakers were liberally doused in human blood. The vile stuff had also gotten into my socks. We typically gird up with goofy little booties and such, but this evening there had been no time. I shed all of it, scrubbed everything down in the sink, and put my shoes out in the garage to free Samantha from temptation. Now finally barefoot and suitable to reenter the land of the living, I stood beside the closed door and just listened.

On the other side of the door there was laughter and happiness not befouled by the world I had just abandoned. The kids didn’t always like school, and my wife was a serious teacher. However, there was so much love there. I felt vaguely like a man crossing a great desert who finally had water within his grasp. With that I pushed into the house.

The kids jumped up and ran over to grab my legs. My wife tolerated the interruption. I hugged each of them in series and then my bride. That was when she innocently queried, “How was your night?”

How do you answer that? I had just put my sneakers in the garage so the dog wouldn’t be drawn to the human blood that defiled them. My family did not need to be befouled by such as that. My wife never signed up for it. I just smiled and said fine. When you live long enough in an asylum, eventually it starts to feel like home.

Categories
Manly Stuff

Now that is what I call a Man Cave

Categories
A Victory! Manly Stuff Real men that’s too bad” This great Nation & Its People Well I thought it was neat!

Reminds me of my son & I on the evenings of the 4th of July

Categories
Hard Nosed Folks Both Good & Bad Manly Stuff One Hell of a Good Fight Paint me surprised by this Real men Stand & Deliver War

I found this on the net & I was pretty amazed on how many ships were sunk at Guadalcanal

Categories
A Victory! All About Guns Allies Manly Stuff One Hell of a Good Fight

Minden was one Hell of a Good Fight!

This why the Regiments that fought at Minden wear roses on their hats on Miden Day Grumpy

Categories
Hard Nosed Folks Both Good & Bad Leadership of the highest kind Manly Stuff Real men Stand & Deliver

Vince Coleman: The Spontaneous Hero Written By Will Dabbs, MD

Vince Coleman was just a normal guy, right up until
he was called upon to do some very abnormal things.

 

On the morning of December 6, 1917, the French munitions ship SS Mont-Blanc sat fully laden with a cargo of TNT, picric acid and guncotton in the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia. The ship also had a load of highly volatile benzol stored in barrels lashed to the deck. The vessel was desperately trying to leave the harbor to transport its critical cargo to the World War I battlefields in Europe.

German submarines were a menace, and the Canadian government had erected sub nets across the mouth of the harbor. The nets were closed at night. Extricating from the busy harbor during the limited periods of daylight this time of year was a complex and difficult task. At the same time as the Mont-Blanc was making its exit, a Norwegian cargo vessel called the SS Imo was also transiting the channel.

This was a really crowded place. Ships ranging from ocean-going freighters to local tugs puttered back and forth, jockeying for position. Larger vessels were helmed by experienced local pilots who were well familiar with the harbor and its eccentricities. However, at 0845 that morning, the Imo struck the Mont-Blanc a scant glancing blow. The collision speed was estimated at one knot. That’s only 1.15 miles per hour.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, was a thriving seaport before a horrible maritime accident in 1917 blew the place to pieces.

Damage to both ships was trivial. However, the shock was adequate to tip several drums of benzol. These broke open and spilled volatile liquid across the deck. The benzol ran down into the bowels of the ship until it encountered an errant spark. The subsequent fire soon raged out of control.

The captain of the Mont-Blanc ordered his crew off of the ship. The now-empty vessel drifted slowly until it beached itself at Pier 6 near Richmond Street in Halifax. Curious onlookers flocked outside to take in the spectacle. Several nearby vessels responded to the fire, spraying the stricken ship with water. However, there was no hope.

While the image of the burning ship was mesmerizing for countless hundreds of bystanders, a few among them appreciated the true gravity of the situation. Among them was Vince Coleman, a 45-year-old train dispatcher for Canadian Government Railways (CGR).

The area in the immediate vicinity of the blast was leveled.

The effects of the detonation were felt for miles around.

Coleman and the Chief Clerk William Lovett were working in the Richmond Station, only a few hundred feet from Pier 6 where the Mont-Blanc now rested beached and aflame.

A sailor raced up from the pier and warned the two men that the Mont-Blanc was a munitions ship and that the risk of an imminent explosion was profound. Coleman had time to run. However, the No. 10 overnight express train from Saint John, New Brunswick, was due into the station in 10 minutes. There were 300 passengers onboard.

Lovett called the CGR terminal agent to report the danger, and both men fled. However, Coleman appreciated that this phone call was likely inadequate to stop the incoming passenger train.

As a result, he turned around and ran back into the station. He subsequently banged out the following message along the rail line to stop all trains heading into Halifax, “Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbour marking for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye, boys.”

At 0904, the fire reached the cargo hold on the Mont-Blanc. The subsequent blast wave propagated out from the ship at 3,300 feet per second. The core temperature of the ship reached 9,000 degrees F. The explosive force was the equivalent of a 2.9 kiloton nuclear detonation. At the time, the Mont-Blanc blast was the largest single man-made explosion in human history.

This picture was taken moments after the Mont-Blanc
exploded and leveled the Halifax harbor.

The explosion destroyed everything within an 800-meter radius. The blast wave leveled buildings, sheared trees off at the ground, twisted iron railroad rails, and pushed nearby ships up onto dry land. The resulting tsunami propagated across the harbor and wiped out the community of Mi’kmaq people who lived in nearby Tufts Cove.

As a result of the catastrophe, 1,782 people perished. Among them were both Vince Coleman and William Lovett. There were a further 9,000 injured. However, thanks to Coleman’s desperate telegraph message, the No. 10 passenger train was successfully stopped at Rockingham Station roughly four miles short of the terminal and Pier 6. The conductor of the No. 10 later attested that it was Coleman’s telegraph that stopped the train in the nick of time. As a result, 300 passengers and crew survived.

We all want to be remembered as heroes. The archetype dons blue spandex and flies off to do battle with digital monsters.

Out here in the real world, however, heroes are not nearly so flashy. Sometimes, they are train dispatchers just going about their day. Normal folk, when faced with abnormal circumstances, are often capable of stepping up to perform amazing feats of courage. Vince Coleman was one of those rare heroes.

Categories
Art Manly Stuff Well I thought it was funny! You have to be kidding, right!?!

An example of one of my family reunions

Next day Newspapers list among the survivors are ….

Categories
Manly Stuff You have to be kidding, right!?!

82-year-old man attacked by bobcat on Wilcox County hunting land by Erica Thomas

Claude Strother is an avid outdoorsman. He hunts and fishes and has always kept a journal of his experiences.

In his 82 years, he has learned to become an expert turkey caller. His friends and family take him with them to call.

Since 1975, he has had 247 kills, including four Royal Slams and eight Grand Slams. Strother has helped his loved ones take over 75 turkeys by doing the calling.

Even when one of his friends takes a turkey, he jots it down in his journal.

His latest story is one he will never forget.

“It was big,” Strother said. “It was a monster.”

It isn’t a big buck or a monster bass Strother is talking about, and this time, he was the one being hunted.

Last Friday, Strother decided to take a short turkey hunting excursion in Wilcox County. It was there that a bobcat attacked him.

“All of a sudden, I thought somebody hit me with a baseball bat,” Strother recalled. “Knocked me forward and I looked back and nothing, then I looked forward and this giant bobcat was trotting off.”

Strother wasn’t seriously injured, and he was able to take photos of his injuries. The bobcat’s claws left gashes in his face, close to his eyes.

Although his head was sore for a few days, he said he plans to go right back to the same spot and call for turkeys. His inspirational story serves as a reminder never to let fear get in the way of life’s adventures.

Categories
Manly Stuff Real men Soldiering War

What I call the before you go into the field and then about 3 months later

Categories
Manly Stuff Soldiering The Green Machine

The Fat Electrician Reviews: 11 Bravos