Stephenson Tales

My father was a remarkable man. Elsewhere in these tales I have told how he turned the cottage at Gull Lake around. He was always very self-reliant and always did all his own work on the places where we lived. He put in the electricity in the cottage, rebuilt the second floor interior, put on a new roof, installed electric pump for the water system, built two closets, put in the toilet and shower. Somewhere along the line he was doing SOMETHING and broke his left wrist. He looked down at it and saw that his hand was somewhat off to the right as the joint at the base of his hand had separated from the radius and ulna of his arm. He put the side of his arm against the side of the house, doubled up his right fist and hit the out-of-place bones as hard as he could putting the bones approximately in their proper positions. Then he passed out cold on the ground from the pain. He never regained the full use of his left hand, and the joint was always a bit to the right of where it should be. Go to the Hospital? Get it set in a cast? Dont be silly. On his eightieth birthday we were visiting Mom and Dad at Gull Lake and Mom got very nervous and reported to us that Dad was on the peak of the roof mending a small leak. Typical! The next day Mom and Dad drove up to Harper House for a Sunday visit. It was a very hot day and we all went swimming off the end of our long dock. Dad went out on the dock to the end and put his right hand on top of the post of the crosspiece holding up the end of the dock and did a one-handed hand stand upside down on that one hand. He held it for a minute then flipped himself off and did a neat dive into the lake. He came up, spit out a jet of water, looked up at us all standing there on the end of the dock with out mouths open. "Not bad, for an old man," quoth my father.

Composed 24 February XXMIX

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