Shoulda Been An Ophthalmologist

My friend and fellow professional, Dr. Richard Elgin, has written a book. A memoir of his "hitch" in the Army. The title of the book, "Shoulda Played The Flute", speaks to a choice that Dick was given; Fly helicopters in Vietnam or play the flute in the Fort Polk Army Band. I believe the title speaks for itself.

I have stated that my Dad, Leamon H. Riggs, was a "Jack of all trades, and Master of most of them". Whatever he put his hand to, he usually was successful at. So... Since Ralph and I were accomplices in most of these endeavors, it just follows that we could have turned out to be most anything! A carpenter, a real estate agent, a tax preparer, an auctioneer (I think I still have the training records), an auction clerk, maybe a "horse trader". He ran a successful "Moving and Storage" business and a "Second Hand" store. He bought, repaired and sold tractors and farm equipment, built and sold trailers and various other kinds of mechanic work. By working with my Dad, I acquired a myriad of skills, that have stood me in good stead throughout my life.

We had a shop full of tools. Wrenches (box-end, open-end and pipe), screwdrivers (straight and phillips), sockets (standard - no metric), hacksaws, hammers, mauls, a welder and... a cutting torch. For the mechanically challenged, this is a "cliff-notes" explanation of how a cutting torch works. The handle, like the one in the picture above is connected to bottles of Acetylene Gas and Oxygen by two hoses with knobs to control the amount of Acetylene and oxygen delivered to the torch tip. The Acetylene is ignited at the tip by a striker (sparks) and then oxygen is slowly introduced to make a blue/white flame at the tip. This flame is held to a piece of thick metal you want to "cut" and will heat the spot where you want to start the cut. When the "spot" is red hot, a lever on the torch handle is pressed which introduces a rush of oxygen at the tip, which superheats the "spot" and basically melts the metal and blows it away. You keep the oxygen lever pressed and as you move along the line you want to cut, it continues to superheat and blow the metal away in a line approximately 1/8" to 1/4" wide. Pretty neat huh?!? I watched my Dad do this hundreds of times and observed how he adjusted the knobs, heated the metal, when he pressed the lever... And... the very first time I ever picked up the torch, I knew what to do and did a decent job of it!

The job of metal cutting was not without its hazards. Dad wore safety goggles and leather gloves but with superhot pieces of molten metal (we called it slag) being blown around, things were bound to happen. Such as... One day a piece of slag fell into my Dad's open (Andy Griffith style) boot top. Wowser! That was ONE time I saw my Dad get excited!

I have never really figured out how it happened but one day, Dad had a serious encounter with some slag. As he was cutting, something got in his eye.

What followed is not a mystery - I was there...

Dad worked around for a while with his eye watering and hurting. I guess he figured that eventually, whatever it was would just wash out. He would pull out his hanky, wipe the tears out and try to keep working.

Finally, he had had enough. "Ray, I've got to get whatever this is, out of my eye."

My thought was "Good, good! Let's go to old Doc Hayes and git'er'dun!"

That's not what Dad had in mind...

He pulled an old chair out of the shop into the sunshine and sat down in it. Then he leaned his head back, held the affected eye open with his fingers, and said... "See if you can tell what it is in my eye."

In the bright sunlight I examined his eyeball and in a few seconds, I saw the problem. As he was using the cutting torch, a small piece of the slag got behind the safety goggles, burned onto and stuck to his EYEBALL! Dad ALWAYS wore the safety goggles so to this day, it is a mystery how this happened.

I told Dad what the problem was and I'm thinking "For sure now, we are going to the doctor." Didn't happen...

Dad merely reached into his pocket, pulled out his Case pocket knife with the razor sharp blades, handed it to me, and said... "Get that off of my eye."

Shoulda Been An Ophthalmologist.....

My Dad was not mean and even though he would get frustrated at us boys, I never heard him raise his voice. He was stern, somewhat taciturn but could and did find humor in life.

But... It never crossed my mind to refuse to do what he told me to do.

With trembling hands, I opened the long, sharp blade on his pocket knife.

With the fingers on my left hand, I held the eyelids back from his eyeball, exposing the tiny piece of slag burned onto the eyeball.

I forced my right hand with the knife to be steady...

And carefully scraped the offending little piece of slag off of Dad's eyeball....

In a few seconds, Dad sat up, blinked his eye a few times, wiped the tears out of the eye with his hanky and said "Well, I think you got it. Now we can go back to work."

Shoulda Been An Ophthalmologist.....

I have told this story numerous times and it still seems almost unbelievable. My Dad basically entrusted the eyesight in one of his eyes to a gangly, pimply, immature teenager! However, as I look back at it through the lens of thirty-five plus years, I realize that Dad had more confidence in me than I had in myself and he knew me better than I knew myself...

Ralph lost the key to the lock on his storage unit so he used Dad's old cutting torch to cut the lock off! (I just noticed his "Andy Griffith" boot style!!)