Florian Kicks The Bucket
In 1961 I graduated from La Grange High School. I took Vocational Agriculture (AG) for three years. In one of these three years, I took welding as one of my subjects. I didn’t really weld much but I learned the basic fundamentals from books and brochures. After graduation, I lived at home and worked for my Dad working on the farm and helping him move houses. He always said he was a farmer and a rancher and house moving was his third occupation. But he moved or leveled about 100 buildings a year so that kept him quite busy. While using heavy equipment, it kept breaking so he was spending a lot of time going to town to Bohot Welding shop to get stuff welded. So I convinced Dad to buy an electric welder.
The only building available was a four-car garage with closed doors. The left portion housed our tractor; the next was our tire changing shop with all kinds of junk in it. On the right side was the blacksmith shop. The only logical room available was the room that housed the large air compressor. There was also a permanent work table with a large vise on it. I did most of my welding on the outside, going as far as my cables allowed. Next to the table with the vise on it, we had our electric gas pump and an underground 500 gallon gas tank. My Dad also kept a 2½ gallon metal bucket under the work table with a little bit of gasoline in it. When he worked on oily or greasy parts, he used gasoline to wash his hands. This setup proved to be an ideal situation for an accident waiting to happen!
Sure enough, one day I was attempting to weld a small piece of metal to another. I was busy doing so with my helmet in place. I felt both of my legs getting really warm. It didn’t take long to raise my helmet and realize that my bucket under the table was on fire. In my panic and haste I pulled it from under the table and found out the bucket got too hot to handle with my hands so I just “kicked the bucket” out of the shop! In doing so my right leg ended having 3rd degree burn from my ankle to below my knee. I could have eliminated a lot of pain and suffering if I would not have panicked and just found a way to move that burning bucket with out it spilling over my leg.
Note: In 1965 Dad built a nice welding shop far away from that original “mine field”!