My first thought was, man this is going to hurt. Then almost without hesitation you get this sinking feeling in your stomach. I called to Doug via my two-way radio and told him that we would need to get an ambulance out here as soon as possible there had been a terrible accident. More about this later now let me tell you about the rest of the crew.

It was my first winter working with Doug’s crew; they were an experienced crew that ended up being one man short of a full crew, so it was decided by the powers that be that I go down to join them. I was excited to be going; I had been working as a site supervisor in Des Moines, Iowa and that job was nearing the end for another year.

Doug’s crew consisted of Chuck, a quiet black military man who had been working with Doug long

I picked up my left arm with my right arm and put the cuff of my shirt in my mouth and clamped down with my teeth. I said lets do this; Ray as carefully as he could called down to the operator and said gettin up on the 3/8 EASY. This is how we indicated to the operator that he was preforming a delicate operation

I had been lying down for just a few minutes when Ray appeared from above. They all had this look on their face Ill never forget it. Ray was swinging from the end of the 3/8 cable and was trying to figure out how we were going to do this. I said just hook into my safety harness and pick me up with the cable. We used a long lanyard so that I would hang underneath Ray.

It was in the first few days of December that my story takes place. It was December 12th and we were at section 24 or 25, towers are triangular in shape and are assembled in 30 ft sections. If you do the math that’s about 750 ft in the air; the sections were heavier than usual they had 9in solid legs and 12 ft across, that’s about 42,600 pounds of steel that we are tossing around at 750 ft above sea level. The project had been going extremely well up to this point.

Nate was the first to my side; he was obviously shaken up and wanted to know what he could do to make me more comfortable. I told him that I was OK and all I wanted to do was lay down; so Nate helped me to lie down across the corner of the tower.

As I said before I had been in the wrong place this time; the section came at me; I put my hands up to slow it down; OH SHIT!!

Ray had already gone up to the top of the gin pole to get a 3/8 cable that we had rigged previously for another purpose.

Nine surgeries later here I am in college training for a new career.

There nestled in the pine trees in the red southern dirt we would build a miracle of modern engineering. We were in the process of building a steel structure that would marvel anything to date; this thing would be huge compared to the kind of thing we were building just a few years ago. The thinking here is that if you build one big tower and put all of the local stations on it, it will save everyone money.

Some topics in this essay:
Thanksgiving Lord, Immediately Doug, Dale Alabama, Gulf Mexico, OH SHIT, Finally Nate, Moines Iowa, Ray Florida, Pensacola Baptist, gin pole, Robertsdale Alabama, sinking feeling stomach, 3/8 cable, called doug, feeling stomach, rest crew, section rolled, doug’s crew, 750 ft, left arm, sinking feeling,