Honor Intact? Affirmative. Arm Broken? Ditto.
Chivalry is not dead. It might be battered. It might be bruised. It might be broken. But it definitely ain’t dead. Honor intact? Affirmative. Arm broken? Ditto.
By John G. Stamos
I was involved in a recent X (the erstwhile Twitter) exchange with Russ Smith, chief, cook, and bottle washer at Splice Today, and all-around major good guy, about the weather. Specifically, its vicissitudes, and their implications for humanity, and humanity’s utter powerlessness over them. I was only half-bitching about the lack of snow (this year), and fully bitching about the massive amounts of it we typically get here in my neck of the woods, the idyllic hamlet of Michiana Shores, Indiana. At the time of our X convo, Russ and his fellow Baltimoreans were dealing with something like seven inches of the stuff, and he mentioned that the inevitable resultant damage to trees and landscaping was going to be substantial. Next, the topic of the roofs of houses, and their obvious vulnerability to meteorological assault, was introduced. Russ explained that during a series of recent wicked thunderstorms in Baltimore, a slew of heavy slate tiles were ripped from the roof of his house, and, as he pointed out, the swath of ensuing damage could have easily included human decapitation. Russ kept his head on his shoulders, intelligently remaining indoors for the duration of the spectacle. I mentioned to Russ that I myself had experienced a similar situation involving heavy, deadly projectiles being ripped and subsequently hurled from a building with which I was closely associated (it wasn’t my house, though it was a commercial building I did own) as a result of adverse weather conditions. But unlike Russ, I didn’t beat it indoors when the weather turned ugly, and there was definitely nothing intelligent about any of my ensuing actions.
My own flying structural building components story is generally fascinating from the standpoint of its meteorological phenomenon element – it’s absolutely crazy what the heavens cooked up that evening in the space of less than a minute. But, it’s even more fascinating, and very morbidly so, due to its “What are the depths of stupidity to which one human being is capable of sinking?” component. Seriously. Stupid is as stupid does. Wait’ll you see what I mean. It went down like this…
The date was a few ticks past twenty-five years ago. The place was Hammond, Indiana, right next to Chicago, just on the other side of the state line. The time was approximately seven PM on a warm, early September Saturday…
I was in the middle of a quixotic (but, to that point, not entirely unsuccessful) effort to develop an Arts District in the old city’s largely abandoned downtown State Street Corridor (a name I’d coined and applied to a stretch of amazing turn-of-the-century architecture that I’d purchased and planned to develop – and a name that ended up finding a permanent place in the parochial lexicon). At the time of this story, I was balls deep into a number of projects (when you’re trying to make something out of literally nothing, and you’re the only game in town, you’ve got to keep all your markers covered, and a whole bunch of balls in the air), and was literally about to physically leave one building, occupied by a retail enterprise I’d created (right from the start, not only did I have to develop the buildings I’d bought, I also had to develop the businesses that occupied them), and walk down the street to another building, which was the future home of an art gallery (that I also created, incorporated, etc) that was playing host to a world-class juried exhibit featuring a contingent of artists from all across the country and around the world, and a panel of jurors comprised of curators and educators from the two most prestigious art museums in Chicago. This was a hugely important exhibit, and the space wasn’t even a quarter of the way finished, and there were less than thirty days left until showtime. So I was actually doing a lot of the hammer-swinging, conduit-bending, wire-pulling, and general schlepping myself.
So… this particular warm, late summer evening, I, along with one of my new business partners – an investor I’ll call Katie – was walking out of the building I’d rehabbed that housed the world-class antiques gallery (great stuff there, kiddos, I mean great stuff) I’d organized, formed, and implemented. It was a beautiful evening, so Katie and I decided to continue the conversation we’d been having right out there on the sidewalk in front of the massive, 100-year-old building that housed the antique gallery – a building that, incidentally, had been fitted with a faux facade (sickeningly obscuring the gorgeous brick and stonework of the original) in the 1950s, consisting of course upon course of 3’x3′, forty-pound steel tiles. These tiles lent a silver-gray, “modern” look to the grand old building’s face, and were attached to concealed wood furring strips, which were in turn anchored into the building’s original masonry facade. The plan was to wait and remove these tiles the following spring, then begin the process of restoring the structure’s orginal grand facade at that time.
As it turns out, waiting was a bad idea.
So, there we were, Katie and I, talking shop on the sidewalk in front of the building’s now-hideous, metal-tiled facade, when there occurred a serious and abrupt shift in wind direction, and an accompanying acute increase in its velocity. I swear to God, tumbleweeds started tumbling down the middle of this urban street, and the locust trees I’d had planted in front of the buildings I owned began to toss and bend. The wind then started in with a sinister keening. Katie and I looked at each other. Then Katie started to say something (over the sound of the wind), when her eyes got really big. Then she promptly closed her mouth. My back was to the building, and she was looking past my shoulder, and up at the building’s face. I turned around and watched with disbelief as the column of metal tiles cladding the building’s southeast corner began to lift and undulate. Within a split second, seven or eight of these massive tiles ripped from the front of the building, became airborne projectiles, and started sailing in Katie’s and my immediate direction.
Since I’ve never been accused of intelligent decision-making under even the most amenable of circumstances, it’s not surprising that, rather than grabbing Katie and dragging her and myself under the protection of the building’s immediately accessible porticoed entrance, I instead got between her and the whirling tile that was heading right for her and raised my left arm to shield her, and, in doing so, my own skull.
Let me tell you, boys and girls, when that 40-pound, ugly, steel sonofabitch hit my left forearm, I heard the crack of bone above the sound of the wind and immediately wanted to cry like a schoolgirl. I was wearing a short sleeved tee, so I could watch with fascination and dawning comprehension as my forearm’s circumference immediately swelled to that of a regulation NBA basketball. I shit you not. It got that big that fast.
In the meantime, the wind abated as quickly as it had kicked up (we found out later that it was a tornado – the first ever to touch down in that immediate area – that had twisted and whipcracked its devastating funnel right down the middle of the State Street Corridor), and Katie and I were left staring at each other.
“Oh my God, are you alright? Of course not. Oh my God.” Katie was stammering. And then, “I think you just saved my life! Oh my God!”
“Katie, listen, I think my arm is broken. I’ve gotta get home and lay down. I feel like I’m gonna pass out.”
“No way. I’m driving you to the ER. Right now. Let’s go.”
“No dice. I’m driving home and hitting the rack. I really feel like shit. Gotta go.”
I jumped in my pickup and drove home, steering and shifting with one arm.
The night passed in feverish, acute discomfort. Even though I’d gulped down about twenty Advil the second after I walked through my front door, my arm hurt like a mad bastard. I couldn’t sleep and was experiencing chills and sweats in alternating waves. The next morning, I made the decision to call an old family friend, a podiatrist. I’ll call him Gary. He answered his home phone on the first ring.
“Gary, I’ve got a situation… ”
He listened while I laid it all out, and explained to him that there was no way I could go to the hospital. Not with the construction schedule I was facing, and my integral contribution to its completion. “Can you x-ray this thing for me? On your machine? In your office?”
Gary said “Meet me in the back. I’ll be there in twenty.” And then, “You’re a fuckin’ idiot.”
“Well,” said Gary, “It’s broken. In two places. The ulna and the radius. They’re both cracked.” He was sweating a little because he had to sort of jury-rig his machine in order for it to accommodate a human arm rather than a human foot. And then, “You’ve got to get to a hospital. I’ll drive you. Do you realize how serious this is?”
“If I go, what are they gonna do to me?” My eyes felt like they were pinwheeling around in my skull, and I was sweating myself – a lot more than Gary was while playing with his x-ray machine.
He assumed a professional, clinical tone. “They’re going to x-ray you then admit you. If you’re extremely lucky, you won’t need surgery – IF you’re extremely lucky. They’re going to set the breaks, and put you in a cast. It’ll be a full one – past your elbow. Those two bones that you so intelligently cracked? They work in complementary fashion. One rotates around the other when you bend your wrist, move your hand, bend your elbow… “
“So I’ll be screwed. I won’t be able to use my left arm at all?”
“Bingo.”
“No fuckin’ hospital. What do I owe you, Gary? I’m outta here.”
“Jesus Christ. You’re an idiot,” he told me again. And then, as I was leaving through his building’s back door, “You better get your ass to the hospital.”
I did not get my ass to the hospital. I started to drive back to my groovy bachelor pad cum infirmary, and while I drove, I hatched my own treatment plan. So, I reversed direction, utilizing a slick 3-point turn: I couldn’t pull a U-ey and downshift with one arm, but I woulda if I coulda because the treatment plan I’d just formulated was brilliant, and I couldn’t wait to implement it. And in order to do that very thing, I needed to head to the very spot that necessitated my avoidance of the hospital at all cost in the first place: the unfinished art gallery space, located just down the street from the place of my injury the night before. There, within the echoing vastness of the giant, open, unfinished loft space, I would find the medical supplies I’d need to fix myself up – namely, 1/2″ diameter galvanized thinwall electrical conduit (or, EMT as it’s know in the trade), and Scotch Super 33™ heavy-duty electrical phasing tape.
I got there in record time.
And then, I fixed myself up…
(Here, you might want to take notes. You know, just in case… )
I cut three lengths of the conduit equal to the distance between a point just below my elbow and a point just above my wrist (this was the hardest part – thank God I had my handy-dandy pipe cutting stand on site – I might not have been able to pull it off, otherwise – not with just one arm), and one by one, I taped each length of conduit tightly to my broken forearm, spaced equally at points girding its swollen, painful circumference (this was almost as hard as the first part – it hurt like a fiend trying to keep the sonofabitch straight, and it hurt even more when I started wrapping that electrical tape around the whole works).
But when I was done, I had what amounted to a perfectly rigid splint around my busted forearm, which now was likewise being kept perfectly rigid. AND, I could still bend my elbow. Bingo bango. This orthopedic surgery business? It was a breeze. After I quit crying (like I told you, my self-performed medical procedure hurt like a motherfucker), I called Gary to tell him what I’d done.
“You know, that was remarkably astute,” said Gary. “It’s not very different than what a full cast would have accomplished, though I’m not sure how being able to bend your elbow is going to impact the healing process. Plus, I’m positive the bones haven’t been set properly, so when they heal – IF they heal – your left arm might not look so pretty. And you absolutely have got to rest that arm. No pounding, or pipe-bending, or wire-pulling… none of that. I’m serious. But, all in all, it’s like I said. Amazingly astute.” Then, “But you’re still an idiot.”
“How long do I have to keep it wrapped up like this?”
He said a minimum of three weeks would probably be good, but longer would definitely be better. Then he told me to meet him back at his office and he’d pass me a few bottles of pain meds and anti-inflammatories.
The long and short of it, sports fans, goes like this:
I wore my homemade, handcrafted orthopedic device for about a week-and-a-half, while continuing to do physical work on the new gallery’s build-out during the day, and paperwork at night. When I removed the pipes-and-tape device from my arm, it hurt, but not anywhere close to as much as it originally had. I just couldn’t ride it out for the full three weeks. All that hardware and tape was driving me crazy and making it really hard to do the things that Gary told me not to do.
My left forearm healed, but, as Gary predicted, it never looked quite the same as the right one. Ended up bending a little differently, too. But, hey, it was working, and that, for me, was all that mattered.
Because, in the end, I got the gallery space completed, and the exhibit was a resounding success. It was an unforgettable opening, and an event unlike anything the City of Hammond had ever experienced. Yours truly ended up in any number of newspaper features and television interviews as a result.
And my far-flung plot to singlehandedly resurrect a city’s dead downtown and create a bustling, thriving arts district? Well, that didn’t turn out quite as well as my self-performed arm repair. I ended up losing my ass. It’s an interesting story. But it’s a story for another time.
But, the story you’ve just read – the story of the tornado, my de facto act of chivalry, my broken arm and the ill-advised repair methodology I implemented to correct it – all of it is true. The names, of course, have been changed to protect the innocent. But the facts of the case are just as I’ve laid them out. And the most relevant of those facts, the most salient of them, is exactly as Dr. Gary astutely pointed out. I am most definitely an idiot.
Cheers, and Happy Gardening!
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In 2011 we went to California for my former boss’s birthday party. We stayed in a sleazy motel in Redding Ca because we just didn’t have the energy to keep driving to the Bay Area – from Washington state – all in one day. I remembered that motel from my childhood. It was horrible in the 1950s and equally horrible in 2011.
I was not in the room for more than 10 minutes when – while trying to walk to the bathroom my foot slipped on the very shiny old carpet and I fell and broke my right arm – the humerus. Like with your arm – my right arm swelled up like a few times larger than it normally is and started to turn black. My husband drove off to find a Walgreens – and brought back a sling. I wore that sling for the next few months.
When we got back to Washington state I had an appointment with my worker’s comp orthopedic doctor. The rep from the insurance company was there. They both took one look at my right arm and gasped. Long story – short – the insurance paid for the treatment of my broken arm and I got the knee brace that I had been asking for – for over a year.
Three weeks after the humerus shattered – the bone had totally reformed and on X-ray it looked like I had never broken the bone at all. I guess I am a fast healer.
Fast forward all these years and the only time the humerus hurts is when the weather gets too cold. I can tell the temperature by my arm.
Such an interesting story, Annie. Thank God the injury healed so beautifully. Here’s to good health – cheers!
WOW …. Stubborn, but I completely understand!
I would do something similar 😂😂😂🙏
Thanks, Roxxy – I really appreciate that. I’m glad I’m not alone. But honestly, I KNOW for a fact that you would NEVER be as stupid as me! Thanks for reading the piece!
A stubborn “idiot” yet, so interesting.
Thank you for sharing.
Wow, Lane, thank you so much for your kind words. I really appreciate that. And, of course, I appreciate your reading the story of my complete stupidity in the first place. Honestly, I’m not sure how I’ve made it this far without ending up with a posthumous Darwin Award. Thanks again!
Goodness! That was an ER trip event and there you were dodging it. Lucky you got off with your arm working as well as it does, but most of all, you probably did in fact save your friend’s life!
Thanks for giving this one a read, Lisa, and thanks for looking on the bright side. I’m happy that you were able to glean some redeeming elements from this little tale of stupidity. Time and time again, I’ve proven myself to be smart like an ox. I swear, Lisa, sometimes I can’t figure out how I’m still drawing breath. Thanks again!
I think you may have to publish a disclaimer saying that you are not qualified to give medical advice! Take down the MD sign and hang a sign that says Great Writer!
You’re far too kind, Kevin – but thanks – I’ll take it!
Good example of a short term response with long term consequences. Sometimes we can’t do it all. However, your initial reaction saved your friend’s life.
Thanks for reading my “Stupidity Chronicles,” Rick, and thanks for putting the best possible spin on my actions. I appreciate that. Cheers!