People say, “Gee Fahey, you sure have a lot of funny stories!” Well, when most of them were happening, they weren’t funny at all…I have no idea who’s reading my stories. I have no idea how others were raised. All’s I know is all through my wonder years, then, to this day, more hard asses. Writing about the ‘Widowmaker’ made me think of a guy who I haven’t thought of in a long time. Old man Henry. I still know his family pretty well. They run Boston Henry drilling and wells in Aqua Dulce to this day. Their shop is on a ten mile an hour hairpin curve leading into town. I dropped a 650 Triumph Bonneville on that curve coming in late to work when I was sixteen. Took out about forty feet of a wooden picket fence. Old man Henry ran over to see if I was alright. When he saw it was just scrapes and cuts, he picks me up by my throat and starts shaking me like a rat a terrier. Boy, could he curse…I’m helping old man Henry on a job in Sleepy Valley. It’s really cold. Even worse, a wind is cranking at around sixty miles an hour. We were behind on this well we were drilling. This guy was always working so hard, drilling, fixing rigs, welding pipe, he was usually in a foul mood. A sleeve we were slipping onto another section of pipe slipped and caught his thumb through his glove, pinning his hand. Now, a section of 22 foot one and a half inch pipe weighs about two hundred and fifty pounds. We had six in the hole already. This guy jerked around like a pinned Brahma bull, then, bear hugged the pipe and LIFTED it enough to clear his hand. He then picked up a five pound sledge and threw it overhand while screaming obscenities you have never heard in your life. He rips the glove off and he’s only lost some skin. He laughs, roughs up my hair and yells over the sound of the rig. “CLEAN LIVING LAD, CLEAN LIVING!” He was so powerful, he threw that sledge farther then I could toss a football…
LARRY WILLIAMS…He took me out of Father Garretts home for wayward boys when I was sixteen. My mom used boys homes, sheriffs work camps and youth ranchs to get rid of me between her seven husbands. When she wanted a divorce, she would pull me out and pretend she was giving me another chance. On my arrival, you could set a timer on how long it was before my mom had everything the guy had. Me? Another juvinile facility. The weird thing is, I deserved every day I served. I was amazed I was even let out at times. I end up out off Hwy 138 on an abandoned almond orchard. It had lots of old buildings and an outhouse to take a dump in. Larry was a guy you would NEVER want to screw around with. He could pound in a 16d nail with ONE PUNCH of a 28oz hammer, ALL DAY. LONG! Once, in a 7/11, Larry tells a guy to stop licking the spoon that you used to put relish on your hot dogs with. This guy sneers and does it again. Larry backhanded the guy so hard, his front dentures bounced off the beer display behind the cashier. He then picked him up by his EARS and rattled the guys remaining teeth for about ten seconds. Had a lot of adventures with Larry…get around to them sometime..