My dad had an arc welder in his workshop when I was a kid and it was a thing of wonder. It made a buzzing sound like the black and white Flash Gordon spaceships on Saturday morning television and of course the warning not to look anywhere near it when he was using it was stark. My dad had some good educational advice for staying safe and healthy. “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to drown?” he asked me when I was four years old. I had not considered it. “Well, first you cough, and your throat will start to burn. Your eyes will bulge and you’ll feel like your head and chest are exploding. Then you’ll die. Do you want to drown?” I intimated it was not an ambition I had. “Stay away from the pond then,” he warned. He’d been advised by my mum to put a fence around our fish pond that was about a meter and a half deep. He thought a quiet chat would be sufficient, which it was.
Similarly, whilst driving along the motorway one day he asked me “Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be run over by a juggernaut?” Again, my imagination fell short as I was into wrestling and science fiction comics. “Well, first your ribs will break…” he went on, finishing with the warning “Don’t ever open the car door whilst we are driving.” They put child locks on doors now as most parents haven’t got the same art of the cautionary tale as my dad had. Incidentally he got run over when I was eleven, ironic now I think of it.
Anyway, back to welding. I bought a machine off a friend as I was getting into strongman and having done a basic college course a few years before I had great ambitions to make my own kit, which I eventually did. I had the sense to sign up for another cheap course first – why waste electricity and electrodes I reasoned? I found it hard. I was diligent but clumsy, producing a number of poor test pieces that failed the grade for the most basic qualification level. I asked my humorous instructor what I might do. “When faced with people of your sort of skill,” he reflected “I usually suggest a career as a milkman.”
I persevered. I made handles for a car lifting rack and welded empty gas cylinders into Farmers walk apparatus. I’ve mended gates, benches, repaired random things and manufactured all sorts of things for my gym – lately a trap bar deadlift frame with 4 sets of handles for close and snatch grip at different heights. On Saturday I made a start on a football pressing bar. The sun was shining, everything was set up outside the workshop and I listened to some Westside Barbell podcasts. I thought of my Dad and smiled. Then remembering the welding instructors words said to myself “Well, I never became a milkman.”
See you down the road.
