There was a certain young man, around fourteen years of age, who helped his father along with other brothers in the fields. Now his father owned many fields and raised feed hay as a crop. Some fields contained seed hay, others feed hay for livestock to be sold for winter fodder. The seed hay would be harvested and sold to other ranchers and farmers to seed their fields for grassing.
In the summer when the first yield was ready, the farmer and his sons would gather in the equipment barn and check over the days tools. Each day all of the tools and equipment to be used that day would be thoroughly checked out to make sure it all worked properly. Many of the tools and devices used were extremely dangerous to operate and required the utmost of care to insure they worked flawlessly. These precautions not only helped the work process to go easier, it might very well save a life or serious injury to the workers.
The young man’s responsibility was to drive the tractor that would pick up the bails of hay left in the fields after the combine had cut the stock that then fell to the ground. When the hay had dried sufficiently a winnower would turn the stock into neat rows and the bailer would then collect the rows and feed them through the process of making bails of hay. This process left the bails of hay in neat rows scattered throughout the fields. The young mans tractor pulled a piece of machinery that scooped up these bails of hay on a conveyor belt that transported them to a large trailer that tailed along behind. Other lads would receive the bails of hay and stack them upon the trailer for transport to the hay barns where the feed would be stored until delivery to others in need of it.
The young man checked his equipment with meticulous care. Having done this for several summers prior to this one, it was nothing new. He knew well the necessity of these equipment checks as he had witnessed himself many injuries inflicted on others because of carelessness or faulty equipment. The young mans equipment was flawless…save for one small wrap of wire, gone unnoticed , that encircled the PTO shaft protruding from the rear of the tractor which provided power to the conveyor. This small piece of wire, perhaps no longer than an arm, had become entangled on a previous run around the shaft.
The PTO (power take off) system simply used energy produced by the tractor itself to motivate towed machinery. This system eliminated the need of an additional power source (including the fuel and maintenance required to operate it) and utilized energy that would otherwise be wasted or unused by the tractor pulling it. As long as the PTO is engaged, the shaft turns. In this case that turning shaft ran a set of gears that operated the conveyor belt, which ran constantly.
The errant piece of wire had become wrapped around this “universal joint” connecting the shaft from the tractor to the shaft from the equipment. This joint allowed the continued movement of the shaft even when turns were performed. The joint required that it be free from impediment in order to perform correctly.
So the wire went unnoticed.
As the day proceeded the young man noticed that when making turns in the field his conveyor system would seem to bog down as the turn was made. After several of these struggling turns he stopped the tractor to check for problems. Upon examining the shaft joint, he noticed the piece of wire entangled upon it. Without consciously thinking about what he was about to do, the young man reached down to remove a loose end of the wire. It had a bit of a barb on the very end, which snagged his glove and pulled his hand closer while the shaft continued to spin. As this occurred his jacket sleeve caught in the universal joint and became rapidly entangled pulling his body closer and his arm around the shaft. With the power of the PTO coming from the tractor, a slow chugging but extremely strong motor, it was unlikely that the equipment would bog down before the inevitable occurred.
And it did. Something had to give. Unfortunately the human body, being nowhere near as strong as the old farm tractor, gave first. The young mans entire arm was torn from his body at the shoulder. With the last of his conscious thought the young man screamed in agony and passed out.
The two young men helping to stack the bails of hay on the trailer, friends who worked the fields with the family, rushed to the young mans aide. Neither being old nor experienced, yet both knowing what needed to be done. One ran to the front of the tractor and shut it down while the other tried to assist the young man.
In the adjacent field the young mans brothers and father were about the business of winnowing the cut hay into the rows the bailer would address. As circumstance would have it, the young man was near the fence line between the two fields as the accident occurred. The father and his boys were also near the edge of their field only a short distance from the young man and his crew. They heard his cry of agony and the shouts of his helpers. Immediately they ran to his aide. Father, seeing the dire circumstances and thinking with phenomenal foresight, sent the younger of the brothers back to his tractor that had a large cooler filled with ice water. Upon returning with the jug, at the fathers direction, the brother placed the young mans severed arm in the cooler as the father did his best to staunch the flow of blood from the shoulder.
Another of the lads, seeing the dire circumstances, ran to one of their two pickups parked nearby. He bolted to the farmhouse some quarter of a mile away to make the emergency call. Father picked up his son and placed him in the bed of the remaining truck and followed. Concerned about shaking his son and causing further pain, as well as knowing the necessity for speed, he kept to the main roads rather than cutting across the fields, which might have been shorter, yet rougher.
The winds of providence blew that day for the young man. As fate would have it, only a mile or so down the country road from the farm was the local volunteer fire departments rural outpost. They received the emergency call and responded to the farmhouse within mere minutes of father arriving with his son. Both the young man and his torn appendage were transported to the local hospital where he underwent immediate and critical surgery. Time was against them and the prospect of saving the arm as well as his life seemed slim.
However, the operation was a success, in that the young man survived and the arm was reattached to his shoulder. Modern surgery had done the seemingly impossible. It had reattached the bone, all the muscles, ligaments and various other tissues and tendons connecting arm to shoulder. The only remaining issue were the nerves themselves. Sometimes damage is temporary, at other times permanent.
After a few short days it appeared as though the young man would recover some if not all of his mobility of the arm. The arm itself appeared strong, the young man was right handed and this was his strong arm. The sutures appeared to be taking and it looked as though all would be well. Time would tell about the nerves and their responsiveness.
Time did tell. The nerves were never able to reattach themselves or carry signals required for mobility from the brain to the arm. As time passed, without mobility to exercise or strengthen the arm, it began to wither. Atrophy is a physical reaction that occurs when flesh or muscle tissues goes unused for any long period of time. In this case, though the muscles were fully developed and had been strong and resilient, without the motivation of the signals coming from the brain, they began to wither. What was once a strong and virulent arm was now only a shadow of its former self. It hung limply at the side of the young man. Though it continued to accept the flow of blood and from thence energy, and though he could feel sensations in his fingers and hand to some extent, the arm was lifeless. It could not be willed to move. Nor would it ever again. Though the flesh is willing the spirit is weak.
Without constant communication, encouragement and nurturing of the spirit, the flesh becomes weak and lifeless. It lacks motivation. Without motivation comes lethargy. Lethargy begets sullenness and an idleness of the will. Without will and without purpose, the soul becomes weak, dormant and eventually dies. What once was a useful member of the body, without motivation of the head, becomes useless and lifeless.
A small piece of wire, an overlooked error, an unthinking reaction, a horrendous accident, a miraculous surgery, a small portion of nerve, an overlooked attachment, a lack of reaction, a lifeless result….all parts of a comedy of errors and circumstances with devastating and lifelong reverberations.
What should be remembered throughout the recounting of this incident is that no one single act of forgetfulness nor oversight is responsible for the entirety. The end result is the lesson. A body can be trained, equipped and for all outward appearances be full of life, possessing all the necessary nutrients and attachments to function at an optimum level, but through a severance by circumstance, being cut off from the mind (or the spirit) of motivation, become withered and lifeless. Where does the fault then lie?
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