Father Time
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3/13/2022 7:32:45 PM
Tell a story from your life, anything at all.
I mean funny or sad or educational, or war story, anything at all. Like we were sitting around a coffee table and you wanted to bring the best you got to a conversation.
I'm going to start out with a sad one cause it's kind of a mindblower. Maybe I told it before, but I'm gonna tell it again anyhoo.
So, this happened in 3rd grade. I had 2 bestest friends, Greg my neighbor who I played ball with practically every day, and this guy Billy from the other side of town. The 3 of us would carry on in class, we were the troublemakers I guess. During recess we were foolin' around and came up with the idea of doing these 3 Stooges skits. We practiced up a bunch of them and the teacher let us do them in front of the class and the rest of the kids laughed their heads off, it was really fun. That's the set up of the story.
Anyway I lived in the country right across the street from a State Park which had a big lake my dad actually helped build - Pinchot Lake. This is the place we went swimming every day of summer, where I remember listening to my sister's transistor radio and heard Winchester Cathedral the day they announced it reached #1 in the US. In winter the lake was covered with ice and that's where the event happened, when Billy, his dad and his sister Jo were ice skating on the lake. As occasionally happens (and I think about every single time I see someone ice skating now), the ice cracked and Billy went under. Then his dad dove in to save him and neither of them came back up, both died that night. The sister somehow broke her leg trying to get them out and had to basically crawl back 2 miles to her house to report this horror.
The story would end there except when I was in high school, another best buddy, Craig, another guy I played ball with all the time, had a new girlfriend who was several years older than him, it was Jo. My girlfriend at the time would go with me over to Craig and Jo's house every couple weeks and Jo was as you might imagine, a very unstable woman even in adulthood. Twice in our presence she attempted suicide. Once she tried to jump out of a moving car I was at the wheel of, we reacted quickly and kept that from happening. The other time was more extreme. It was New Year's Eve and we went over to Craig and Jo's for their New Year's party. I guess I should add that we all dropped some acid to celebrate that night. The thing about Jo was, she was pretty loopy before any drugs. She would suddenly get jealous about Craig wanting other women and it's only guessing but maybe she thought he was eying my girlfriend that night and left the room and went upstairs. Anyway when she came down she stuck her tongue out to show us her tongue was covered with pills which to our horror she quickly swallowed. It was only 2 minutes maybe til she conked out. We called the ambulance and a little bit later we were all in the emergency room and she was in a coma which lasted oh maybe 10 hours. but they did pump her stomach so she lived. but that was an unpleasant 5 or 6 hours in the hospital (while tripping) before we finally left. fwiw Craig stayed with Jo another 25 years, had a few kids and finally left her and I was happy for him to hear that he did, one of those.
The epilogue of the story is, about 5 years after the pill incident, Billy and Jo's mom went down to the lake, I guess pretty enebriated, and jumped in at the same spot where her husband and son met their end, and Pinchot Lake took her too.
RIP the 3 Ryders. Billy was such a smiling, happy kid. We had a lot of fun that year.
ok your turn, remember, anything at all ya got.
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Bryon Tosoff
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3/13/2022 8:30:22 PM
Worked in construction for 12 years or so before I did teaching promo. prior to that I worked for the Vancouver parks board for a year at Stanley park in Vancouver
So a few years in we were doing demo and upgrades to this school in Richmond and I decided to grab a ladder and get in fast before every one else
up goes the ladder
up I go, get to the second floor overhang., start to hit the crap out of the plywood nailed over the previously removed windows ,nailed from the inside. wham boing reverberation bounced off of the overhang, and flying down I go, (below me was a bunch of rebar wood crap sticking up in a huge dumpster. ) hit a cedar tree sliding down I went, sliding sliding past the rebar sticking up out of the dumpster, just missing the crap slide down another tree missed everything slowly descending looking out to the street, cars slowing down as I was falling sliding and watching my possible demise and death, maybe, slowly little by little I drifted to a nice light landing and proceeded to walk away unscathed and went in the entrance a few minutes after everyone else,. that was a freak show, I thought the end of me while flying through the air looking down into that dumpster, was it an angel that saved me, probably, who knows,, but here I am. think about this on occasion. lucky man
I have another when I was working 14 feet deep into an excavation which I barely escaped before the whole thing caved in. but that is another story, one I reported to the WCB due to improper shoring, last guy up the ladder as everything caved in
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Bryon Tosoff
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3/13/2022 9:04:57 PM
---- Updated 3/13/2022 9:05:37 PM
I quit that job. the company was at fault, WCB shut it down, safety measure improperly handled, supervisor was pushing and the area deep down was really unstable, obviously, supervisor and prep team did not get it properly shored before we underground pipe and concrete guys started doing our job. all I heard was get out get out. scrambling heart thumping as walls of crumbling caving earth collapsed, just made it out . packed up tools , jumped in car shitting myself almost as I was driving home. phone WCB. scariest thing ever, but if I think back , there probably are more construction stories I have forgotten. not the easiest of trades, rather sit here typing out the bloody thing, safe and sound lol
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Bryon Tosoff
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3/14/2022 4:44:08 PM
Pitt River Bridge Coquitlam BC
Fraser River Pile Driving did all the Caisson piers prep and pile driving for sub structure underwater concrete work for the Pitt River Bridge
I was the guy who work on doing the The Big mofu of a concrete vibrator as I was the only guy who could fit all the way down among all the rebar and formwork which was a hell of a job to get to the bottom of the pier of about 50 feet.
Concrete was brought in by barge on Hoppers and lifted up to the Elephant Trunk chute. I be at the bottom climbing up as the Hoppers dropped the concrete down the chute into the formwork , two guys would pull the lever to release the tons of concrete that would come down
Once I get a mother load of concrete dumped on me by accident, I had on heavy clothes, (winter conditions) and big boots as well as water proof weather alls during the cold weather which was a god send
So here I am, getting bombarded by concrete as the guys miss timed the release and probably grabbed it too soon and blasted me with quite a bit of the load, I could hear them laughing as I was screaming and swearing at them for being so careless, man that hurt, pounded my hardhat and bruises on my shoulders later
crawled up after a long long day completing that operation and the big honking long horse cock of the concrete vibrator dragging it up as I went to the top, you had to be in good shape and strong like Russian Bull to do this work. but yeah, what a memory, Construction is not meant for the faint of heart, endurance and strength was a part of the job. I was tough as nails and still am.
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