In the early seventies Brant, Dennis, Bruce and I headed north in Brant’s van. In Bend Oregon Bruce got out and hitchhiked east, ending up in Boston. We proceeded north to a little town called Cle Elum and camped outside town. Eventually they rented a house in the south side of town and every day Brant would disappear. One day he came back and says something typically cryptic like, “Do you want to go to my house?” He had been exploring and found a little town called Roslyn a few miles away and had arranged to buy a house from Guzzi Realty. The house had all the major appliances, was two story and cost around fifty five hundred dollars. We walked the road passed the high school into Roslyn and rooted around his new place. It was a fixer upper, big and dirty and falling apart, but that wasn’t a big issue. We explored until dark, found a French fried potato cutter in the basement and walked back to South Cle Elum where we fried up some greasy spuds.
It wasn’t long after that that Martz bought a place and soon Dale came up from Brea and bought one too. It was a deal too good to pass up. We had a little “Brea north” going for a while and it was idyllic.
One day we were building a new staircase for Dale’s house. Me, Brant, Dennis, Dale and probably others too (it seems like there was a crowd when I think back on it) were working away. It was community tool chest, you grabbed whatever you needed off the floor or out of the truck and tended to your project. I think I was cutting treads for the stairs. I’d set the tread up on the case, hold the length mark with my thumb, then I’d squat down with the board across my lap, lay the Skill Saw where the cut needed to be, then put it back on the staircase for support while making the cut. This worked fine, but Dennis could see that it was an accident waiting to happen and started calling me “one finger Phil”. I had complete confidence in my technique a scoffed at his reference.
Phil was one of our buddies growing up. He was everyone’s friend and was recently referred to as "one finger Phil", having just lost his digits in a lumber mill accident. He didn’t make it too long into adulthood; a short time later he was killed trying to avoid a deer that had jumped into his car’s path in John Day Oregon.
The saw I had been using was getting dull, so I picked up another one and set it on the board resting on my thigh. This saw had a different safety switch, or no safety switch, and when I picked it up to go to my staircase cutting station it started running. I wasn’t prepared for it to go. The blade caught the edge of the board, kicking it out from between the blade and my denim covered leg. As durable as Levis are, they are no match for an electric saw with a 7 1/4” blade. It cut through my pants and plowed through my leg. I set the saw down right away.
Well, I looked at the wound and got depressed; I didn’t want that to happen. I announced that I cut my leg and wanted some else to look at it, which was met with the usual calls of “lightweight” and “get over it”. Dennis came over and looked at it. “Wow, you need to go to a doctor.” he said with no alarm in his voice. This was the response I was kind of hoping to hear. The saw had cut deep, the entire depth of the blade, which is about 3 1/2” deep, and ran diagonally across my thigh for about nine inches. A filet. The nerves were all cut too, so there was no sensation of pain. And it didn’t bleed a drop. It wasn’t even red, other than the red color of red meat.
I don’t remember the particulars, it has been thirty-five years or so, but there are no hospitals up there and so Martz took me to the ranger station. There we found the ideal ranger. He was older than us; we were just out of high school, but young for being a guy in a uniform. He was in the Navy and volunteered for this duty, fixing up errant locals who might have the occasional hunting accident or be bucked off their dirt bike. He assessed the situation quickly and started picking the frayed fabric out of the gash. “How come it doesn’t hurt? I asked. “You cut the main nerve that runs through here, that may be a blessing, but you may never feel anything in your leg again.” He spoke slowly and with authority, and was a very cool guy. “How come there’s no blood?” was the next obvious question. ‘Well, there’s two ways for bleeding to stop, you know about coagulation…” (Of course we knew about coagulation) “But that’s only for small cuts and abrasions. What happens is (at this point he interlocks his fingers at ninety degrees, one set of fingers representing veins and the other layers of skin) your veins and arteries are elastic and when you cut them they retract into the layers of skin, pinching off the blood flow.” As he said this he slid one set of fingers out from between the others which closed together as they left. “You have very elastic veins and they were pinched off before there was a chance to bleed.” I looked at Martz with astonishment.
Now that the wound was clear of debris he got out a syringe. “What’s that for?” “Well it was a dirty wound and I want to stop any infection from spreading” I really liked that he gave the name of the drug, how it worked and why I needed it. “It’s not gonna make me vote any different is it?” “He didn’t even look up “How’d you get so paranoid?”
Next it was time to sew it up. He started from deep inside, bringing the layers together slowly, row after row, until he got to the top where he used a different pattern of stitching, more decorative. Dennis took me back to the remodeling party and I kind of watched for the next few days, hobbling around on a crutch, trying to stay out of the way and look involved at the same time. Eventually the feeling came back to my leg and there’s still the impression of a great looking scar.
