Picture My World

a giant metal cog, approximately six feet in diameter, rests against a hill amongst green foliage.

 In Cog We Trust

Before the Resurrection of Cog 

Of course, there's always a story that goes with the picture!

When we were cleaning up the Machine Shop property, I found this cog. I begged my Dad for over a year to let me have this cog. He kept asking me how I was going to move it--it's a legitimate question, as it can really only be moved with a forklift. We used the forklift to move it and place it. Dad wanted it standing up on its side, and is having a brass plate engraved for it to be a memorial to his parents, our grandparents, Bill and Billie. 

Using the forklift to place the cog wasn't as difficult as we anticipated and we managed to get some cement in the ground around it, but it promptly fell over. And there it stayed, as a freak accident immediately followed its placement. On the return trip to the barn, the forklift came out of gear, sped out of control down the hill, and plunged into the creek forks first. Luckily Mark, the driver, was able to jump clear of the lift and escaped with a few bruises and emerged from the creek with a very stunned look on his face, but relatively unharmed. 

I hadn't seen it all happen, I had been trying to fetch my phone from the house and get some pictures of the cog. I was headed back down the driveway when I saw my sister, Sarah, running. Which is interesting because Sarah never runs. Sarah only runs if something bad is happening or she needs to make something happen. She was saying things as she was running too, "It's bad, it's really bad!" She gave me the short version and kept running up the hill. I ran in the opposite direction. She didn't even know if he was ok, just knew she had to get help. 

I nearly slipped in the gravel as I reached the creek and peered over the edge of the road, where culvert allowed the creek to pass under. Mark was pulling himself to his feet in the shallow water by the culvert when I peered over. Relief flooded over me. He was alive! Dad arrived shortly, driving the car, insisting that we should take him to the hospital. He might be more hurt than he realized at first and didn't he think we should just go on and take him to the ER? He said no and rode back to the house with Dad. We were there, talking together at the kitchen counter, when he realized that his phone was probably in the creek. I volunteered to go fetch it and Sarah came along. We were taking selfies with the crashed forklift in the creek when I slipped and fell and heard and felt a crack in my wrist as it bent backwards underneath me. I was suddenly over being in the creek, but I had the phone and we walked back to Dad's. He was smashing around on my wrist asking if it hurt (it did, very much) when I requested to take the rest of the day off. It was the one and only Sunday that we ever worked that year. Mark had a bruised leg, the phone had to be replaced, and my wrist was definitely broken. 


pictured is a really old model forklift forks down, crashed into a creek bed. the picture is taken from the roadway above.


Having crashed in the creek, the old forklift was something to behold.


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