J.D.’s Columns

Misunderstanding             Without much effort on my part, I seem to have become a hard of hearing old man in a wheelchair. The chair is the result of a fall that broke my neck, The hard of hearing is because of advanced age combined with lapses in job-related human maintenance.       In my 20’s, I worked with a tree crew in Palo Alto, California operating a chipper machine that noisily converted tree branches into wood flakes. This was before OSHA and common sense entered the workplace. We wore no hearing protection.      I was in my prime, my early 30’s, when I rolled logs to the headworks of a sawmill that cut three-sided logs for home building. The big circular saw bit into the lodgepole logs just to the left of where I stood with a peavy ready to roll another one off the stack. If I ride shotgun with you driving, chances are I will miss some of what you say.   ...