Sleeping Grass
On most of my adventures, there's no scuba diving, smugglers, guns and ships.
By the fall of 1977, I had managed to extract myself from that very perilous adventure on the East Coast and return to Hawaii. I was reflecting on my reckless ways, and trying to figure out a new plan.
I took refuge at the home of old friends Dick and Carol who had a small house in the Puna district of the Big Island. In Hawaii, there is a particularly gnarly weed called "sleeping grass", so named because that when you touch the plant, the leaves instantly fold up and hide themselves. It has painful thorns and grows from a very tough vine.
To make myself useful, I had taken on the mission to rid the yard of this sleeping grass once and for all. I had pulled it up and collected it into a great pile in the middle of the backyard with the idea I was going to burn it.
I poured a healthy amount of kerosene on the pile and lit a match. The flame started slowly, then flared up into a big fire as the kerosene burned up. When the fire went out, the tangle of vines was blackened, but still there. I poured double the amount of kerosene, and lit the match. This time the fire roared a little louder and longer than the first time, but when the fire went out, the black vines were still there.
So I got the gasoline can. This time I was going to make sure. I doused the pile, and, being somewhat safety conscious, I was careful to screw the lid back on the can and put it down a safe distance. I had paper matches. I lit one and tossed it toward the pile. It landed short and went out. I lit another and tossed it. It went out too. Finally I lit another match and reached in cautiously. Kabloom!
On a hot dry East Hawaii morning, the gasoline had filled the pile with its explosive vapor. In a great fireball, I was thrown upward and backward and came down in a heap. My arms, face and feet were badly burnt, and my skin had bubbled up and blistered in an instant. I ran into the house and got in the shower, fully clothed and let the cold water run on me.
Carol was not home at the time, and Dick had been in his tape room with a window that faced the back yard. He got on the phone for emergency help, and reached the Keaau fire station, 10 miles away. They told him that it would take them 15 minutes to get to the house, so that it would be better if Dick would drive me to Keaau, and then they would transport me to the Hilo Hospital by ambulance. Dick couldn't stand to look at me, my injuries were so gross, my face and arms like fried chicken, so we covered me with wet towels and got in the car.
At the Keaau fire station, the paramedics loaded me onto a rolling stretcher and put me in an ambulance. They were sitting there with the engine idling getting ready to go, when I heard talk over the radio, about someone being in extreme pain. I said, "Go ahead and take that guy first, I'm not feeling so bad." The paramedic said, "That's you he's talking about." I was in shock obviously, and the pain was more of a stinging than an agony. I think I looked a lot worse that I felt, just painful to look at.
At the Hilo Hospital Emergency Room, they made the same mistake, assuming that anyone who looked like me was surely in a lot of pain. So they gave me a big Demerol shot in the butt, and kind of botched it. For the rest of my hospital stay, I had trouble getting comfortable, and I had to lay in bed a lot. The pain from the site of the Demerol shot was the worst part of the whole experience.
When you have your skin burned off you're at heightened risk of infection, so they try to keep you in a private room. The only private room open was on the floor that was all for women. And it so happened that my close friend, Bonnie Bartman, from our San Francisco commune, was a nurse at that hospital, she may have even been in charge of that ward. All the nurses were her friends so I got the very best of treatment during my stay. I got regular massages and daily they would wheel me downstairs and give me a whirlpool bath in a betadine solution, and then peel off the dead skin loosened up by the bath. There was minor stinging discomfort. Then they would dry my arms and apply silvadene cream like frosting a cake with cool icing. Then they would wrap them in gauze a transport me back to my room. I had a quite heavenly time there, attended by caring ladies in white. Great attention was given to my vital signs. Carol had brought me some books to read since it looked like I was going to stay for a while, I had lots of visits with Bonnie, and the window of my room looked out over Hilo Bay.
When I got out of the hospital 10 days later, Carol drove me back to her house. I had spent that time in such a protective caring environment with doting nurses and doctors, that as we drove along the two lane roads of rural Hawaii, I felt quite vulnerable. The enormous sugarcane hauling trucks barreling by in the other direction buffeted Carol's little car, and I had renewed awareness of the precariousness of everyday life, back in the world where nobody ever checks your vital signs.
In Dick and Carol's back yard, I walked out to the scene of the explosion. The pile of sleeping grass vines had turned entirely to white ash. Mission accomplished.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
By the fall of 1977, I had managed to extract myself from that very perilous adventure on the East Coast and return to Hawaii. I was reflecting on my reckless ways, and trying to figure out a new plan.
I took refuge at the home of old friends Dick and Carol who had a small house in the Puna district of the Big Island. In Hawaii, there is a particularly gnarly weed called "sleeping grass", so named because that when you touch the plant, the leaves instantly fold up and hide themselves. It has painful thorns and grows from a very tough vine.
To make myself useful, I had taken on the mission to rid the yard of this sleeping grass once and for all. I had pulled it up and collected it into a great pile in the middle of the backyard with the idea I was going to burn it.
I poured a healthy amount of kerosene on the pile and lit a match. The flame started slowly, then flared up into a big fire as the kerosene burned up. When the fire went out, the tangle of vines was blackened, but still there. I poured double the amount of kerosene, and lit the match. This time the fire roared a little louder and longer than the first time, but when the fire went out, the black vines were still there.
So I got the gasoline can. This time I was going to make sure. I doused the pile, and, being somewhat safety conscious, I was careful to screw the lid back on the can and put it down a safe distance. I had paper matches. I lit one and tossed it toward the pile. It landed short and went out. I lit another and tossed it. It went out too. Finally I lit another match and reached in cautiously. Kabloom!
On a hot dry East Hawaii morning, the gasoline had filled the pile with its explosive vapor. In a great fireball, I was thrown upward and backward and came down in a heap. My arms, face and feet were badly burnt, and my skin had bubbled up and blistered in an instant. I ran into the house and got in the shower, fully clothed and let the cold water run on me.
Carol was not home at the time, and Dick had been in his tape room with a window that faced the back yard. He got on the phone for emergency help, and reached the Keaau fire station, 10 miles away. They told him that it would take them 15 minutes to get to the house, so that it would be better if Dick would drive me to Keaau, and then they would transport me to the Hilo Hospital by ambulance. Dick couldn't stand to look at me, my injuries were so gross, my face and arms like fried chicken, so we covered me with wet towels and got in the car.
At the Keaau fire station, the paramedics loaded me onto a rolling stretcher and put me in an ambulance. They were sitting there with the engine idling getting ready to go, when I heard talk over the radio, about someone being in extreme pain. I said, "Go ahead and take that guy first, I'm not feeling so bad." The paramedic said, "That's you he's talking about." I was in shock obviously, and the pain was more of a stinging than an agony. I think I looked a lot worse that I felt, just painful to look at.
At the Hilo Hospital Emergency Room, they made the same mistake, assuming that anyone who looked like me was surely in a lot of pain. So they gave me a big Demerol shot in the butt, and kind of botched it. For the rest of my hospital stay, I had trouble getting comfortable, and I had to lay in bed a lot. The pain from the site of the Demerol shot was the worst part of the whole experience.
When you have your skin burned off you're at heightened risk of infection, so they try to keep you in a private room. The only private room open was on the floor that was all for women. And it so happened that my close friend, Bonnie Bartman, from our San Francisco commune, was a nurse at that hospital, she may have even been in charge of that ward. All the nurses were her friends so I got the very best of treatment during my stay. I got regular massages and daily they would wheel me downstairs and give me a whirlpool bath in a betadine solution, and then peel off the dead skin loosened up by the bath. There was minor stinging discomfort. Then they would dry my arms and apply silvadene cream like frosting a cake with cool icing. Then they would wrap them in gauze a transport me back to my room. I had a quite heavenly time there, attended by caring ladies in white. Great attention was given to my vital signs. Carol had brought me some books to read since it looked like I was going to stay for a while, I had lots of visits with Bonnie, and the window of my room looked out over Hilo Bay.
When I got out of the hospital 10 days later, Carol drove me back to her house. I had spent that time in such a protective caring environment with doting nurses and doctors, that as we drove along the two lane roads of rural Hawaii, I felt quite vulnerable. The enormous sugarcane hauling trucks barreling by in the other direction buffeted Carol's little car, and I had renewed awareness of the precariousness of everyday life, back in the world where nobody ever checks your vital signs.
In Dick and Carol's back yard, I walked out to the scene of the explosion. The pile of sleeping grass vines had turned entirely to white ash. Mission accomplished.
Copyright © 2022 John Oliver
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com
All Rights Reserved
mail@unclejohnsweb.com