Buried Alive!! – Lindley Backhoe/Sanders Trenching and Backhoe . . .

My husband worked for his father in the backhoe and trenching business.  I am sure that some of you have known someone with a story to tell of being buried in a trench.  There are broken collar bones and such from this occurrence.  My husband, Wes, was buried in one once.  It happens to a lot of people.  When it happened to him, the others yelled for him to run, but Wes ran the wrong way.  He was pinned from his neck to his waist and then buried from there down.  They dug so far down and then pulled him out, which was probably not a good idea.  They pulled him right out of his boots!  It took approximately and an hour and a half as they had to dig by hand.  They took him to the hospital and x-rays were taken.  He had no broken ribs but all of his ribs were bruised and every breath was very painful. He had to take several days off and the pain was excruciating.

There is a story that my father-in-law told that made us all laugh every time even though it was scary to some of the people involved, well ONE of the people involved.  It seems that my father-in-law, Frank, worked for his father-in-law, Harold, before he had his own business, Sanders Trenching and Backhoe. It was winter and they were working in a field. Harold had to leave the job site to do something and left Frank there. There was only the backhoe and their pick up truck at the site.  Harold was gone in the pick up, so Frank was there alone.  Remember, Frank is married to Harold’s daughter, Imy.

When Harold returns, all he sees is the backhoe, and it is running.  The trench was caved in and the pair of Frank’s gloves were sticking in the dirt! Harold is beside himself.  He left Frank and now he has been buried for who knows how long.  Harold is frantically digging with his hands and thinking he has just made his daughter a widow and various  other sad, sad thoughts.  He was wondering how he was going to explain this to his daughter and his wife.  When Frank tells the story, he says that he was digging like a dog and then he would imitate this motion.  That was so funny to see Frank doing this!  Poor Harold.  What he must be thinking and how he must be feeling!  I imagine his hands were painful from the digging!

A very short time later, the farmer pulled up.  Harold, saw Frank get out of the truck and jumped up and stopped digging.  He just stared at Frank and stormed over to the truck and drove off.  It turns out that the farmer had stopped and asked Frank to go to lunch.  Without thinking, Frank said sure and took off with the farmer.  Harold’s part of the story is the part that makes this story sad.  I cannot even imagine being in his shoes! I  won’t even tell the rest of the story here.  But, you can imagine.  You all know how you feel when you have thought someone was hurt?  You are happy they are not, but still, at times, the anger comes?  This will be left for your imagination.

Frank and Imy were always so tickled about this story.  It was so cute to watch them tell it and to hear it.  They would giggle like little children throughout the story.  I never got the chance to meet Harold, but I can only hope that he laughed about it later as well.

**As an additional note, some time later in life, Frank did have a huge clump of dirt land on him which resulted in a broken collar bone.  That is when he was in business for himself as Sanders Trenching and Backhoe.  I wonder if Harold found that funny/ironic? Haha!!