David had a summer job during his college years, working at the Weyerhaeuser lumber mill on the waterfront in Coos Bay, Oregon. One of the operations there used a "chipper," a disc six feet in diameter spinning a 1,000 RPM, moved a toothed ege with more than a 100 blades on it. It disposed of wood that couldn't go down a regular sawmill line. An employee used an air compressor to keep it clean of grease and chips. The guy who kept it clean was good at it. He wore a safety belt that kept him from getting too close to the machine. Unfortunately, one day he overlooked a 15-pound wedge stuck in a piece of wood he threw into the chipper. It sent shards of the wedge 15 feet to the ceiling and sent some pieces through the wooden floor. He operator ran, but was jerked back by his safety harness, and fainted. He had no physical injury but developed such sudden and severe PTSD that he never recovered.
David didn't see the incident because he was in the hospital, recovering from injuries he sustained in a car wreck.
The Weyerhaeuser building was so long that a relative of Patty Sampson, a kid our age whose family came to visit Patty, commented, wondering what in the world it was. The building stood on Indian land under a long-term lease that ran out. The Indians repossessed the land and it is now all Indian casino.
Six-foot-six Bob Jacobson, "Jake," was an Oregon State University basketball player who also had a sawmill job. He lost two fingers on his shooting hand, and was out of basketball for a year, but returned and started for two years afterward.
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