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 Honolulu Lite. Extra.  Charles Memminger |
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When stuck in a backhoe,
just keep digging
There probably is a law against letting someone like me take control of a 12,000-pound backhoe, or at least there should be.
I've wreaked destruction on house, yard, nature, pets and myself with a lot smaller appliances than a Case 580M 73-horsepower backhoe, a machine capable of uprooting trees, turning over cars and, unless I figure out where the brake is in a couple of seconds, plowing through a large chain-link fence bordering the Kaneohe Yacht Club.
If I crash through the fence and lose control of this beast, I figure I'm doomed to end up on an episode of "Cops," knocked out of the operator's cab by a SWAT team sniper moments before the rampaging backhoe careens into a school for orphans.
I find the brake with minutes to spare, seeing as how I'm actually zipping along at a heart-pounding 3.5 mph, walking speed, and the fact that the brake pedal is located amazingly where one would expect to find it on the family automobile.
Standing off at a safe distance, Jerry Small, foreman and expert backhoeman for Sutton Construction Co., doesn't seem to be having second thoughts about letting me captain this monster. Or at least he isn't showing it. He could be deep in thought, considering a call to his lawyer to set up his legal defense fund.
I turn the machine around and head, inadvertently, for a Star-Bulletin photographer who shows remarkable agility, hopping out of the way of the oncoming machine with the calmness of someone who is seeing their life flash before their eyes.
After just five minutes of driving the backhoe, I'm operating it with the skill of someone who has been at it for five minutes. But now comes the real fun, attempting to pick up a rock the size of a Mini Cooper in the jaws of the front loader.
For Jerry, who has nearly 800 hours operating backhoes, this is a cinch. He operates the stick control like a jet pilot and picks up the rock as if it were a penny. After a few tries, I get the rock, along with about four tons of dirt. Eventually, I can scoop up the rock with very little of anything else around it. I proudly wave to the photographer, now shooting from the safety of across the street with a telephoto lens.
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THE QUESTION IS why am I operating a backhoe? With all due respect, that's a chick question. A guy would never ask why another guy is running a backhoe. The answer is obvious: Because he can.
Boys like toys. The bigger the better. I happened to find out that a friend of mine had access to a backhoe and I pestered him until he let me run it. What I really wanted to play with was one of those huge mobile cranes with the lead ball on a long cable used for tearing down buildings. But there IS a law against that.
But you can still have a blast with a $65,000 backhoe. I begged Jerry to tell me that running a backhoe after all the years he's been doing it is just another job. I mean, desk jockeys see guys running heavy equipment and looking like they are having fun but no job can be fun every day, right?
"It's still fun for me," Jerry said, ruining my life.
THE DIFFERENCE between operating a computer keyboard and being at the controls of 12,000 pounds of mobile metal is that very few people have been crushed to death with a keyboard. As you walk around a Case 580M backhoe, you notice that just about every part of the brute is labeled with a warning. They include: Battery Acid Explosion Hazard!; Run Over Hazard!; Crush Hazard!, Roll-over Hazard! and, I believe, Columnist Flatter-Than-A-Pancake Hazard! And each warning is accompanied by one of those little drawings showing, variously, someone getting conked in the head by the digger, someone being rolled upon by the machine, etc. Any student of civil tort litigation knows that each of those warnings came about because every scenario actually happened to some unfortunate soul.
I tried not to think about that as I tried my hand at digging with the Praying Mantis-like arm and bucket. This thousand-pound arm can stretch and contract and swing to and fro in a frightening fashion.
"Now this can really get you into trouble," Jerry said, swinging the arm back and forth like Hulk Hogan. If the arm and bucket struck someone, say, someone directing traffic while you're digging a trench, that someone would be knocked onto another island.
The truth is that Jerry hasn't been injured or injured anyone since he began running backhoes in Oklahoma when he was 8. (Oklahoma's child labor laws apparently are a little more lax than Hawaii.)
The only accident he witnessed was when a backhoe operator backed off of one of Oahu's famous ridges and fell into a ravine. It was a case of pilot error and, luckily, the pilot lived.
We faced no such peril, having picked a tennis court under construction as our venue. We were free to dig and plow and pick up rocks as much as we wished. It was no coincidence that the scene resembled a couple of boys playing in a sandbox with one of those toy construction machines kids other than future columnists get when they are young.
So there is no great truth to be found in this tale. Well, one truth. My photographer actually was more game than I have made out here. He climbed aboard the backhoe and put his life in my hands at one point. There's no accounting for judgment. As fate would have it, he drives a Mini Cooper, which I offered to pick up in the bucket and move to another part of the parking lot, you know, just to prove my new-found expertise. He mumbled something about having another photo assignment, sprinted for the Cooper and tore out of the parking lot at what I considered an unreasonable rate of speed.