5/20/03 12:04:12 PM
THE MOST DANGEROUS THING I DID TODAY!
I got to bed late last night because. Because! I’d tell you because of what, but I want to get on with this letter and “because” was a good enough explanation when I was a kid, good enough for my parents, and it’s still a good enough explanation, especially now that I’m the parent.
So, the alarm goes off at 7 AM which is actually 6:40 AM because our bedroom alarm clock is always twenty minutes fast, and as I press the snooze button I realize it will do me no good if I don’t turn the fan off and close the window because my whole right side is frozen, and if I’m going to get any more sleep I’m going to have to warm up a bit.
Peggy and I have an eight o’clock call to put SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER “in” at the Bass Hall. Peggy is working electrics and I’m rigging. That means we have to take two vehicles because I’ll be finished long before Peggy.
I suppose you have a general idea of what rigging entails but from room to room, arena to arena, coliseum to coliseum and theatre to theatre it varies. The Bass Hall has what they call a proscenium stage. That’s the kind that has the curtain between the audience and the actors. It’s like a big window. The Bass Hall stage is pretty big, compared, say, to a high school stage. It is about fifty feet deep and over 100 feet wide. One of the impressive dimensions of this stage is the height of the grid. And the number of batons (100). That’s what they call the pipes that the curtains and props and lights and whatever else you might want to hang, hang on.
The grid is the floor that hangs below the roof. In the Bass Hall the grid is five floors up via the elevator and then three more flights of stairs. Walking on the grid always reminds me of when I was a kid and Dad would take us out on a pier at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The spaces between the planks were too narrow for my little feet to slip thru but wide enough to give me a clear look at the churning water below. Walking on a pier was like stepping onto an escalator over and over except with one you get eaten by a shark and on the other you get eaten by a machine. The grid in the Bass Hall is 90 feet above the stage. And the cracks between the rows of channel iron are plenty wide for little feet to slip thru.
So it’s eight o’clock and my firstborn son, RaByn and I are the “up” riggers and River, my thirdborn son, and Chip Wood are the “down” riggers. The road guy, Tony, with the bright red goatee and the shaved head says that he will not be making any chalk marks on the floor. Usually the rigging roadie uses one of those railroad chalk sticks to make circles with x’s in them on the floor and we have to drop the rope down out of the ceiling (thru the grid) so it hangs right above the “x”. Today, Tony is going to accompany RaByn and me to the grid and mark, with pink tape, the place from which the chains are to hang. There are ten motors in this show. From these motors will hang three trusses and two speaker clusters.
After Tony marks each hang point, RaByn straps his shiv, that’s what we call a pulley we thread our ropes thru, to the cables above us. I should tell you that the cables that run across the grid are the cables that are secured to the pipes that the curtains, etc hang on. They all go to one side of the stage where the ropes go up and down and are pulled by the flymen when they are raising and lowering the curtains, or lights or set pieces or anything that might have to go up or down during the show. These cables are arranged in any number of ways. In some grids the cables cross the grid like fences in an obstacle course. Crossing the grid from front to rear, say at the Will Rogers Memorial Auditorium, is like wading thru a river of wires. In the Bass Hall the cables are all routed overhead and then down thru the spaces between the channel iron “planks”. A very user friendly grid.
For some reason RaByn’s rope is in a hundred knots today and as he untangles it I go to the back of the grid, “upstage,” to get the channel iron and piece of pipe that we will thread thru the “basket.” I guess you need to visualize the grid so here goes: The grid is made up of four-inch channel iron strips running from the front of the stage to the back. That is, North and South. Between each strip of channel iron is about a four-inch crack/space. We will drop the rope down thru this crack at the place where Tony has indicated with his pink tape and River and Chip will connect it to a five-foot piece of cable, we call it steel, that is bent back around itself and connected to the hook on the motor chain with a shackle. That makes a loop, which we call a “basket.”
When we drop the rope, the down riggers will connect the rope to the “basket.” Today the chains on the motors are 80 feet long. That means River and Chip will have to add a 20 foot length of cable between the basket and the motor chain so it will reach from the grid to the floor with chain to spare.
RaByn lowers the rope and River or Chip tie it to the basket with a knot called a Bolin. That’s a very special kind of knot. It is a knot that only gets tighter when weight is put on it and then when the weight is released untying the knot is easy. You can hang a ton of bricks on that knot and it won’t slip and then you can untie it with one hand when the load is released. Everyone should know how to tie a Bolin.
What do we do when we pull that “basket” up thru the space between the channel iron planks? Now is where an element enters that very few people ever need to know about. I mentioned the channel iron and pipe combination earlier. This is the part that is the most sobering. Upstage, tucked between steel beams are some four-foot pieces of channel iron. These lay with the flat side down, envision the letter “u” with a four inch bottom and two inch sides and squared edges. Cradled in this four-inch “channel” is an eighteen inch long piece of 3-inch pipe. When RaByn pulls the basket up thru the grid I will have to slide this channel iron/pipe combination thru the loop, (thru the “basket.”) This faces left to right across the grid, resting on the iron floor slices. East to West.
But first I have to transport these four-foot pieces of channel iron with the pipes cradled in them from their upstage storage places to the hang point. Maybe I should say that dropping a shackle pin from the grid could constitute a very real threat to someone’s well being below. And life generally goes on below with very little thought to what we are doing overhead. Below, there are electricians and prop people and carpenters and directors and engineers and anybody else that might have no better place on earth to be at the moment, all running around like a bunch of ants, (rigger’s perspective).
If something is dropped, the first anyone on the floor knows of it should be upon hearing the standard warning, “Heads up!” I have seen a “rigger” drop a little metal bracket from the grid and then stand there trying to figure out whether he should admit he just screwed up or just hope it doesn’t hit anyone and no one figure out where it came from. When a deadly missile has only 100 feet to fall, there is no time for philosophical ruminations. Last week I threw my shiv ribbon over the cables and the beaner flew off and bounced on the grid and before it could get any further I was yelling, “Heads up!” The sound of retreating feet could be heard by all.
“Heads up,” does not mean for people to stand where they are and look up so that might not be the best thing to say when there is a mixture of experienced and inexperienced people on the ground. The last thing you want to do when you hear, “Heads up” is look up. We, who rig, have stories about people that have done that.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting old and have nothing better to think about, but every time I carry one of those channel iron/pipe combinations from its resting place to the hang point I am very aware of the possibility that I could trip or have a spasm in my hand or something totally unpredictable, like the beaner flying off the way it did last week. So I am in a very special head space as I cradle this deadly combination in my arms and make my way across the grid. Think about this with me: The channel iron I am carrying, if dropped, would easily fit thru the four-inch spaces in the grid. The pieces of three-inch pipe, after a bounce or two, would likely submit to the charms of our buddy, gravity and… To say it is a prayerful exercise is fitting.
Today during that period of prayer I found myself thinking that it might be just me and god and everything else an illusion. That my life is just a dream where god holds out his hand to me and says, “I will keep you safe. No matter what happens don’t fear for yourself. Concern yourself with the needs of those beneath you. You are protected.” It reminds me of the part in the book called Dune where they have this box and you put your hand in it and you are told that nothing bad will happen to you if you do not pull your hand out of the box. No matter what it seems like, you are ok, unless you pull your hand out of the box. What do you trust. It’s not a matter for speculation in a situation like this.
Sometimes riggers are in a situation where they “must” use safety gear. Say you are about to rappel out of a dome. Before this is possible one must determine that he trusts his gear. Trusts his life to his equipment. Trust his life to his own judgement. One time I was rappelling off a three-story building out at the old stockyards. As I reached for the ledge above the second floor I realized that the beaner that secured my harness to the rope had come undone. I will never know how that happened. I will always remember though, to double check my beaner and I will tell you why it stays in my mind as such a vivid memory. I was not alone that day as scaled down that crumbling brick face. My three-year old daughter, Precious Silky was trustfully hanging around my neck as I looked down and saw that the only thing keeping the two of us from doing a crash landing in a pile or twisted metal and broken bricks was the strength of my two arms and the power of my hands.
That was the day that RaByn demonstrated the value of cotton gloves when one is rappelling. We were new at this rappelling game and had just invested some serious money in ropes and safety harnesses and figure eights and beaners and RaByn had this cool new pair of leather gloves. After a couple of slow slides down the building, RaByn decided to do a fast rappel. One big leap and “Whoopie!” with a quick break and, “Ut oh!” Leather, as it turns out is not a good insulator. Another floor or two and I suspect that the line between his hands and his fried gloves might have become blurred.
So, I’m carrying this four-foot piece of channel iron which is cradling this eighteen-inch piece of 3 inch pipe, consciously careful, knowing the danger, not to me but to those below and I’m thinking, “Does it matter, really, if all this stuff around me is real or just a figment of my imagination? Is it all just a way for God to find out if I really trust him. Is it all a test? It is all just a dream that, depending on whether or not I trust his “love” will turn out to be a nightmare or a beautiful awakening?
And as time and place disappear and the clouds of reality “spread” and come back together, dissolve and regenerate, I feel my pockets for a pencil, look around for something to write on. Finding nothing, I remind myself to make a mental note of this. “Remember this!” Remember this like you remembered last night when you got home from Dallas to write down that idea about fear. What you fear. What you don’t fear.
I’m not afraid of the speeding train but sometimes when I stand by the track I tremble.
I’m not afraid of the pouring rain but sometimes when the thunder turns my curtains orange I flinch.
I’m not afraid of the rapids that pour over the boulders but sometimes I forget to breathe.
And then it’s supposed to flip over to a chorus that says something like...
“But I’m afraid that you, my love, have taken my heart and stolen my reason to doubt, my excuse to mumble curses…
Remember this like that picture you dreamed of a truck-full of clowns passing in the desert… Remember this!
So, it all reminds me of the thing I did today that put my mind squarely in the face of the possibility of ending up in the hospital or stretched out in the morgue: The most dangerous thing I did today.
There is this place between here and the Bass Hall where I have to cross over four lanes of traffic as I merge from 121 across I35 to the ramp into town. Every time I make it thru that process I sigh a sigh of relief and know that the worst is over for the day.
Contact:
jamesmichaeltaylor@email.com
