There is absolutely nothing like celebrating the 4th of July at the beach. Standing there at the edge of the land, with nothing but the expansive, reflective ocean in front of you, fireworks take on an entirely different dimension of beauty.
Ironically, here in Southern California where fireworks are practically outlawed, the acquisition and ignition of illegal fireworks goes on virtually unabated and are generally flaunted in the faces of law enforcement and firefighting personnel. This is not hard to imagine being that Mexico, with its year-round, inexpensive fireworks available nearly everywhere south of the border, is so close to Los Angeles.
One of my most memorable 4th of July celebrations was at Topanga State Beach in 1976 for the bicentennial. Back then there were no designated campsites, and you were allowed to pitch a tent directly on the sand and camp, which we did along with hundreds of other people with their tents which were scattered around the beach but in relatively close proximity. It looked exactly like a modern-day homeless encampment.
I was a 15-year-old punk-ass white boy juvenile delinquent, and my friend Jerry had taught me how to make really good firecrackers – the recipe of which I will not reveal as it may run me afoul of the law – but I made about a hundred of them because, why not. These were on par with the Mexican M-80s but were also waterproofed with beeswax. I would light one and throw it into the ocean and it would still explode underwater – like little depth charges. Although the fuses were cut to the same length, they were a little bit unpredictable with their burn time and sometimes the firecracker would explode before hitting the water or sometimes in midair. It’s not lost on me that I’m lucky that I still have all of my digits…and both hands…and my face.
Down the beach about fifty feet away from us toward the water, a couple of guys dug a pit in the sand – about eight-feet in diameter and a few feet deep – and lined it with rocks from nearby Topanga Creek and then started an impressive bonfire before dusk. When the coals were hot enough, they tossed in a 5-gallon bucket of magnesium shavings from their machine shop, and a few bright, errant sparks went aloft as the magnesium shavings began to heat up. In the meantime, fireworks and firecrackers were going off all up and down the beach; Roman candles; large and small bottle rockets; Buzzbombs (not the beverage); and loud, ear-piercing M-80 and M-100 explosions could be heard every half-second. It was pure mayhem. Happy 200th Birthday, ‘Merica!
Then one of the bonfire guys walked down to the edge of the water and filled his bucket with saltwater and then came back up to the bonfire, paused for a moment, and then started pouring the water directly into the pit. The result of the saltwater hitting the hot magnesium shavings was more than magnificent: It was ephemeral art. The fleeting, white hot fireball and radiating heat were impressive. The gathering crowd of people were oohing and aahing and clapping as the guys threw even more magnesium strips and water into the pit to keep their little show going.
Then there’s always that one guy in a crowd that will one-up anyone no matter the circumstances.
Two tents to our right, another guy, who was standing on the beach and smoking a joint in the glowing magnesium firelight, went into his tent and pulled out a shovel and a black six-foot long by six-inch wide pipe that had handles mounted on the sides. He dug a hole about three feet deep and put one end of the pipe in the hole and then back-filled the sand around the pipe to hold it in place. He tapped on the side of pipe and pointed the open end of it ever so slightly seaward. Then, again, from inside his tent, he pulled out what appeared to be a black bomb with a long fuse in it – like what you’d see in a Spy vs. Spy cartoon in Mad Magazine.
He lit the fuse with his joint, dropped the “bomb” into the tube fuse first, and took a couple of steps back. There was a slightly muffled PHOOM! and it launched that bomb looking thing high into the night sky like it was an artillery shell. Then there was a much louder BOOM! from above and a professional pyrotechnic level burst of red stars went off over the water. This prompted the crowd to cheer and applaud. People pulled their cars over and stopped on Pacific Coast Highway behind us to watch. Then he lit another one. And then another. It went on for about 15-minutes, the duration of which all of the other fireworks up and down the beach had ceased. It was spectacular.
After that impromptu semi-professional fireworks show, all of the other fireworks seemed puny, silly, and totally insignificant. We sadly carried on anyway.
We found out afterward that the guy worked in the pyrotechnics department at a very famous Southern California amusement park located in Anaheim. By all considerations, it was a pro level show, and the crowd loved it.
Then the waves from the incoming tide came up the sand and started flooding the magnesium fire pit, turning it into a hellish fireball which glowed under the surface of the water. Everyone began to scramble, and people were pulling up their tents and grabbing their camping gear and hauling them up to higher ground. It was complete chaos. I managed to save Jerry’s Coleman cooler full of Bud tall boys before it drifted out to sea. With the combined smells of marijuana, hot dogs, sulfur, and burnt arm hairs wafting through the air, we cracked open a couple of beers and gulped them down. They tasted like freedom.
Another controversy and another peaceful protest that morphed into a riot in Los Angeles which looks remarkably similar to a Dodgers World Series championship celebration. Some things will never change.
This time, it’s about federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the sanctuary city of Los Angeles within the sanctuary state of California enforcing federal immigration law, the media narrative of which is labeled as “ICE Raids.” When the citizens of L.A. got news of this, the peaceful protests began. Not soon afterward, the wolves amongst the peaceful protesters started vandalizing public and private property and then they started flying foreign flags and started burning American flags amongst many other things and then they started looting businesses and hurting people. This is the point at which the protesters completely lost my support for their cause, however noble it may have been.
President Trump, in his usual fascist bullying manner deployed the National Guard to support ICE allegedly without notifying Mayor Karen Bass or Governor Gavin Newsom. Mayor Bass blames Trump for the rioting yet resists cooperating with ICE. Governor Newsom blames Trump for the rioting yet resists cooperating with ICE. And then in Governor Newsom’s perpetual effort to both appear on national television and not let a crisis go to waste (right out of the Rahm Emanual playbook), thumbs his nose at Trump and promises to sue but does nothing to actually deescalate the violence. The idiocy of this is breathtaking.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” Well, here we are. Great job everyone.
For the record, I completely reject Trump dispatching military resources to my city – this is not 1930’s fascist Germany or Italy. People are going to get hurt and killed, and this blood will be on the hands of Trump, Newsom, and Bass, the trifecta of disastrous political leadership.
That being said, I don’t see this immigration issue as black-and-white at all; I see this as the culmination of failure of leadership at the federal, state, and city government levels for decades which has brought this city to another boiling point. The only black-and-white that I can discern from all of this chaos is that you have the open border advocates (typically Democrats) on the one side, and you have the law-and-order advocates (typically Republicans) on the other side, and on this illegal immigration issue, the two of these are mutually exclusive.
I am a U.S. citizen that was born right here in Los Angeles. I’m also a migrant every time I travel internationally, and not only do I have to prove who I am with my U.S. government issued passport, I also have to fill out a visa form, letting the foreign government know whether I’m there for business or leisure, where I’m going to, and where and for how long will I be staying. Sometimes they also want to know what my profession is and my annual income, whether I’m married or single, and so on and so forth. My face is scanned. My thumbprint is taken. This is all in an effort to validate that I am who I say I am. In the background, I’m sure that my information is checked with INTERPOL and FBI databases to assure that I am not a terrorist threat, or a criminal, or a person of interest. Only after getting clearance, will I be allowed into their country. Fair enough.
It’s a slight inconvenience, but not insanely difficult. I have no idea what actually happens to someone who is red flagged other than they are taken to a secure area, but it is probably very inconvenient and very likely to include incarceration and deportation, and maybe a strip search and a body cavity check and a beating or two, none of which I want to experience.
But here at the southern border of the U.S. we are not so vigorous as out international counterparts, and this is where things really start falling apart with our immigration policy and law enforcement, and I think that there is plenty of blame to go around.
I believe that the federal government is complicit (dare I say derelict?) when they elected to not vigorously enforce existing federal immigration laws at the porous southern border for decades, under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
The state of California is complicit in its effort to ignore federal immigration laws by allowing undocumented migrants to work in the state without proper federal authority or approval, essentially ignoring appropriate lawful identification and immigrant status verification.
The Los Angeles City Council are complicit in their sanctuary city policy prohibiting city resources from being used to assist federal immigration enforcement. Was this actually approved by the voters in the city, or is this just a flex?
The California Democratic party is complicit for allowing undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and for providing public services at the expense of the state taxpayers like in-state tuition discounts for universities, Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid program) coverage, financial aid like Cash Assistance for Program for Immigrants (CAPI), food and nutrition assistance like California Food Assistance Program (CFAP), and not requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. This, I think, smacks of pandering to a group of vulnerable people for a voting bloc that will keep Democrats in power. These programs and services also make the state of California a magnet for illegal immigration.
The Republican party is complicit due to their “pro-business” platform (which really isn’t) and wanting cheap labor for their business constituency, so they turn a blind eye to the illegal immigration issue, allowing undocumented migrants to work in the U.S. without proper identification or authority, again, taking advantage of a group of vulnerable people.
The corruptible Mexican government is complicit for not enforcing international immigration law but being that remittances from the U.S. are a significant part of the Mexican economy (around 4%, or $64.75B), they have zero incentive to do so. By the way, this money is not spent stateside stimulating local economies; it is exported U.S. dollars. They are complicit for allowing the drug cartels to cross the U.S. border virtually unabated, providing access for them to sell their deadly drugs inside the U.S. Moreover, having an economy that is so terrible that its poorest citizens choose to leave for better opportunities in the U.S. speaks volumes about Mexico’s domestic economic problems that have been ongoing for generations.
The undocumented immigrants are complicit themselves in that many of them have been here in the U.S. for decades and either let their visitor or work visa expire or crossed the border illegally yet have not applied for a visa renewal or citizenship or a green card or amnesty. To me, this means that they want to remain a foreign national and have no desire to become a legal U.S. citizen or obtain legal permanent U.S. residency – which is fine – but that does not give them a pass to not have their legal documents in order. I’m not going to buy the media narrative that this is because they are afraid of deportation, or that they are poor, or illiterate, or ignorant – it’s paperwork, not rocket science. There are also plenty of free or low-cost public resources available to help them navigate the process, so there really aren’t any excuses not to do it, which begs the question; why haven’t they already done so?
The media are also complicit in changing the language of the narrative from “illegal alien” (a common term used in law) to “undocumented alien” then to “undocumented migrants” or “undocumented immigrants” and then to just using “immigrants” or “migrants,” intentionally blurring the line between legal and illegal status and conflating the significant differences between them and also downplaying the possibility of any criminals crossing the border into the U.S. illegally which may be a low number, like maybe, I don’t know, let’s say a few cartel members here or a few street gang members there or a few murderers and rapists trickling in across the border here and there, but it is definitely not zero. But the fact that we don’t really know this information should enrage Americans of all stripes.
My understanding is that if someone crosses the border of a sovereign country without going through the proper customs checkpoints and processes, they are violating the law. This is known as an illegal entry. If they are a foreigner, they are considered an alien (a term from the 14th century), ergo, illegal alien, the specific term of which has been around for about 100 years. It seems harsh and maybe sounds a little bit dehumanizing, but maybe it should be because they are actually breaking the law! Is breaking the law not a crime? It appears that it depends upon whom you ask.
Twisting a longstanding term like illegal alien into something more generic and friendly sounding like migrant is a serious dereliction of journalistic duty because there is a gulf of distinction between them. It’s like calling trespassing some squishy euphemism like unintentional intrusion. Would anyone call rape overly passionate hyper-sexual activity, or call murder suddencessation of biological activity? No! Rape is rape, and murder is murder, and everyone knows what these words mean, both of which are heinous, serious crimes, but they are factually crimes. Trespassing is also a crime and so is illegal entry. But when facts are politically unpopular and get in the way of advancing a political narrative, the language is changed by the various factions in power to distract from the truth.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,” and John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” In essence, facts are truth. Truth has meaning. Truth has weight. Truth cannot be altered. Truth actually matters.
But when truth becomes inconvenient and gets in the way of a political movement, truth must become the enemy. Truth must be entirely disregarded or distorted, dissected, parsed, and contorted into something that it isn’t. Through this process, truth becomes fiction, and an alternate definition (the untruth) is brought forward as a replacement. This is how illegal alien becomes immigrant. This is how the narrative is changed from someone who has factually entered the country illegally and violated the law (the truth) to someone who is just a poor, honest, hard-working person looking for a better life for their family (the replacement), which may have some truthiness to it, but it does not excuse the actual truth. My head truthfully hurts thinking about this.
I think our political leadership across the board need to grow up and deescalate the rhetoric and the finger pointing, and the name calling and take a step back and ask themselves this: How can we cooperatively reform this colossal failure of immigration policy in a fair, compassionate, humane manner? These politicians created this unbelievable quagmire and now it is time for them to clean it up.
I have a few suggestions:
Discontinue the ICE raids. These appear to be too much like a Gestapo tactic. In political speech; bad optics.
Lock down the U.S. Mexico border. Might be hard, but it’s not impossible. Lots of other countries do it.
Allow for a temporary immigration law enforcement hiatus with a hard one-year deadline to allow undocumented immigrants already residing in the U.S. for more than one-year to file appropriate forms. This puts the onus of documentation on their shoulders while also giving them the opportunity to choose whether to stay or to leave.
Make it a felony for U.S. employers to knowingly hire undocumented workers. It’s not asking too much for job applicants to prove their immigration status if they want to work here.
Make it a felony to enter the U.S. illegally. Lots of other countries do this too.
Vigorously enforce immigration laws after the one-year hiatus expires. No more catch-and-release policies.
This, I think, will give undocumented immigrants the time and the space needed to get their legal affairs in order while also deterring illegal entry. If they intentionally choose not to do it, then the full force of the law should be applied to them. No more excuses.
These are not inhumane, unreasonable, or radical ideas, rather, I believe they are sensible and achievable.
Our spineless political leadership just needs to grow the backbone to do it.
December 26, 2024. Yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of an industrial accident that almost killed me. According to the ER doctor at Providence Saint Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank CA, it should have killed me.
I was working as a Journeyman in the electrical trade at the time, and the contractor I was working for landed a job for some tenant improvement (TI) work on the 6th floor of the DIC Enterprises building. It was a relatively simple job; relocate some 3-way light switches in the file room from one of the existing doorways that was going to be removed and closed off and move the switches to a new doorway location that was cut in on an adjacent wall. In the trade, this was typical, benign TI work that I had done hundreds of times before.
A 3-way switch means that there are two switch locations where the lights can be turned on or off as you enter or exit a room, generally, on opposite sides of a room.
Also typical was that this was a commercial office building with a 480-volt 3-phase wye alternating current power supply that utilized 277-volt A, B, and C phases for the lighting circuits. Yeah, that’s right kids: 277-volts from one leg (one wire) of the wye. This is common, industrial strength power here in the US and it must be handled with great respect, or it will unceremoniously kill you.
The 12-foot high suspended 2-by-2 acoustic t-bar ceiling of this room was also typical of a commercial office building. It’s one of those ceilings with 2-foot square drop-in tiles and a metal t-bar grid to hold them in place. The t-bar grid also holds the lighting fixtures in place. Everything is held and tied together with #10 or #12 tie wire where one end is tied off to the t-bar, and the other end is tied off to an eyebolt or a bracket that is fastened to the metal decking or concrete building structure above. Light fixtures have additional #8 or #10 self-tapping sheet metal screws that fasten them to the t-bar. All in the name of seismic safety.
I was working with an apprentice named Miguel. In trade parlance, he was “green,” meaning inexperienced – he only had a couple of years under his belt. But Miguel was a quick learner and we got along well.
I proceeded to do the investigative pre-work. This consisted of identifying the line side conduit which is the conduit that contains the “feeder” wires – a.k.a., “hot side” – of the circuit, and then identifying the load side conduit which is the conduit that connects to the lighting.
I won’t bore you with the details, but both switch conduits connected to a common junction-box (j-box) above the ceiling, and the feeder side was at the switch that was not being relocated. Easy-peasy: remove both switches, open the wiring on the feeder side switch and cap it off, pull out some wiring, cut in a new switch box, drop in a new conduit, pull in new wiring, make appropriate splices and pigtails, reinstall switches. Done.
During a critical part of the work, I had instructed Miguel not to splice and pigtail either switch until I was done with working with the j-box in the ceiling, which was sandwiched between an air duct and the t-bar, and I only had about 6-inches of space to work with. Well, apparently the part about not splicing did not get through, and Miguel energized the circuit anyway…and me along with it.
I was standing on the 9th rung of a 10-foot ladder and was leaning heavily into one of the 2-by-2 openings to access the j-box, partially resting my arms on the metal t-bar. I am always careful when I’m doing make-up work, which is trade slang for stripping and splicing wiring, however, you handle the make-up work differently if you know you are working on a hot circuit. Well, I did not know I was working on a hot circuit until I was stripping a wire and the finger of my right hand was touching the exposed metal of my wire stripping tool. This now made me part of the circuit, and the 277-volts flowed through my body because my arms were grounded to the t-bar ceiling.
Being that your muscles work with small electrical currents that are controlled by your brain, when higher voltage goes through your body, your muscles contract violently. I was situated in such a way that when my muscles contracted, I lifted myself off of the ladder and suspended my body by my arms and the pain from this hyper-contraction of my muscles was unbelievable.
Oddly, even though I was aware that I was being electrocuted, I could still think clearly, and I was telling myself to let go, but I had no control over my body that was now vibrating with the 60hz of the electrical current flowing through me.
I could smell my hair and flesh burning and sensed a metallic taste in my mouth.
Suddenly, I felt that I could float, and this is the moment when I saw the white light in front of me. I stopped feeling pain. It seemed that I could gravitate toward the white light without much effort, almost as if it was pulling me – beckoning me – to go to it. I could still think crystal clear. The last thought I remembered thinking in my semi-conscious state was, “I can’t go; my wife and kids need me…I can’t go!”
The next thing I knew was that I had hit the floor and landed hard on my right-hand side. I have no memory of falling. Hitting the floor either knocked the wind out of me or knocked the life back into me, but I was sucking really hard for air. Now that I was awake and conscious and could think clearly, the first thing I tried to do was stand up. I was extremely wobbly. I looked around and Miguel was standing there like a statue with his mouth agape and his eyes popping out, like he had just seen a ghost. I tried to yell, “Call 9-1-1!” but the voice that came out of my mouth was not mine; it sounded unintelligible, and strangely like someone that had a severe speech impediment.
It’s hard to pin this down, but I think the entire ordeal lasted about a minute. A minute that would forever change my life.
When I realized that my speech was compromised, I tried walking but ended up stumbling clumsily over to the wall and tried to write 9-1-1 on it. But I couldn’t write it out. My body was not fully responding to my brain. It was at this point that I remember thinking to myself, “God, thank you for letting me live,” and, in a moment of amor fati, “Well, if this is my permanent state, I’ll just have to accept it.” Suddenly, about four people from the office rushed into the file room, evidentially after hearing my body hit the floor, took one look at me, told me to lie down and someone called 9-1-1. I couldn’t even figure out how to take off my tool belt – my brain was saying one thing, but my body was doing something else – and so I lied down on the floor with tools and parts spilling out all over.
I remember not saying another word while lying on the floor uncomfortably, writhing in pain, not knowing how bad I was injured, and staring at the 2-by-2 opening in the ceiling that tried to kill me and asking myself how did I survive this? Why, did I survive this?
The paramedics got to me pretty quickly. As they were taking my vitals and connecting electrodes for the EKG machine, one of them started asking questions and I was terrified about answering them because it might validate that I was perma-fried. “Can you tell me what happened?” I hesitated for a moment, then slowly replied, “I was electrocuted by a 277-volt lighting circuit.” My voice actually sounded better, but it was still far from normal. “Were you standing on that ladder when this happened?” “Yes.” “Do you know what day this is?” “Yes, it’s Monday, December 26, 1994, the day after Christmas.” “Do you know where you are?” “Yes, I’m at the DIC Enterprises building in Burbank.” The questioning was interrupted by one of the other paramedics; “The victim is in atrial fibrillation!” “Get him ready for transport,” said the other.
They lifted me to the gurney, strapped me in, and wheeled me to the elevator. On the way to the ground floor, one of the paramedics said, “You’re lucky you’re alive!” I was loaded into the ambulance and transported to “St. Joe’s,” as the locals call Saint Joseph’s Medical Center. This was the most swerving, jarring, bouncy, uncomfortable ride I ever experienced. I started to wonder if the ambulance had wandered onto a demolition derby track. To occupy my mind while en route, I performed a self-check to determine if I had lost control of any of my extremities, and to my delight, I had no problem moving anything. At least this part of me was not perma-fried.
During the ride, they asked more questions. They needed my full name, address, phone number, emergency contact, my current health status, and if I was taking any prescription medications, etc. It wasn’t long before we were pulling into the ambulance driveway at St. Joe’s where some hospital staff members were waiting for our arrival. They quickly exchanged information and wheeled me into the ICU where they moved me from the gurney to the bed, switched EKG connections, and started an IV drip. I was still in shock, the word of which now took on an entirely new meaning to me.
“Patients heart is still in A-Fib, there’s a 1st to 2nd degree burn line across the shoulders below the back of the neck, and a 3rd degree burn on the bottom of the right forearm about the size of a quarter. The patient lost consciousness during the electrocution, but he’s lucid now.”
All of this happened before noon.
As the attending physician was examining me, he said, “Hello Mr. Freeman, it appears that you’ve had quite the morning; can you tell me what happened?” I gave him the same story I gave to the paramedics. “I see,” he replied. “Where does it hurt?” I replied in a wavering voice, “My head is pounding. My right shoulder is throbbing. All of my upper body muscles are extremely sore. I feel like I got run over by a trash truck.” “Okay, I hear you, and here’s what we’re going to do; we’re going to put you on a morphine drip to ease the pain and give you some medication to get your heart back into normal sinus rhythm, then we’re going to treat that 3rd degree burn on you arm and send you over to x-ray to make sure that you didn’t fracture your arm or shoulder. You’re lucky to be alive.” I replied, “That’s the second time this morning that I’ve been told how lucky I am, how do you mean that, exactly?” The doctor replied with, “Well, Mr. Freeman, that 277-volt shock you received has a nasty reputation of being fatal. The ones that survive are usually in such bad shape that we’re just trying to find out what’s still working. You, on the other hand, not only survived the shock, but you are also apparently in pretty good shape, considering the circumstances, and we’re going to find out what, if anything, is not working for you.” Lucky me. Just another day in the life of an electrician.
Shortly thereafter, my wife Kim walked into the ICU which raised my spirits considerably. I was in the midst of telling her what happened when the doctor came into the room. Lots of Q&A ensued. This is when the doctor told me that if the medication did not bring my heart back into normal sinus rhythm…they were going to have to use the defibrillator. Yes, that’s right; they might have to shock me again. I was not keen on the possibility of this happening.
Over the course of the next several hours, my voice went back to normal, and my body started responding to my brain.
The good news was that although the shoulder x-ray revealed some tissue damage and joint swelling, there wasn’t a fracture or break, and my body eventually responded to the heart medication and after 48-hours, my heart was back to normal sinus rhythm. After 72-hours, I was released to go home. The bad news was that the 3rd degree burn on my arm was going to need a skin graft which was performed at the Grossman Burn Center in Sherman Oaks, CA several days later.
Oddly, after only a couple of days of recovery at home, I received two visitors from my employers insurance company asking me if I was ready to go back to work. Go back to work? Seriously? This didn’t pass the smell test. I told them that my doctor hasn’t authorized me to go back to work yet, and they needed to check with him. This is when it occurred to me that the insurance company was overtly trying to rush me to go back to work. This is when I knew that I needed a professional to represent me, so I hired George Shulman, a workers comp attorney who took care of my case.
Due to the extensive muscle damage to my upper body, it took 7-months of twice weekly physical therapy sessions before I was allowed to return to work. The first couple of months of recovery were brutal. It hurt to raise my arms. It hurt to breathe deeply. It was a struggle to get dressed or take a shower. I was extremely weak. My muscles were so damaged that it limited my upper body range of motion. I had to stretch all of those muscles back out over the course of the PT sessions, which was a slow, painful process.
I’ll tell you right now that the economic reality at the time was that the workers compensation payments didn’t even come close to my normal income, and we found ourselves on the brink of bankruptcy during my recovery.
I don’t know if the law has changed since then, but at the time, I was eligible to take advantage of vocational rehabilitation training which would expire within a 5-year window. I took the required aptitude test and was told that they have never seen anyone score so highly and that I was eligible to take any of the training they had in their extensive catalog. The problem was that there was no new career that was going to put me in the same income level that I was already making, so I passed on retraining and went back into the trade.
I didn’t want to go back to work for the same electrical contractor that I was working for when I got hurt, so I called Joe Kamashian, one of my old bosses and after hearing my story he offered to rehire me for more money than I was making with the previous company. This was another lucky break.
In the meantime, my dad upgraded the old DOS computer that he bought the family a year earlier to Windows 95…and I was hooked. I learned as much as I could about PC’s, even considering computer programming. This set the wheels in motion for my interest in somehow making a living in the computer field.
By spring of 1999, I called Mr. Shulman and told him that I wanted to revisit the vocational retraining opportunity, and to my amazement, there were two new computer focused certification training paths. One was for Certified Novell Engineer (CNE) and the other was for Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) for Windows NT 4.0. At the time, Novell was the well-established 800lb gorilla in the network operating system (NOS) space, and Microsoft was a newcomer. I consulted with my dad about which one I should choose, and my dad quipped, “Go with Novell. Microsoft sucks.” Naturally, I went with Microsoft.
But this choice did not come without sacrifice or great effort.
To beat the 5-year sunset for retraining, I had to double-up on night classes at Mount Sierra College in Pasadena to finish certification in 9-months instead of the usual 1.5 years while also working full time, but I sucked it up. I had little time for any social activities. After 9-months of long days and longer nights, I pulled it off and obtained my MCSE certification on December 27, 1999, exactly 5-years and 1-day after the accident.
Incidentally, before I was fully certified, I was invited to a meeting with Dave Farguson, the GM of Center Automotive Group (BMW, and Chrysler/Jeep). I had already been moonlighting for him doing some electrical work at the dealership during a parts department remodel, so we already had a working relationship. What I didn’t know was that he was looking at a new Windows based Dealer Management System (DMS) named Carman to replace his mainframe-based Reynolds & Reynolds DMS at BMW, and ADP DMS at Chrysler/Jeep.
I was unaware that during a previous meeting with all of the departmental managers discussing the move to Carman, Dave asked the group if they knew anyone who he could hire to manage the new computers and network. My brother Scott was working as the BMW parts manager and Scott knew that I was attending night school and working toward my MSCE and threw my name into the conversation. Lucky once again.
At our meeting, Dave asked me some questions about my certification training status and when I would obtain it. I told him that I had a couple more classes to finish before taking the Pearson certification tests, but I should be done by the end of the year. This is when Dave offered me a job starting with an $80,000 salary. I was only making about $52,000 per year in the electrical trade, so this was a major bump in income for me and my family. Lucky yet again. Or was it providence?
1994 was a rough year for my family. It started with the Northridge earthquake in January and ended with a near electrocution in December. I’m lucky to be alive.
Looking back through the lens of time, this accident provided opportunities that I never would have had otherwise. It also changed my focus and my outlook on life in so many positive ways that it’s hard to define. I’ll put it this way; Being so close to death actually brought me closer to life, and something positive can come from an unfortunate circumstance.
The accident also made me more spiritual in that I now believe that there is an afterlife, but this is a complicated topic because this also validates that there must be a world of spirits. If there is a world of spirits, does this also mean that there is a heaven and a hell? If so, this also means that God and Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary and Satan are not fictional characters. If these biblical figures are not fictional characters, it means that the bible is true. If the bible is true, and God exists, I have questions. Questions like, “God; why did you create the mosquito and the tsetse fly? What purpose do they serve other than to spread blood borne diseases (that you also presumably created) that kill people in some of the most agonizing, horrific ways possible?” “Why did you take our son Travis away from us?” Questions like this flood my mind. This is my Pandora’s box.
I may be conflicted but I’m still the luckiest man on the planet.
msnarky 