When
I was a kid I used to carry around this awful image in my head – a picture of
three men tangled awkwardly in high-tension wires, fifty feet in the air, their
lifeless bodies crisping in the midday sun.
The
horror they endured was shared with me by my father, an electrical engineer who
worked, among other places, at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New
York, helping with the installation of a new power plant in the 1950s. Carl
Frehley was a man of his times. He worked long hours, multiple jobs, did the
best he could to provide a home for his wife and kids. Sometimes, on Sunday
afternoons after church, he’d pile the whole family into a car and we’d drive
north through the Bronx, into Westchester County, and eventually find ourselves
on the banks of the Hudson River. Dad would take us on a tour of the West Point
campus and grounds, introduce us to people, even take us into the control room
of the electrical plant. I’m still not sure how he pulled that one off –
getting security clearance for his whole family – but he did.
Dad
would walk around, pointing out various sights, explaining the rhythm of his
day and the work that he did, sometimes talking in the language of an engineer,
a language that might as well have been Latin to me. Work was important, and I
guess in some way he just wanted his kids to understand that; he wanted us to
see this other part of his life.
One
day, as we headed back to the car, my father paused and looked up at the
electrical wires above, a net of steel and cable stretching across the autumn
sky.
«You
know, Paul,» he said, «every day at work, we have a little contest before
lunch.»
I
had no idea what he was talking about.
A
contest? Before lunch?
Sounded
like something we might have done at Grace Lutheran, where I went to elementary
school in the Bronx.
«We
draw straws to see who has to go out and pick up sandwiches for the whole crew.
If you get the shortest straw, you’re the delivery boy.»
That
was the beginning. From there, my father went on to tell us the story of the
day he drew the short straw. While he was out picking up sandwiches, there was
a terrible accident back on the job. Someone had accidentally thrown a switch,
restoring power to an area where three men were working. Tragically, all three
men were electrocuted instantly. When my father returned, he couldn’t believe
his eyes. The bodies of his coworkers were being peeled off the high-tension
wires.
«Right
up there,» he said quietly, looking overhead. «That’s where it happened.»
He
paused, put a hand on my shoulder.
«If
I hadn’t drawn the short straw that day, I’d have been up there in those wires,
and I wouldn’t be here right now.»
I
looked at the wires, then at my father. He smiled.
«Sometimes
you get lucky.»
Dad
would repeat that story from time to time, just often enough to keep the
nightmares flowing. That wasn’t his intent, of course – he always related the tale
in a whimsical ‘what if?’ tone – but it was the outcome nonetheless. You tell a
little kid that his old man was nearly fried to death, and you’re sentencing
him to a few years of sweaty, terror-filled nights beneath the sheets. I get
his point now, though. You never know what life might bring… or when it might
come to a screeching halt.
And
it’s best to act accordingly.
Ace
Frehley, No regrets - A rock'n'roll
memoir