More than thirty years ago, right out of high school, I took a job in a nearby foundry to earn money for college. I worked with the mechanic helping to repair equipment and conveyors around the foundry and I was called the “Tinker”. One of my job assignments was to dispense first aid supplies. I don’t know why I was supposed to take care of the first aid stuff, I was hardly qualified to do anything medical, but it was part of my job, none-the-less.
Most of the employees at this foundry were former residents of the mental institution, from the area, and I was a little uncomfortable working near them. Just in case one of those crazies decided to do something I always carried a hunting knife.
One day, one of the numb nut workers thought it would be funny if he held his hand in the rail when the smelting bucket traveled over it, after leaving the furnace. The bucket ran over his hand and smashed the heck out of it. The idiot started screaming and those around him started yelling “DOC!”. Well… at first I didn’t realize they were hollering for me, but pretty soon some of the guys were dragging me over to the scene. I took one look at the crazy old guy’s hand and almost lost my cookies. All the guys were crowded around us and kept yelling for me to do something before the guy died. I studied the hand and saw that it was really smashed, but very little blood was coming from the wound. Suddenly blood started squirting all over the place. I knew at that point what I was going to do, mostly because I remembered reading about Civil War hospitals, and I whipped out my hunting knife, whacked off the hand, then grabbed the arm and shoved it against the blasting furnace, to seal the wound. Soon the ambulance came and hauled off the nutcase, who certainty was crazier after that day.
For the remaining year that I worked in that foundry, everyone called me “Doc Tinker”.