Medical News

Oh my! That reminds me of something I was "witness" to as a young single guy who liked the money you could make working while in the winter on an isolated crew out in the north country. (I've already written something much longer about that time of my life, but I'll paraphrase part one chapter and post it here.)

I was working on a seismic outfit one winter and everyone on the crew slept in bunk house trailers with about eight bunks in each one - well everyone but the 'tool push,' the mechanic and the cook. The 'tool push' had a small trailer that doubled as his office and residence, while the cook and the mechanic, who were a married couple, had a bedroom in the cookshack. Now on that trip I was working as a helper to the mechanic, but I slept with the jug hustlers and other single guys. So I was there when 'the fart hit the flame' so to speak, and although I consider it funny now, I can tell you that at the time it was no laughing matter.

You see somehow one of the 'jug hustlers' knew the cook quite well and convinced her to brew up a batch of her special, home-made pork & beans one day. That night he pigged out on those dang beans and later in the bunkhouse, he thought it was funny to lay on his side, point his butt toward the aisle between the bunks and let loose with the most vile smelling vapours I have ever scented.

Now until that day I hadn't realized that at least some farts are heavier than air, but I saw an illustration of that fact when the dope blew a long toot on from his aft sphincter, just as the guy who slept on the bunk below him was lighting a cigarette. (Hey, it was the sixties and almost all the guys in that bunkhouse were smokers - which is the feature of another story.)

Anyway, I saw the flame race UPWARD from the lower bunk and envelope the stench committing dork's butt. There was no big boom, just sort of a whoof, then an extremely loud scream as the perpetrator's nether regions were enveloped in flame. The flame didn't last all that long, but as 'Gassy Gut' screamed in surprise, his belly muscles must have clenched tightly and the next fart in line made it's escape. So for a brief instant there was a jet of blue-green flame that arched out and upward from between the cheeks of his butt and out into the aisle.

It was a relatively serious 'accident' though, because the guy had to be treated for burns and was actually shipped out to Edmonton, since he could no long walk to do his job as a "Geophone Placement Engineer." Actually by the next day he had blisters on his butt cheeks and was shipped out to the hospital while lying on his belly.

Oh, another result was an order from the main office that there would be no more pork & beans coming out of ANY of the company's cook shacks, PERIOD.

K Pelle

New pre-op question in Japan. How much sake did you drink last night?