by Marie Cobb
There are a lot of experiences many of us never have. Sometimes it is because of lack of interest, sometimes lack of money, sometimes lack of time. But for those of us who are blind the reason is frequently something else: lack of belief (our own and others) that we can or even should try to do the thing in question. This is the situation Marie Cobb, one of the leaders of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland, addresses in her story, "Chain Saws and Chigger Bites." Here is what she has to say:
As I was growing up in Tennessee the only experience I had with tools was on my grandparents’ farm with my grandfather and uncles who thought girls—and especially blind girls—had no business using such things. The most I ever was allowed to do was pull one end of a crosscut saw or screw a black walnut in a vice to hold it while I cracked it with a hammer. Power tools of any kind were certainly off limits.
Bright and early one hot summer morning five or six years ago the telephone rang and I heard my dad ask in a voice that sounded very chipper, "Are you alive?"
I did not want to admit that I was sitting in my bed drinking my first cup of tea and reading a good book. I answered, "Certainly."
"What are you doing today?" he asked.
"Oh, I don’t know. What do you want me to do?" I asked with no idea of what the answer might be since with Dad one never knew.
"If you haven’t had breakfast yet, why don’t you come over, and we’ll have a bite and talk about what you might do this morning."
I said I would come in about half an hour after I had taken a shower and dressed.
"You don’t need to do all that. Just put on some old clothes and come on now. I’m hungry. The gate is open." And he hung up the phone.
While we were having fruit and cereal you can imagine my delight when he asked me in a very casual manner if I had ever learned how to use a chain saw. Of course I had to admit that somehow I never had but that I would like to since I shared his love of gadgets. "Well as soon as we’re finished here I’ll teach you. A girl ought to know how to use a chain saw," he said.
When we went out to the wood garage he got out a contraption that looked like a vice on legs and took a tree branch about four feet long and about the size of my forearm and secured it with the clamps. He showed me the controls and how to place the blade exactly on the spot I wanted to cut before pushing the power switch. Then, he told me to put my hands on top of his while he made the first cut.
As those of you who are familiar with my father know, he was blind from birth, but what you may not know is so was I. Therefore, I was just a wee bit apprehensive since chain saws are so noisy and neither of us could see what we were doing, although I knew he wouldn’t have been showing me how to do something that wasn’t safe, and besides I didn’t want him to think I was a coward.
After he had done a couple of pieces it was my turn, and I discovered that it was great fun to zip through pieces of wood with such relative ease. When he was sure I could handle the saw competently he said, "Now over here I have a big stack of these limbs you can cut up for me to burn in my fireplaces.
In a couple of hours I had what I thought was a very respectable pile of wood, of which I was quite proud.
Getting the wood cut up was a good and productive thing to do, but the most important thing that happened that day was that I gained a little more confidence in my ability to use power tools.
On the following Saturday I happened to mention to Dad that I knew where there was a lot more wood about the size of the limbs we had cut earlier in the week. He wanted to know where they were, and I told him in the woods a block or so from his house.
"Show me," he said, and off we went.
By the middle of the afternoon when I was tired and bathed in perspiration I wasn’t so sure it had been such a good idea to tell him about the dead branches in the woods.
I had dragged many long pieces of wood back to his driveway, and some of them were too long and heavy for me to handle by myself. Of course Dad had a solution for that problem.
"Take this little hand saw over and cut the long ones into more manageable pieces," he said. I said somewhat sheepishly that I had never been able to use one of those successfully. "Nonsense. I know exactly what you are doing wrong," he said. Of course he really did. I had always put too much pressure on the saw instead of letting the blade just ride along the top of the wood until it caught on its own.
After several more trips to the woods I finished cutting the wood. Later that night I discovered that I had made another acquisition that day besides learning to use a saw.
I woke up itching in several places, and realized from past experience that I was covered with chigger bites. It was definitely time to get out the nail polish to seal off the little holes they had made in my skin for breathing purposes.
Using a hand saw proved to be much harder work than using an electric chain saw, but I was glad to have the knowledge and to have learned a new skill. Sometimes it is necessary to remind myself that blindness is not the reason why I can’t or don’t do certain things. It is simply that I haven’t tried yet, and there is the big difference.
We are all so thoroughly brainwashed concerning the so-called limitations of blindness that we have to guard against not allowing ourselves the freedom to accept all the exciting challenges the world has to offer.