Member-only story
The Spider, the Hippie, and Siddhartha
Back in the early 70s, I worked for a pipe manufacturer in Hamilton Ontario. We made all kinds of pipes: sewer pipes, water pipes, and pipes for pipelines. My job was to load these long pipes onto a machine and pump water into them under intense pressure to ensure there were no leaks or imperfections. Most of the time they passed the test but occasionally one would blow out. It was always a noisy and unnerving experience and while I didn’t wish for pipes to blow, it did break the soul-numbing boredom of the job.
Because I worked on an assembly line, it was necessary for me to stay at my station. Unless we were on a break or lunch, we had to stay at our controls to keep everything moving. However, one morning I spied a long wispy thread floating down from the ceiling struts high above me. At the end of it was a large spider. Whether it was the sun’s light or the light radiating from the blast furnaces that tempered the pipes, the spider appeared to glow in the smoky gloom. Judging from its trajectory, it was headed for the ovens where the newly formed and still hot pipes came rolling out.
I turned off my machine, grabbed a broom, and headed off to save the spider from certain doom, confident that I could save it and return to my post before too many pipes piled up waiting for pressurizing. Braving the heat from the furnace, I intercepted the drifting…
