My Brother, My Hero

      “Are you guys ready?” My dad mouthed the words through the pane of glass between us.

Gary and I looked at each other, and shrugged, and started delicately pounding on the bottom of the 4’x4’x1/4” glass window with the rubber butts of our Estwing hammers. Is it possible to “delicately pound”? We were trying.

My dad, my brother and I were working on a window replacement job. It was on the historic Ravenel house. Dad was outside standing on the top of an extension ladder, looking in the second floor window that we needed to remove. On either side of his ladder was another ladder. The plan was: Gary and I would ever so gently ease the window out of the casing by tapping on it with the butts of our hammers, which were handled with soft-ish rubber. Dad, balancing on the top of the ladder, would ease his fingers under the window as it edged out of the casing, and then Gary and I would run down the flight of stairs, out the door, and around the house, and sprint up the ladders on either side of Dad, and then all three of us would slide the window down the front face of the ladders to the ground. (To any OSHA official reading this: Just Kidding!)

This sounds like a ludicrous plan, perhaps, but we had already successfully executed it with about 6 other windows, so we were feeling pretty secure.

As Gary and I continued to tap gingerly along the base of the window, we heard a tiny brittle sound, and looked at the bottom edge of the glass. There was a miniscule crack in the glass. Gary and I looked at each other, and then glanced out at Dad, who was staring at the defect.

Hmmm…

Nothing more happened, so we collectively shrugged our shoulders, and Gary and I resumed our activity.

Tap…tap…taptap…tap…taptaptap…tap

Tap

Abruptly, 16 square feet of ¼” thick plate glass disassembled itself into exploding shards. As I fell backwards in shock and survival, I saw two snapshot pictures in front of me.

My dad, hammer in hand, reaching through the rain of glass, trying to hook the hammer claw over the window frame, and missing as he reeled backward, losing his balance at the top of the ladder.

My brother, wading into the killing glass that I had shied away from and grabbing my dad’s arm, pulling him back into balance just before he fell backwards to the ground.

And then silence, as the glass window that was, crunched under Gary’s feet.

And that day, my brother became a hero to me.