Never give up!!

         Awhile back at the plant I work at we had a part wear out on a machine, the line was down and quite frankly we weren't sure just how to repair it to get the line running. The first attempt at fabricating a piece failed miserably , I thought about it awhile and started again, the machinist commented on how the first attempt didn't work and what made me think the second attempt would. My stress level was pretty high and I just stopped, "You never give up, never.....not even in the face of death". Now my comment got me some strange looks, but I proceeded to work and the second attempt was successful and looked promising.
When the part was done I gave a little story, a true one in fact.

        I was walking down around the corner of the barn next to the manure pit one morning  and I heard a noise that sounded like faint grunting and water splashing. I listened close for awhile and finally figured out that it was coming from a one foot diameter pipe that goes down in the ground about four feet to a valve for a manure transfer pipe. Now this pipe was about half full of water and looking in it there was a ground hog trying to stay afloat, and the way he looked he was about done for.
       Now his predicament was dire but he kept trying to crawl up the pipe which was futile, but not to him. His primal little brain knew one thing and that was he wanted to get out of there.....to live, he wasn't about to give up. Now a ground hog is a real nuisance especially to a farmer, but I couldn't in good conscience let him just drown so I went to the shop and  got a piece of pipe and made a hook. By the time I got back he was on his last leg, spending more time under the water than than on top. He came up again and I got the hook under him and got him out. He was whipped and walked slowly over to his hole and disappeared under the ground to live another day.
I covered the hole so it wouldn't happen again but for some reason I just found it somewhat inspiring that on his own he was done for but he kept trying.


 One of my favorite quotes is by Winston Churchill  on October 29, 1941,  when he visited Harrow School.

 

" Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy".


Stay safe
Bob