Wake Up!

Leaving the shop one Spring evening, I suffered some concern over the robustness of a linear ball bearing system I was installing. Were the bearings rigid enough to traverse the almost imperceptible bump at the juncture of two sections of the ball ways? Though well within engineering specifications, I wasn’t comfortable with the design.

Later that night, in dreamland, I saw the carriage running down the twenty foot long rails. Hitting the spliced section, the bearings disintegrated, throwing steel balls everywhere. Faced with disaster, I quickly designed a shroud to retain the assembly and even included felt wipers to retain grease and exclude contaminants.

The next morning, full of apprehension, I proceeded to test the apparatus. Lo and behold, on one traverse down the track, upon hitting the joint, a bearing failed and balls flew everywhere. On my hands and knees, I searched the warehouse floor for some two hundred 3mm ball bearings. Mysteriously, as I reclaimed the balls, I also found a number of 1/8 inch balls. This added to the fun as the diameter of the balls are quite similar. I was looking for .118 inch and finding .125’s. After sorting and cleaning the balls, I was ready to remedy the problem. As instructed in the dream, I made the containment system and the balls had nowhere to go! As in Answers, this dream brought a welcome solution.
 
While on the subject of dreams, I must relate several recurring dreams that have entertained me for many years. First is the sinking in the mud and disappearing dream. In the early sixties there was an airliner that purportedly crashed through the water of Lake Pontchartrain and disappeared into the deep sediments below the shallow water and no trace was ever to be found. As a kid I used to ponder salvaging the wreck and claiming the jewelry and valuables from the entombed corpses. My dream is much the same. Usually in my truck, I make a fatal wrong turn into a hazardous area. Sometimes it’s a canal, but the most interesting was a trackless tundra. My truck slowly sinks into the mud while I ponder the fact that no one will ever know what happened to me. Perhaps I will be discovered by some future archaeologists, as ice age creatures are found in the La Brea Tar Pits.

Perhaps the dream has some basis from a real life adventure. Once while rebuilding the pumping station at the end of Lake Villa St., the canal was drained exposing the unexplored canal bottom. Appearing dry and firm, what teenager could resist? Walking under the Avron Bridge, the ground suddenly gave way beneath me. Into the bottomless muck I descended. Up to my shoulders in thick muck, I clutched the nearby bridge piling. My companion, Dominick, reached from Terra Firma and drew me out by my shirt collar. Though covered in muck, I don’t recall being too concerned by this extremely close call.

The next dream concerns steep bridges. I drive up a bridge that grows increasingly steep. I reach the point where I am sure I will fall over backwards. I spend the rest of the dream trying to determine how best to solve this dilemma. Once while crossing the bridge to Dauphin Island, Alabama, I felt that this, too steep, bridge must be from my dream. The most recent dream bridge was in Australia.

Lastly is the non-existent grass cutting contract dreams. In various scenarios, some things remain the same. For mowing work at different industrial sites, I am continually paid for my services. I either neglect or forget to provide the service. The dream is spent in the torment of figuring out how to catch up before the customer is aware. As far as I’m aware, these dreams only occur when I am not in the grass-cutting business. In the most recent manifestation it was a very large contract. I had been paid monthly for several years, yet had never gotten around to starting the job. I traveled from site to site looking at overgrown plants and remote locations. I felt that I must cut everything before the contract expired. Even though I planned the ultimate solution, it was to no avail. I no longer had the will or desire to complete the task at hand.

Reading this, I conclude that sometimes it is good that we get to escape to the earth plane where we don’t have all those problems to solve.

©02/06/09