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The Nail

Ronnie Bray

It was an annular ringed nail made to be driven into wood by a nailing machine and to stay there forever.
That is what the rings were for. Once in place, it took superhuman strength to remove it. But then, our
job at Shaw’s pallet factory in Dobcross, at the old textile mill, was putting them in, not taking them out.
Dobcross is an ancient stone built Pennine village on the wrong side of the Mountains and close enough
to Oldham to celebrate Whit Monday instead of Good Friday.

The pallet making shop was four times as long as it was wide and had a pallet manufacturing line at either
side close to the side walls. Two teams placed elm blocks in rolling jigs at appropriate points and another
man placed wooden boards on them for the first nailer to fix, then the work was turned over and a ready-
made top was put on before the pallet went through the last nailer to complete the palette before it rolled
off the production line before it was taken off and stacked to be run into the yard by fork lift trucks who
stacked them thirty or more high making wooden canyons along the sides of the roadways in the big mill
yard.

Hoppers on top of each nailing machine held the nails that were fed down through tubes to the nailing
heads. From time to time, one of the crew went aloft to empty boxes of three-inch long annular ringed
nails into the hopper to keep the supply stocked. Occasionally, a few nails would spill over the sides of
the steel hoppers as they were being emptied, landing on the floor to be swept up at the close of each
day’s operations. It was commonplace to have nails kicking around the floor and no one paid any mind to
them.

My position on the team varied according to need and whether I needed to be free to take care of any
Trade union business, for I was the Senior Shop Steward at Shaw’s, having unionised the factory after I
had led the workforce out for a three-day strike over pay and conditions. On the day I found the nail I
was working at the back of the machine, pulling the half-made pallets through to the turnover element
before sending them down to have their tops fitted and nailed. I needed to go for a drink, or something
equally trivial, and asked one of the team to cover for me. Then I jumped down from the staging on
which we worked on the assembly lines, and that’s when I found the nail.

At first it didn’t register what had happened, but a moment later it was obvious that against all the odds,
one of the spilled nails had landed on its head and stood there just the right distance away from the
staging for my right boot to find it when I jumped off.

I felt a bit sick when I saw the point of the nail sticking through the toe cap of my boot and knew that I
had been nailed good and proper. I was still feeling a bit sick when my workmates carried me into the
supervisor’s office and laid me out on the desk. Someone had notified the work’s First Aid man who
arrived breathless and asked for a claw hammer. I had already tried to remove the nail by hand and the
resultant pain left me in no doubt that it was not of a mind to be taken out without some of the brute force
that it took to drive it in. I explained to the First Aid man that if he touched my foot at all, never mind
with a claw hammer, he would be on the desk next to me with someone trying to pull my other boot out
of his face. And he understood!

So, I was consigned to Oldham general Hospital in an ambulance where, because I had had a drink of
orange juice at ten that morning, I had to wait in casualty in a wheelchair with my bad foot cradled across
my good one with the nail sticking up like Blackpool Tower, attracting wry comments from other patients
and visitors.
My wait was of four hours duration because the physicians wisely decided that I would need a general
anaesthetic before they could pull the nail out of my foot. Pain was the given reason for the anaesthetic,
and the possibility of ingested orange juice inducing vomiting and premature death from inhalation
pneumonia, was the reason for the four hour delay. At the examination immediately prior to the general
anaesthetic, the kindly physician, an Indian, was reaching for the nail head with his finger and thumb.
Before he could touch the piercer, I placed my hand around his windpipe and smiled at him, saying
gently, “We are not going to hurt each other, are we?” And he understood!

I awoke on the table, minus boot, and minus the nail. They had already discarded the nail and I did not
need a souvenir. I felt drunk and could not stop laughing for about ten minutes, after which they declared
me ready for discharge, having dressed the wounds, one on top and one underneath my foot a little way
back from where the toes join the foot. It remained sore for a few days before the pain subsided, and the
holes healed well, leaving small scars that have faded into nothing with the passing of the years. Only a
faint memory remains and I hardly think about that event now – except at Easter.

Then it is that I am reminded that the Romans did not have the luxury of one eight of an inch diameter
annular ringed nails, but crude shafts beaten from iron by a blacksmith: heavy square things with broad
blunt heads that were made to fix heavy timbers in place; wedge-shaped things with sharp edges that tore
into flesh when driven through human hands and feet, and hurt not one whit less when that flesh was both
human and divine.

Sometimes I remember that no one suffered more keenly the anguish of the driving of the nails through
his hands and feet than Christ did, and yet he murmured not, and I am ashamed because of my all-too-
human murmurings when my pain was so small, and His so great, even unto death.

Then, I understand a little better than once I did, how it was love that kept Jesus fastened on the cross and
not the pitiless nails, and I feel ashamed because I complained about one little one, and feel ashamed to
think that sometimes I forget the nails he bore in his flesh because of His love for me; and in such
moments or remembering the recollection of his words floods into my mind like Spirit-borne light,
bringing a new and more profound realisation of what He meant when He said,

The Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh;


wherefore he suffered the pain of all men,
that all men might repent and come unto him

Then the soaring words of the prophet Isaiah stir in my heart:

He was wounded for our transgressions,


he was bruised for our iniquities:
the chastisement of our peace was upon him;
and with his stripes we are healed

Then I am healed again through His suffering, and know His peace – and then I understand!
---
Copyright © 30 September 2001
Ronnie Bray
All Rights Reserved

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