Can a person living on this earth avoid taking risks? I think not! The following poem written by an unknown author says it very well:
To laugh—is to risk appearing the fool;
To weep—is to risk appearing sentimental;To reach out for another—is to risk involvement;
To expose feelings—is to risk exposing your true self;
To place your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd—is to risk their loss;
To love—is to risk not being loved in return;
To live—is to risk dying;
To hope—is to risk despair;
To try—is to risk failure;
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to
risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing. They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live.
Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves, they have forfeited their freedom, Only a person who risks is free.
We have to take risks but they should be calculated risks. Fools rush in where caution fears to tread. If you have lived a fairly long life you will end up committing a few of those that others would say were foolish risks but hopefully the majority will be judged as calculated.
In my early thirties I had a lot more energy than I knew what to do with and apparently I was not working it off fast enough on my job and at home. I decided that I wanted to build a big home up in Ogden Valley all by myself. We sold our Ogden home the first day we put it up for sale. We bought a five acre lot east of the golf course in Nordic Valley. The only place to rent in the valley, close to the work site was an old, mouse invested frame home. We spent a week cleaning and painting it before we moved in. That was an adventure in itself for every member of the family. We all had experiences in that little house that we can both laugh and cry about now. That’s a whole other story in itself.
My wife and I made a rough design for the house we wanted. An old draftsman drew the official plans that I submitted to the county for approval. The house as planned was 4,200 sq ft., a very big home. As soon as the building loan was approved, I had the foundation hole dug. I had one year on the contract to finish the job.
The risk that I took, I took in behalf of the whole family, they were counting on Dad to follow through. We had five children at the time, our oldest was 11 and our youngest about two. I was working full time at the University and the drive was approximately 30 minutes each way. My routine was to get home from work, have supper with the family and change into my work clothes and head up to the project. I would work until around twelve A.M. each night, but ‘never on Sunday.’ It was summer when I started. I contacted every foundation contractor in the area and they were all so busy they said they wouldn’t be able to get to my job until September. If I did not complete the building project by the end of the contract year there was a heavy penalty for every day over. That was my risk, I had to work fast because even though my boys were willing to help, they were still too small to be of much help.
A former neighbor with heavy equipment dug the hole for the basement. I leveled everything to the right height with gravel and a hand shovel. I dug the footing trenches, poured the footings with steel rebar about every foot. I ordered 12-inch cement blocks that weighed 50 pounds each. I mixed my own mortar and carried my own blocks, built my own scaffolding and laid the blocks. I mixed the mortar with an old mixer I bought really cheap. I filled the blocks with groat (a thin cement) all around the steel rebar going through the middle of the blocks. After a month and a half, I had finished my foundation and I sealed it from moisture on the outside. Because that project took a month and a half out of my planned building time, the risk now was getting greater and a little more scary for me. I had assumed that I could get the foundation finished by a contractor but because I couldn’t get one, I lost precious time. I ordered building supplies while at work and started laying the first floor with tongue and groove lumber over 4 ̋ by 12 ̋ beams. The tongue and groove was finished such that it would serve as the ceiling in the basement without sheetrock and only needed to be carpeted on the top side. I built and had the outside walls up pretty fast, I built them with 2 × 6s, the inside partitions were 2 × 4s. The plan was a partial A-frame requiring huge beams, they were used to support each floor level and the roof. The two inch tongue and groove went over them. I had steel boots custom made for the ceiling beams to rest in. I had a few friends come up one Saturday to help me hoist the ceiling beam in place, they were 4 × 8 ̋ approximately 30 feet long.
As I was finishing up the second floor ceiling one night, I was cutting off the excess ends of some 4″ X 12″ beams. I was sitting on top of a shaky 8 ft. stepladder that my father-in-law gave me. I planned to catch the piece I was cutting off so it wouldn’t scar the floor by falling on it. The plan was to cut, then rest the saw on my leg and catch the piece before it fell. My skill saw blade safety cover did not close as usual and fortunately I realized that just in time to pull it up before it cut my thigh muscles. Fortunately I saved my leg but the blade shredded my coveralls so that they separated but it did not cut my garments. It was actually a miracle. Had it cut my thigh muscles I would have been laid up for months and may never have been able to use that leg again. That was the biggest part of the risk—avoiding accidents and maintaining my health so that I could do this humongous job by myself within the time frame. I was up on the job many a cold and lonely night, I would sometimes wonder what I had gotten myself into. I would look at what I had left to do and feared I couldn’t do it. But I kept trudging along and tolerating my aches and pains. Alone, I had to do many two man jobs and somehow found the strength to do it. The roof was especially hard, carrying my heavy two inch thick tongue and groove boards and laying them in place, keeping them even as I nailed them in place being careful not to drive any nails through so they would show inside. The ceiling and the roof were the same as there was nothing that covered the tongue and groove on the inside. On the roof side, I used sheets of foam insulation over the tongue and groove and shake shingles over them. It was one big roof. By now it was snowing and I was laying brick veneer on the outside of the frame walls. I was my own hod carrier and bricklayer. I sheetrocked and finished the inside walls with pre-stained cedar and that went pretty fast. I had a neighbor who had an old corn shed with beautiful weathered wood all around it. I negotiated with him to have his weathered wood from the shed if I would build him a new block corn shed in it’s place. He bought the blocks and I laid it up in one or two days. I used the old wood primarily in Brian’s bedroom. I built two big fireplaces, one in the family room and one in the living room. Installing the pre-framed windows was fast but I had a Finishing Carpenter friend, install the doors. I installed the boiler furnace and the baseboard heating system. I completed the plumbing and the electrical by myself. I asked advice from an old electrician who lived in the Eden Ward. The carpet was laid by the store we purchased it from. It was all finished on time and inspected to the satisfaction of the County Building inspector and the Credit Union that loaned us the money. We moved in and we really loved that home. When we moved up to the valley in 1968, heating oil was 22 cents a gallon. Four years later and after we moved into a high ceilinged A-Frame house the oil embargo started and oil jumped to 72 cents a gallon. That made our monthly oil bill greater than our house payment. We decided we had to move. We put our Nordic Valley home, ‘the home Emil built,’ up for sale and it was sold in one day and we made a pretty good profit. We had a framing contractor build a home in Uintah bench area.
Our valley home was a beautiful home and I had successfully completed what I wanted to do. The risk was great but it was calculated risk based on a man who, at the time, had way too much energy and way too much of what is referred to as ‘guts.’ But now I was ready for a rest. We have raised six wonderful children and they have blessed us with grand and great grandchildren. If there were not a few risks taken none of that would have happened.
Over the years, my good wife and I have taken what we thought were calculated risks, and a few have not worked out to our ben- efit, but fortunately our blessings far outweigh the few calculated risks that did not pan out. We have had a very good life, a good life because of our lifelong risk-taking adventures.
As ‘Unknown’ said so appropriately, at the beginning of this thought, “But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing. In the Dali Lama’s Instructions for life include: “Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.” Those who risk nothing may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live.
Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves, they have forfeited their freedom, Only a person who risks is free.” We are free and God has blessed our freedom.