Forwarded by CanITellSteveKoozer on Facebook: The x-ray on the glass board showed a right arm turned to dust. The bones of the elbow were not just broken. They were crushed into small, sharp pieces.
A doctor stood by the bed in a quiet hospital room. He held a metal chart and spoke in a low, flat voice. Standard medical rules gave the man in the bed two simple choices.
The doctors could remove the right arm completely. Or, they could use steel pins to lock the arm perfectly straight. A straight arm meant the man could still walk normally and carry things at his side.
The man in the bed looked down at his damaged body. He shook his head. He did not ask for the safest path. He asked to be broken in a very specific way.
The man was Lester Polsfuss. Most people knew him by his stage name, Les Paul. He was a working guitar player who built his own solid-body electric guitars in his spare time.
It was January 1948. Les was driving through Oklahoma on Route 66. A sudden winter storm had turned the dark roads to solid glass. His car slid out of control in the freezing wind.
The heavy car broke through a wooden guardrail and dropped off a bridge. It crashed deep into a freezing, snow-covered riverbed. The metal roof crushed inward. Les woke up in the dark, trapped in the cold shell.
His ribs were badly cracked. His back felt completely wrong. He had severe internal injuries from the heavy steering wheel. But the deepest shock came from his right side. His elbow was totally destroyed.
Rescue workers used heavy tools to pull him from the wreck. They rushed him to a local hospital. The pain was blinding and constant. But Les quickly realized the pain was not the real danger.
If his right arm was pinned straight, he would never play the guitar again. A straight arm cannot reach across a wooden body to pick heavy steel strings. His career would simply end.
Music was not just a job for Les. It was the only way he knew how to speak to the world. A straight arm meant a quiet life, a safe life, and a completely silent life.
The hospital operated on strict 1940s medical protocols. When a major joint is destroyed, you stabilize the limb. A straight arm lets a person work a normal factory job or sit at a desk.
The logic of the hospital was cold and correct. They focus on basic survival. They deal in bodily functions, not human dreams. A straight arm limits risk and prevents future damage to the nerves.
The medical system does not care if you are an artist. It only cares that you can walk out the front doors and pay your bills. This rule works — until it meets this person.
A nurse brought in fresh white bandages on a metal tray. The doctor picked up a thick pen to mark the skin for surgery. Les looked at the straight lines drawn on his pale flesh.
He felt the cold reality of the hospital room pressing down. He saw the door to his future closing.
A straight arm was a death sentence for the loud life he had built.
Les stopped the doctor from leaving the room. He asked for the lead surgeon to return. When the older surgeon arrived, Les made a strange and highly dangerous demand.
He asked them to bend his arm. He wanted his right arm locked at a very sharp angle. He did not want a normal, working arm. He wanted an arm built just for holding a guitar.
The doctors were entirely confused. An arm locked at nearly ninety degrees would be strange. It would stick out in crowds. It would make wearing normal shirts hard. It would be useless for daily tasks.
Les did not care about wearing normal shirts. He asked them to bring a guitar into the sterile hospital room. He placed the heavy wooden instrument on his stomach while lying flat in the bed.
He moved his broken, painful right hand over the tight strings. He found the exact angle he needed to hold a flat plastic pick. “Pin it right here,” he told the surgeon.
The operation took many long hours. Doctors opened his hip and removed a large piece of bone from his pelvis. They used that fresh bone to replace his missing elbow.
They drilled thick steel plates into his arm. They locked the bones together with heavy metal screws. When he woke up, his arm was bent forever. It would never straighten again.
The physical recovery was a slow, dark nightmare. Les was placed in a massive plaster cast that covered his upper body. He carried the heavy white weight around for a year and a half.
His body was weak and thin. He had to learn how to move, sleep, and dress himself with a rigid wing of an arm. Small, daily tasks like opening doors became exhausting battles.
When the heavy cast finally came off, the arm held. It was fixed at the exact angle he asked for. He could hold his guitar again. He could pick the strings. He could play.
But he was not the same man. His right arm was entirely stiff. His physical movements were strictly limited. He could not perform on stage with the same wild, fast energy.
The music industry was moving on quickly. New bands were playing faster and louder. He needed a way to keep up. He needed a way to create the rich sounds he heard in his head.
. . . . . . . . . .
Read more about Les Paul here: https://www.les-paul.com
Sources: Archives of the Les Paul Foundation; historical medical and police accounts of the 1948 Route 66 crash. Some minor details summarized for clarity.
[My question: With today’s technologies — replacing bad knees, hips, etc., — do you think the doctors could have replaced Les’ elbow with a plastic one? ~ Barb]