If you were swimming and fishing in the Kern River back in the 40s you might have heard someone say, “The Kern River mile for mile is the most dangerous river in the world for loss of lives.” Even as a kid I thought this farfetched, something fabulous or extravagant some of the grownups would say as a warning like; “Be careful with that BB gun; you can put your eye out.” And while I never actually knew a kid that had stuck the barrel of his BB gun up to his eye and pulled the trigger, such things actually happened through carelessness on some rare occasions; which only proved to me as a boy that occasionally some kids could be as stupid as some adults.

However, when I saw the very first warning sign about the Kern River posted at the mouth of the canyon years ago my first reaction was resentment. I resented some nanny government functionary stating the patently obvious fact that you could actually drown in the river! Hey! Here were the “grownups” telling me once more I could put my eye out with my BB gun! But really, I thought at the time, have people actually become so stupid they don’t know a plunge into boulder-strewn, white water rapids is a dangerous thing to do?

Over the years we have become accustomed, in many cases callous to the many ways government attempts to control our lives to the extent we now live in an America where anyone can be sued for any reason, an America where lawyers and judges rule our lives and in which Big Brother will step in and tell us “what is best for our own good,” but in the end no one from the President on down is expected to accept personal responsibility for anything.

We need warning labels in many instances, and that skull and crossbones logo on some medicines I recall from childhood, and still used today, were necessary. And kids need all the adult supervision possible at all times. As a child I needed someone to point out what that skull and crossbones on a label meant. But a child can, and too often does, drown in a pail of water because of the lack of adult supervision. Adults need caution labels on buckets warning them this can happen? There needs to be caution labels on bathtubs warning children can drown in them?

Perhaps the warning signs about the Kern River are a good thing. But when I was teaching shop classes, during safety instruction I would tell my pupils “You can make a machine foolproof; but you cannot make it fool proof.” Over the years I collected an archive of stories about fools that make the point.

From childhood I have been engaged in “risk behavior;” guns, motorcycles, fast cars and airplanes; all of which do not suffer fools, and will certainly kill fools. When I started flying in the 50s a fellow had a J3-Cub at the Torrance airport with “armstrong starter.” I didn’t need my buddy to tell me that prop could kill you if you didn’t watch yourself. There was no warning label on that prop and there is a very good reason the guy in the plane shouts “Contact!” when he is ready for you to pull that prop through to start the engine. What I didn’t expect was when we took off he decided to teach me how to put the bird in an intentional spin so I could learn how to recover. This is no longer allowed because of the danger of such a maneuver. I recall the placard prominently displayed on a WWII AT-6 at Minter Field that read: Do Not Put This Aircraft In An Intentional Spin!

So, there is a proper time and place for warning signs and labels. Perhaps the Kern River needs such signs. But the resentment remains that there are such people Big Brother needs to care for because they are fools. My resentment stems from there seeming to be no want of fools that need to be told they can actually drown in the Kern River. Worse; the less personal responsibility and personal accountability we see in our government the more the fools seem to outnumber those with just plain common sense. And the signs and labels just keep multiplying, but they will never prevent anyone from being a damned fool, they will never make the “Killer Kern” fool proof.