HOLE IN ONE?

In addition to the Crater lake Lodge, I've already mentioned having started out my career with the carpenters union on the job at the Oregon Shakespearian Theaters, Allen Pavilion in 1992.
Heretofore I had never been on such a huge job, having been a residential carpenter on Whidbey Island, Washington.
To say the least, it was quite an eye opener to me. The need for safety is paramount on huge construction sites like this, especially when you have the general public standing right out side the Chautauqau wall.
I made several blunders on this job that could certainly have ended rather badly, don't worry I'm still here, so it wasn't too bad.
One of my jobs as an apprentice was to make sure that the holes for the caisons were covered up every time one was finished. For those of you who don't know, basically a caison is a column, only it's in the ground. The Allen Pavilion has about 60 of them, if I recall correctly. The deepest one was over 60 feet deep, while the shallowest one was probably less than 10 feet. They have to be drilled until they hit bed rock, because, once drilled they are filled with rebar and concrete and once the concrete has cured, they drill all the way down thru all of it and put a giant bolt in it, called a rock anchor. In this manner they take a big 'ole top heavy building like the pavilion and tie it right down into the ground so it won't tip over or have the wind blow it over.
The next morning I had to pick up some of the covers to get ready to instal the rebar. The covers were labeled "DANGER HOLE BELOW". So I picked up a couple of those sheets. It was about the third one I came to that wasn't labeled, being in the hurry that I was. I assumed that it was just a peice of plywood somebody had dropped on the ground. So when I went to pick it up I lifted one corner of it and stepped foreward to lift it and stepped right into a 17 foot hole in the ground. What a surprise to find yourself 17 feet down in the ground. When I looked up, guess what? The plywood had fallen back over the hole. Well, what do I do now? No way to climb out. There's equipment running all over the jobsite, so nobody will be able to hear me yell, What do I do?
It seemed like I pondered that question for at least 10 minutes, when I heard the operator of the drilling rig, yell"man in a hole!". He'd been watching me because they drilled that hole the night before after I had gone home and he knew that I didn't know, that, that hole was there.
It took them maybe 10 minutes to swing the crane over to the hole and hoist me out. My heels were a little sore, other than that, I was fine and went right back to work. You talk about embarassing tho, I got teased for the duration of that job.