Be like the man who jumped for joy —literally

My dad didn't have a career but he had many jobs. He left school when he was 14 to go make a living, and for the next 50 years he was a railway worker, a welder, a night-watchman, a boxer, a travelling salesman, a prospector, a racetrack handicapper, a nightclub bouncer, a purveyor of small-time scams, a wrestling promoter, a somewhat incompetent car mechanic, a hotel lounge singer and quite possibly a gigolo.

He had a belief that every person has one thing special they can do, which if discovered and monetised might lift them clear of the cold grinding cogs of daily labour.

The problem, he used to muse, is that it's hard to find that thing, and that the thing, once found, is often not that useful.

It would be a cruel blow, for instance, to discover that your special talent is being able to walk convincingly with one leg very stiff, and your hand in your pocket working a matchstick protruding from a closed matchbox to create an authentic creaking sound, thereby fooling everybody that you have a wooden leg like a pirate.

It's a jolly good skill - and my dad pursued it with such stamina that after he died there were congregants of St Margaret's Presbyterian Church who refused to believe he wasn't indeed a ligneous unidexter - but regrettably there's not much demand for it in this our modern world.

I thought of my dad when I learnt about Sam Patch, the secular patron saint of every working stiff who dreams of a ticket out.

Sam Patch was an American mill-worker in the early 1800s. Mill-working was a ghastly sort of grind, and Sam didn't feel it represented his true calling. His true calling was jumping off things.

Cotton mills were built on rivers, and rivers had bridges, and each lunch hour while his fellow workers were eating their boiled eggs and picking cotton from their beards, Sam would gain blessed relief from the workaday by stripping down to vest and undies, climbing the nearest bridge and jumping into the river.

He didn't dive headfirst or perform the fancy-pants tricks we'd demand today; he
just jumped off feet-first, but that is the privilege of being first to do something. Soon he noticed that other workers and even townsfolk were gathering to watch him.

Finally, Sam Patch tired of performing his art for free. But did he dare leave the security of his wages?

Earlier this week on Twitter, former public protector Thuli Madonsela tweeted this piece of wisdom: "If you wait for assurance that you'll have a perfect landing if you jump, you might never jump."

Back through the centuries, Sam Patch heard her words. He decided to follow his bliss as a freelancer: he handed in his hat and boots, and took his jumping routine on the road. If worse came to worst, he could always go back to the mill.

In October 1829, dressed all in theatrical white, he jumped 40m down the Niagara Falls. Spectators came from all around and paid good money to sit in specially constructed wooden bleachers close to the action. Sam Patch was doing it. He had made it out.

Soon he acquired a pet bear and they jumped together, travelling wherever there
was a paying public and a high place from which to jump.

He became a hero to the working people, who gave up their money and leisure time to watch one of their own demonstrate the mechanism of his escape. They would return to their mills and factories on Monday with their hearts lightened by what they had seen, their heads filled with dreams of sweet transcendence. What more can you reasonably ask from art, or any artist?

He became a celebrity - songs and poems and stage plays were written about him. President Andrew Jackson named his favourite horse after him. On Friday, November 13 1829, Sam Patch announced his final jump of the season - down the High Falls into the Genesee River in Rochester, New York.

The bear jumped first, or more accurately suffered itself to be pushed. Then Sam Patch - who, spectators noticed, appeared to be swigging enthusiastically from a flask of brandy, perhaps because it was cold - stood a moment on the platform, lowered his arms to his sides, and plunged feet-first into the mists.

Sam Patch never came out of the Genesee River. That is very sad, but we should also remember: Sam Patch never went back to the mill.