"the wind caught it!"
driving down my road on the way home after a big day, i catch a glimpse of an unknown neighbor looking up at the corner of his house, the the profile of a 40 ft x8" pine tree severly leaning toward the house.
---i drove on by for a couple hundred feet, but then backed up to see whatup. hurricane dennis was on the way, so he was doing "prevent defense " doityourself ignorant style. he had tried to directional fell the tree away from the house, he says, " the wind caught it!" it fell about 45 degrees from where he wanted,right towards the house,onto the service power pole, by small miracle the trunk perched right onto the top of the pole, with a big branch balanceing the whole thing by being splayed out onto the power line loop at the pole ---i recon it was coincidence the front notch and back cut was all wrong, hinge was in the wrong place with only 1/2" to serve as guide and he did not use a rope to guide it anywhere in particular.
---so i used my pole saw , cut brances all off except one a little entangled with the power line loop, down to bare trunk-used 4"x4" for a midway prop with 2"x4"'s (to make wide) and 1"x4" "ears" then wedged it up a little bit to unweight the tree--i had a 100 foot guide rope on it, and showed his wife how to hold it out at the end-- and when i made the final cut and yelled she would only have to nuge the rope, the prop would act as crutch and go over with the tree--(elbow on the table, your forearn is the "prop"-put your arm up then let it go down to the table)
---i showed her about where to tree would hit and how she would be safe at the end of the rope , and after the nudge would have plenty time to trot off a few more feet anyway just to be safe---so i extend the polesaw-have a bench properly stableized to stand on-and make the cut --it was beautiful, the end piece rolled over the top of the pole,out of the entangled loop, over and right down to the ground without tearing up the power line--still looking up , i yelled to pull and she did, and watching the tree start to slowly roll and fell with the prop guiding its fell arch-i look down and over at the wife, she had for some reason,quitely moved up on the rope to the exact spot where i told her the tree would fall--i hollered, she realized what was happening-and leaped out of the way--oh dam- it fell right where she had stood-blam!!!-that trunk would have killed her--i cannot explain what i felt,the air turned mighty blue in general,but its was mostly anger at myself,,, i think --so i wipe down with a clean towel, clean up my tools, put em away, sun was pretty low in the sky, guessed i had been there working steady for 2 hours at least-in general i was in a puzzeled but bad mood , then the homeowner comes up and tries to hand me $10--i just put up my hand, shook my head, got in my truck and leave--!!! ---i thought of one of my favorite books--"Carry the Wind" about mountian men trappers the first to interact with the rocky mountain Indians in the early 1800's--right then i wished i was there!
she-devils!
