lego1970
ArboristSite Guru
I started out the morning clipping on a couple real small trees while doing line clearance. My ex-wife had called and informed me on what was happening. At the time, I can't say that I was shocked. As a young teenage kid in the early and mid 80's I delivered newspapers so I was in tune with the worlds events. My Dad (who is fine today) was a traveling salesman and was out of town flying all over the country and in Europe 6 days a week. Every air disaster and terrorist attack thruout the world would have me think about my Dad. Having said that I never really worried about my Dad, since the man seems to have little emotion, therefore no fear of death, yet he was always in the back of my head. During a plane crash over the Potomac river in the early 80's there was a man that gave up his chance to live and slipped beneath the ice to give the blind girl the flotation ring, I saw my Dad, because my Father would of done the same thing. Having grown up in a college town where my best friends included Egyptians, Vietnamese, Chinese, South African, Jewish, and White Americans, I understood the complexity of diverse cultures, their history, and beliefs and how they correlate with one another. Anyway, later that day on 9/11 we went to an emergency removal. It was a Hackberry that had broken off towards the base and had gotten tangled in a Walnut. We had a good size crane, a bucket truck and two crews. My foreman climbed the Walnut and was cutting off some of the limbs that were tangled, another crew foreman was in the bucket truck attaching the slinging to the crane and I was on the ground hanging out with the crane operator. At the time I was a Journyman trimmer for Asplundh, but my foreman wanted to do this job, so I just hung out. The other crew foreman took a limb off and crushed the fence, but other then that the job was done without injury or damage. The main trunk was 17,000 lbs according to the crane's computer. It was pretty impressive. Thruout the day our wives kept calling and seeing when we were coming home, but we did our jobs as if it was just another day. My Dad was held up at Logans Airport on 9/11. He worked for Holmes which is based outside of Boston and was there on a business meeting. I didn't know my Dad was there. He traveled so much that I never did keep track of where he was. My mom notified me later that day that Dad was somewhere in Boston and that he shouldn't of been on one of the planes but none-the-less she was worried because sometimes my Dad's flight itenery changed and because she couldn't get a hold of him or anybody at Holmes since the phone lines were jammed. Good ole Dad is Ok and was able to rent a car with a couple of other business men and made it to Pittsburgh. From there he was able to rent a car for himself and drive home. To me the whole day didn't seem any more strange then other events like the TWA hijackings, or the Mexican City Earthquakes, Potomac river crash, Beruit, Challenger crash, etc, etc, but later that night it hit home with me that this was pretty significant. My son was born a couple months later and since then I've been plenty busy with him so I seldom reflect on that day. Well, anyway's that what tree work I did on 9/11 and how my day evolved.
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