Tree Removal

The past couple of years have been pretty droughty in our neck-of-the-woods. It has worked a real hardship on vegetation of all kinds. Grass withers, gardens don’t grow, and trees are severely stressed. We haven’t dealt with that type of problem for some time and our reaction sometimes illustrates that.

The best example that I know of is my roughneck neighbor Bill. Bill was never much on lawn care during wetter times and with the drought it got worse. His grass became brown and a large tree in his front yard died from neglect. Our hero ignored the situation altogether and after a few months the wind began to remove dead limbs that tended to land indiscriminately on unwary pedestrians, the occasional car, and end up littering the neighborhood. Finally the city took action and forced him to remove the tree which was deemed a public nuisance.

At that point two things came into play. First was the shape of his corner lot which was bounded on one side by his neighbor’s brand new western cedar fence. The other was Bill’s decision to “cheap out” and save the $400 an arborist wanted to charge for removing the tree. He would do the job himself.

So along about daylight one sunny Saturday morning when most of us were peacefully slumbering after putting in a hard week’s labor old Bill cranked up this wore out, second hand, smoke belching chain saw and commenced work. I have to give him credit, he did have a plan (sort of). He began by climbing up in the tree and removing all the larger branches. They crashed to the ground with rapid regularity and so did Bill on at least two occasions. By the time he got all those limbs off (which wasn’t very long) there was this humongous wood pile scattered across his yard and he called the project off on account of the sun being up. I know this to be true because by then me and my other neighbors had been jolted wide awake to become avid garage dwellers in order to observe the show unfold from a safe location.

I suppose Bill felt that solving the dilemma of falling limb endangerment meant he had done his duty. Anyway he put off cleaning up the mess for about two weeks and I guess it would never have happened if he had not been encouraged by neighborly suggestions and a little nudge from local code enforcement authorities. Once that happened he started work on the main trunk of the tree. Perhaps he was concerned that the tall trunk might still cause some damage to adjacent properties so he took it down in small segments. At any rate after about a weeks intermittent labor he was left with an eight foot stump in the middle of his yard. It wasn’t at all clear to me and my fellow garage dwellers why until one day his strategy became clear.

He had decided to remove the stump by pulling it up instead of expending all that energy of sawing it into sections. Accordingly he backed his pickup truck up to that stump and attached one of those large nylon straps around the offending piece of wood, attached it to his bumper, and eased ahead until the strap was taut. Then he gunned the engine. Tires squealed, dust and smoke flew, but nothing else much happened. So he backed up a little bit and took a run at it. Once again nothing happened. That stump didn’t even quiver. By that time Bill was getting a bit exasperated so he backed up as close as possible to the stump, revved the engine, and popped the clutch.

When he hit the end of that strap it must have stretched at least three feet before it snapped and took out Bill’s rear window. Before he could get that truck shut down he had ran through his neighbor’s brand new western cedar fence, destroyed a perfectly good barbecue pit, and almost hit a set of sliding glass patio doors. Luckily nobody was home at the time or there could well have been casualties.

You might think that would have convinced Bill of the error of his ways. But his blood was up. Before the last board on that fence hit the ground he stalked over to his garage and dragged out this big old log chain, looped it over that trunk, secured it to his bumper hitch, and repeated the same fruitless procedure. About all he accomplished was to rip the entire bumper assembly off. By then he was livid with rage so he crawled under the truck, secured the chain to the frame, and revved that engine up until it sounded like a B-29 taking off. I’m not sure exactly what happened then, but ever since that pickup has had this peculiar look while going down the street like maybe the front end is going northeast and the rear end going a little more easterly. As for the stump it appeared to have suffered little or no damage.

Oh it was quite a show while it lasted and all us garage dwellers thoroughly enjoyed it. We figured that when it was all toted up Bill still had to pay the tree man the $400 when he came out and removed the stump and he was probably out at least another couple of grand for repairs etcetera, but as far as we were concerned the entertainment value was priceless..