Pride cometh

Hi folks!

Everybody needs some help sometimes, even ifn theyse don't necessarily think so. A good example of that is Joe Jones. Joe lives on the way to Cotter's Creek on a nice piece of property a little distance down a dirt driveway that stretches for at least a half mile or so from the road. He built his house centered right in amongst a stand of trees that provide shade from the sun in the summer and give him good protection from the wind. Only problem with doing that is trees have a habit of falling down or having limbs break when theyse get hit with a good strong gust or get too heavy with snow or ice.

Well that's exactly what happened with Joe. Those trees of his had never been trimmed or cut back even though they'd really growed far beyond what he needed for shade or a wind break. Why they'd gotten to be twenty or thirty feet higher that his roof line. Only a matter of time before something happened that would bring all or part of pine of them trees down. Bound to cause real trouble at some point or another. His neighbors... well he really didn't have no one real close to him cause of the way he'd set his house... but still... them folks who thought of themselves as his neighbors... those within a mile or two... offered to help him trim them trees back some a bunch of times over the past couple of years or so. Joe always said no... too prideful... figured ifn there was any trimming to be done he could do it himself thank you very kindly. Well you guessed it. Things being what they is... and inertia taking the place of action... nothin ever seemed to get done.

Weather waits for no man and while Joe was goin about his daily chores and takin care of his snerts... he's had a good size flock for about ten years or so now... makes a decent livin off of sellin their wool... of course that's not counting what he makes selling the eggs from his Pren Hens... He has about a hundred or so of them... built a bunch of Pren coops to house them to give them someplace to lay their eggs and to get away from predators like the Sharp Toothed Saren. Well like I was sayin... he was just goin about his business, not paying no mind to the weather which was fixin to get bad in a real hurry. Caught him by surprise. Doesn't watch much TV... never was one for radio neither so this storm, it just snuck up on him real sudden like.

Before Joe had time to do much more than run to the house for shelter, the sky turned black as night and the wind... well let's just say it picked up Vern's shed over in Thomston and carried it a half mile before smashin it to little pieces on the rocks by Miller's quarry. Shame too... that shed was almost brand new. Just goes to show you... Well anyways, must have been one of them microbursts over at Joe's place. Branches broken and lying on the ground all over the place. One or two of them trees was just snapped in half. Another was pulled half up out of the earth and was leaning against another. Heck of a sight from what I've been told.

Well Joe being Joe tweren't no way he was goin to ask anybody for help cleaning up the place. He just went into his barn and grabbed some tools and started to work. It was easy enough to clean up the fallen branches and stuff... even the bigger ones could be chopped up with an ax and a saw, trimmed down some and hauled off with a little elbow grease and some internal motivation. But that big leaning tree was another matter. Tweren't gonna be easy to manhandle that thing, no sireee. Lucky thing Joe had one of them new Binford 9000 laser saws lying around. He'd been itching to use it but never seemed to find enough of a reason to haul it out and fire it up. Tried it out on a few of the fallen trees that were nearby. Sliced right through the trunks like theyse were butter. Couldn't believe his eyes just how easy that Binford made cutting them trees down to size. Had 'em all cut and ready for the wood pile in about a hour... less than half the time it would've took with his old chainsaw. He was so excited he figured he just have a go at the leanin tree while he was at it.

Well that's when things started to go south so to speak. Oh it seemed alright at first. He cut away some of the lower branches so as to get better access to the trunk. Finally managed to get things where he had a pretty clean shot at it. Maneuvered hisself in there... fired up that Binford and started to cut away. Cut clean as anything... didn't even make any sawdust... just kinda burnt a line clean through that trunk. Only thing is... Joe hadn't bothered to figure out exactly which way that tree was gonna fall once it was separated from the rest of its roots and its weight was free to go whichever which way.

Nothin happened at first. I understand Joe actually had time to shut off the Binford and walk away from the tree to see what was goin on. After that, well let's just say that Joe didn't have much control of what happened next. Yeah... that tree started pushin and strainin against the tree branches which nature hadn't really intended to hold up that much weight. As you might expect... there was a snap, then a crack and pretty quick that leanin tree was a fallin tree carrying branches and one or two other trees with it as it went. Well those trees fell every which way. One cut the Snert pen in half scatterin Snerts in every direction running like the world was about to end... which was a reasonable expectation for them. Another tree smashed some of Joe's Pren coops leaving nothing much more than splinters and a few boards here and there. Lucky for him, tweren't too many Pren Hens around although he did lose about thirty or so eggs... I understand though that the neighborhood Sarens fed well for a week or so afterwards.

The leanin tree... you know the one Joe actually cut down... well it fell straight as an arrow after it knocked the other ones out of the way. Headed straight for Joe's house. Crushed the porch, scraped the roof, and completely wiped out his old outhouse on the way down. No big loss that. Missed his wife's car by hair. Got to tell you, he'd a been in real trouble if it had hit that. She's real fond of that car... maybe even more than she is of Joe... but that's another story...

You'd of thought that he'd be real upset by this turn of events... but not Joe... he was a happy as a Brown Belly with a fledgling Coomer... he had all them downed trees to play with... his Binford 9000 in hand... and he needed the firewood anyways. Course he did buy some flowers for the Missus mind you... just in case. Still it seems like he could've avoided all that excitement ifn he'd just let his neighbors help out with some tree trimmin along the way. But that's Joe...

Anyways... that's it for now. 'Til next time. Jon