THE YESTERYEAR FEATURE MAY BE SUSPENDED UNTIL
FURTHER NOTICE DUE TO GROSS INCOMPETENCE AT GOOGLE.
One year ago today: July 24 ,2019, don’t alter the character.
Five years ago today: July 24, 2015, false advertising.
Nine years ago today: July 24, 2011, mental departmentalization.
Random years ago today: July 24 ,2010, $128k, but over seven years.
Three hours, that’s how long so far in the yard cutting limbs. They have to be trimmed to less than two foot lengths for the trash hauler. That’s half the morning on half the tree. The large trunk sections are still on the ground and that’s the hard part. This should give you an idea of the amount of tree we’re talking about here. Massive. Hour after hour of just chainsawing off the smaller branches and dragging the pieces to the curb. That leaves 6-1/2 trees to go. All of them larger. That’s why I watched so closely, to see what mistakes we made. One is that simply watching people cut down trees on the Internet is a joke. Millies don’t video their mistakes, the fragile liberal mind can’t deal with self-blame.
We borrowed a real chain saw, that’s the smoke and aroma shown here. The larger pieces have to be trimmed so I can get at them with the smaller saw In four hours we got two more trees down. The first went easy, the second was that curved one you’ve seen before. No matter where you cut something that curved, it could fall the wrong way. Three hours. We had it notched and sliced until only a sliver of wooed was holding it but that tree would not fall. Using two ladders, including Howie’s big rig, it was a frustrating chore. A few raindrops will cause that tree to crash down on your roof, but two men and a chainsaw the damn thing will not topple.
How did we finally do it? We took Agt. R’s fancy yacht rope, part of the nylon rigging salvaged off a sailboat. We looped it around the tree above the cut, tied it to the trailer hitch on the trunk and spun the tires. After another twenty minutes, we got it down. See photo. The rope trails off toward the lower left-hand corner. It was so tight we were afraid of consequences. Agt. R was up the ladder six times, cutting a little deeper. But he could not stay on the ladder in case the trunk fell straight down. We got it down just as the afternoon rains began, we worked on for another 15 minutes and got soaked. Why? If you look closely, the tree only leaned over, it is still attached at the cut. Another widowmaker. We had to make repeated cuts so it was at a safer angle.
The downside was Agt. R accidentally sliced through that expensive yacht rope by accident. Of course, it was the woven end, the part that cannot be fixed. Welcome to Florida.
Okay, out of sequence, but here it is as written. At 7:30AM, guess who was not awake and ready to drive to Bowling Green. I’ll work in the yard until noon, mainly cutting up tree debris into barrel-size pieces. If he shows, I’ll make him feel guilty because he knew I was waiting instead of going into Winter Haven to make a medical appointment. Hey, the guy needs a better perspective on consequences other than his own. While waiting, I began watching a DVD because of the title, “Glorious Basterds”. I had no idea and thought it was a gangster movie. Instead it is Zionist propaganda. These Jews go around scalping German soldiers and clubbing then to death, not on the battlefield, but as handcuffed prisoners—and they say the Germans were barbarians? Dozens of scenes based totally on wartime exaggeration. I’m still watching it, mostly in disbelief. Could this be a spoof?
More news on the triple murder in Frostproof. Talk about a legal system that does not work. When the police asked for information, their phones lit up, saying it was “TJ”. The police said wait, don’t you want to know what the crime was? They all said nope, it was “TJ”.
When a car was a car, 1969.
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Get ready for shorter posts until I figure out ways to defeat Google stupidity. I mean, who removes paragraph markers. I have to go into HTML mode and line breaks one by one, hoping the next Google idiot doesn’t change the style sheet back . Don’t put it past them they are really that stupid. It reminds me of the fall of IBM, the once Fortune 500 company who thought they were big enough to absorb their own mistakes forever. They came out with so much junk it actually gave a boost to other PC makers. Remember OS/2, the system that took five minutes to boot up and ate all your memory?
Since you have not see enough pictures of that damn tree, here’s Agt. R up the fiberglass ladder. The last blog worded funny, this tree was not the first cut, it was number three. We did the easy ones first for practice. There is enough fallen lumber in the yard now to make up a truckload of good fireplace logs. The graceful curve of this former tree is easy to see, but it also made it dangerous. You can also see the patch of open sky it was aiming for.
I leave you for now saying you cannot imagine how much no-nonsense labor this was in the Florida summer sauna. A quart of peach tea. The operation brings us to less than half done. Everyone was past the point of physical exhaustion. So I sprung for a twenty pack of cans, and we sat in the last of the rainstorm over on his porch knowing the beer is not going to help the pending aches and pains. For one, I am no longer built for this type of exertion. I have pulled muscles in both arms and both legs. Tomorrow I shall suffer.
By the way, all this work had to be done most gingerly, as the ladders were tilted over the old barbed wire fence. It was as much fun as it looks. The unposed chainsaw picture above is already a classic. I also took down a couple of pumpkin trees on the east side that were blocking sunlight to my raised planter. I can’t wait to get back to Tennessee just to have time off.
ADDENDUM
Today in 2013 began the string of events that brought things to where they are today, although the connection isn’t anything formal. I began to toy with the idea of driving a sidecar motorcycle cross country. Blog posts can give you the day-to-day, but not the big picture as to why all that is relative now. I drove the sidecar all the way to Yakima on one of the most unique adventures of my life. Maybe I should not say string of events when it is more of a combination. I cannot describe the factors that had to be adapted, created, or destroyed to make that trip. It was expensive, far more than hopping a package to Hawaii for a couple of weeks. Even the motorcycle was a risk at over 35 years old. Before I go further, I would emphasize to the reader that I do not normally divulge much about the nice women I meet. But nice is a connotation which I make up for by blasting the hell out of women who waste my time.
Beginning around September of that year, some changes became permanent and I had decided to save up to buy a house—because I did not want to die in a trailer court. I had moved there to save money and got too comfortable. I was already taking trips and gallivanting around, playing in a band and spending money I should have been saving. But I told myself why bother, my savings were already on budget. I suspected this would be the last “edge of winter” trip by sidecar. Whatever I reported as the cost of that trip, I spent another few thousand dollars on top of that. Party time in Bakersfield, riding the City of New Orleans, singing on Beale Street.
The final half of that year was a number of turning points. The most observable to me was that while I was no longer dying, I would never fully recover. I remember that trip amazing well for a busy memory like mine. I’ve been back, by car, which is not the same. There is no replacement for being alone that far from home on an ancient two-wheeler, on some back road in the prairies. It’s much like it sounds, like a movie script heading into the sunset, watching snow storm clouds in the far northern horizon.
I don’t recall what I was thinking, which is why I keep a blog. But I deeply pondered how I had not found a decent woman in over 20 years. I get antsy with people who hear that wrong and make assumptions. People who get me wrong are generally the sort that have trouble even meeting people of the opposite sex and justify it by projecting that pitable defect into others. Not so with me, I never said I don’t meet women, but that I have not found a good one. Nor is it right to conclude I’m saying all the good ones are gone, because I know they are out there. But my only solid link to them was through music, which makes for even sparser pickings. I think music teaches women lessons faster than other careers, but all too often causes them to believe the veneer of their own acts. I may be nice to women when I’m on stage, but not half as nice to my own when I’m not. Valid point, ladies.
Yep, that last half of 2013. And here I am.
