Selling A Tree House

When is the most opportune time to have a tree fall on your house? Probably not four hours before you are to sign the papers to sell it. This I know from experience.

We were all packed, the U-haul loaded and ready to move. We had spent one more night in the house, on sleeping bags in the living room, and this was our rather rude awakening. It sounded like a freight train had hit the house, so I should have been relieved to find it was only a tree. Yet, as I walked outside, relief wasn’t quite how I would describe my demeanor. Imagine the scene: a grand old Elm tree (my neighbor’s tree) sprawled across the yard and extending onto the roof, completely obscuring one side of the house. Of course, it happened to be the side with the electrical connections. Splintered branches, and smaller limbs with leaves were everywhere. That might have been okay if we were Swiss Family Robinson, but we weren’t.

After crawling and climbing through the jumbled pile of entangled branches to inspect the damages, I breathed an audible sigh. We had been lucky. Aside from the superficial scrapes on the paint and a few minor gouges to the siding, the only real damage was the electric meter and weather mast. Both had been ripped off the wall and lay under the tree, twisted and bent, with frayed electrical wires waving in the wind. We were without electricity, but no major repairs would be needed. Even the three windows on that side of the house had managed to remain intact. Still, knowing we were supposed to sign the papers in a few hours, the fallen tree presented more than enough anxiety.

The first call I made was to the insurance agent. Typical of insurance companies, the response I received served only to further my angst. This was an act of God, I was told, and being the neighbor’s tree, we would have to collect any expenses incurred from said neighbor, or perhaps his insurance company. The neighbor proved less than accommodating in this regard. Incidentally, we shared the same insurance company, and the agent made it clear they wouldn’t be paying. This is the same insurance company that one year earlier had forced us to have two similar trees removed from our property due to the liability they posed if they were to fall on a neighbor’s house. Against my nature, I decided to not press the issue and take care of the fallen tree myself. In less than three hours the moving van would be taking us two thousand miles away and I didn’t want to be involved in a long term dispute from that far.

Calling an electrician, I arranged for a new meter and weather mast to be installed. Surprisingly, the total came to only $137. Then, calling a friend, who needed the wood, the cleanup was taken care of. This was over the protests of my neighbor. He seemed to think that since it was his tree, he should get the wood. I was as accommodating as he had been, with a simple, “I don’t think so.” The chainsaw was already running, which made it a little difficult for him to argue, or maybe I just didn’t hear him.

Later, we signed the huge stack of papers and I couldn’t tell you what most of them said – except one that I found fascinatingly ironic. It seems that by my signature, I certified there to be, among other things, no known structural damage or electrical problems. Now, I’m a straightforward and direct kind of guy, and in my usual matter-of-fact approach, I said, “Other than the huge tree that fell on the house this morning, I can’t think of anything.” The look on the faces of the buyers and loan officer was priceless.

“Was there any damage?” they wanted to know.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “It ripped the weather mast and meter off the wall and currently, there is no electricity.” After explaining the situation in further detail, they all agreed to proceed with the closing.

On second thought, the timing of this incident couldn’t have been any better. A tree fell on our house, but all of our stuff, was packed safely in the U-haul. None of our electronics had been affected by the surges and sudden loss of power. And then, four hours later, with the simple stroke of a pen, the whole mess became someone else’s problem.

Bruce A. Borders, author and songwriter has over 500 songs and 9 books. Over My Dead Body, his latest ebook, is available on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®. For more information, visit http://www.bruceaborders.com/ or http://overmydeadbody.jimdo.com/

My Thanksgiving

            Thanksgiving 1986. My wife (girlfriend at the time) and I, along with her sister, had traveled to Wyoming to visit my parents for the holiday. We made the wintry trip fine, had a good time, and ate way too much of my Mother’s delicious southern cooking. Facing a 16-hour drive home, we’d planned to leave early Sunday morning, which would get us back in time to catch up on some sleep before Monday morning. Due to an evening snowstorm, we decided to allow a little extra time and took off about 11 p.m. Saturday night.

            The snow was light and didn’t present much of a problem – at first. The further we traveled however, the worse the storm and the roads became. By 4 a.m., we’d barely made 150 miles. The freeway was covered with more than a foot of heavy, wet snow and I was down to driving 30 mph. The 4-wheel drive Subaru (my Father-in-law’s car) performed very well in the less than desirable driving conditions and I had resigned myself to the fact that I’d get little to no sleep before work on Monday morning.

            Traffic was almost non-existent, though occasionally, a semi would pass, temporarily blinding me in a swell of blowing and swirling snow. Each time one appeared in my mirror, I’d let off the gas, letting the truck go by more quickly, eliminating most of the whiteout. Starting up a small grade as one truck was passing, I waited for the billowing cloud to disappear. As soon as it did, I noticed the truck driver in front of me having problems; his truck and trailer were sliding back and forth, jack-knifing; first in one direction, then the other. My first thought was, how am I going to get around him if he blocks the whole road when he crashes? Then, as quickly as it had started, it was over. The driver managed to right his vehicle and take off up the hill. I breathed a sigh of relief. Prematurely, because that’s when my own troubles began.

The criss-crossing of the tractor-trailer’s tires, sliding sideways through the heavy snow had created a chaotic maze of deep ruts and piles of snow. Hitting the first set of ruts, I felt the car slide to the side. Steering into the slide, the car straightened out just in time to hit the next set of ruts. This time we turned around backwards. By now my speed was down to less than twenty, and keeping my foot off the brake and the gas pedal, I hoped to ride it out. That hope was short-lived. With a significant decrease of friction, a car sliding on slick snow doesn’t slow down nearly fast enough. Moving sideways, toward the edge of the road, I could see the only thing between our car and the cliff was a lone delineator. For a brief instant, I wondered if the little metal post would stop the car. Common sense then prevailed and I knew it wouldn’t. Couldn’t. The laws of physics just didn’t allow it. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

That’s when I woke up my wife. Until this point, both her and her sister had been asleep, oblivious to the impending danger. “We’re going to wreck,” is about all I had time to say. My wife, on the other hand, found a little extra time – to pray.

            The crash happened in slow motion, or seemed to. We counted as the car rolled; up on it’s top, and then back on the wheels, hoping each time the wheels were on the ground that it would stop. Eventually, it did, but not on its wheels. Three and a half times we rolled with the car finally coming to rest upside down. After a bit of struggling with seatbelts and car doors, we managed to climb out of the smashed up vehicle. Then we hiked the thirty-foot, snow-covered cliff, back up to the road. Catching a ride with a truck driver, who took us into the nearest town, we made a few calls and waited for the tow truck to retrieve the car. Some ten hours later, and after several trips, they were still unable to locate the vehicle, despite the fact that I had given them the exact location. The continuing snowfall had obscured the car from view, they told us. It was almost dark when they finally showed up with the badly damaged car. My Dad, who had come as soon as I called (along with my Mother), helped me refill all of the fluids, and jumping the dead battery, we got the car running. Every panel on the vehicle was dented but it still ran. My in-laws had also come to meet us, along with the Pastor of our church. We all made it home on icy roads without further incident, though I didn’t make it to work until Tuesday.

            The next summer, my wife and I stopped to look at the place we’d wrecked. The hill we’d rolled down was steeper than it had seemed at the time. And then we saw quite a chilling sight. About thirty feet down was the small outcropping where the car had landed. It looked barely wide enough for the car, and on the other side was a drop-off, straight down for at least a hundred feet! Not knowing this and unable to see in the dark, we’d walked all around the car. Yet, none of us had fallen off! It was amazing the car had stopped where it did and even more amazing we hadn’t plunged to our death. Perhaps my wife’s prayers had something to do with it!

And that brings me to my point. Every Thanksgiving, I’m reminded of this event and how thankful I am to be alive. That’s My Thanksgiving. Oh, and one more thing. Though I wouldn’t advise this, if you want to find a way to acquire a good used vehicle, at a decent price - roll it down a cliff. We bought the severely dented car from my father-in-law and drove it for another three years!

Bruce A. Borders, author and songwriter has over 500 songs and 9 books. Over My Dead Body, his latest ebook, is available on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®. For more information, visit http://www.bruceaborders.com/ or http://overmydeadbody.jimdo.com/.

The Way I Figured It

Apparently, I’ve always been a little stubborn, especially when it comes to learning new things. The conventional method of teaching; repeating the same stuff under constant supervision, just annoys me. I don’t want to take forever to be taught something in small increments. Just tell me what to do, or show me, and I’ll figure it out. I don’t want to keep “learning” it over and over.

Which is why in fourth grade, I made an “executive decision” that all the repetitive schoolwork the teacher assigned didn’t really need to be done. All those endless sheets of math problems, (and English and spelling), were just a useless exercise to me. Social Studies and Science were not included in this self-proclaimed ban on schoolwork because those two subjects didn’t feature the same material repeated again and again. I could learn new things, instead of boring myself with the same lessons. After all, how many times did I need to demonstrate that I knew how to do simple addition and subtraction? There are only a 100 possible problems of each. Even multi-digit problems are reduced to single digit equations, a fact my teacher failed to fully appreciate. Neither did she appreciate my choice to disregard her assignments. Every day she’d hand out our papers and every day I’d throw them in the trash.

This continued for the entire quarter. My teacher tried to get me to cooperate but hey, I was 10 years old! I didn’t need her to tell me anything. After a few weeks of no papers being turned in for my “selected” subjects, she started sending letters home to my parents. She wasn’t exactly the brightest teacher in the world, because she sent the letters with me. Of course, I promptly filed them in the circular file marked “trash.” Then the phone calls began. But those were easily dealt with too since she called after school hours. By that time, guess who was home? I’d answer the phone and hang up. Then, one fateful day, my little scheme came to a sudden end.

I still remember the evening my dad walked into the house direct from the parent/teacher conference. I’ll spare you the gruesome details but as you imagine he was not pleased. In his hand was a bulging manila envelope. Inside were copies of all the papers I’d thrown away. Three months worth of work in Math, English, and Spelling! My dad said I had until bedtime to have all the work done – and it had to be done correctly. He expected a passing grade on every paper. Now, the teacher, I could ignore and defy, my dad was a different story.

I conceded defeat and disappeared to my bedroom with the stack of schoolwork. At 1:00 a.m., I came downstairs with the work completed. I turned it in the next day but was not graded on it until a week later. Apparently, my teacher wasn’t nearly as motivated to grade it, as I had been to get it done. Yes, I did receive a passing grade for the quarter in all subjects, although I was docked several points for all of the incompletes.

Throughout the remaining years of my schooling, I never repeated the stunt but still held the adamant opinion that repetitively doing things I already knew how to do was a waste of time. And I knew that once I got out of school, I’d never do such a thing – who needs to compute simple math problems over and over anyway?

Well, time to end this blog. I have to balance my checkbook.

Bruce A. Borders, author and songwriter has over 500 songs and 9 books. Over My Dead Body, his latest ebook, is available on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®. For more information, visit http://www.bruceaborders.com or http://overmydeadbody.jimdo.com.

A Lesson Burned

I’m from Oregon, central Oregon, and the arid climate of the high dessert. But, I did spend some time in Wisconsin, which I shall forever refer to as “doing time.” Actually, it wasn’t all bad and I did learn some things there, like; never eat lutefisk, how to pronounce uff-da, and that gasoline is highly explosive. All right, I already knew the last one, but let’s just say I learned it again.

It started one late August, with two dead elm trees that needed to be cut down, a task that involved some redneck friends, ropes, and pickups driving at high speeds down the alley. Surprisingly, that part all went well! After another friend had taken most of the wood, I cleaned up the yard and made a huge pile of limbs and leaves intending to burn it. Now, where I’m from, that would be unthinkable, especially in the dead of summer, but in Wisconsin, with the humidity and thick, lush, green grass, it’s the norm.

After several unsuccessful attempts to get the brush pile burning, I opted for every man’s fire-starter fuel of choice – gasoline! Circling the perimeter of the twelve-foot high pile of tree branches, I emptied a gallon can and found a match. Standing back a good five or six yards, in expectation of a quick ignition, I “shot” a match toward the pile – a technique I’d learned as a kid that could send a lit match up to 20 feet, sometimes farther. Turns out the match didn’t need to travel nearly that far. In fact, it didn’t need to go any distance at all. Due to the combination of high humidity and gas vapors, the moment the sulfur tip burst into a flame, so did the gasoline, and with a terrific sound. It was a deafening roar that’s best described as a cross between a boom and a swoosh. Later, I was told the blast had rattled the windows two blocks away – like a jet breaking the sound barrier.

For me, the deafening sound wasn’t the only thing of concern. A wall of flame rushed toward me and somehow I managed to close my eyes. I suddenly noticed that the already 100-degree temperature had increased dramatically. I didn’t know it could get that hot outside!

After the initial shock of the explosion, and once the fire had settle down to a slow burn, I made my way into the house. My wife, who had been watching the commotion with a why-did-I-marry-this-guy look, informed me that I no longer had eyebrows and the front portion of my hair was visibly missing. My mustache too, was gone. Some time later, I discovered the hair on both arms had been burned off as well.

The good news is my brush pile was burning nicely! My hearing gradually returned and eventually so did my hair. It’s been years now since I lived in Wisconsin, but I still remember the things I learned there. I don’t eat Lutefisk – rotten fish, uff-da - a Norwegian word, pronounced f´- duh, is a mild expression of disgruntlement or surprise, and to this day, I never start fires with gasoline!

Bruce A. Borders, author and songwriter has over 500 songs and 9 books. Over My Dead Body, his latest ebook, is available on Apple I-Pad®, Amazon Kindle®, Barnes & Noble Nook® and Sony Reader®. For more information, visit http://www.bruceaborders.com or http://overmydeadbody.jimdo.com/.