DEC-B-2
ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE WEEK:
YEAR-END LETTER-’01 IN THE MAIL,
BIG BRANCH OFF THE ROOF,
AND PLANS BEING MADE FOR VISIT OF MICHAEL, JUDY AND THE TWINS,
AND MY VISIT TO CHICAGO AND MICHIGAN, AND FLORIDA
December 12—16, 2001
Small triumphs have marked the culmination of some long term advanced planning and the assembly of the component parts for the year-end letter-’01, “The Year of the Twins.” I had collated all of the copies, stuffed them in pre-addressed envelopes and added pictures, and carried it all down to the post office to put in the mail first thing on Wednesday morning December 12, 2001, giving a two week trial of US Postal Service efficiency. So, let me know when it arrives, if not necessarily when you have finished reading it!
I had tried various means for getting on the roof or up to it to take down the big branch that had fallen with the butt end of it on the roof and the crown end hung up in thew branches of an adjacent tree. I could not get it down easily, and it was of such a size that if it came down uncontrolled, it might topple over, taking off the eave troughs at least, a bit of roof at most and possibly smash in the windows on its way down before hitting the ground—or the fence, lamps and picnic table on the way.
I first crawled out a window, and had found two tent poles that fit together with which I could reach the underside of the bough. But it was very heavy, and the push on it made the tent poles bend and the straightened-out poles could not take the pressure without snapping. I then got an old long two by four and tried to spear the bough from underneath, with a shower of cinders from shingles and bark from the bough down into my eyes. I needed some heavy equipment, and tried to think of where I might find it to work on the branch. I remembered that in my hunting pack I had carried a new rope coiled in the package in which I had bought it, as well as a band saw and other gear like the gloves. I had my bicycling helmet, which would be needed as a safety precaution in this hard hat zone.
I leaned the old rickety ladder, missing a few rungs, against the house and clung to the ivy and the eaves, to get under the branch. With an iron ring tied to the one end of the fifty-foot rope, I whirled it like a lasso, and with several tries, finally looped the butt end of the branch, and backed off the ladder. The iron ring did come down to hit the helmet, so I am glad I used a few precautions. I could see the whole branch coming off the roof toward the ladder, and knew that I would not stand a chance of remaining on the ladder when it came down, so I retreated as far as the rope would allow, and then pulled with the rope to move the butt end down the shingles to the pint where the overhanging branches would let go of the crown of the heavy log suspended below, directing the fall toward a narrow space between the picnic table and the fence with its lamps. It managed just somehow to work. So the whole log crashed off the roof, without any damage to the ladder, the fence, the picnic table, the eaves, or the roof—and best of all—to me. I had to saw it in sections with the band saw just to move it out of the yard.
So, the principle chore for which I had stayed home on a Derwood day came to a successful conclusion, in urgency only because of the failing light. I must come and go in the dark these days, since with the Winter Solstice coming, it starts getting very dark at about four o’clock here in daylight savings time land. I can now continue in indoor projects of the sort that prepare for the coming visits and the closure of the year’s records and accounting.