Month: June 2017

Location, Location, Location

Years ago, back when you could buy a beach front house for, say, $300,000, Donna and I went shopping.

We couldn’t afford to pay anywhere near that much, of course, but I thought maybe we could buy something modest two or three rows back from the beach.

This isn't the beach house Donna found -- but it looks like it.
This isn’t the beach house Donna found — but it looks like it.

But Donna would rather have a shack on the ocean front than a mansion anywhere else so she kept looking for something that we might be able to afford.

One afternoon, when she returned from a house hunting trip, she told me she had found a front row house she wanted me to see.

“How much do they want for it?” I asked.

“$100,000,” Donna said.

“How far is it from the water, Donna.”

“At high tide or low tide?” she asked.

Postscript: At high tide the ocean was under the house.

Friday: Get Out and Stay Out!

Attacked By A Dead Tree

I was chain sawing junk trees at my place at Snowbird, in far western North Carolina.  Live trees. I usually leave the dead ones alone because they’re a lot more dangerous. Besides, some birds like them and they’ll fall down one of these days without my help. No point in taking a chance.

But this particular dead Hemlock stuck its tongue out at me, so to speak, so I had no choice. I had to cut it.

This is a widow-maker.
These dead trees are widow-makers.

What makes dead trees so much more dangerous is that when they fall they sometimes break apart and fall every which way.

I was standing on the side of a hill, knee deep in debris, when I cut this one and as it began to fall, I looked up. It was tall and I saw that it had broken into two pieces, neither of which threatened me.

And then, in a flash, a question entered my mind, from where I don’t know.  My subconscious? Some corner of my mind that wanted desperately to live?

The question: “Where’s the rest of it?”

I craned my head back a little further and I saw the rest of it, a third section falling straight toward me.

I couldn’t run. Like I said, I was knee deep in debris. Instead I wheel around and held my Huskie — my chain saw — out behind me, causing me to fall backward into the brush. The third section fell where I had been standing.

The debris saved my legs and feet. I was saved by a question: “Where’s the rest of it?”

Coming Monday: Location, Location, Location