Tree Trimmers

by Pa Rock

Former Brush Boy

Tree trimmers have been working my stretch of County Road 1770 for the past two days, directlly in front of my typing window.  It's quite a show, especially for those of us who tend to be easily distracted.  This crew, probably contracted by the county, consists of three young men,: two who manage traffic about 25 feet out from each end of the bucket truck - which has an attached wood chipper - and one daredevil who rides the bucket forty feet into the air (or thereabouts) where he leans out and  trims limbs with a small chainsaw on on long rod.   

(Favorite "woodchipper" movie?  Mine is "Fargo."   They don't make 'em like that anymore, but I digress!)

I walked out this morning and took a few pictures.  One of the guys controlling traffic walked over and chatted to make sure I wasn't some crank troublemaker.  I assured him that I was just a garden variety busybody who was enjoying the show.  Here is a shot of monkey man in the bucket:

I was reminded of the summer that I worked as a brush boy with a pair of old alcoholics (one in his forties and a younger one in his late twenties or early thirties.  I was around twenty and home from college for the summer.  My choices for the summer were lawn work coupled with putting TV stands together in my dad's appliance store - or getting out and finding a real job - which were not very plentiful for young, temporary help in a small town like Noel, Missouri - "the Christmas City of the Ozarks on beautiful Elk River" -  in the 1960's.

But I had only been home from school a few days when I got lucky.  I had ridden my small Honda 50 motor scooter into town and was sitting on the sidewalk in front of local teen hangout drinking a coke when a derelict fellow approached and asked if I was looking for work.  "Yes," I said, amazed that the process for finding work was so simple.   He sat on the sidewalk next to me and proceeded to tell me about the work that he and his friend were doing.

The guys, and nearly sixty years later their names have escaped me, were independent contractors out of Okalhoma who had been hired by the local telephone company to trim brush away from the phone lines around the rural community of Southwest City, Missouri.  (Can you guess how the town got its name?). They operated the chainsaws and did the tree-climbing (there were no bucket trucks in those days - or at least our crew didn't have one.  My job would be to stay on the ground where I would gather the brush and stack it in piles.   Sometimes I would operate a hand sprayer and kill stubborn sprouts with diesel.

It turns out there was no seed for traffic control people because all of our work was on dirt roads - and every old farmer who drove by stopped and wanted to talk. The challenge was getting them to move on down the road!

It sounded like a suitable position for a college underclassman, so I snapped it up.  I knew I could work for the yahoos a few days and see if I liked it, and then leave if it didn't suit my refined tastes.  I wound up working with them the entire summer, and it was definitely a good experience.  By August we were three happy derelicts!

I learned a lot about a bunch of things from those guys, a useful supplement to a college education.  We were paid every Friday afternoon and the boss would always go to town and bring back two twelve-packs of cold beer and we would spend the rest of the day sitting around the truck and celebrating the end of the work week.

The guys working in front of my house today don't look like they would be nearly as much fun as my buddies from Oklahoma!  Maybe I should take them a beer!