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Oak-ums |
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shadow974 Senior Member
since 2001-06-21
Posts 636Michigan 
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Oak-ums That tree, it’s the same one, I knew I had seen it before. Wow! The memories. Well, I’m a member of an internet club and the manager posted a picture of a large oak tree glowing in the sunset, it hit me, that’s the tree. I lived on a farm when I was twelve and thirteen, we had a mere twenty acres with ten acres of woods, but I ruled. Dad only came home on the weekends. I think I walked and crawled all twenty acres. We had a great garden and a barn and lots of trees, oak trees, walnut trees, hickory trees, and maple trees. There was this huge oak tree near the trail that was property line. Must have been fifty feet tall. I wanted to conquer it. Who was strongest I wondered, who was the smartest? I could climb it, I was to young to cut it down and we didn’t burn wood anyway. I’ll build a tree fort way up there, there where those two limbs are, up about twenty feet off the ground. That night I cut several small pieces of wood and gathered some tools and larger boards and loaded them in the wagon. My mom got my sister off to work at five o’clock and I never went back to sleep, at least not as the same person. Those four inch spikes that my Dad kept in that old tin can sure came in handy. I nailed he step slowly ascending the tree. I climbed down and after a rest I tied a couple of boards to the pull rope and went up the tree and pulled them up to the branches that I had chosen. I nailed two and then four and then it was time to cut the over hang off. I cut the left side, that was easy enough, then I turned around and cut my way further and further away from the trunk of the tree. I heard a creaking and a snap, it let loose. I fell about ten feet and as I hit the trunk of the tree, the steps that I had nailed to the tree gave way, and I found myself hanging by the back of my pants from a four inch spike ten feet off the ground. My belt tightened and it felt like my pants were up to the middle of my chest. I hung there hurting for hours. It slowly got dark and I got scared that no one would find me until it was to late. Would if I fell the rest of the way and landed on something? I yelled for what seemed to be a couple of hours, then out of exhaustion I fell asleep. All I could hear were dogs howling and barking! They were jumping up at me. Then I was blinded by a flash light. “There he is Dad, do you see him way up there?” “Yeah, I got him.” My heart pounded and I shook like a leaf. Then there was a loud explosion. Next thing I knew something was falling from the tree. It hit the ground with a thud. “Boy that’s a big one Dad, must be thirty pounds or more.” “Yeah, he’s a nice one, but what about that other set of eyes up in the tree?” The dogs started howling again. “No, no Buster, that’s not a coon, that’s a kid. Hey kid, what are you doing hanging up there?” “Well you see, my tree fort ... it ...” “This limb is rotten Dad” said Walter. His Dad said, “why would you build a tree fort if that’s what you call it on a rotten branch?” “Please, please, just get me down, it’s getting hard to breath.” “Well boy, about a foot and a half above your feet is a two by four step that you must have put there. Save yourself.” “Wow, thank you, you two are life savers. Hey those dogs don’t bite do they?” “Well, Buster’s pretty mean, but he won’t hurt you unless you try to take a coon away from him.” I thanked them again and invited them up to the house for coffee. The older gentleman said, “ Son, it’s three o’clock in the morning, what would your parents say if strangers were in your house that late at night?” “Well, I guess your right, I didn’t know it was that late.” “How long have you been hanging in that tree son?” “Well, I figure somewhere around twelve hours if it’s three in the morning.” “Son, they used to kill people by hanging them from trees, except death was a lot quicker then.” We all told each other good-bye. The next morning I asked my Dad, “Hey Dad guess what happened to me?” “What’s that son?” “I fell out of a tree trying to build a tree fort and hung by a spike till the middle of the night. Two coon hunters rescued me.” “Well son, your mistake was using nails, trees don’t like nails, are you o.k.?” “Yes, just a few scratches,” I said. “Dan, I’ll help you build a tree fort and we won’t put one nail in the tree.” He showed me how to pinch the trunk of the tree with four boards bolted to each other around it with pieces of an old car tire squeezed in between them. We made a great tree fort right in the same oak tree. I had to pull out all the nails first, and we made a rope ladder to climb up on. It was fun, Dad made it easy, especially with the power tools and a generator. This episode brought me and Dad closer. That’s the story, I have to get back out to the garage I’m making some oak furniture. Everything oak, I would love to start a business and call it Oak-ums, all oak. By the way the coon hunter, well, he’s now my father-n-law. We never kept in touch or anything, we lived one hundred and twenty miles apart, it was just a coincidence I married his daughter. |
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