Guido's Last Hurrah: Part I
- Thread starter Mapleman
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Slvrmple72
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opcorn:
slinger
ArboristSite Guru
opcorn:opcorn:
tree md
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Mapleman
ArboristSite Operative
PART IV
Working in The City in those days was a gas. There was a small fraternity of climbers who did the really big trees. By big, I mean anything over 80 feet. Some of the monsters got close to 120’. But often it wasn’t the height of the tree, but more the size of its canopy and branches. Sometimes a big gum’s first branch was 3 feet across at the collar, and it could stretch out 40 feet with a thirty inch clearance over an adobe-tiled roof. We get those down by tying the tip with a bull line which threaded through an overhead block and then down to the Hobbs. While the branch was winched up, the climber would make an undercut, and we shoot the piece down butt first.
There was a job we did in the Castro for two gay guys who had a lot of expensive Oriental vases and antiques in their house. They also had an overgrown ninety-foot, 69-inch diameter Monterrey cypress fifteen feet outside their backdoor of their three story condo. The backyard was an overgrown postage stamp, and the condo sat on a crowded street halfway down a hill. Wires and lack of access made it impossible to get a crane or bucket anywhere near the tree.
I think JB was climbing that day, and I was working the Hobbs. The takedown went pretty smooth except for one of the 200 lb. chunks JB pushed off the trunk broke a water pipe 18 inches under the ground. Water shot up twenty feet until we got it shut off at the main.
But getting the tree down was half the battle. There was no garage, no gates, and no way to drag the brush and haul the wood to the street. So we went through the house—yup, all 90 feet of that cypress went in the back door, through a hallway, past a fireplace and all those Oriental vases, and out the front door. We had lined the walls with half inch plywood and covered the floors with thick cardboard. But we should have brought along some Prozac and nail clippers for those two gay guys.
Guido was a loner for the most part and never did join in on our fraternal shindigs. He didn’t have much use for small talk, pruning tools, and a lot of the ground men he worked with. But even though he seemed to enjoy heaping big loads of brush on his ground crew, underneath it all, when the chips were down, you had the feeling Guido would be there holding up the mine shaft like Big Bad John in that 60s folk song. So it was pretty shocking when we heard the news two months later…
to be continued tomorrow...
Working in The City in those days was a gas. There was a small fraternity of climbers who did the really big trees. By big, I mean anything over 80 feet. Some of the monsters got close to 120’. But often it wasn’t the height of the tree, but more the size of its canopy and branches. Sometimes a big gum’s first branch was 3 feet across at the collar, and it could stretch out 40 feet with a thirty inch clearance over an adobe-tiled roof. We get those down by tying the tip with a bull line which threaded through an overhead block and then down to the Hobbs. While the branch was winched up, the climber would make an undercut, and we shoot the piece down butt first.
There was a job we did in the Castro for two gay guys who had a lot of expensive Oriental vases and antiques in their house. They also had an overgrown ninety-foot, 69-inch diameter Monterrey cypress fifteen feet outside their backdoor of their three story condo. The backyard was an overgrown postage stamp, and the condo sat on a crowded street halfway down a hill. Wires and lack of access made it impossible to get a crane or bucket anywhere near the tree.
I think JB was climbing that day, and I was working the Hobbs. The takedown went pretty smooth except for one of the 200 lb. chunks JB pushed off the trunk broke a water pipe 18 inches under the ground. Water shot up twenty feet until we got it shut off at the main.
But getting the tree down was half the battle. There was no garage, no gates, and no way to drag the brush and haul the wood to the street. So we went through the house—yup, all 90 feet of that cypress went in the back door, through a hallway, past a fireplace and all those Oriental vases, and out the front door. We had lined the walls with half inch plywood and covered the floors with thick cardboard. But we should have brought along some Prozac and nail clippers for those two gay guys.
Guido was a loner for the most part and never did join in on our fraternal shindigs. He didn’t have much use for small talk, pruning tools, and a lot of the ground men he worked with. But even though he seemed to enjoy heaping big loads of brush on his ground crew, underneath it all, when the chips were down, you had the feeling Guido would be there holding up the mine shaft like Big Bad John in that 60s folk song. So it was pretty shocking when we heard the news two months later…
to be continued tomorrow...
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slinger
ArboristSite Guru
Keep it comin
treemandan
Tree Freak
This is like a chapter out of my life. Who hasn't worked at Smokin Joe's House? Who hasn't hauled so much crap through a fags love shack?
Great stuff. Where have all the good times gone?
Great stuff. Where have all the good times gone?
tree md
Addicted to ArboristSite
Yup, great stuff. Maple should definitely write a book. Thing is, only climbers would get what he's talking about. :monkey:
Mapleman
ArboristSite Operative
Yeah, someone really needs to write about us in a positive light. We get no respect. Day in, day out, making the world safe from killer trees...
I did write a novel a few years back--it's still unpublished--about a guy who travels to Russia and gets into all kinds of trouble. His name was Wesley Colter, and he was a tree man. I managed to bring a little about what we do into the story line.
Everything I'm writing I'm pulling from memory, but I will admit to taking certain artistic liberties with some of the events and people, ie., combining separate events or characters into one entity.
I need to get a workout in and go to the library before writing anything more. I'm enjoying it--hope you all are as well...
I did write a novel a few years back--it's still unpublished--about a guy who travels to Russia and gets into all kinds of trouble. His name was Wesley Colter, and he was a tree man. I managed to bring a little about what we do into the story line.
Everything I'm writing I'm pulling from memory, but I will admit to taking certain artistic liberties with some of the events and people, ie., combining separate events or characters into one entity.
I need to get a workout in and go to the library before writing anything more. I'm enjoying it--hope you all are as well...
Bermie
Addicted to ArboristSite
This is a gas!!! ! am thoroughly enjoying it and BTW you have a great writing style!
Staying tuned for more...
Staying tuned for more...
Mikecutstrees
ArboristSite Guru
Good story!!!!
Mapleman
ArboristSite Operative
PART V
“…the clothes she wears, her sexy ways
make an old man wish for younger days
She knows she’s built and knows how to please
Sure enough to knock a strong man to his knees
Cause she’s a brick house…”
The Taco House was vibrating like the Enerzier Bunny with a dildo. It was Friday night, about six weeks after the first time I had seen Guido in the place. Any tree dude who hadn’t cashed his check already was elbowing his way to the bar to get the ever lovely Cheryl, the bar matron, to cash it for him. An eight-foot long, two handle cross-cut saw was mounted over the mirror behind the bar. Posters of topless women in chaps holding weed eaters and of climbers hanging in trees with a variety of Stihls hung on the smoke-stained walls. The captions underneath the Stihl posters read:
“Never Use a Running Chain Saw in a Tree.”
Tony C., my employer, was there. He liked to gamble with his employees, shooting a little nine ball or throwing dice, so he could win back the money he had just paid them. If he was successful, he’d usually end the evening by dancing on the pool table. Tony C--if he wasn’t a tree man, he could have been a mouthpiece for the Mob.
Guido sat at a corner table with Geena, his girlfriend. She wore her hair in a long, dark braid, slung over her left shoulder and partially covering up a tattoo of a skeleton on a Harley waving two chainsaws over his head. She sometimes ran the ropes for Guido, and today they had been doing one of their own jobs somewhere down Peninsular in the Palo Alto area. Geena was half Mexican, half Irish, and all Amazon, just like the song on the juke box was saying...“36-24-36, what a winning hand.”
Geena pushed back her chair and did the tree-man strut to the bar, exaggeratedly dipping and swaying her shoulders and upper body every time she bounced off her toes. I knew that walk, and I figured Guido had let her climb that day. When she got to the crowded bar, a hole opened up for her, and she reached in the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a handful of sawdust and a wad of bills.
“Yup, if she’s buying, she was definitely climbing today. I’m glad those two are getting along tonight,” I thought.
I felt pretty light on my feet myself, that night. I had had a three bridge day—the Golden Gate, the Richmond, and the Bay Bridge. We were working over in Chinatown at a four-story apartment building that formed a square around the largest avocado tree I’d ever seen. We climbed the fire escape to the roof where I launched into the tree after retrieving my climbing line with the hook of my pole saw. I had hit a good crotch that angled away from the trunk, and I was able to grab the branch of a secondary leader on my backswing.
The apartment building was located next door to a fire station. And the guys stationed there must have been really bored because they started stacking the brush we were lowering from the roof. The avocado measured about 28-32 inches at the base. It grew straight up until just short of the roofline where the secondary leader took off. The tree had already been limbed out all the way up to the roof, after that it mushroomed out. By using the closest crotch to the ground crew, and with the groundies grappling pieces with a pole saw, I was able to swing all the limbs to them. They walked the brush to the street side of the building and lowered it four-stories down to the firemen.
I chunked the rest of the tree onto the dirt and grass of the courtyard that surrounded the trunk. I had a limited impact zone, and I had to keep my pieces from bouncing around too much as it was a regular obstacle course below me, with fountains, flowering plants, lawn furniture, and smiling Buddhas. As I cut the stump and pushed it over, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, especially since all the wood was staying. Then it occurred to me—how was I getting out of there? I was in a walled in atrium, and I only saw two doors. They were both locked. I shucked my saddle and gaffs and coiled my line. Just as I wrapped up all my gear in my safety lanyard and threw it over my shoulder, an old Chinaman tapped on a window and motioned for me. I grabbed my 266 as he opened his window. He was waving at me to climb in and across his bed. And that’s how I got out of a courtyard where the last avocado tree in Chinatown grew.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75qXUfp4wtw>
“…the clothes she wears, her sexy ways
make an old man wish for younger days
She knows she’s built and knows how to please
Sure enough to knock a strong man to his knees
Cause she’s a brick house…”
The Taco House was vibrating like the Enerzier Bunny with a dildo. It was Friday night, about six weeks after the first time I had seen Guido in the place. Any tree dude who hadn’t cashed his check already was elbowing his way to the bar to get the ever lovely Cheryl, the bar matron, to cash it for him. An eight-foot long, two handle cross-cut saw was mounted over the mirror behind the bar. Posters of topless women in chaps holding weed eaters and of climbers hanging in trees with a variety of Stihls hung on the smoke-stained walls. The captions underneath the Stihl posters read:
“Never Use a Running Chain Saw in a Tree.”
Tony C., my employer, was there. He liked to gamble with his employees, shooting a little nine ball or throwing dice, so he could win back the money he had just paid them. If he was successful, he’d usually end the evening by dancing on the pool table. Tony C--if he wasn’t a tree man, he could have been a mouthpiece for the Mob.
Guido sat at a corner table with Geena, his girlfriend. She wore her hair in a long, dark braid, slung over her left shoulder and partially covering up a tattoo of a skeleton on a Harley waving two chainsaws over his head. She sometimes ran the ropes for Guido, and today they had been doing one of their own jobs somewhere down Peninsular in the Palo Alto area. Geena was half Mexican, half Irish, and all Amazon, just like the song on the juke box was saying...“36-24-36, what a winning hand.”
Geena pushed back her chair and did the tree-man strut to the bar, exaggeratedly dipping and swaying her shoulders and upper body every time she bounced off her toes. I knew that walk, and I figured Guido had let her climb that day. When she got to the crowded bar, a hole opened up for her, and she reached in the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a handful of sawdust and a wad of bills.
“Yup, if she’s buying, she was definitely climbing today. I’m glad those two are getting along tonight,” I thought.
I felt pretty light on my feet myself, that night. I had had a three bridge day—the Golden Gate, the Richmond, and the Bay Bridge. We were working over in Chinatown at a four-story apartment building that formed a square around the largest avocado tree I’d ever seen. We climbed the fire escape to the roof where I launched into the tree after retrieving my climbing line with the hook of my pole saw. I had hit a good crotch that angled away from the trunk, and I was able to grab the branch of a secondary leader on my backswing.
The apartment building was located next door to a fire station. And the guys stationed there must have been really bored because they started stacking the brush we were lowering from the roof. The avocado measured about 28-32 inches at the base. It grew straight up until just short of the roofline where the secondary leader took off. The tree had already been limbed out all the way up to the roof, after that it mushroomed out. By using the closest crotch to the ground crew, and with the groundies grappling pieces with a pole saw, I was able to swing all the limbs to them. They walked the brush to the street side of the building and lowered it four-stories down to the firemen.
I chunked the rest of the tree onto the dirt and grass of the courtyard that surrounded the trunk. I had a limited impact zone, and I had to keep my pieces from bouncing around too much as it was a regular obstacle course below me, with fountains, flowering plants, lawn furniture, and smiling Buddhas. As I cut the stump and pushed it over, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, especially since all the wood was staying. Then it occurred to me—how was I getting out of there? I was in a walled in atrium, and I only saw two doors. They were both locked. I shucked my saddle and gaffs and coiled my line. Just as I wrapped up all my gear in my safety lanyard and threw it over my shoulder, an old Chinaman tapped on a window and motioned for me. I grabbed my 266 as he opened his window. He was waving at me to climb in and across his bed. And that’s how I got out of a courtyard where the last avocado tree in Chinatown grew.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75qXUfp4wtw>
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Rickytree
Addicted to ArboristSite
I tried the youtube link and it didn't work, but keep the stories comin! Any got a pile of brush and some gas, lets get a bomb fire going!!
tree md
Addicted to ArboristSite
tree md
Addicted to ArboristSite
Mapleman
ArboristSite Operative
here's that youtube again--I'm not quite sure how to post it so it gets you right to the site when you click onto it.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75qXUfp4wtw>
or
<http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/--2154048>
It's the same video.
Oh, I see you got it Ricky, thanx...
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75qXUfp4wtw>
or
<http://new.music.yahoo.com/videos/--2154048>
It's the same video.
Oh, I see you got it Ricky, thanx...
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Rickytree
Addicted to ArboristSite
Definately cool! but some of the worst dubbing I have ever seen. P.S. I'll take the Philippino with the long hair. Dibbs!!
Mapleman
ArboristSite Operative
PART VI
The December Storm of ‘81 made a few climbers very rich--some of them even started their own tree services. Guido bought himself two new Harleys and a 084. I saw the Harleys in front of the Taco House as I walked down Dolores Street. The 084’s sprocket poked up over the top of the sissy bar Guido had welded behind the seat of one of the Harleys.
I was feeling particularly ripped this afternoon, walking through the Mission and having just finished a two-day removal of a big Monterrey pine near Golden Gate Park. I felt like an inch of air was beneath my feet, and all the muscles of my upper body were pulsating. I still had sap stains on the backs of my elbows and triceps, plus an assortment of pine bark cuts on my forearms, and an aroma of bar oil permeated my Carharts. But I had slipped on a fresh shirt and I thought there wasn’t a tree in The City I couldn’t handle…well, except maybe the eight foot gum growing through the middle of that trapeze artist’s house over on Gough Street.
Guido had landed the contract for the Presidio cemetery where monster pines and cypresses had come crashing down among all the plain white stones that marked the graves of soldiers and sailors. The wind from that storm had been so bad--it was measured at over 120 mph at the Marin Headlands—that the Golden Gate Bridge was shut down for only the third time in 50 years. Observers said the span was swaying six feet in each direction. The tree contract lasted right through the summer, and that’s when Guido met Geena.
I wouldn’t exactly say their relationship was a match made in heaven, as they seemed to spend more time damning each other to hell. Their fights spawned legends. One of the particularly better ones happened after Geena didn’t let a 5/8” line run enough, and a piece of pine hurtled back toward Guido. When he tried to deflect the piece with the bar of his 056, the chain grazed his left shoulder. After getting stitched up at the local ER, the two of them went on a binge, snorting, smoking, drinking, and fighting. Guido woke up in the morning hung over and alone, sewn into his sheets.
Guido sometimes wore a T-shirt that said: “I should have been born 100 years ago.”
That pretty well summed him up, in my opinion. The saddlebags on one of the Harleys were packed with climbing gear and lowering lines, and the oversized bags on the second bulged out where a 038 and 056 had been crammed. The bars had been removed and were lashed to the tops of the bags. The counties to the north of San Francisco (Sonoma, Napa, and Mendocino) were full of open spaces, big trees, wineries, and affluence. It was a tree man’s paradise in those days--getting paid under the table and moving from job to job. With a few connections, the right gear, and a hired gun mentality, a climber could live a pretty good life…
The December Storm of ‘81 made a few climbers very rich--some of them even started their own tree services. Guido bought himself two new Harleys and a 084. I saw the Harleys in front of the Taco House as I walked down Dolores Street. The 084’s sprocket poked up over the top of the sissy bar Guido had welded behind the seat of one of the Harleys.
I was feeling particularly ripped this afternoon, walking through the Mission and having just finished a two-day removal of a big Monterrey pine near Golden Gate Park. I felt like an inch of air was beneath my feet, and all the muscles of my upper body were pulsating. I still had sap stains on the backs of my elbows and triceps, plus an assortment of pine bark cuts on my forearms, and an aroma of bar oil permeated my Carharts. But I had slipped on a fresh shirt and I thought there wasn’t a tree in The City I couldn’t handle…well, except maybe the eight foot gum growing through the middle of that trapeze artist’s house over on Gough Street.
Guido had landed the contract for the Presidio cemetery where monster pines and cypresses had come crashing down among all the plain white stones that marked the graves of soldiers and sailors. The wind from that storm had been so bad--it was measured at over 120 mph at the Marin Headlands—that the Golden Gate Bridge was shut down for only the third time in 50 years. Observers said the span was swaying six feet in each direction. The tree contract lasted right through the summer, and that’s when Guido met Geena.
I wouldn’t exactly say their relationship was a match made in heaven, as they seemed to spend more time damning each other to hell. Their fights spawned legends. One of the particularly better ones happened after Geena didn’t let a 5/8” line run enough, and a piece of pine hurtled back toward Guido. When he tried to deflect the piece with the bar of his 056, the chain grazed his left shoulder. After getting stitched up at the local ER, the two of them went on a binge, snorting, smoking, drinking, and fighting. Guido woke up in the morning hung over and alone, sewn into his sheets.
Guido sometimes wore a T-shirt that said: “I should have been born 100 years ago.”
That pretty well summed him up, in my opinion. The saddlebags on one of the Harleys were packed with climbing gear and lowering lines, and the oversized bags on the second bulged out where a 038 and 056 had been crammed. The bars had been removed and were lashed to the tops of the bags. The counties to the north of San Francisco (Sonoma, Napa, and Mendocino) were full of open spaces, big trees, wineries, and affluence. It was a tree man’s paradise in those days--getting paid under the table and moving from job to job. With a few connections, the right gear, and a hired gun mentality, a climber could live a pretty good life…
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I love it! I love it! I love it! I love it! I love it!
Great stuff. One warning thought - unless I'm mistaken, anything posted on this site becomes property of Arboristsite. Right?
So, get an agreement with whoever runs the show here. Your stuff is too good to be just giving it away... Put it in a book format, a little more plot, and I'd betcha the tree catalogs would jump all over it. Best of luck & keep it comin'.
Great stuff. One warning thought - unless I'm mistaken, anything posted on this site becomes property of Arboristsite. Right?
So, get an agreement with whoever runs the show here. Your stuff is too good to be just giving it away... Put it in a book format, a little more plot, and I'd betcha the tree catalogs would jump all over it. Best of luck & keep it comin'.
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