Tree Trimmin Thanks.

Ah now... Billy has to go throwin some pressure out by calling me out. B'sterd. Alright... here's a little story and thank you note to three guys.

So, we have this house that we used to live in. On one side is empty old home that has this annoying mulberry tree growing along the alley. The mulberry is female so it leaves buckets n buckets of gooey berries on the ground in the middle of July. This tree has grown where it happens to interfere with the power pole servicing 4 residences. The property that the tree resides on is owned by an old woman with alzheimers and has been vacant for years. No one has trimmed this tree in many more years. She is dirt poor and her kids aren't particularly supportive either.

There is (was) another tree behind our house, across the alley. It is an old pine of some sort. It has a very noticeable 45 degree lean right into the main power line. The tree literally rests upon the power line and it's support cable. You can see the tension in the line and in the poles. The tree has been this way for a long time, with the new growth growing vertical. The folks who own that tree just never did anything about it.

Both of these trees have been called in repeatedly over the years to try and get them trimmed and get them off the power lines. The city has been called. CILCO has been called. Phone company.... everyone just pointed and said 'not our problem' call someone else. CILCO every few years goes through the neighborhood and 'trims' the trees to keep them off the power lines. We get the famous 'CILCO cut'. That is where the guy goes up in the bucket, finds a totally unrelated branch, snips it and calls it 'done'. So naturally, the limbs (or tree) have never actually been removed from the power lines. When called about it, you got more of the 'not my problem' bullshit.

Fast forward to last week, in which, as we all know, we got hammered with a wonderful ice storm. Both of these trees were weighing heavily on the power lines. The mulberry is nearly pulling the line off our house. The support brace is bent and starting to tear out. Saturday night, as we returned from an out of town gathering, we swung by the place to see if there was still power (there was). There, in the alley, was one of many tree trimming crews in the neighborhood that night.

The weather is crap and you know these guys have been busting their butts for many hours when we arrived. So I pull up, get out and kindly ask the guy if he can do anything about the trees. They had already worked on the pine but I needed that mulberry dealt with. The guy looked at it, said he would try and get his supervisor on the line to see if they could get approval for it. He calls right then and there. Naturally, the supervisor is swamped and can't be reached. So the guy yells for his foreman who was in the truck. Foreman comes up and looks at it, agrees that they can and should do something about it. The two talk. A third guy walks up, who had been in the truck warming up. They can't reach the supervisor but surely this would be approved work. First guy is like 'Do it anyways?' Foreman: 'Yeah'. And they DID IT all with out any grumbles or sourness despite the long cold day. The farkin tree FINALLY got trimmed.

No bullshit from these three guys. No finger pointing that it isn't their task. They saw it was the right thing to do, to be proactive and fix these trees BEFORE they take someone's power away. So MY THANKS to the three guys who were working as a team that night, for actually doing their jobs right. Maybe they will read this... maybe not. You made a customer happy and saved some folks a bunch of expense by doing the right thing. The rest of you finger pointers can go find a snow drift and plunge headfirst into it.

Merry Christmas all.