I wanted to hike to the hot springs yesterday but because of a recent storm the road was closed. Because it was only a few more miles out of the way I decided to go out to Granny’s Café and Hotel and visit with my friend Terry for a while. Boy, did I find a mess out there.The café is on winter hours now and wasn’t open yet (it’s out in the country) so I started looking around. The first thing I noticed was that a huge pine tree just behind the cafe was lying in the side parking lot. The wind had snapped it off about thirty feet up and sixty or so feet of it was on the ground. The wind was blowing hard enough that it didn’t go straight down or it would have crushed the covered sidewalk to the restrooms, and the patio area at the back of the cafe. It blew it about fifty feet over it and out into the parking lot. It is so big that you can’t even see the café and patio area behind the downed tree in the posted picture.
Terry had just walked through that area, it fell right behind him, what a very lucky man.
Luckily it also missed the gazebo and the music grandstand where they play and sing in the summer time.
The storm also blew some of the roof off of the café and the hotel. And snapped off a forty-foot trunk of a multi-trunked maple tree that fell on the end of a covered area that I built a few years ago. It drove the end supporting post three feet into the ground and twisted the roof pretty badly and broke some supporting beams and did some other structural damage, but all in all my structure held up pretty well.
I had the wrong glasses for carpentry work with me so I bent some of nails trying to drive them in but I went to work on fixing the damage. Terry wanted to help me but I’ve worked with and for him for some years now and I trained him some time ago to get out of my frigging way when I tell him to, I have a habit of training bosses. LOL.. I can figure out how to do most things alone and there were other things needing attention and I figured that it would be more efficient if he tackled them, so he went off to tackle them.
I got the corner post jacked back up and supported and removed short sections of the broken supporting beams, jacked them into place where they needed to be and ‘sistered’ them. It’s a term from the days of wooden sailing ships when they had to repair the ribs in ship hulls. I didn’t get all of the damage fixed but will go back out in a few days and finish it.
A few other men started helping Terry with the tree that had snapped off, they got it limbed and had much of the branches ran through a chipper by the time I left, the roofers were there and planning the roof repairs and things where looking pretty good out there and Terry was feeling much better about things.
I got an email from Terry last evening saying that he didn’t even want to get out of bed that morning as it was all so overwhelming and he didn’t know where to start. But like I said, when I left it was looking a lot better, in just one day.
We’re country out here, we help each other in times like this, well some of us are still country. I love being country, I will always be country folk, we help and support each other. I’m country, I’ll fucking be country the day I fucking die. PROUD TO BE COUNTRY !!!!! PROUD TO BE WHAT I AM !!!
Hey, have a great day, hugs….. BBC
12 comments:
Terry was lucky, on 2 accounts, one the tree didnt land on him and two, that you were there.
Thanks for stopping by the Fortress. I am glad I got to read this blog because it confirms what I have suspected all along. The Christ of your Baptism continues to work in you no matter what you say.
Sorry about that.
Dr. John, have you been whacking off again? Hugs.
I can't drive a nail stright with the right glasses.
Hi Rick, Terry and I both bend more nails than we used to, we decided that they don't make nails as good these days. LOL
A few years ago he bought an air powered nail gun that we use on bigger jobs.
He has trouble cutting a straight line with a skill saw so I do a lot of the sawing on panels and such.
Yet when it comes to helping our neighbors on a larger scale, such as, say, by providing a guaranteed minimum level of health care to all Americans, your neighbors will call it "Communism" and vote against it. Your neighbors are "country" because they have to be, not because the nature of hairless monkeys has changed at any point in the past million years.
PS - it's not that they don't make nails as good these days, it's that they don't make *hammers* as good these days!
Badtux.... No, many of us are country because we want to be, we choose to be. If we didn't want to be country we would move to a big city.
Being country is a choice, something in our blood. We are not country because we have to be.
I agree with you, I live in the city but am country at heart. You have been a busy boy. Have a great weekend
Beeb, I've lived in the country before. Folks help each other in the country because there's no services to call and you don't want to get bad reputation because if you do then nobody will help you when you need help. But that generosity ends swiftly when it comes to getting together on a larger basis (we call it "government") to handle problems like, say, millions of Americans lacking healthcare, or hundreds of thousands of veterans living on the streets. Then helping other people becomes "Communism" and evil, all the while that country folk trumpet their moral superiority over the city folk who do far more in the end to help those in need.
You might choose to live in the country. But your lifestyle while you live there isn't a choice. It's how you must live to survive there. That's all I was saying.
- Badtux the Country Penguin
Badtux.... You are so full of crap that you don't don't know what you are talking about. I'm not a hundred miles from nowhere and we have all the services you do without your big city shit that goes along with it.
You just don't like country, and it may not like you. :-)
"We’re country out here, we help each other in times like this, well some of us are still country. I love being country, I will always be country folk, we help and support each other. I’m country, I’ll fucking be country the day I fucking die. PROUD TO BE COUNTRY !!!!! PROUD TO BE WHAT I AM !!!"
Make that two of us, if you don't mind.:) Terry is indeed a lucky Man. Sometimes you get the gold mine...sometimes you get the shaft.
I want to thank you for your kind support during the last week. It was treasured, believe me!
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