Louisiana September 2008 Part 1

I'm still nursing an aching muscle or two from the chainsaw crew that I was a part of last week. We went to a small town called Denham Springs, LA. There we hooked up with a man called Link who had a beastly old boom truck. With the help of this truck we lifted 40 foot tree trunks off of houses that the trees had fallen on top of. I found my niche with a 460 Stihl chainsaw that had a 36 inch bar. With this saw we cut the tree trunks in 8 or 9 foot chunks to come within the weight limit of the scat trac. We usually piled these trees up either by the road for pickup or in the woods to rot away in peace.

We slept in a house owned by the hosting church and ate food prepared by the hosting church. All in all it was a terrific trip with lots of hard work.

The biggest tree we worked on came on the last day. It was a 60 inch across the stump, 100 year old, oak tree. Lightning had struck the tree and bored a 3 inch hole right down the middle of the tree all the way down into the roots. We hooked a 100 foot rope about half way up the tree and tied it to the boom truck. When the tree gave a crack Ron, the cutter, ran and the truck driver gave it the juice. The tree fell right where we had planned to fall. That's always a good thing.

Earlier in the week on a much smaller tree that wasn't quite the case. They left me in charge of cutting down a much smaller tree. Well, the rope came off the tree and the tree strayed off course. The tree christened a home made flower pot. The tree fell smack in the middle of the cut in half water heater. How ever the good news was that it missed the cable TV wires. The cable man had just left, so it wouldn't have been a good thing to cut off the cable right after just getting it fixed. I can just see this Cajun lady chasing me around the property because I had cut off her just fixed cable TV. If you get chased by a Cajun you can be assured it isn't with a broom. Guns abound in Louisiana. So I for one was glad to see the wires remain intact.

I was seriously thinking about hooking up with another team that was coming to the same area and staying another week, but maybe it's a good thing for me that never happened.

There is so much left to do there and news coverage has subsided due to elections.

Louisiana Chain Saw David