Was a clear August morning, it began as any other day did. I work for a lawn and tree company, i am there Arborist. $@#$%@ consists of 14 or 15 fertlizer trucks. You cant miss them they are all over the valley. They look like someone took a giant beer can and laid it down on its side in the back of a truck, hence the name "Beer Truck." We have an irigation truck. Acouple of mow trucks acouple of pest control trucks , a couple of areation trucks, our old "Tree" truck. And my new chip truck and my chipper from 1960 something, biggest pice of shit. $#@$%# finely broke down and bought me a new chip truck. 4500,GMC Duramax with an 8 YARD CHIP BOX! With a ELECTRIC DUMP! Oh! and get this, the brand new chip trucks, trailer hitch Broke 4 times in the firts year i had it. This should tell you how serious they are about "Tree" work. Shit , when you put the old chip truck alongside the new one. One would wonder how anything got done. 69, The old truck, had a history that screamed : drive "This pice of shit off a fuckn cliff!" No AC, no heat, no defrost, no wipers, it hardly ever ran, thewindows barely rolled up. It held, maybe 5 yards with another ELECTRIC DUMP! The history of 69 began in Tri-citys,Washington where theymanaged to catch it on fire and burn it down, should have been totaled. But DIL-WEED being the fucking genious he is, paid to rebuild. When it made its way here, it managed to cost 3 transmisions, 2 engines, my blood presureand god knows how many helpers or Groundmen.These guys really knew shit about real Tree work. Although they had ONE WHO THE FORCE IS STRONG WITH. He runs the Bucket truck in another branch. Basicly, $#@$%# had the money and image and the intention of providing great customer service and deliver a great product. And they did for awhile! But greed greed greed, seems like in my experence, the bigger and stronger an entity becomes, they are Always! figuring out ways to keep the people (workers) , from advancing, yada yada yada!! Every one seems to be basing there buisness pratices after the Federal Government's. I've worked for them too! Anyway...there is no such thing as shity teams...just shity leaders! Nuff said.
I showed up for work wearing my Flame-in Go T a pair of shorts and my Keens. A kinda sandel shoe. Im always looking for a sandel for light duty work and climbing. $@#$%&, has been trying to sharpen up there image by putting all there employee's in the same applicater "clown suit". Not this Indian! And for the most part i do what I WANT. Today is supposed to be an easy day. i sold a small job in Rose Park and a few "small removals up in the Ave's" said Bret the SALESMAN. He,s ...........a salesman.........need i say more! After alittle coffee some BS and JD loads the tools, were outa here! Wel after i give a quick over, make sure J got EVERYTHING!! Kid's a 20 someting year old "Tree guy" who looks someyhing like sideshow Bob and Bob Marley. Thought for sure he would "Be Jamn!". Until he told me "Thats a negative ghoast rider!" i was informend that GWAR is where its at man" All that! and the fact he's a Pices! (Pices die of VD) Should have told me he's about as serious as my erectile dysfunction about getn shit done right. Its always "My bad Duuuuude"
So were rollin to our first job in Rosepark. I sold it to an older lady who along with 2 other home owers on this particular street, seem to give one shit about wherte they live. This woman is actualy going to invest in her trees, when everyone else is killn for meth buyn Ho's or procuring Lawers. She works down at the corner 7-11 (shes white) she has her older son and his wife and two sons residing there as well. Im told he was diagnosd with MS. Dude is in a wheelchair. Sucks i remember saying to myself. Today we are supposed to "clean up" a plum tree in the front yard and do the same to alarger Maple tree in the backyard. To bad she had to scratch the maple she told me "after a closer look at the dollars, i just cant afford to do both", "no biggie" we agreed upon $400 for both, so now we agree on $200 for the plum. Im a little iritated but dont show it. I bid the job with most of the work being in the plum the maple did'nt need as much work. Oh,well i think. She is a very good customer and she's trying to shine on a shit hole street. "Fuck it" i mutter as i walkback to the truck for my tools. This plum tree has never been cut on, hacked on, lion tailed or hat racked! Nothing! I love it when i get to my "motvation" hasnt been tampered with by some RAPEST! So rare these days. J and i give this tree some TLC, and make it glow,. all the fixins, suckers,crossers, weight reduction, "sailreduction by at least 1/3 and lifted the skirt a couple feet. when completed that plum was happy as hell and you could see it. "Tree glows" i say outloud. The home owner sure was happy. I gave her her invoice, made sure we got ALL of the tools and we were outa there. "Next stop dollar tree real quick, and i got a big sider to start this afternoon". Ha
"Really, you've got to be out ur DAM MIND!"im yelling as im walking back to the truck "fucken steve" He explained this job like "itl take two hours at the most". "Shit its gonna take an hour just to pull in the parking lot" Just a few TOH trees on the south side of the building, he says. Failed to mention anything about the only e-gress, d-gress was on the north side of building and the parking lot was approximatly 8 parking spaces wide! " And thats where we're fuckn goin!" Not much of an alternative, there is no street parkig in the area, well there is, but the drag would be insane! "Out of the question" is what i told the store manager when he told me where to park. Bugs man! just like salesmen! Sometimes, i wonderd if any of them have ever done a lick of work in there little piss-ant lives!? "We're gonna be here for awhile" i tell J "What? Why?" he inquires. I explain things to him, and he wishes we would have stoped for lunch, myself included.!
After about an hour of wrangling through parking spots, a little sign language (bird) and a "fuck you " or two back, finaly were able to get to work. "Yeah! There's a few TOH trees!" It was a jungle! TOH or "Tree of Heaven" trees are a sumac "weed", left un-checked will really "fuck things up". AND as usual its under bid "fuckn salesmen!" And i ment it. Since the chain saws were coming out I had to swap my Keens for boots. The trees were nestled between the building and a fence that stood atop a 10' retaing wall which had cars parked uder it from the appartments next door. We had roughly 10, in width by 60' in length, so it was pretty confined. I should mention its August, its 2 in the afternoon, its hot! And in that cramped spot filled with all that green brush, its dank and muggy. Kinda finding it a little hard to breathe in there. Jd and i agreed we were just gonna "motor" through this and get outa here. No lunch, we got more money to make when we get off. I had just started my own tree buisness and J waslearning to be a tree "whore", although he was still a young "padawan". We just kept this job for the insurance and winter time work. We were cranking through it, we were roughly half way into the supersmall scale logging opperation when we decided "smoke break". It was at this time that i began to feel noticably weak. "Feast or famen" i told myself chuged some water had another smoke and observed one of the trees was going toned to be climed, "JD get your tools on and get that tree to the earth". "What the hell? How did i get sand in my boots?" I spend alot of money on my feet.....sand in my boots is unherd of. I sat down to empty the sand. When i got them off, i'll be damnd if they were free of any sand, of anything. My socks were empty too. "What the fuck?" I felt the bottoms of my feet and they felt......weird.......like the arch of my foot didnt even exist. "ODD!" I need a day off. Get my boots back on and the "sand" is still there. I help J with the tree he is in. And we finish up the job at around 5:00 or so, my feet on my mind. "Yeah, Fuckn salesman." I'm feeling so tierd and weak on the drive back to the shop. Have another Marlboro "Im thinking some Knob Creek and a coors light around the fire pit at the Canyon....you down?" "Nah, man im broke and im goin with Dana>"...................."Suit yourself>"
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