​​​​​​Because humor is funnier when you know it's true.

Knock it down and burn it up!

The brother-in-law of my first marriage and his wife who had rented a house close to where my wife and I were living called up one cold day, asked if I knew anything about cutting down a tree and if I could come up and help him.  I’m not sure which one of us was dumber, but I agreed again to come to his rescue.

He told me his landlord had given him permission to cut down a tree in the side yard where there were a lot of trees.  When I got there he had a chain saw going at a tree about eight to ten inches in diameter and 30 feet tall.  He had used the chain saw to carve around the base of the tree like a beaver would gnaw completely around the tree about 2 inches deep through the bark into its trunk.

First I told him that even after we downed the tree it was “green” wood and would need to be seasoned and dried out before he could even try to burn it.  The wood would just sit in the fireplace and sizzle because it was so wet (I know this from experience).  He said not to worry about it because we needed to do something with the tree he had mutilated.

I told him he had needed to cut a wedge out of the side of the tree he wanted it to fall and then cut down behind that wedge on the other side of the tree.  I also said that the tree was leaning toward the house and we should get a long rope as high up the tree as we could and a few of us (me, his wife and my wife) could pull the rope so the tree would fall in the direction we wanted it to. 

Knock it down!  He didn’t have any rope so he started the chain saw and just cut through the trunk of the tree where he had started.  There appeared just a slight possibility that it would miss the house all together, but in just seconds the tree hit the corner of the house.  The soffit and fascia, the gutters, the down spout, and the power and telephone lines that went in that corner of the house were splintered, dented, twisted or torn away from the connection to the wiring in the house.