There is a fifteen-foot retaining wall separating my back yard from my neighbors'. As kids we'd lose basketballs and baseballs and frisbees over the fence, and the family that lived on the other side, at the bottom of the wall, was always nice enough to throw them back over. They owned two little terriers that would race in circles around their yard, from the base of the wall, to their back door, and bark whenever we were out playing.
Our swingset was near the wall, and, if you were old enough, you could get the swing going so fast that it would seem like the high end of your backswing would carry you out over the wall, and your could stare twenty feet straight down to certain death (and two little terriers racing around in circles)(actually, I think the swing's furthest reach still put you two feet from the edge, but it sure seemed daring when you were nine).
There was also a big oak tree growing up from the wall, and in time, the root system started to weaken the concrete keeping our swingset, and ten tons of earth, from falling backward onto our neighbors' yard, so my parents hired a tree guy to come in with his crew and cut it down.
It took three days, if I'm remembering correctly, and was pretty awesome. There was one big guy with a chainsaw who oversaw all of the ropes, there was a little guy who had gone to tree-cutting college and spent all of his time swinging among the highest branches, and the crew leader, a bearded, long-haried hippie, Ted Smith.
Hang on, just received an email:
To: tom@work
From: sam@couchpotato
This hippie woman on television just named her baby "Joy Increasing."
Her middle name is "Increasing."
Seriously. License to breed.
Anyway, this crew leader had two kids, and, being a hippie, they had weird names. His daughter's name was Aurora Borealis Smith.
Which really isn't that bad at all. His son was Buck. I'm not making this up...
Buck Aroo Smith.
-t
1 comment:
I met a poor child named "Heavenly Sunshine".
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