Kindness a legacy that hung around (09/06/06)

Everyone remembers that night.

It was the middle of January, but we were all in a time and place we'd never encountered before.

Trees broke.

Power lines fell.

And transformers exploded.

You'd think, after more than 18 months, all that would be behind us.

But it's not.

Take a walk in any woods, and you'll see the lingering damage of the ice storm of 2005.

For that matter, take a walk around your own house. Chances are, you'll see the same thing.

At our place, the damage was pretty bad, but not nearly as severe as many others sustained.

We lost a birch tree that I'd planted too close to the house, we had countless limbs down all over the place, and we lost a flowering crabapple tree in the front yard.

The crabapple was one we'd planted with our twins. One on either side of the front walk.

In the clean-up after the storm, we found that one was gone and the other was damaged but still standing. The survivor had split its trunk, but there was still enough to carry on.

At least, we thought so.

Last week, we learned differently.

A heavy rain had rolled through. The crabapple tree - or its surviving fraction - was heavy with leaves and fruit.

When I went out the next morning, I found a broken tree blocking my path.

More than 18 months later, the ice storm had claimed another victim.

My reaction was the same as it was in the aftermath of the ice storm: It's sad, but what do we do about it?

Heading off to work, I pondered that question.

I knew I had a busy week, and with my wife heading back to grad school, she was swamped.

There was absolutely no blank time on the calendar where I could pencil in, "Remove broken crab tree from front walk."

At the office, I fussed about it during the day, mostly ineffectually. The job was too small to call a tree trimmer, but it was too big for the tools I had in the garage.

Late in the afternoon, I started polling employees: "Do you have a chainsaw I could borrow overnight?"

I started with the guys, figuring that macho types would be more inclined to have a chainsaw.

Nope was the answer. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, to be precise.

Two minutes later, I had a chainsaw lined up, thanks to a female employee, one of two who offered help.

So I headed home, content with the knowledge that I'd lined up the right equipment to borrow to clean up the mess in our front yard. But when I got there, the mess was gone.

Or pretty much gone.

Gary Gibson, our next door neighbor, had done his version of a Boy Scout good deed, taking a bow saw from his garage and cutting the fallen tree into moveable pieces.

Thanking him, I dragged the branches to the curb to be picked up, just as so many were picked up after the 2005 ice storm.

And, in doing so, I realized that Gary's kindness and volunteerism were just as big a legacy of the ice storm as the damaged trees around us.

There may be cracked branches still above us, but there are strong bonds among us.[[In-content Ad]]