Timber!!!

Several years ago,  within two or three years after we moved to Lake LeAnn, my mom (Kay) and mother-in-law (Kate) came to visit us for a day or so.  One had traveled west and the other east.  There was a self-proclaimed psychic living in the area that intrigued the three ladies so  Ruth, Kay, and Kate went off to see her.  I don’t recall if you had to have an appointment, but I do know that other friends of Ruth’s had gone.  They all came home completely entertained if not convinced in the powers of the psychic.

Each of the three adventures came home with a “reading”.   I don’t remember what she said about Kay, but I do remember a couple of bits that she shared with Kate and Ruth.

According to the three adventurers, the psychic asked very little of  them.  My mother-in-law was a recent widow, and although that fact was never discussed, she provided the following insight into her future.  The psychic told Kate that she saw her “moving” and that following the “move” she would be “surrounded by men”.

Kate had been considering buying a winter home.  Within a few months of the “reading” she did just that.   She bought a home in Largo, Florida.  It was a very nice double wide not far from the beaches of Clearwater.   Once she moved in she discovered that there was a widower living on each side of her.  She had indeed “moved” and was “surrounded by men”.

The only part of Ruth’s “read” that I remember was a question that she asked me when she came home.  The psychic told her that her husband had “a scar on his right leg”.  Ruth asked me if I had such a scar.  I told her that I didn’t but that I did have a birthmark on my left leg.  “Perhaps she confused the right with the left and thought that my birthmark was a scar.”

She wasn’t confused.  Her timing was just off by about a week.

Ruth and I had a fireplace insert that we used to  help heat our house.   We purchased our insert at the same time that our friends, Rick and Jan, purchased theirs.  Ruth wasn’t working at the time so she was available to “stoke the fire” during the day.   The investment in the fireplace insert helped us save money on our gas bill.   Rick and Jan did the same.

Rick was the middle school principal in Addison and I was the elementary  principal.  Sometimes we sought a source of wood together.   We’d cut as a team and haul it to each other’s home.  Once there, we split and stacked on our own.

The high school shop teacher, Dean, owned the local “old school” lumber mill.  Rick asked Dean if  he had any lumber that he wasn’t going to use that we could haul away.  He didn’t.  He did have a “tree line” on the property that we could cut down if we liked.  We liked.

I didn’t have a truck but Rick did.  He also had access to a flatbed trailer that we used to help haul the wood.   We decided to meet on the following Saturday morning to cut and remove the trees.  Most of the trees on the line were eight to ten inches in diameter.   That made the cutting and chopping easier to handle.

A couple of hours into the job my saw got stuck in the trunk of a tree.  The saw continued to run slowly and I did my best to pull it free.  As the saw released it hit my leg and cut the flesh.  I was wearing jeans and long johns so it ran through two layers of clothing before it cut me.

I examined the cut as best I could but  determined that I needed to do a better inspection.  My school office was only a few blocks away so I decided I would go there to clean the cut and decide if I should go on to the nearby hospital for stitches.  I left my saw and walked up the tree line to explain what had happened to Rick and tell him of my plan.

He stopped his cutting long enough to listen and then offered up these words.  “Do you know Billy  Smith?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Well he did the same thing about two weeks ago.   Billy went to the hospital and had to have fifty stitches.   After he got stitched up he went right back to cutting trees.”

“I’ll be back.”

I went to my office, examined and cleaned the wound, wrapped a bandage around my leg, and returned to Rick and the trees in about thirty-minutes.

About ten days later, after my injury had healed, I had a scar on my right leg just as the psychic had explained.  The scar remains today and so does its memory.