Mom Left Dad Hanging

If the following had happened today, someone would have taken a video on their i-phone, posted it on Facebook, and in a few hours, it would have gone viral. Soon, people would be tweeting that the entire incident was staged. I will try to convey what happened using words.

A limb had died in the hackberry tree next to our house. It could have crashed through the dining room window if the wind blew it down. The ladder Mom used for washing windows wasn't tall enough to reach the tree limb. It would have been dangerous for dad to perch on top of the ladder while sawing above his head. He decided to bring the utility tractor into the yard and stand in the scoop of the front end loader. It would be much safer.

This restored beauty is very similar to the tractor Dad had when I was a kid.

                                     

Now obviously, he couldn't stand in the scoop and run the tractor controls to raise it at the same time. Nearly every time my mom operated machinery, something went wrong. Nevertheless, dad fearlessly situated the tractor under the offending limb and showed her which lever to use to raise and lower the hydraulic front loader. The scoop just did raise him high enough to comfortably saw the branch off.

My dad never liked objects with handles very much. He wasn't 'handy' at all. I've never seen him do carpentry work. But he was using a rip saw on the limb, so I think the saw must have been something my grandfather left in the garage when he moved to town and our family moved into the farmhouse.

Dad braced himself by wrapping his left arm around the tree limb. His back was to the tractor. The little Ford began running very rough, coughing and sputtering. I think my mom was giving it too much choke. If someone reading this thinks they know what was wrong with the tractor, please don't try to educate me.

The interval between coughs grew until the engine shuddered and died altogether. When that happened, the hydraulic pump also stopped working, and the loader began drifting away from my dad's feet. I'm sure he noticed that the tractor was going to die, but I don't think he expected hydraulic oil to leak back to the reservoir and let the loader down so soon. He should have turned loose of the tree and rode the scoop back to the ground. Instead, with his only means of support obeying the laws of gravity, he was left dangling by one arm from a dead limb. 

It was too high to let go and hope he landed on his feet like a cat. If he had, he would have struck some part of the loader. He dropped the saw and held on with his other hand.

I was outside watching the operation from the safety of the front step. When the tractor died I heard Mom say "Oh." It wasn't her conversational voice, and it wasn't a scream. It didn't sound like 'oh dear.' Or 'Oh My God!' It was a low guttural sound like a monster had fought its way out of her stomach, got caught deep down in her throat, and erupted out of her mouth. "OHH!"

I'm sure terrible scenarios of Dad being seriously injured and questions like how long he could hold onto the limb and would the limb break and should she tell Lisa to dial 0 and ask the operator to send the fire department and why did the tractor die and will it start again and is it out of gas all flitted across her panicked thoughts.

My folks didn't have the type of personalities to remain calm in a crisis. Amazingly, my father kept his composure and managed to explain to my mother how to restart the tractor and get the scoop back under his feet, all the while clinging to the rotten limb.

It all ended fine. The limb was cut down, the house wasn't damaged, and Dad never asked Mom to operate the tractor again.

Once they recovered from the scare, they each had fun with the story. Dad teased her that the only thing she could think of to say was 'Oh.' Mom liked to say to customers at her job, "Did I tell you about the time I hung my husband in a tree?"