When the Bough Breaks

     Yesterday at "the club" I ran into an old neighbor of mine here at Happy Acres and we had an extended chat about the old days in our neighborhood.  He and his wife lived right across the street in the little two bedroom bungalow that I had briefly lived in with the gal I moved to Happy Acres with.  The year was about '80 or '81 and they had just moved in.  Our little recording studio in the old garage was directly across the street from their house.  In those days the studio was busy day and night.  When I went up to meet my new neighbor I said;  "Hi, neighbor.  My name is Mike"  I stuck out my hand and we had a very perfunctory handshake.  Instead of introducing himself to me, the first words out of his mouth were:  "Does that guy have to play so loud?"  This was the first of many skirmishes we would have about the studio.  I learned from former neighbors down in lower Tam valley that this couple had made themselves person non grata there and they were glad to see them go.

The husband was ultimately successful in getting "that guy to stop playing so loud"; or any of our other studio musicians.  Many's the time when there would be an evening session going on, and the sheriffs would show up with a complaint from the guy across the street.  He once called up my landlord at three in the morning and yelled at him:  "Hey Quadros!  If I can't sleep, you're not gonna sleep either!"  That little stunt actually put the landlord in our corner as we could all agree;  this guy was a jerk.  What we were doing, I'll concede, was against zoning regulations.  You can't have a commercial recording studio in an R-1 zoned neighborhood.  He called the county and issued a formal complaint and eventually, we all had to attend a meeting of the Marin County Board of Supervisors where we were summarily given our walking papers.  We had three months to disband our funky little studio and its merry band of music-makers.  The couple across the street had won.  During all this time, the husband and I carried on a personal feud where we studiously ignored each other, which was a shame.  In other circumstances I'm sure we could have been friends.  He was at Cal in the late sixties and I was at Stanford at the same time.

The wife could be a nuisance too.  She had got it into her head that one of the limbs from one of our Eucalyptus trees was hanging over their property like the sword of Damocles.  The couple had recently put in a new fence and planted rose bushes under the offending tree limb and the wife was adamant that that "Sword of Damocles" be safely cut down.  They kept harassing my poor, put-upon, landlord till we finally agreed to accede to her wishes.  I knew a guy who had a side business trimming trees so we hired him to climb up the eighty feet or so it took to get to the limb.  He shinnied out to the end of the "limb-of-death" and affixed a long rope to it.  Five of us grabbed the other end and retreated to the driveway next to our house which was perpendicular to where the rose bushes were.  If the limb, when cut, came toward us, all would be saved.  (and we would all live happily ever after...).

      We could hear Rich, the tree man, hollering that he felt really, really uncomfortable up there and that the wind was picking up.  (I think Rich did most of his tree pruning off a ladder...)  By this time he was at the base of the death-limb and he fired up his chain saw and commenced to cut.  As the limb began to sag (we could hear it groaning and cracking---it really was a big limb.  These huge Eucalyptus branches were heavy and weak and were known as "widow makers..."),  Rich cried out:  "OK YOU GUYS, START PULLING ON THAT ROPE!"  At Rich's command, we started doing our best "yo-heave-ho".  Suddenly with a mighty CRACK! the limb was sheared from the tree and started to fall.  Unfortunately our rope-pulling efforts had no effect on the limbs downward trajectory and it came down with a resounding crash;  wiping out the couple's new fence and rose bushes.  I turned to the rest of the "fellas", who were quietly snickering into their hands (no one liked these guys...), and said:  "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!"

There were other misadventures with the neighbors from hell.  Perhaps another time.  I remain, ever at your service, Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres (TIMBER!!!)

ABOVE AND BELOW ARE TWO VIEWS OF A EUCALYPTUS BRANCH THAT FELL WHERE I USED TO FEED THE FOUR HORSES I BOARDED AT HAPPY ACRES.  AN INSURANCE INSPECTOR SAID THAT THE PROPERTY'S LIABILITY INSURANCE DIDN'T COVER INJURY TO HORSES NOT OWNED BY MEMBERS OF THE HOUSEHOLD AND I HAD TO ASK THE HORSES' OWNERS TO BOARD THEM ELSEWHERE.  I GUESS THE INSURANCE GUY KNEW WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT!

     Please note the fallen limb in the background.  It's about the size of the death-limb that fell on the rose bushes.  This one fell in 2001.  It measured from stem to stern at about 100 feet...
This is actually a different limb than the one in the upper two pictures.  And they say that lightening never strikes twice in the same place.  Tell it to my Eucalyptus trees!