Crazy, old thread!
So I recently had a very wacky job- taking down 3 huge trees very close to a custy's newly purchased home. On the appointed day, we were setting everything up, 55 ton crane in driveway, bucket on lawn, chipper in street. Just as we about to start the treework, a lady driving by stops in front and asks me, 'are you going to cut down that beautiful tree?' pointing to the 4'dbh oak 12' away from the corner of house. Foolishly, I said 'yes'. She totally lost her shit when she heard that. Not in so many words she seethed the following info- she was head of the town conservation committee for 20 years and she knows a healthy tree when she sees one and this tree is healthy and there is no reason to cut it down. And that I should be ashamed of my self for doing it, etc etc. She went completely, totally nuts on me! I tried to be reasonable and diplomatic responding to her complaints which all had zero merit. But like a fool I ended up taking the bait and yelling at her that she was a mean person
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Everything she said was lunacy and one thing stuck in my mind as particularly egregious when she said 'I haven't even met these people (the new homeowners) yet and I already hate them.' And when she told me her name I realized she was the same person who I have heard scores of severe complaints about from people over the years who had to deal with her when they were applying for building permits etc from the town. She was fired a year or so ago and police escorted her from her office...
So after we concluded our yelling match with my telling her I'm going to call the cops if she doesn't get off the property, my guys tell me on the radio as I'm climbing into the bucket to get started, 'be careful up there, she might have put a jinx on you.' I don't remember if I even responded but if I did it would be something along the lines of "I"m not worried about it".
So the job was going fine until my perfectly maintained, normally trouble free chipper shit the bed at 11am, the top feed wheel axle broke. It wasn't a quick fix and it made no sense to continue without a chipper so we proceeded to pack up and leave. In doing so my guys mentioned they think the lady put a hex on the tree. I said c'mon man. They said, no, it was actually the neighbor who agreed with the crazy lady and she was shaking her arms at the tree and hopping and chanting. I said don't you think she was gesticulating with her arms cuz she was upset or something? They both said no, they'd never seen anything like it, she was definitely trying to put a hex on the tree with witch craft or something.
Well, ok.
In cleaning up, there was huge pile of oak leaves that had accumulated by the chipper infeed so we used the tractor to load them into the chip truck. When my guy dumped the chips later that day, the dump minder saw the leaf pile and billed the load as 'mixed yard waste' which is way more costly than chips alone. The most I've ever paid for a load of chips is approx $200 but this 3/4 load came to $450. I was mind-blown.The fact I got screwed on the crane bill that day cuz we didn't put in a full day and would have to come back another day with the crane, and the chipper repair cost and downtime and the astronomical dump fee, the job was starting to feel rather sketchy.
That nite I was telling my buddy on the phone about it and when I got to the hex part, I was thinking to myself this story loses alot in the telling if you weren't actually there, but he says, 'oh no, she didn't hex you did she??' And I said yeah she did and he says omg, hexes are the worst, he knows cuz he got hexed once, he was riding his bike about 100 miles to Rhode Island for a training ride and some lady cut him off and they yelled at each other then she says 'I curse you!` It wasn't long before he broke several spokes, which he says never happens, multiple flat tires and other, bizarre malfunctions. Made it to RI on rims
Once my chipper was fixed, rescheduling the job was extremely difficult between the weather, the crane guy, the custy's subs doing work on the house etc. I started to think about hexes. I figured that a hex, even though otherworldly, still must be governed by the laws of nature or of physics etc. A hex must have a finite life span, nothing last forever.
When the time finally came to finish the job, I was leery, but all went well. And I figured the hex was definitely over when I found $7 cash blowing down the middle of the street
I was being flag man at one point when the crazy lady slowed as she pulled next to me and said,' I guess we know who's going to be getting coal in their stocking this year'. Oooo. Ooooouch. She got me with that one
I hope this wasn't TLTR but living it was bizarre.
