That old guy who told me to stop sawing from the top of the branch

I was trimming a big oak in Austin last month and some retiree watching from his porch yelled that I was 'begging for a widow maker' cutting from above. He came over and showed me how to undercut first and then cut from the top, which felt backwards at first but saved me from a branch peeling bark down the whole trunk. Has anyone else had a random passerby give advice that actually made your job safer?

3 comments

3 Comments

finleyl391mo ago

Is it just me or does this kind of thing happen a LOT more than people admit? There's this weird pattern where random strangers who don't look like they know anything end up having the one crucial piece of wisdom you were missing. I had a woman at the grocery store tell me to check the back of the shelf for fresher milk once and it literally changed how I shop. It's like the universe sends us help in the most inconvenient looking packages just to keep us humble.

ivanbell1mo ago

@finleyl39 you're so right and honestly i feel personally attacked by that milk shelf trick because i spent YEARS grabbing the first thing i saw like some kind of grocery store amateur. the universe definitely has a sense of humor sending us wisdom from people who look like they just wandered in off the street while i'm over here with my carefully planned shopping list missing the obvious stuff. maybe the real lesson is that my brain is just too busy thinking about what i want for dinner to notice the simple solutions staring me in the face.

the_fiona1mo ago

Oh man, that reminded me of the time I was trying to fix my garbage disposal and this old dude walking his dog stopped and said "you're gonna break the whole thing if you keep jamming that wrench in there." He showed me this little hex key slot underneath that I'd never even noticed. I felt like such a fool standing there with a pipe wrench and he just walks up with his little dog and solves it in ten seconds. It's wild how the people who look like they just happened to wander by always have the one trick you were missing.