They're Coming for My Trees

To say that the trees in front of my house are “my trees” might be a stretch. I’m only temporarily responsible for them, since they’re in my yard. These massive 60-foot cedars belong more to themselves than anything. They might be as old as my house – 75 years – or even older. They line the old country road out front. Our old house is not far from the road and we like the trees as a thick barrier against the road. A couple of nights ago the engineer for our electrical co-op knocked on my door. He scared the dickens out of us. The electrical line folks only seem to come before 7 a.m. or after 5 p.m. This fellow apologized for coming so late – said he’d stopped by earlier, and missed us. He wanted me to walk around my house, to the back. He led me around there. “Let’s look at something,” he said. “This electrical line here,” he pointed to a utility easement that goes behind our lot. “Does it cross over your lot?” We walked out back to my property line and determined the line did not cross my lot. “That’s too bad,” he said. “Why?” I asked. He said, “Because, to be honest, it would have been nice to have something positive you’re going to get out of the next thing I’m going to tell you, which you’re going to hate. Come around here.” I followed him back around to the front, all the way to the end of our drive. We’re on a pretty busy country road. There are a lot of crazy drivers around here. Some of them don’t even use the road – they cut corners across fields, drive down the creek, whatever. The more barrier between our house and this old country road, the better. Said this fellow, who by now had introduced himself as a contractor for my electrical co-op: “We’re bringing all these lines behind your house, the ones that cross over your neighbor’s property, there, up here to the road where we can get to them. Our trucks can’t get back there. We want to go from that pole there,” he pointed into my neighbor’s yard, then turned “to that one across the street. We have to go right through here,” he indicated a line right through these beautiful trees in front of our house. “We need to take down two or three of your trees. That one,” he pointed. “That one, that one, and that one – is that yours?” He pointed to one of these old pines that’s probably on my neighbor’s property. It’s on his side of the fence. But I was feeling like a fight so I claimed it, too. “It’s mine. I own that side of the fence, too. That’s four trees. I don’t want you to do this.” I was polite but unmoving. He said, “You’re a member of this co-op. They want to treat you right. They want you to be happy. They knew this was going to be an issue. They knew these trees were going to be an issue. That’s why they stopped up the road – you can see where they stopped work, up there – and sent me in.” Indeed, I had seen the work on transmission and electrical lines proceeding up the road but ignored it, and was grateful when it stopped some months ago. It had been headed right for us. Now it was back. Said this engineer, who was very nice, from Macon, Georgia, home of the Allman Brothers, in fact: “What would it take to make you happy?” “You mean money?” I asked. “Well, money, or trees planted back,” he said. “You’re talking about ruining the whole appeal of the front of my house,” I said. “It’s going to cost you a lot.” “Like what?” he asked. “Like fifteen thousand dollars,” I said. I was not even including my neighbor’s tree in the math. These old trees are priceless. I wouldn’t take that for them. The engineer said with a straight face, “They usually give something like forty-five dollars.” I turned pretty ugly, then. I had been feeling pretty ugly anyway. “Then I’ll see you in court,” I said. “We’ll fight it out in court, and you can do what the judge says you can do after the longest court battle I can afford.” He didn’t like the sound of that. “I don’t want to go back and tell them that,” he said. “I want to tell them you and I made a deal. Let me give you the papers to look at – you can pick the trees and we’ll plant them for you. I think they guarantee them for a year.” We looked over the massive old trees in question. Two of them split about six feet off the ground, and each branch is as thick as the other for another 40 or 50 feet. They are old red cedars, with dark bristly needles and sweet smelling wood. They lose bark in long strips like thin tree-bacon. They’re always green, always there, have always been there for 75 or more years. “You can’t replace these old trees with saplings,” I said. “I agree,” said the engineer. “But these improvements will benefit you and all of your neighbors, and you’ll get some new trees out of it. Just look at the papers I brought.” I looked over the papers, still not ready to sign anything. I told him if anyone shows up with a chainsaw, he’d better bring a couple of deputies with him. I took his papers, and promised to have my attorney look them over before I signed them. One gives the utility the right to come onto our property to cut the trees and drag the lines through; the other is a selection of trees we can choose from, if we don’t take the $45 they offer per tree. I wasn’t hard on the engineer. There was no point arguing with him – it could only hurt my cause. I did some quick calculations – energy spent fighting this plus frustration when I lose in court, as I undoubtedly would, and it all added up to a net loss. I told the engineer I wasn’t going to be the one to hold this up. He offered to throw in a pole to raise the service on the side of my house, which really is too low. I took the papers inside and Honey and I picked three dogwoods, two white ones and a pink one. The engineer came back the next day and took the signed papers and left stakes for us to mark the spots for the new trees. Now the stakes are out, the deal is done and sometime in the next three months to a year they’re coming for my trees. ##

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