Partners in Crime

My son, Trent, was informed by the man who rents his townhouse that two trees had been damaged in a storm & needed to be removed. He offered to cut the trees down himself if Trent could get someone to remove them. Since Trent lives in Baltimore & the townhouse is in Morgantown, he called me to see if I could arrange for the trees to be hauled away. I in turn asked my son, Adam, who lives in Morgantown, to drive by to assess the scope of the job. After driving to the townhouse & emailing me a picture, we both agreed that we could handle the job ourselves. So a couple of Saturdays ago in 19 degree weather, Adam & I borrowed a pickup from my dad, bundled up, & drove to the townhouse.

We had planned to fill the truck with the trees & drive to Fairmont to dump it all on my dad's compost pile or in the woods on my property. Somehow the small pile of trees loomed much larger when we actually got up close. We realized that it would be at least two full loads of the pickup. Not wanting to make two round trips to Fairmont, we filled the truck & began to scout around for a place to unload the chopped down trees. Fortunately, we did not have to look far; there was a wooded area in Trent's development that appeared to already contain a couple of discarded Christmas trees. Adam parked the truck, & we quickly unloaded while glancing around to be sure no one would see us. (We did remember the dumpster incident from a few years ago when Trent was nearly arrested for illegally dumping trash in a dumpster . . . who knew putting trash in a trash container was illegal!)

Adam suggested that we scout out another location to dump the second load. This time we feared we might be pushing our luck to stay in the neighborhood to get rid of the trees. After driving through Suncrest we decided that the woods around a college apartment complex would be a suitable spot. (We had seen "no dumping" signs in Suncrest & rationalized that we could then dump where these signs were not posted.) Our assumption was that college students would be sleeping at 9 am on a Saturday & that we could go unobserved, just in case. We returned to the townhouse & loaded the truck back up. We drove back to the apartment complex & moving with lightning speed, we were stealth in getting rid of the remaining tree branches. Mission accomplished!