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Hot take: the old guy watching me prune a maple in St. Paul knew my hitch better than I did
I was up in a silver maple on a job in St. Paul last Tuesday, just doing cleanup cuts over a garage, and this older fella from the house next door parks his lawn chair in the driveway to watch. About 20 minutes in he yells up that my running bowline is fine but my hitch is choking the rope, and he is dead on. He comes over after I come down and shows me a taut line variation he used for 31 seasons with a city crew, no fancy gear, just rope and a whole lot of patience. We sit on his tailgate for like 45 minutes while he tells me about a cottonwood on Grand Ave that took him and two guys a full day in 1987. I tried his version the next morning on a smaller job and it grabbed way smoother than what I had been doing. Now I keep wondering how many other little tricks are walking around in retired guys' heads that nobody ever wrote down. Anybody else ever get schooled by a total stranger watching from a lawn chair, and did you actually keep using their method?
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brian_jackson1d ago
Watching a guy fix your hitch from a lawn chair is basically free continuing education, and the tuition is just listening to a 45 minute story about a cottonwood. Sounds like the old-timers union got you that day. Half those retired city crew guys forgot more knots than most of us ever learned. Keep his number, because the next lesson is probably a tree you can't climb worth a dang without it.
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