skew
New member
- Location
- scenic Skew Gardens
It took me a while to see if I really wanted to write about this but I can't seem to put it to bed otherwise. On August 26th I received one of those dreaded phone calls. I was listening to the person on the other end of the line explaining to me who he was and I was thinking why is this person calling me and it was sinking in and I knew before he said it that Dave was dead.
Oh no. Oh no. How could this happen? Dave dead from a chainsaw cut.
One of the people I least expected to have an accident much less a fatal one.
He was working alone and wasn't found until he was gone.
The examiner said it was kickback. After talking to Dave's brother he said that he was sawing up a trunk on the ground - making this all the more unlikely.
You see Dave had logged thousands of hours of safe saw operation. He was a highly skillled climber that performed dozens of crane removals. How is it that this could happen while doing something so benign ?
PG always says there are no such things as accidents out here- only mistakes. I know Dave believed this as well as we spent countless hours discussing this type of thing.
What must have happened in my mind: he was sawing up a good sized trunk with a medium sized saw and he leaned over to see where the tip was and at that moment the tip struck another piece of wood and kicked back the saw into his artery and he passed out from blood loss and went from there.
Nobody was there to see it so it's all just guess work at this stage. I am not even sure it would have mattered if someone was there with the nature of this injury.
So all that said I want to say some stuff about the man who is not the sum of this incident but that one little moment ended his life.
Dave used to talk about little"moments" as he called them. The little things that happen in our lives when things can change profoundly based on little tiny moments.
Like the time Dave was out walking around near the mall and this lady comes walking up with her dog. Dave started talking to her about her dog and it turns out she is Sheryl Crow and she was playing a show that night and got him on the backstage list. He went to the show and looked around for her backstage but never ran into her. It was before she was dating Lance and I wondered if he would have run into her that night if things would have clicked between them.
There was the "moment" that after meeting Dave at his brother's shop I convinced him to come back to doing tree work with me at McNeary's in Charlotte. It was right sfter Hugo and he had been remodeling houses and that had slowed. He came on board and for a little while we were the most kick team in Charlotte. After a bit I went back to work for PG and left the foreman ship to Dave.
Dave was a sensiitve guy with a real soft side. After Hugo he found an orphaned squirrel and named it Hugo. It rode around on his shoulder and they were buds. Hugo drowned in the toilet one day and Dave cried and cried.
The most angry I ever saw him was when someone f'ed with his lunch- he used to jokingly refer to himself as a "three sandwich eatin ".
He slapped this poor guy and grabbed him by the lapels and told him "dont mess with another man's lunch!"
When Dave got divorced I thought alright now he can move to Colorado and work with me. But it wasn't to be.
Dave had a patented greeting that went something like "How 'bout cha Big Daddy?" Everyone was big Daddy.
His brother Chris was the mechanic for a while at McNeary's . Those boys had a great mutual admiration and alot of days after work we would end up down at Chris's shop drinking beer and talking about motorcycles and tree work.
Chris was a gifted impressionist. None of his impressions were ever mean spirited and always captured the peoples's essence. Favorite targets were Jack Mcneary, Ron Danise, and his brother Chris.
Whenever Dave worked ground for me he was the best at concealing minor stuff that I destroyed until we could scab it back to gether.
So anyway I could go on and on about Dave and his attention to detail- he knew all the names of all the flowers in people's gardens and most of the latin names of the trees around Charlotte. He would notice and mention the most minute details of everything.
I believe that it was Dave's time that day . He could have been walking across the street or driving a car or anything. God gave him cause to have an instant of inattention and that was it.
He had the utmost respect for his fellow tree men and always made a point to mention when someone was a badass. He was a badass. And one of the best friends I ever had. All of us that knew Dave have broken hearts.
The end I don't know what else to say other than please any of you that comment regarding this to please be respectful. He was an awesome man and an amazingly safe operator. Be careful boys and girls- if this could happen to Dave it could happen to any of us.
Oh no. Oh no. How could this happen? Dave dead from a chainsaw cut.
One of the people I least expected to have an accident much less a fatal one.
He was working alone and wasn't found until he was gone.
The examiner said it was kickback. After talking to Dave's brother he said that he was sawing up a trunk on the ground - making this all the more unlikely.
You see Dave had logged thousands of hours of safe saw operation. He was a highly skillled climber that performed dozens of crane removals. How is it that this could happen while doing something so benign ?
PG always says there are no such things as accidents out here- only mistakes. I know Dave believed this as well as we spent countless hours discussing this type of thing.
What must have happened in my mind: he was sawing up a good sized trunk with a medium sized saw and he leaned over to see where the tip was and at that moment the tip struck another piece of wood and kicked back the saw into his artery and he passed out from blood loss and went from there.
Nobody was there to see it so it's all just guess work at this stage. I am not even sure it would have mattered if someone was there with the nature of this injury.
So all that said I want to say some stuff about the man who is not the sum of this incident but that one little moment ended his life.
Dave used to talk about little"moments" as he called them. The little things that happen in our lives when things can change profoundly based on little tiny moments.
Like the time Dave was out walking around near the mall and this lady comes walking up with her dog. Dave started talking to her about her dog and it turns out she is Sheryl Crow and she was playing a show that night and got him on the backstage list. He went to the show and looked around for her backstage but never ran into her. It was before she was dating Lance and I wondered if he would have run into her that night if things would have clicked between them.
There was the "moment" that after meeting Dave at his brother's shop I convinced him to come back to doing tree work with me at McNeary's in Charlotte. It was right sfter Hugo and he had been remodeling houses and that had slowed. He came on board and for a little while we were the most kick team in Charlotte. After a bit I went back to work for PG and left the foreman ship to Dave.
Dave was a sensiitve guy with a real soft side. After Hugo he found an orphaned squirrel and named it Hugo. It rode around on his shoulder and they were buds. Hugo drowned in the toilet one day and Dave cried and cried.
The most angry I ever saw him was when someone f'ed with his lunch- he used to jokingly refer to himself as a "three sandwich eatin ".
He slapped this poor guy and grabbed him by the lapels and told him "dont mess with another man's lunch!"
When Dave got divorced I thought alright now he can move to Colorado and work with me. But it wasn't to be.
Dave had a patented greeting that went something like "How 'bout cha Big Daddy?" Everyone was big Daddy.
His brother Chris was the mechanic for a while at McNeary's . Those boys had a great mutual admiration and alot of days after work we would end up down at Chris's shop drinking beer and talking about motorcycles and tree work.
Chris was a gifted impressionist. None of his impressions were ever mean spirited and always captured the peoples's essence. Favorite targets were Jack Mcneary, Ron Danise, and his brother Chris.
Whenever Dave worked ground for me he was the best at concealing minor stuff that I destroyed until we could scab it back to gether.
So anyway I could go on and on about Dave and his attention to detail- he knew all the names of all the flowers in people's gardens and most of the latin names of the trees around Charlotte. He would notice and mention the most minute details of everything.
I believe that it was Dave's time that day . He could have been walking across the street or driving a car or anything. God gave him cause to have an instant of inattention and that was it.
He had the utmost respect for his fellow tree men and always made a point to mention when someone was a badass. He was a badass. And one of the best friends I ever had. All of us that knew Dave have broken hearts.
The end I don't know what else to say other than please any of you that comment regarding this to please be respectful. He was an awesome man and an amazingly safe operator. Be careful boys and girls- if this could happen to Dave it could happen to any of us.
