NORTH WESTMINSTER — Even though Uncle Frank lived to be 98, I never met him. Technically, he wasn't just plain Uncle Frank but Great Uncle Frank - or maybe even Great-Great Uncle Frank - so his 98 years might have been up even before I was born.
There's a single reason that I remember him: a quote of his that has passed through the generations.
He and Great-Great Uncle Henry had been out plowing the field when a sudden thunderstorm struck: thunder, lightning, downpour.
Henry made it to the shelter of the barn, but Frank chose the big maple that was closer. As Henry watched from the open barn door, lightning jagged through the wind and rain and struck the tree.
Uncle Frank toppled over. Uncle Henry, horrified, rushed over to him.
As Henry leaned over the sprawled body, Frank opened his eyes, looked up and said, “Quite a bolt, weren't it, Henry?”
* * *
I was thinking of that quote the other day as we had our own impressive storm, this one decorated not with lightning but with off-the-charts gales and gusts of wind.
I could hear it howling down Main Street as I sat at my desk at work. I could feel it somehow sneaking into my office around the window jambs that had always before seemed impenetrable. I could see it as I looked at the trees roiling in the distance and even the streetlights nearby joining in with a swaying dance of their own.
Then my phone rang. It was the secretary saying I had a personal - and “urgent - call from my next-door neighbor.
That's not the kind of phone call I ever want to take in a hurry; the word “urgent” tends to make me back away rather than rushing forward, the response that it's meant to invoke.
But I took the call and became a closer participant in this feisty, blowing day than just observing.
“One of those huge-ass trees across from your house got blown over into your yard,” my neighbor said.
Those trees on the other side of my yard are really tall. One who always wants to be prepared for the worst, I pictured one having sheared through my roof. After all, she had said “urgent,” hadn't she?
“It hit my house?” I asked.
“No, no - your house is okay. I went over and looked. But I couldn't see much more. The power company has the whole road blocked off. There are live wires hanging, and everyone has lost their electricity,” she said.
“Should I come home?” I asked, ready to jump into my car immediately.
“No, you're better off staying where you are,” she said. “Cars are backed up in both directions - no one can get through. You couldn't even get to your driveway, much less into it.”
“The tree's in the driveway? What about the Rav?”
“I can't tell from where I could get. I think the car is okay, but the tree does go into the driveway.”
“Oh, great,” I thought. I'd had two accidents within two years (three if you counted the one that hadn't been reported) and my car insurance was skyrocketing already. What would storm damage do to my rates?
“Which tree was it?” I asked, picturing that line of towering white pines along the north side of the road.
“One of those huge-ass trees - I can't see which one,” she told me.
“An ash tree?” I asked, thinking I didn't know of any ash trees on that stretch - just the pines and some maples. But she didn't seem to be quite as tree-conscious as I'd thought.
“Huge-ass! Huge-gigundo!” she said. “I don't know what kind.”
Ahh, those big white pines, I realized. Those trees were always getting too big for their own good.
* * *
The rest of the day, I would call my home phone periodically to see if the answering machine would come on and thus learn if power had been restored, but it never answered. I hoped with all my heart that the power would be fixed by evening; my pipes had already frozen this winter, and I figured once a year was all that was fair.
When I got home, I saw that the power company was gone. They had cut the tree into giant 8-foot lengths and moved them out of the road and onto my yard, with the part that had fallen there. The tree had indeed reached the driveway as well, but had - only by inches - missed the Rav.
If I'd not driven the Honda (which had been parked closer to the yard), it would have been crushed. But I'd lucked out; even the solar lawn lights had come through unscathed.
In the house, I discovered that power had been restored and the only reason that the answering machine remained silent was that nobody had bothered to tell FairPoint that the lines had been severed. That would have to be a repair for another day.
For now, my house was safe and warm. Even the silence of no phone and no Internet gave me the peaceful comfort that isolation and no expectations can bring.
* * *
The next morning, I looked at the huge-ass tree sprawled across my lawn and followed its path across the road.
More huge-ass trees still stood there, and it took me a minute of getting my bearings to realize that the one with a long white gash all along one side was the one that had fallen.
Only half a tree had caused all this hullabaloo. Its other half was still standing tall and waiting for its own turn. I stood on the porch watching it swaying in a breeze that now didn't disturb its neighbors in the least. I saw it weakened from having lost half of itself.
Uncle Frank's tree came to mind. I wondered what had ever become of that maple. Had it fared as well as Uncle Frank himself? And me - I'd somehow latched onto Uncle Frank's luck in this stormy incident.
Looking upward from the scarred pine and into the sky, I had a word with my uncle.
“Quite a wind, weren't it, Frank?” I asked him.