Daddy loved to drink his morning coffee out on the porch and watch the sun come up, and watch the world come to life. He had participated in the same ritual for as long as I can recall...arise in the pre-dawn hours, make the loudest racket possible while "fixing" a pot of coffee then move to the porch to enjoy a few cups while the aroma spread throughout the house, announcing the arrival of a brand new day full of hope and opportunity. We Johnsons love our coffee, and love it even better when consumed on a porch as the sun rises.
One morning Daddy made his way out to the porch to enjoy a freshly-brewed cup of "Eight O'Clock Coffee" and as the light slowly filtered through the pine trees he spied a rather odd sight in the driveway. Sensing that something was amiss, he returned to the house and awakened Matt, requesting that he accompany him on the porch to help him make sense of the situation that lay there. Groggily, Matt obliged and followed Daddy out onto the porch to survey the scene that was slowly unfolding in the growing light.
"Matt", Daddy asked...."What do you make of this?" Matt, rubbing the sleepiness from his eyes and focusing on the scene finally spoke. "Doggone, JB! It looks like a limb fell out of that Holly tree and busted the windshield of Mama's car!" Mama had a little Chevrolet Nova.....not the 1970s muscle car but the 1980s compact version. There was a Holly limb laying on the hood, and the windshield had a big spiderwebbed crack in it.
Daddy made his retort. "Son, you got to come up with a better explanation than that. I think there is more to this story than what you are telling me. It isn't that the limb has been sawed off....I can see the saw marks in the cleanly cut end of the limb. It isn't that I can look up in the tree and see where the limb was sawed off. Nope, not that at all. It isn't the saw laying there at the base of the tree with fresh wood chips still in the teeth. What makes me think you had something to do with this is the fact that you left the ladder leaning against the tree!"
Matt sheepishly replied "Um, yeah....well, me and Ricky Clark decided to take Mama's car to meet some girls last night. I ran through a ditch and Ricky went head-first into the windshield." Daddy tried to get mad at Matt but just couldn't find it within him to summon up the anger considering the scene. Daddy said that later on that morning, Ricky came by to see Matt and was sporting a big old bandage on his forehead. Ricky told JB that he had been painting his garage the day before when the ladder had fallen, striking him on the head and gashing his forehead. Daddy didn't skip a beat, he simply waved a hand in the direction of the tree and said "Yeah, that has happened to me before when I was cutting limbs out of that Holly tree. You have to be careful when working around a ladder!" He then turned and winked at Matt, both of them bursting into grins!