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"Humph," he said, "I never saw a movie about my profession." So I had to ask, "And what is your profession?" Smiling happily he replied, "I'm a tree surgeon. And oh, boy! Could I tell you some stories that would make a heck of a movie!" And he did, too. My manuscript lay untouched the rest of the way to town while I listened to escapes and escapades—some harrowing, some comical, all exciting—of the fearless fraternity called tree skinners. My informant explained that any man content to earn his livelihood by climbing trees has to be a little bit "tetched" to start with. He has to be lean, muscular, nerveless, and somehow persuaded that trees are challenging. He must want to climb and conquer them no matter how tall and perilous. Finns, French Canadians, Scandinavians, and boys of German extraction—in that order—make the best tree workers, I was told. Due to their concentration on survival, and their pride of prowess, all of them tend to be prima donnas; sensitive to criticism, quick to anger, devil-may-care in their fun and games. I heard about ax fights on the ground and knife fights aloft; about nicking a braggart's rope "to see if he could take it" when he fell; about accidentally dropping heavy wood on a hated foreman's car, with him in it. And so on. Actually, as I was to learn later when he became my valued friend and teacher, my voluble new acquaintance, whom we can call Rivers, was a conscientious, thoroughly informed student of trees and their therapy. He had been graduated by one of the big-company training schools and now had a thriving organization and practice of his own near Albany. At this first meeting of ours, he played up the picaresque just to get his profession some public notice. As things turned out, instead of a screen drama, what he got was a disciple. It so happened that just when Rivers entered my life I had been casting about to find a new story-line for one of the more two-fisted, daredevil screen actors of that day. As Rivers talked I formed this wondrous thought: why not, in a first act, send our Hollywood he-man up into the trees, keep him there for three acts, chucking rocks at him, finally let him down into the heroine's arms. In such a novel setting, with a lot of unfamiliar tools, rope tricks, and lingo, and any quantity of scary, offbeat camera angles, the picture would be sure-fire. |
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