Cedar Tree On The Hill

The Wolfe family lived in Chesapeake, Ohio, from July, 1979, until July, 1982. We lived in the church parsonage of Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church on Buffalo Creek Road. We had a good ministry there in preaching, visiting, and learning to sing together in some groups.

At the parsonage the back yard went flat straight back and then up a hill. At the top of this hill stood a tall cedar tree. My wife and I had three little boys at that time. They loved to play in the yard around which the church had placed a chain-link fence for protection from the busy highway that lay just a few yards in front of the house.

The boys played outside in good weather, and from time to time they would climb up the hill in the back of the house and then climb up to the very top of the tall cedar tree on the top of the hill. Many times I told them to get down out of the tree so they would not fall out of the tree and break "every bone in your body."

If I told them once, I told them a hundred times to stay out of that tree. I could just see them sometime falling out of the tree and breaking a leg or an arm or both.

Then, one day while playing in the front yard, my youngest son, Chris, was climbing on the chain-link fence around the yard. It was about 4 1/2 feet high. I thought nothing of that, since they did that often. So, I never told them not to play on the fence. Yet, he fell off that fence and began to cry. He had fallen off that fence and had broken his arm.

I should have scolded the boys for climbing on the fence instead of climbing in the cedar tree. Watch out for those short fences. Pay no attention to the tree on the top of the hill. I think there is a conspiracy here somewhere.