When I was in college, one of the part-time jobs I had was working for Terrible Terrance Tree Service. Terrance’s full-time job was working for the college in building and grounds, mostly as a tree trimmer. This was in the days when the elms were dying from Dutch Elm Disease and, since the main trees on the Iowa State campus were elms, there was a lot of work to do, not only on campus, but the whole city of Ames and surrounding countryside. Terrance would get off work from the college, then go to work on his side business, trimming trees. He had a flatbed truck, and small bucket truck, but he far preferred climbing trees. He could be strapped in a saddle, a rope thrown over a branch, and in a tree before the bucket truck got situated. Terrance was like a squirrel, running across branches high up in a tree, with a small chain saw, trimming as he ran. (Artist in a tree.) People loved him.

Terrance probably got his moniker, “Terrible,” because of his drinking. All tree trimmers drink, right? There was always a case of PBR on the seat of his flatbed truck, and things could get pretty tipsy come dark. I had to climb up and haul Terrance out of a tree once, because he had passed out. “Just let me die,” he mumbled on the way down, a rope around his chest, his head slumped.

I made the mistake of going with him on a fishing trip to Minnesota. It was just a big drunk, culminating with him in a blackout on the last night we were there, wanting to fight me. As the loons on the lake called to each other the next morning, he told me he couldn’t remember a thing about it. “I did that?” I knew then he had a serious drinking problem. (I was in the early stages.) On the way home, he said, “Don’t tell the wife about any of this drinking.”

At a gas station he stopped and used the pay phone. He called the treatment center he had attended in the past to take “the cure.” They told him to check back in. He told them he would. I doubted it.

He had a thing about big dogs, always talking about fighting them. It was strange. At a house where we were doing work, the owner had a big Black Lab. The dog was barking at us. Terrance kept eyeing it, saying he wanted to, “Fight that black devil.” The property owner, terrified, took his dog in the house, and Terrance had to settle for getting drunk.

On another occasion, a Saturday afternoon, I was with Terrance in the flatbed truck. He pulled into a friend’s house to have a beer. His friend had a German Shepherd running loose. Terrance made an aggressive move toward the dog. The German Shepherd lunged at Terrance’s face, biting and snapping. I hauled Terrance to the emergency room where he received 80 some stitches in his face and was lucky to have an eye left.

I couldn’t believe Terrance sued his “friend,” but he did. As far as I was concerned, Terrance had provoked the German Shepherd, and was lucky the dog didn’t go for his throat. Terrance won the suit of course. The insurance company had a “one-bite rule.” They would pay for a dog biting someone the first time, but not thereafter.

I lost track of Terrance after I graduated and moved out of state. However, upon returning a few years later, I did look him up. He was a completely different person. He had aged, put on some weight, and was graying around the edges. I could still see some facial scarring, but he had the clearest eyes I had never seen. He told me he had sobered up after having a head-on collision which nearly killed him and the other driver. Terrance was now a counselor at the treatment center where he took “the cure.” He had made amends to the driver of the other car, and to his friend who owned the German Shepherd that chewed him up. He didn’t do tree work anymore and, with a laugh said, “I don’t fight dogs no more, neither. In counseling I learned who I was really fighting. Me.” He then quoted an American Indian saying that was popular at the time, “I will fight no more forever.”

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Have a good story? Call or text Curt Swarm in Mt. Pleasant at 319-217-0526 or email him at curtswarm@yahoo.com. Curt is available for public speaking.