In the spring of 1975, a BIG storm blew through here.  It came in the middle of the night, and it wasn’t until daylight that we found out what that big wind had managed to do in such a short time.

Thankfully, no one was hurt, but there were a whole lot less trees standing than when we had gone to bed.

One particular man lost several cedar trees. He had them cut into long slabs.  Then he stacked them under a shed where they’ve been for the past forty years…that is all except one that they let me have a couple of weeks ago.

Over the years, bees have built an elaborate maze of tunnels in those cedar planks. That was very obvious because of the perfectly round holes that decorated the surfaces of each board.

  
As I rummaged through the stack to pick out my board, I never saw the first bee.  Surely they had moved on to bigger and better boards. 

I got the board home, put it in the shop and sanded it. It was to be a seat for a bench that I was building.  But when I began cutting it to the size I needed, bees started coming out of those holes.

There were about fifteen of them and they didn’t seem to be aggressive, especially the ones whose heads I had sawed off.  So, I really never missed a lick at what I was doing.

  
When I finished the bench,

  
I put it in a little nook in one of our bathrooms.  Just so happens, it’s the one

  
that girl from New York uses.

Everything was fine till bees started buzzing around in her bathroom.  Honestly, l didn’t think that there were any left in that board. Needless to say, the bench is currently on the porch. Anyway, it’s not like 

  
they didn’t have plenty of opportunities to escape before I brought the thing in the house.

  
This weekend, that girl is going to New York for a friend’s wedding.  But Monday evening…when she gets back…guess where that bench is gonna be.