The summer of 2000 had a series of events that began with a piano player and ended with plenty of wood for the fireplace.

A neighbor couple invited us to come over and listen to a pianist from Louisville. We sat out by a little lake and heard Prisoner of Love, Danny Boy, and all the old songs from the time when we kissy-faced in the moonlight. That was back when thunder and lightning were mainly sound effects.

But, on this evening, there were serious rumblings rushing out of the southeast. The wind began to blow the willows over into the water. The tied canoes bobbed up and down. Thunder tromped the blackened sky and lightning turned crazier than anything we’d ever seen in Texas (the place where lightning was invented).

The piano player moved inside, and we decided it was time to go home. Driving down Plum Lick Road was as scary as Shelley’s “Angels of rain and lightning.” Wind had collapsed a neighbor’s greenhouse and taken the roof off his shed, but we couldn’t see it in the pitch black.

As we approached our house, where the water maples are more than 80 years old, one of the trees had snapped about eight feet up and crashed through the fence. A wind shear had uprooted another giant maple patriarch and heaved it lengthwise in front of the house, ripping out the gutter, missing the porch by inches.

We stood in the rain and gaped.

Next morning, we took the chainsaw and had it sharpened. Bought a sledgehammer and rounded up the steel wedges. Now, we’ve got enough firewood for 30 winters.

We noticed a peculiar stain on the trunk of the first tree. Beehive. So we called a beekeeper, and he came out and removed a fine colony of bees. He promised to return next year with a new queen and several hives to help pollinate our clover field.

Called the gutter man, and he fixed that, while our family discussed wooly worms and came up in the usual quandary about whether this’ll be a good or a bad winter. City folks generally prefer good winters because it speeds up getting to and from work. Farm folks are usually partial to bad winters, because it conditions the soil and cuts back on the insect population.

One of the steel wedges said, “Hit me square, or don’t hit me at all,” and left a razor-sharp sliver as a reminder that it was serious.

The chainsaw said, “I’ve had about enough of this,” tightened up, and refused to make one more cut.

Found a small-engine repairman on the other side of Sharpsburg, and he performed brain surgery on the chainsaw. While the patient rested in the recovery room, the doctor took us into his house and played a tune on his banjo. Then he played the fiddle. Then the guitar. The doctor’s wife played a hymn on the electric organ.

Man shows up on our doorstep and wants to know if we have any trees we’d like to have “harvested.” We said, “How ’bout a couple of water maples?”

He smiled but was in more of a black walnut and wild cherry frame of mind. On any other day we would have probably said, no, we love our trees and they love us. Instead, we said, let’s go look. He spotted about a dozen and said he’d be back to get them. This may offend purists, but why wait until lightning strikes and the wind begins to blow?

Somebody, somewhere, will never know the origin of a new piece of furniture or, maybe, the front door to a house.

It all began with that piano player from Louisville, Stardust, and a strong wind out of the southeast.