In 1977 when my youngest son was born, we lived on Sunnycroft Rd. in Ben Lomond. Across the street was the Henry’s house. One rainy, windy day I was on my living room sofa nursing the baby. The way I was sitting, my back was to the street, but the wall I was facing was covered with those awful 7o’s gold veined mirror squares.

Suddenly I heard a terrible sound like a huge limb cracking. As I looked in the mirror I saw what appeared to be a limb crashing down onto the Henry’s house.

It took me a few minutes to get dressed and go outside. Some neighbors, and I think one of the Henry’s were there. They told me that the very top of a tree (redwood, I think) had broken off and crashed, point first like an arrow, through the roof. No one was hurt, but the strange thing was that after it went through the roof, it continued down through the seat of an old Panama chair, through the wood floor of the house and down into the dirt approx. 2 feet below.

Later when they’d dragged the old Panama chair outside, it looked almost untouched except where the tree had gone through the seat. The Henry’s let me have that chair. I wish I’d hung on to it.