Born in April of 1956, I was 45 years old on that final Sunday in August of 2001. Athletic and agile, I was proud of the fact that I still carried the same weight and just about the same physique as I had in high school.

The fact that I was working in a tree wouldn’t have surprised any of our neighbors. I was the resident tree trimmer at our end of the street. A few years before, I had purchased a harness, ropes and tree-climbing spikes. I was the guy the neighbors called when they needed a high branch trimmed. I always took the task seriously, even calling tree trimming one of the most dangerous jobs going. “Every tree is different,” I would say in recognition of the great potential to overlook flaws and weaknesses present in any single tree. Frankly, the job often scared me. But I thought it scared me into approaching it with adequate respect and caution.

On that August morning in our backyard, I actually raised my ladder into that tree three times before settling on an approach. It was puzzling because that box elder leaned at nearly a 45-degree angle. I couldn’t just rest my ladder against a strong, vertical trunk. Instead, I had to rest my ladder against an inclining tree in such a way that I would be cutting the very branch against which I was leaning. This tactic concerned me, but it didn’t tip me off to the danger that awaited.

The tree itself wasn’t big, maybe 16 inches in diameter at its base. There weren’t many large branches. I saw no place to tie on to that was higher than where I was cutting. To tie in lower didn’t seem to make much sense. It wasn’t that far off the ground, about 9 feet is all. Consequently, I left my safety harness hanging in the garage. A lot of good it did there.

To me, their arrival was instant. In reality, it took the Livonia EMS crew and fire truck just over six minutes to arrive. I tried to convince them my arm was broken. “Is it bleeding?” I asked. No, it wasn’t bleeding. “Do you have any other pain?” Matt McGuffin, the crew chief, asked. I told him my upper back and lower neck ached. They zeroed in on that.

“Can you remember what you were doing when you had this accident?”

“Trimming trees.”

“What day is it?”

“Sunday.”

“How old are you?”

A partial blank. “I’m in my forties,” was the best I could figure.

“What year is it?”

What year is it? Wow. A stumper. I took a guess. “2001.”

“Who is president?”

Another tough one. “Bush,” I said, glad he didn’t ask for a first name.

Matt moved with expert precision. At 29 years old, he had six and a half years experience as a Livonia firefighter. For nearly four years, the Livonia Fire Department had also been providing emergency medical services in our city of 100,000 residents. These dual roles keep the department hopping. Station 4, from where this crew came, is the city’s busiest, making upwards of 8,000 runs a year.

First and foremost, they are firefighters who, Matt later told me, not surprisingly, love to fight fires. “The first guy will kick your helmet down the street to be the first guy,” he explained with enthusiasm. But these Livonia firefighters also had extensive training in emergency medical procedures – training my situation was putting to the test. And Matt had a compassionate, no-nonsense demeanor and professional approach that made it easy for me to place my confidence in him.

I tried to stay focused on his eyes. He wore oval, wire-rimmed glasses. He kept his eyes trained on me. I asked his partner’s name. “Eric,” he answered. I forced their names into my memory, Matt and Eric, hoping the effort would push back the fog.

Soon, and without pain, they had a collar on my neck and a backboard under me. They taped my forehead to the board, strapped my chest down. I couldn’t move. “Where would you like us to take you?” Matt asked. Now this is a question for which I’ve been prepared to answer most of my life. For years, the standing joke here in Livonia, is that when the paramedic asks if you would like to go to St. Mary’s Hospital he is shaking his head “no,” and when he asks if you would like to go to Botsford Hospital he is nodding his head “yes.” Matt wasn’t playing such games. I told him I would like to go to Botsford.

“Did I had pass my test as a Livonian?” I asked. He smiled cautiously and nodded. His hesitance suggesting that he had more serious matters on his mind and that perhaps I should, too.

Carl would stay home and explain things to his mother, Lisa, and sister, Lina, who would soon return from church.