ELMER TELLS OF SOMEONE'S MISTAKE

Some people do the darnest things sometimes in this life.  When I stop to think, I guess we all do it one time or another.  I got an ambulance call the other night and when we got there, an Amish was lying on the ground.  No one saw what happened, but their five year old daughter and she only spoke deutch.  I was trying to get out of her what happened and she kept saying her Father fell off the roof, which sounded right except there was a ladder against the building.  So I asked her if she ment the ladder.  She kept saying no the roof.

When the Father started to wake up after his fall, he wasn't making any sense, so with the wife's permission we took him to the hospital.  They were new people to our area, so I called Bishop Eli and asked him to come to the hospital so the wife and children wouldn't be alone.  He came and stayed with them and I went back with the ambulance.

The next morning, I went over to the house with my ladder.  Introduced myself to the wife and explained that I wanted to check out the roof and see if I could finish the job so her husband wouldn't have to get up there again.  She called me the short man she had seen at church.  They realized what she said and turned red.  I guess she thought I would get angry. I agreed with her, I am the short man. Also, I spoke with their little girl and still she kept insisting that her Father fell off the roof.

Up I went, and there was nothing wrong with the roof.  In fact, it was a brand new one.  When I got on the ground again, the little girl grabbed my arm and showed me where her Father fell.  They was a place where he was putting siding on the house.  That was what he was doing.  I was still trying to figure how he fell from the roof there.

I checked to see if they had enough siding to do the job and they didn't, so I took a piece and went down to the store to get some more.  Then I climbed up and started putting the siding on.  While I was up there Bishop Eli came by to talk with the lady to see how her husband was doing and saw me up there.  After speaking with the lady, he got the man's ladder out and climbed up to help me finish the house.

When we were kids Eli and I use to do jobs like this to earn extra money.  Even as adults, we did.  But as Eli became bishop, we never got together like this anymore except for house or barn raising.  We got talking about how we hadn't done this in a long time together and we really enjoyed it.  Up in the air talking, telling jokes, just like the good old days.  We got the job done.

The lady wanted to pay us, but we wouldn't hear of it.  We told her we would stop by and see her husband a few days later.  He came home from the hospital the day after he fell, in the late afternoon. He didn't show for church that Sunday, but his wife and children did saying he was doing well.  Eli went over to this house after church and then came to my house.  He said the man was doing well as he could with a bad headache  and I had to go over in a couple of days to have him tell me how he fell off the roof.  Eli wouldn't tell me but he was laughing.

So a couple of days later, I went over to the house.  Brought one of Anna's apple pies along for the family.  I asked him if he fell off the roof and he said yes.  Then started to tell me what happened.  Someone he hired had started putting the siding on the house for him and then didn't show up again.  He called them a few times, left a message on their answering machine and got no response.  So he decided to finish the job himself.  There wasn't much left and he felt he could do it.  His wife told him to either hire someone else or ask one of his new Amish neighbors, but he insisted he could do it. He wanted this done before the next snow storm came.  Even with his fear of heights.

He did the lower part which was fine because he could stand on the ground.  As it got higher, he got the ladder.  At first the ladder didn't bother him until he got near the top and looked down.  Then fear took over.  So he decided to go on the roof, lying on the roof, leaning over the side and nail the siding on.  He guessed he leaned over too far because the next thing he knew was he was in the hospital emergency.

I tried not to laugh, I really did, but I couldn't help it.  He laughed with me, too.  So his little girl was right, he did fall off the roof.  I explained how we found it hard to believe with the ladder leaning against the house that you fell off the roof.  He said his little daughter was right - he fell off the roof.
When he fell, his wife and older daughter were in the house.  His sons were in the barn doing chores.  So the only one that saw him go over was their five year old little girl.  She ran into the house and told her Mother.

Since his fall, he had heard that one of my jobs is siding and again wanted to pay me.  I explained that if he had hired me, I got paid.  He didn't hire me.  Eli and I are neighbor's helping neighbor.  Anyway Eli and I had a great time putting his siding on.

When he came to church, everyone knew who he was.  News travels fast among the Amish.  Of course his little girl didn't help by telling everyone that would listen how her father came flying off the roof.

I asked him if I could put the story in here and he said it was fine as long as I didn't mention their names or address.  He felt that by putting this in here, it might stop someone else from doing something stupid like that.  Told him, I wouldn't call it stupid, dumb maybe, but not stupid.  We laughed.

Trust God's Wisdom,
Elmer