Rooftop rescue precedes snowbank crash-landing

Out for my daily walk in Winterport a couple of summers ago, I heard a voice shouting “Hello, there,” presumably to me. Looking around, I couldn’t see a soul within hailing distance, so I wrote it off as the work of a practical joker making sport of me, and kept moving.

The voice spoke again, but louder. “Up here,” it said. I turned around to have another look, this time gazing heavenward, as directed.

Astride the ridgepole of a rear wing of his Main Street home, frantically waving his arms to attract my attention, was an uptown neighbor in a predicament far more gut-wrenching than being stuck up the creek without a paddle. Having ascended to the roof’s peak by ladder to make repairs, he had watched in dismay as the ladder clattered to the ground when he stepped onto the roof.

Working without a net – and with no adult supervision – the chap had gotten himself into a fine pickle. Marooned on a slick, slate-shingled roof high above ground and with no one at home to bail him out, he wondered if I might be so kind as to have a go at it.

He had been pleading for help from the occasional passer-by for quite some time, with no success, possibly because he was out of context, so to speak, and difficult to spot through the trees adorning his property. But when I had come ambling along he had recognized me as a highly trained observer who had soon twigged in to his sorry plight, he said, and he had realized that his bacon was about to be saved.

The rescue completed, the man thanked me profusely. I assured him that I’d hope someone might come to my assistance should I ever find myself in a similar circumstance, and I continued on my way.

Little did I know…

Last weekend, with a serious rainstorm predicted by TV Weather Guy on the heels of a month of near-record snowfall, I decided to clear the snow from the roof of my house so the accumulation would not become waterlogged and cause the structure to collapse into the cellar in an embarrassing heap.

Plastic snow scoop in hand, I scurried up my extension ladder and had at it. Everything went swell, and in jig time I had the area shipshape. Cue the rain, Big Guy, and give it your best shot. Yr. Fthfl. Crspndt. is ready for the deluge.

Except for one minor detail: I couldn’t get off the damned roof.

Although my ladder hadn’t gone south when I had stepped onto the roof, as had my Winterport friend’s, I was every bit as hung up as he had been. Albeit at a bit too-steep an angle for my liking, the ladder remained in place. Unfortunately, so did adjacent rooftop ice that I hadn’t noticed on my way up because it had been covered by the snow I had subsequently removed.

I was unable to get sufficient footing to pivot and step safely backward onto a rung of the metal ladder that was also as slippery as greased lightning, and unable to employ Plan B and make a jump for it because the ever-present wind had swept the potential landing area clear of everything but solidly frozen ground. No soft touchdown could be had there, so I moved on to Plan C. In the manner of Marooned in Winterport, this consisted of waving my arms and shouting shamelessly for help from my rooftop perch.

Because pre-Christmas traffic was practically nil here in the outback, there weren’t a whole lot of passers-by to hail. Several who did spot me waving from the rooftop apparently presumed I was just being friendly in the spirit of the season and returned the greeting as they drove on by.

Eventually, two young bucks in a pickup truck came to my rescue by adjusting and firmly steadying the ladder while I descended. Having accomplished their good deed for the day, they wished me a Merry Christmas and moved on. But, as you might suspect, my story does not end there.

Later the same day I volunteered to clear the roof of a neighbor who was not at home. When it came time to descend the ladder, it was deja vu all over again. Different house, same bind: Too much ice to step safely off the roof; no one around to secure the ladder from lurching sideways and depositing me in broken-neck territory far below. This time Plan B was workable, however, and I took the coward’s way down by launching myself into a nearby snowbank. As I sank to my breastbone, it occurred to me that I may be what they call a slow learner.

That night I watched as some grim television pitchman shilling for a group of insurance companies dispensed the most unheeded advice in this neck of the woods since Webster haggled with Ashburton over establishing a boundary line between The County and Canada. “Shovel your roof after every snowstorm,” the talking head ordered viewers, and one could well imagine the hoots of derision the command must have provoked here in the north country.

“I don’t think so, Chummy,” I replied. No offense, but the next time I set foot on any Maine roof in winter, for any reason, it will be a cold day in hell, thank you very much.

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may contact him by e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.