By Jim Pence, grandfather

One day I was working in the shop bolting the deck down; it was up on the hoist. Jared wanted to help, he was about 6 years old. He was on the trailer on the hoist I was under. He drilled the holes and put the bolts in and held them while I put the nuts on and tightened them.

When we sold our house, we were required to clean out all of the junk in the crawlspace which was a hard job. Some places you had to crawl on your belly. There were spiders and webs everywhere. I could not do it, but Jared stuck with it until it was finished. I paid him for this job.

We were falling a large oak tree that was partly in the driveway. Jared and I were working together getting in the winter’s wood. When the tree started to fall a family of flying squirrels sailed out of the top of it. We looked around to see if there were still some in the nest. There were no fatalities.

Jared was a fun kid to work with and always eager to help me with my computer later. I’ll miss him.