Is the property Middlesex Township residents pay taxes on really their property or does it belong to them and their township supervisors?

When I began driving many years ago, I was taught to drive carefully and use common sense when approaching blind spots and hidden driveways. But that didn't happen last fall and it cost me two 40-plus-year-old blue spruce trees that were on my property.

Last fall, during Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to Saxonburg, a state police officer stopped at the Middlesex Township building on Brownshill Road in Cooperstown. Upon leaving the township building onto Brownshill Road and approaching the bend while in the middle of the road, he collided with a vehicle driven by a woman and also occupied by the woman's two children.

Then, a few weeks later, the township road supervisor, Scott Fodi, and the police chief, Edward Brooks, came to my home to tell me the two pines would be cut down because they were on the right of way. They said a guardrail would be installed.

My daughter and I went to the January meeting of the township supervisors and, of course, the supervisors had their minds made up. The trees would come down.

I asked where the original center of the road was because, for the last 20 years, they would take the property off on this side only. They couldn't tell me - only that the trees were coming down.

I'm paying taxes on 1.51 acres. They tell me I have 1.32 acres.

Where has the .19 of an acre gone?

On April 21, Fodi was talking about cutting the trees down on April 22. My 10-year-old granddaughter asked Fodi whether he knew what day that was.

He said it was Friday and, "out of the mouths of babes," her reply was, "That's Earth Day; you're supposed to plant trees, not cut them down."