Paul Bunyon Was Here or At Least His Southern Cousin

We have loads of pine trees in our yard and they're not the most stable trees in the world, they're shallow rooted and in wind storms they come down on a regular basis around here.  When we first bought our house there was a dead tree next to the house and we had it taken down right away.
Since our neighbor had tree come down last fall we've really been watching our trees and there was a big one, more than 50 feet high, that has been steadily leaning towards the house and we decided it had to go.  So a friend of ours recommended someone to us and they came out Saturday to take a look at it. They had such thick southern accents we had a hard time understanding them, but the bottom line was they'd take the tree down for the same price we'd paid 10 years ago and we told them to saw away.
One of them shimmied up the tree and topped it.  When that hit the ground it was so loud I heard it way in the backyard and when the rest of the tree came down it literally shook the yard, could only imagine what it would have been like if it had hit the house.
I didn't get a before picture, but the tree we took down was at least as big as those still standing in the yard.