Not all of us are up the hill like you TW. I will be golfing at Superstition Mountain Sunday but it is not really a mountain and still will be 110. Oh well Hill? Dude I am from TX, this is not no freaking hill where I come from, its a rock of a mountain sitting up here at 5400 feet. :>) Just giving you a hard time. If it makes you fell better we have touched 100 up here a few times, but as you know if we hit 100, you hit 120 or more down there in the valley. At least up here if it does hit 100 during the day, it is real pleasant just after sunset as this very dry thin air up here cools off real fast. Just about every morning you need a sweater or light jacket if out early. Now if it would just rain a bit. We only get about 4.5 inches per year I hear, and 4 of that is suppose to come in August with Monsoon. At least that is what I am told.

In my experience, most regular saw mills don't want a residential tree due to hardware since they have large circular saw blades, and damaging a tooth or two is an expensive thing to fix. However, bandsaw mills have much less expensive blades. Often folks with bandsaw mills will be happy to either take the logs or do the sawing at your place and turn them into lumber. DH worked at a regular saw mill in his younger years and now has a portable bandsaw mill. We are both woodturners and he often gets calls from neighbors or other turners about trees that they would like to have sawn into lumber for woodworking of various sorts, including turning blanks. Depending on Don's tree, there may well be some good wood in it so it's probably worth a phone call to see if once the tree has been taken down by someone qualified there will be interest in it as wood. The pin oaks I grew up with started branching above the second story windows, and poor lumber often makes great turning stock, though since it doesn't grow in this area much we haven't ever gotten a pin oak so I don't know for sure how well it turns. Other oaks are fine. Here's a link to an article about woodturners salvaging an old elm on the other side of the state from you: http://www.stltoday.com/news/state-and-regional/missouri/article_b880f39a-4840-5418-9139-4ac39f45929a.html and below is a link to a St. Louis woodturning group. Here is a link that might be useful: woodturners of st louis

i havent. i re potted it into a bigger pot and used new soil. and have been keeping an extra good eye on it. it is still alive but i ant tell if it is getting worse or better. as of right now its a brown stick in a pot. haha but is still green inside and the roots aren't brittle. just brown. i snipped a small root the other day to see what it looks like inside and it is not white but not brown

It's not Oak Wilt which would neither originate from a spruce (spruce is an incompatible host) or spread crown to crown (it's a systemic fungus). Best guess from what I can see is either mechanical damage caused by the oak leaves being blown back and forth against the scratchy spruce twigs or sun scorch when previously shaded leaves were exposed to full sun as the spruce continued to die. Leave it be this year, remove the dead spruce, and see if this issue recurs next year.