Sunday, August 28, 2011

Death by Stihl

Been busy bringing in the winter wood. Took the hounds with me this morning. The old girl doesn't like the sound of the saw, but Lucy doesn't seem to mind. I put them in the cab of the truck while I was cutting. Five minutes later I notice Lucy is following me around. I take her back to the truck, thinking the other one is still in there. Nope. So they both jumped out the window, and then one high-tailed it for home and the other stuck around.

Lucy is the ugliest wretch of a dog that God ever breathed life into. She's grown bigger since we got her, but rather than growing into herself she just gets more ungainly. Her paws would be big on a dog twice her size. Ears likewise. When she runs she looks more like a goat than a dog. She looks like a toddler in size twelve sneakers wearing floppy Mickey Mouse ears. Her brindle tiger-stripes get more asymmetrical by the day. Easily the most beautiful dog I've ever had.

I was cutting up the trunk of a maple that I'd originally felled a couple of months ago. Just overhead was a big dead limb coming out of another maple. Tantalizingly out of reach. Twenty feet of dry firewood just hanging there. I could have reached it from the bed of the truck, but I couldn't get the truck in there without dropping half a dozen other trees. So I made a little pyramid out of the stuff I was cutting, and voila, what was out of reach was now easily accessible, as long as I could keep my balance on top of this little woodpile.

Every time I go into Hastie's Small Engines they want to sell me a bigger Stihl. According to them I should have something with a 24 or even 26 inch bar for the kind of work I'm doing. They happen to have just the machine in stock, and by the time we add the tax we're at nearly a thousand bucks. No thanks, but watch this! Who needs a 24 inch bar when you can just stand on a pile of firewood!

So I'm on my tippy toes, saw held as high as I can hold it, and I'm nearly through when the branch takes a twist, I take a tumble, fly ass-over-chainsaw off my pyramid, and I'm lying there with a branch across my chest, Lucy licking my face, and the trusty Stihl ten feet away, still running. Close call.

Reminds me of one of Helpful Herb's chainsaw adventures. Helpful Herb is my mentor in all things farming, and sort of a general life coach. A chainsaw veteran. He's got a John Deere 450 that he uses to build logging trails through his woodlot. One day he's out there, hard at it, drops a fifty footer which gets hung up in some other trees. So he fires up the 450, raises the bucket as high as it'll go, climbs up in the bucket, and he starts cutting where his tree is hung up.

Herb is working on a bit of an incline, and while he's up there in the bucket chainsawing away, the Deere starts rolling down the hill. Holy shit! What's he gonna do? There's the bail-out option, but a bit of a miscue and he'd end up under the tracks. Climb down the side-arms and take control? A possibility perhaps, but again, one false move and he'd be under the tracks. So he figures his best bet is to just sit tight in the bucket till the ride is over, which it was about two minutes later, in the pond at the bottom of the hill.

Helpful Herb is one of those old school European guys who came over here with nothing and did OK for himself. I invited him and Mrs. Herb to Falling Downs for dinner just after I got the place. The day before our dinner appointment I called him up, said can you come a bit early so you can show me how to sharpen the chain on the saw. Next morning at eight o'clock he's pulling up the drive-way. Takes fifteen minutes for the saw sharpening tutorial. Nine hours till dinner. So Herb takes my saw and my truck, and off he goes.

At noon he comes back and him and Mrs. Herb are sitting out having the picnic lunch they brought. Next thing I know, he's climbing the pine tree out in the yard. The man is crowding eighty. What are you doing? Oh, I noticed that some of these branches might interfere with your electricity line. He's twenty feet up the tree with a pruning saw trimming the offending branches. Helpful Herb. Most of my wood my first winter came from stuff he cut down that day.

I've got a lot of respect for these older guys who stay busy. My all-time idol is Eubie Blake. Made a living playing the piano till the day he died, 100 years old. Started on the cigarettes when he was nine. Planning to quit, for his health, but never got around to it.

Herb made it out of Eastern Europe by the proverbial skin of his teeth. Spent five years in a camp in Denmark. Apprenticed as a baker. Figured as a baker his kids, when he had any, would never know hunger. Got off the boat at Pier 21 in 1956 and got a job shoveling coal. In this land of unlimited possibilities he eventually reinvented himself as a businessman. Real estate.

I think in general the idea of longevity is oversold. It's got to be about the quality of life. Cut out fat, booze, cigarettes. Jog. It'll add ten years to your life. If you're gonna spend that ten years sitting in the corner at the nursing home, drooling on yourself while waiting for somebody to change your diaper, I don't really see the attraction.

Helpful Herb was a natural in the business world. He could do a deal in the morning with a guy who had a Treblinka tattoo on his forearm, and a deal in the afternoon with a guy who had an SS tattoo on his upper arm. He had friends on every side of every war. One of his best buddies was an old Scotsman named MacKinnon. They were cut from the same cloth.

One day MacKinnon, well into his eighties, was out in his woodlot cutting firewood. MacKinnon had a successful business career behind him, and could well afford to call the oil truck. But these old school guys, they just have to keep busy. He's taking down a big old dead elm on one of the fence lines. As he's making his back cut a twenty foot branch drops and kills him on the spot.

Death by Stihl.







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