Beech Tree News Network

I will always remember the three one-on-one things I got to do with my dad when I was growing up.  I helped him skin a squirrel, clean fish and cut fire wood for the stove we heated with.  Each of those things happened just once when it was only my dad and me.  There were seven kids in the family, so you didn’t get much one-on-one time with anybody.  I carry each one of those events as little points of light inside of me when I become sad over my childhood.  

I could speak my mind when I was alone with my dad, something I couldn’t do in front of my stepmom.  I remember when we cleaned fish.  As I watched them flop around under my father’s knife on the wood slab, I told him it would be better if he killed them first, so he did.  When I told him how disgusting squirrel guts were, and I had really rather not touch that part, he laughed at my little girl candor. 

 My favorite memory, however, is cutting firewood with my dad.  He was a sawmill man, so he was at home in the woods.  He found a downed tree then cut it up into manageable pieces and I stacked it onto the pickup.  We laughed a lot that day.  Even though Dad was always in the woods, it seemed we were pretty much down to our last few sticks before we went out to cut more.  He was really a live-in-the moment kind of guy.

I’ve helped my husband, Garey, cut firewood many times.  He has a wood splitter that works off the PTO of his tractor, and sometimes we take it with us to the location where we’re cutting.  Garey cuts, I hand him pieces to split then we load the wood onto the old red and white Chevy.  We bring it to the house and rick it under the eve of our storage building, stacking it nearly even with the roof.  Garey always looks at me and says, “According to that old Indian sign, it’s going to be a bad winter.”  We both laugh, because it is a reference to a story one of his friends told him: A Native American Indian told Garey’s friend it was going to be a bad winter.  Garey’s friend asked his Indian friend how he knew it was going to be a bad winter, expecting to hear some insight into signs the Native American Indians used to predict weather conditions.  The Indian friend said, “White man next door have big wood pile.”

 We heat with propane, but we supplement with a wood fireplace.  I know it’s messy, traipsing through the house in your boots with a load of wood in your arms, dropping bits of bark as you go, but I love the smell of freshly-cut wood and there is no equal to the heat that comes off burning wood.  It has come in handy a few times when the power went out during inclement weather.  Our kids used to roast marshmallows over the hot coals.  I expect my granddaughter, Sabria, to ask to do that any day now.  One of her first chores was helping her Papa (Garey) with firewood.  She was just a little tyke when she started lifting small pieces from the tailgate of the pickup.  She was so proud of herself, telling her Papa to look at the big piece of wood she was carrying.  

I know someday, Garey and I will get to the place where we will have to buy our firewood, because of physical restraints.  One of our friends used to cut firewood as a side job, but decided to quit doing it, because he couldn’t please anybody.  He told us about someone who ordered a load of firewood for his ninety-year-old aunt.  Taking the woman’s age into account, and trying to be sensitive to any struggle she might have with standard sized fire wood, our friend decided to cut the wood into small pieces she could readily handle.  When he delivered the pickup load, the woman came outside where he was unloading it.  She had a cigarette in one hand and a glass of brandy in the other.  She looked the rick over then said, “Son, if I had wanted kindling, I would have ordered kindling.”  He retired his chainsaw after that.

I hope I’m always able to burn firewood, even if it’s only at Christmas, like the woman I met at Walmart that season we had balmy spring-like weather.  She was on her way home to turn up the air conditioning, so she could build a fire in the fire place, because she always had a fire at Christmas for her grandchildren.  I will be that woman.