Chapter 4

Woodcutting Days

Out of the seminary, totally unprepared for life in the so-called real world, I did what I had always done. I went to the woods. My father allowed me to cut and sell firewood from Snider’s Woods as a way to earn a little money. I had no skills that might have qualified me for a good-paying job off the farm, so having this work was a godsend. I didn’t know anything about woodcutting either, but somehow I learned how to fell dead trees without killing myself. Mostly I cut up windblown red oaks already on the ground.

The first thing I learned was that the chainsaws then coming on the market to replace hand-operated crosscuts could reduce a man to a raving idiot. They were inferior to the ones today. They did not cut much faster than two men on a crosscut, and they were notoriously hard to start and keep running. Once I lost my temper and threw one against a tree with such force that I bent the saw bar and had to get a new one. So I learned another lesson: Losing one’s temper in the woods only means losing one’s money and might mean losing one’s life.

To me a chainsaw was a snarling, sawdust-spitting little monster, and I tried to horse it around with brute strength—precisely the wrong thing to do. I finally learned that a chainsaw should be handled almost as delicately as a violin. And just as you would not try to learn how to play a violin by reading a manual of directions, so you can’t learn how to “play” a chainsaw that way either. Even good instructions serve only to persuade beginners that, having read them, they now know how to cut wood. It takes lots of practice and then, like learning to ride a bicycle, the feel of the saw suddenly comes to you. It should do most of the work, not the saw operator. The blade should eat its way into the wood at its own speed. If I tried to force it into the saw kerf faster than it wanted to go, I’d just make it choke. Or in forcing, I would ever so slightly and unknowingly bind the saw bar in the kerf, causing it to growl with disapproval. Just the slightest wrong pressure could cause a bind, and it just took time to learn to feel the bind and avoid it.

Cutting through a large log lying on the ground, I learned to let the saw glide at its own speed forward into the wood and down the opposite side of the log from where I was standing. If I pushed down with my left hand on the handle, it only made me and the saw labor unnecessarily. The left hand should just hold on to the saw firmly, not push down. At the same time, with my right hand on the trigger handle, I learned to lift the back of the saw upward gently so that the tip of the saw blade went forward and down the other side of the log. This is the way the saw works best and fastest. That’s what those teeth are for at the back base of the saw bar—to hold the saw against the log while the sawyer tips the front of the blade forward and down, making a vertical cut down the log on the side away from where he is standing. When I sawed as far as I could before the nose of the saw went into the dirt, I could then bring gentle pressure downward on the back of the saw so it would cut through the log on my side. When the saw leveled out in the cut near the bottom of the log, then I would push down a little with my left hand, watching the color of the sawdust. When it turned darker, I knew I was through the log and into the bark on the bottom. It was very important to stop sawing then. Letting the blade plow into the soil under the log even a little dulls the blade in a hurry. Cutting into ice in the fissures of the bark dulls it as fast as cutting into a rock. When there is ice on the wood, I learned to leave the chainsaw in the truck.

I didn’t realize how dangerous woodcutting could be until a tree I was cutting down fell directly back toward me, the opposite way I had notched it. What had I done wrong? I had gotten the mistaken notion that if I notched the tree like the books said to do, the tree would automatically fall in the direction of the notch. Not always so. The trick is to insert a wedge in the saw kerf behind the saw as soon as there is room to do so. For this job, a wooden or plastic wedge is necessary, of course, so the blade won’t be dulled if it accidentally bumps back against it. Then I needed to keep driving the wedge—sometimes I used two wedges for extra safety—into the kerf as I sawed so that the tree trunk was always tight against the wedge. When there was about three inches of wood left between saw kerf and notch, the tree would not be quite sure which way it wanted to fall, and the slightest puff of a breeze might push the tree back away from the notch if the wedge wasn’t there to stop it. With about three inches of trunk yet to saw through, I learned to remove the saw and drive the wedges in as far as I could. If I guessed correctly, the tree would go on over as it was supposed to do without further sawing. Sometimes, though, I had to put the saw back in the kerf and cut a little farther, which might mean backing the wedges out a bit to make room for the saw. Then I’d remove the saw again and bang on the wedges again. Turning off the saw’s motor had an extra advantage in that I could hear the first soft creak of the tree rending from the stump and have plenty of time to back away.

A tree is going to fall in the direction of least resistance. So the first thing I learned to do, before doing any cutting, was just to stand under it and study the situation long and hard. Standing and studying was easy work, and in this case it could save hard work, not to mention my life. Which way does the tree lean, even if ever so slightly? I would ask myself. Notch the tree to fall in that direction if there are no other extenuating circumstances. If the tree didn’t lean at all, I would study the upper treetop to try to figure out which side had the most and heaviest outgrowth. The tree would be inclined to fall in that direction with a little help from the wedges. If the tree couldn’t be felled in the direction of its lean or top-heaviness because of a fence, building, or other tree, or if it leaned pronouncedly toward such objects, it was time to consider calling in an expert. A tree that falls into another standing tree and gets hung up is the woodcutter’s worst nightmare. It is cheaper to hire an expert to cut the tree down than to hire someone to drag a tree out of another tree’s branches with heavy equipment. In those days, the idea that in the twenty-first century there would be skilled tree trimmers who used pulleys and ropes to swing themselves among the trees and take them down limb by limb was as unimaginable as putting a man on the moon. But now that these professionals do exist, use them when necessary.

There were other dangers. Sometimes when the top of the tree hits the ground, the trunk will bounce up or roll sideways or even spring back, any one of which actions can kill a woodcutter standing too close. Or if the tree did fall the wrong way, I learned to just stand there to make sure of the direction of fall and then calmly walk around to the other side of the stump rather than turning my back and running away in panic. If I ran and the tree fell the way I was running, I might just about make it out to where the highest limbs would hit me as they came crashing down.

Once a tree is on the ground, the danger is not over, especially if the log is a large one, say twenty inches or more in diameter. Sometimes a fallen log would still be propped up on “legs”—large branches that hold the log off the ground. I once cut through a leg-limb and when it popped off, the tree trunk whirled over and a limb-leg on the other side whizzed right by my head. I had not realized that the first limb was holding up the whole weight of the horizontal trunk.

In cutting up a tree on the ground, I learned by trial and mostly error to cut chunks off those parts of the lower trunk, if any, that were free and held above the ground by limbs. They would come off without pinching. Then I’d go to the top end of the fallen tree and cut away all the limbs too small for firewood. I had to think about what I was doing at all times or I would pinch the saw blade. If a limb I was cutting sagged inward on the saw only a fraction of an inch, the saw would be caught in the kerf. Often one must saw upward rather than downward through a branch to prevent pinching.

With the branch twigs all removed, I’d start sawing up stove-length pieces from the smaller branches. I’d leave those branches intact that were holding up the main trunk until I cut off the sections of the trunk that were free above ground level. I’d always be thinking about how the limbs or logs were going to bend or sag when I sawed through them. It was a matter of constantly remembering the effects of gravity, lever, and fulcrum. It turned into sort of a game of skill to see how much of the tree I could cut up without using a cant hook to roll the log over, and knowing when to use wedges in the kerf to keep the log from pinching.

I never learned how to sharpen saw blades really well (to this day), and since it is folly to try to saw with a dull blade I buy a new one every year and take four dulled ones to be sharpened by an expert, hang the cost. In the earliest years I’d have to change blades half a dozen times each winter because I would cut into the ground or ice or old rusted wire embedded in the wood. Now, a new sharp one will last me half the year, and a couple of resharpened ones last the other half. Spending a little more money to keep a really sharp blade in the saw actually saves money because the chainsaw lasts much longer than it does trying to cut with a dull blade.

At first, Dad and I, in one of our more romantic moments, hauled out the two-man crosscut saw to cut up the logs. We would mimic the pioneers, we thought nobly. That turned into a tale of woe. Not even married partners deeply in love should get on opposite ends of a crosscut unless they are very skilled at that work. So there was hardly a chance that a father and son would be comfortable at it, especially when the son, at least, had never done it before. Besides, with chainsaws available, crosscutting was too slow, even though we knew of woodcutters who could cut through a log just as fast with a crosscut saw. But Dad had better things to do. He bought the chainsaw and turned me loose on my own.

One handy trick I did learn from Dad was about trimming branches off a downed log. Most of that kind of work is done today with a light chainsaw, but it is easier and quicker to use a sharp axe. The trick is to chop off branches by cutting through the outside angle of branch and trunk, not the acute inside angle. And to cut from the lower end of the trunk. Your brain says that a limb should lop off easier striking down into the acute angle where the branch grows out of the log. But actually, if you strike at the underside of the branch upward, right next to the log, the axe will sever the branch much more easily.

But while we were still struggling with the crosscut—which I know now was not sharpened correctly—Dad casually mentioned his father’s ancient mechanical crosscut saw, which ran off the power takeoff on the tractor. I asked Grandpa about it, and he finally found the derelict old thing gathering rust in his barn. Much to my surprise it still worked, mimicking the action of two men on a crosscut exactly. It turned out to be the most civilized piece of technology that I have ever had the pleasure of using. It seemed slow at first as it worked its way through a large log. But it took me about the same amount of time to split up a big log section as the mechanical crosscut took cutting it off, so there was no time lost at all. The sawing took much less muscle, obviously, and with the tractor barely at idling speed, the work was soothingly quiet compared to running the roaring, sawdust-spitting chainsaw.

Sometimes I was grateful just to stand there and watch that antique saw patiently make its way through a log while I wondered woefully about whatever I was going to do with my life. I knew I must get a job, but it was just so pleasant in the woods that I resisted.

But I still had to deal with customers. For example, I had never before been in the position of selling anything, so I was unprepared for what clerks and salespeople elsewhere must often endure—suspicion and disdain from buyers. I worked hard splitting wood and sold it cheap and thought customers would be grateful to get the wood. But a few of them treated me like I was their servant or slave or an intruder out to cheat them. The really nasty ones would walk around my pickup and stare at the wood as if it were full of disease-carrying maggots. One fellow was particularly loathsome.

“Is that a cord?” he asked in a challenging voice.

“No, sir.”

“Well, how much is it?”

“A pickup load, sir.”

“And how much of a cord is that?”

“I really don’t know, sir. About half I suppose. It is what I am selling you for $15 delivered and stacked.”

“Is it dry?” His tone was still rude and suspicious.

“The trees it comes from have been dead for two years anyway.”

“Well, is it doughty then?”

I looked at him questioningly. I had never heard of that word, and he could tell.

“Starting to rot,” he explained, a satisfied smirk on his face for having shown how much more savvy he was about wood than I.

“No sir, it’s not.”

“Smells pissy. Must be piss ellum.”

“It’s red oak, sir, and it does have a slight aroma. Some people like that smell.”

He looked at me witheringly, shrugged, and pointed to the place where he wanted the wood stacked. If I knew this wood was red oak, I just might know more about wood than he did, and he didn’t want me to find that out. He watched me as I unloaded, and although fully able-bodied, never once offered to help, never once handled even one single stick. If our situations had been reversed, I would have helped unload under any circumstance. But this pointy-nosed little piss ant of the upper-middle class intended to wring every penny he possibly could out of my servitude to him.

One day, reading the local newspaper, I realized why some wood customers treated me like dirt. A series of articles in the paper was supposed to instruct people on the ins and outs of buying firewood. The advice went into pious detail over the definition of a cord of wood: a stack measuring four feet wide, four feet tall, and eight feet long. Firewood sellers were supposed to use the cord as their unit of measurement and the customer was to make sure, by golly, that he got that much wood. Keep your tape measure handy. No one I knew sold wood by the cord because that would be folly. A cord of hickory has twice as much heat value as a cord of pine. The BTU value is different for all wood species. Woodcutters I knew mostly sold wood by the pickup load, and we learned to heap it up or buyers would bitch. We sold mixed hardwoods, and I prepared myself to spout off proudly which pieces were hickory or ash or oak or elm. And how all the wood came from trees that had been dead for several years. But whatever, the buyer could see the amount and kind of wood he was getting for $15 a load and if he didn’t think it was enough or he didn’t like the looks of it, he didn’t have to buy it. The whole tenor of the information being handed out in the paper suggested that firewood sellers were out to cheat firewood buyers. No wonder consumers treated us suspiciously. There may have been some cheaters, but anyone with any experience selling firewood knows that you don’t stay in the business long unless you are at least as honest as preachers. Ironically, these articles were written by agricultural extension agents, whose main job it was to help farmers. Since all the wood sellers I knew were small farmers trying to make a little winter money, I wondered why government types who were supposed to be our helpers were undermining our work by questioning our honesty and pontificating on something they evidently knew very little about.

Another experience made a deep impression on me. Dad came home one day very excited. He’d met a traveling businessman and told him about my budding firewood business. The businessman ordered a load of wood. He’d pay $30 for a pickup load if I’d deliver it to his house, which was a bit outside my usual territory. Thirty dollars was big money to me. He wanted it for his fireplace in time for Christmas, which was about ten days away. He gave directions to his house and said he probably would be “on the road” but that his wife would be there to show me where to stack the wood. Okay.

The directions took me out into a rural area outside the town of Bucyrus, our old pickup putt-putting along with its heavy load over back roads and down a long lane to a lovely new home surrounded by woodland. It was just the sort of place I dreamed of having some day. As I pulled up to the house, something shocking revealed itself—shocking to me anyway. Across the backyard stretched a big, fallen, dead elm tree. This man had wood enough for ten Christmases literally at his doorstep but was buying wood.

I knocked on the door, and a woman with two little kids hanging on her opened it timidly. She had known that I was coming, but it was obvious that she was fearful. Here she was with her children far out in a secluded country home with this sorry-looking, scruffy young man staring at her. I tried to be as friendly and polite as I could, and I think she got over her misgivings soon enough. But as she directed me to where she wanted the wood stacked along the side of the garage, I kept glancing out at the big old dead tree in the backyard. She noticed, and she understood.

“Yes, isn’t that a shame. We have wood but we’re buying wood. My husband would love to be cutting that tree up, too. He loves to do things like that, he loves living out here in the woods,”—she rolled her eyes in a way that clearly told me she did not like being there alone—“but his job, you see, he has to travel all the time.” Her voice quavered a bit. “It’s a good-paying job, but he has to travel all the time.”

Driving back home, I felt contented with my lot in life for the first time since I had come back home. I did not have any money, but I did have all the wood, and food, and love, and a sort of settled stability that this traveling man with all his money could not enjoy. Which, of the two of us, was truly the poorer?

I resolved never to trade peace at home for a high salary on the road. Only for a little while did I break that resolve.