“Observations from the Woodpile”

Prologue

Observations from the Woodpile” is a collection of essays bundled together and given as a birthday present for my wife, Nancy, in 1997. Twenty-seven years have passed since the collection was given. The two main subjects of the essays, my sons Justus and Jacob, have grown into men with families of their own.

I don’t really know what my dad used to navigate through life. I understood his dad’s view of the world much better because we talked about it from time to time. One of my biggest fears as a parent is I’ll make the same mistake with my kids. Because of this fear, I’m always looking for a way to convey what I think is important. 

During the 1995-96 winter, the vehicle to deliver this perspective came from a most unlikely source.

Every year, late in the fall, I buy a truckload of logs for firewood. The pile of timber becomes the project for the winter months. Nearly every Saturday of the winter and early spring, my two boys, Justus and Jacob, and I spend a few hours sawing and splitting and stacking and hauling wood (my daughter, Sarah, is not too keen on this sort of thing). Usually, I’ll run the chainsaw until I’m out of gas. Then, we split what’s been cut. The boys and I spend a boatload of time together in this enterprise. I don’t know if it’s the quality time that I hear the experts yap about so much or not.  I get the impression from the boys, it’s the kind of quality time that road gangs spend with their guards.

Early that November, we ordered the truckload of logs and arranged to have it delivered on a day my wife was home. The logs were stacked in my small field, not far from the creek. After they arrived, I looked at each log to determine the quality and species of the wood. Were there a lot of knots? Any rotten spots? How big in diameter? The pile was taller than me at its peak and 16 to 20 feet long. How many cords? I was a little intimidated by the amount of work I saw stretched out before us. Jacob (Jake), who was seven at the time, was something more than intimidated. I’m sure from his seven-year-old perspective, the task before us must have looked like something akin to the building of pyramids. He kept asking if we were really going to cut and split that entire pile of logs, as if I were playing a prank on him.

After sawing a couple of the logs into firewood length, Jake’s suspicion of a joke subsided, but his doubt of ever cutting and splitting the entire pile hung on. We sat on the logs for a breather, and I explained to him how we were going to cut and split that entire pile of logs. We would do a little each weekend until it was all done. We didn’t have to kill ourselves trying to get it done. He nodded his head like he understood and believed we would. Kids do that sort of thing for dads even when they really believe the old man is stark raving mad.

Broken Handles

p the log splitting for a year or two and just burn the handles. Hobb’s Hardware has made a fortune in the handle trade.   Once, I even invested in an expensive maul with a fiberglass handle, and they broke it quicker than a wooden handle. 

The handles break when the maul’s handle, rather than the head, hits the wedge. It’s easy to do, and I have done it myself. I try not to get in a twist about a broken handle, but the two boys will tell you how entertaining a grown man trying to contain his temper can be. At one point, I could have sworn they broke them just to watch me.

They’ve gotten better as they’ve gotten bigger and sharpened their aim. Experience does that, and patience allows for the experience. More than once, I’ve wanted to take the splitting maul out of their hands and just do the job myself. But, I’ll have to sacrifice a few broken handles if I want them to grow into proficient wood splitters. A broken handle is really just a part of the job.

Epilogue

This past autumn, my son Jacob told me how he had won the Bell Ringing Contest at a carnival that he and his wife had gone to. He had beaten much larger guys and won the cupie doll for his wife. He attributed the victory to his years of forced child labor in the woodpile. I took it as a parenting success story.