There's snow in the forecast if not on the ground, and now that Lundy has his cows back at the home farm I can access some trees along the fence-rows that I haven't been able to get to all summer.
That turned into the usual shit-show of the sixty foot dead elm wanting to fall to the east when all of my calculations indicated it was going west. That leaves me standing there scratching my head, chainsaw stuck in the kerf, until I do the only thing I can do; pull that sixty footer to the west with my thirty foot tow strap.
I've been meaning to get a good long length of 5/8 rope if TSC every gets around to putting it on sale, but if that's happened I must have missed it.
Last time I was at the Tractor Supply Company store they had a good deal on Tremclad paint. You can put that shit on everything, and they don't call it rust paint for nothing. Yup, you can paint right over rust!
Which reminds me of a story about my old pal George from the drydock, but before I get into that I wanted to mention that I met Billy Morris at the TSC on that trip to buy the Tremclad.
Billy was from Kentucky, and he'd been hired on for the summer by one of the local farmers. Billy was 16, and I was duly impressed when he showed me a picture of his fiancee.
Who the hell has a fiancee at 16?
I managed to get that unwieldy elm to fall to the west with, I am pleased to report, no damage to the truck.
I'm getting better at this, but you never want to think you're too good at it. A sixty foot elm is big and heavy. Once she's on her way down there's no do-overs on the cut.
There's a kind of existential purity about heating your home with wood that you cut down. I suppose it's right next to eating meat from the deer you shot at hunting season. There's something primitive about it, but at the same time you can't help but feel good about it.
I was a bit taken aback at Billy's fiancee and all that implied, and then he showed me a picture of his 14 year old sister. And her fiancee.
What the hell?
Hey boy, how you kids coming up with these fiancees?
The internet!
So George is the guy who built a beautiful 3,000 square foot home in St. Martin, overlooking the Bay of Fundy, and the day I was there me and him and a couple of lads from the shipyard got seriously shit-faced on George's home made beer. I believe he had a jug of screech at hand as well. That's when George told us about his plans for the house.
Now the house was there. We were sitting in it. We'd had the grand tour. But George had a plan.
Next year, God willing, he was going to jack 'er up and put a foundation under it!
Well fuck me!
My four year old Stihl put in a good afternoon. I went through two tanks of gas and had a full load in the back of the truck when I came back to the house. That's about a week of warmth in the dead of winter. God willing, global warming will keep winter warm and short, but that isn't something we should count on just yet.
Firewood, like guns and condoms, are in that category where it's better to have and not need it than the vice versa.
One day I asked Billy how the Morris clan ended up here in the Bruce all the way from Kentucky. Oh he says, Mom met this guy on the internet...
So one Monday George announces he did a body job on his truck on the weekend. We're deep in the bowels of one of the frigates we're building for the Royal Canadian Navy. So deep that you can hear a black-hat clanking down the ladders ten minutes before he gets there. A dog-fuckers paradise.
A body job on your rusty old truck in a weekend? Do tell, George.
"Well, while the missus was in the mall I slipped over to the TSC and got a roll of duct tape and a can of Tremclad. The bright white Tremclad matches my truck perfect, so I just taped over the rust holes and then gave 'er a spray with the Tremclad."
A couple weeks ago I ran into a buddy who has a house down at McCullough Lake. He uses it for the summer and rents it out September to June. I did the customary "how's things" routine.
"Oh by fuck, you wouldn't believe it. I had these fucking hillbillys in there, folks from Kentucky. Paid rent for three months and then nothing. When they finally moved out I find out they've cut the stairs down, the fucking stairs to the second floor. The railing and the stairs! You can't even go upstairs now without a ladder!"
"Was the name Morris?"
"Ya! How the fuck do you know that?"
"Just a hunch."
I was hand bombing the firewood into the woodshed. Got a couple of old dining room chairs back there. They'd make good kindling I thought.
So I fired up the Stihl one more time and cut the legs off.
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