Poulan vs. Stihl

It was a baking-hot July in the mid-seventies, 1974 maybe. I was hitchhiking east somewhere between Seattle and Spokane.  A pale yellow ’66 Chevy Biscayne pulls over. I open the door. A body falls half out, legs still in the car, head on the ground, arms splayed out. Holy shit, a dead guy. Do I really want to get in this car?...

I was working on the wood today. There’s a long way to go if we’re to get through the winter without calling the oil truck. I’ve been using the Poulan lately, mainly because the Stihl needs the chain sharpened and I wasn’t in the mood.

The first saw I bought was a Homelite. Used to be a good name, but I’d have to say I can’t recommend it. Didn’t even last a summer. Of the other two the Stihl is by far the superior piece of machinery. You can feel it in your hands. The Poulan is OK;  it’s a little lighter, a little quieter, but it just feels cheap.

The driver gets out and comes round the car. Gimmee a hand dude, let’s get him in the back. Not dead after all. Driver opens the back door, grabs the guy under the arms, I grab his legs, and we accordion him into the back seat. We pull out on the highway in the general direction of Coulee City.

The Poulan doesn’t really feel like it’s up to a full day’s work. If you’re the kind of guy who doesn’t mind stretching a day’s work over a week, you’ll probably be alright with it. The Stihl on the other hand can run flat out hour after hour, day after day.

If you’re looking to buy a chainsaw these days, you basically have a choice between a saw made in China, like the Poulan, or a saw made in Sweden or Germany. Sweden and Germany are high-wage countries. Why can they make saws and we can’t? Obviously it isn’t because our wages are too high. Industrial workers in Western Europe passed our standard of living back in the seventies or eighties, and they’re way ahead of us now. The Stihl is made in Germany.

We’re sailing through central Washington. Driver is telling me the story of him and Buddy passed out in the back. Life-time pals since grade one. Inseparable.  Enlisted in the service together. Driver finds himself on an aircraft carrier, doing laundry.

Germans have got to be about the most obnoxious people on earth. I have never met a German who doesn’t know everything – just ask one. But they know how to make a chainsaw. Their cars have a pretty good rep too. And their tools, industrial machinery, steel, chemicals… in fact most everything made in Germany comes with a good reputation. Come to think of it, the same can be said about Sweden. 

Germans love to come to the US and Canada on their summer holidays. They rent fat-ass RVs and hog all the best campsites in all the nicest national parks. It’s best to avoid talking to these people, but when you do you find out they’re as likely to be a technician from the Mercedes factory as a doctor or a lawyer. I was camping at Banff a couple of summers ago and they were all around me. Canadian autoworkers don’t get that far west on their holidays anymore, and when they do you’ll find their family cozied up in a six by nine tent they got on sale at Walmart.

So while Driver is doing laundry on the aircraft carrier Buddy has the misfortune of finding himself in the actual heat of things. He spends two years slogging through jungle muck up to his balls hoping every minute that he’s gonna kill the yellow guys before they kill him.

Speaking of Banff, I’m riding up the gondola at one of the mountains and right there on the side of the car it says made in Switzerland. Say what? Switzerland? We’ve got half a million dispossessed metal workers in southern Ontario alone with the skills to build this stuff. Is Switzerland a low-wage country? No! And the Swiss, God help me, they almost make the Germans look humble. At least there aren’t as many of them.

Buddy is stirring. Grunts and moans coming from the back. What’s he saying? Dunno. More grunting. What’s he saying? I think he said he shit himself. Aw fuck, man. We stop at the next gas station. Me and Driver grab a couple six-packs and sit by the car waiting for Buddy. He’s in the bathroom around back a good fifteen minutes. Finally comes out, goes in the store, grabs a six-pack, and we’re going down the road.

There was a time not too long ago when European millwrights and welders and skilled tradesmen of all sorts wanted to come over here and make a better life for themselves and their families. They don’t anymore. I think a lot about why this is, and I think somewhere we lost our way. We started to put the razzle-dazzle kind of financial wheeler-dealer on a pedestal. By the eighties and nineties the people lionized in the popular media and in the business press were no longer the guys who built something up over a life-time. Instead, the new heroes were the Millikens and the “Chainsaw” Dunlaps, guys who bought companies, ripped their guts out, looted the pension plans, and sent the work to Mexico and China.

We’re past Waterville and bearing down hard on Coulee City at a hundred miles an hour. I’ve changed places with Buddy and I’m scrunched over to the side to avoid the damp area on the seat. Deep Purple is on the eight-track. Buddy is screaming I'm a highway star and taking random shots at highway signs with a .45 he pulled out of the glovebox.

I believe that the reason the Swedes and the Germans and the Swiss can still build stuff and we can’t boils down to leadership. Our political class has long since given up doing anything other than appeasing the super-rich. Maximizing profits became far more important than improving the standard of living for the average person. And the working class, stupefied by a never-ending barrage of jiggling cheerleaders and Nascar and American Idol didn’t notice till it was too late. And that’s just fine with our leaders.

There’s been a hash-pipe going around in the Biscayne and I’m getting a little paranoid. This isn’t going to end up anyplace good. I bid my friends goodbye in Coulee City. I’ve often thought about them, wondered how they fared out. That war really fucked them up. Driver maybe had a chance.

Buddy was pretty much done.