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"Bowling for firewood? What the heck is bowling for firewood?" Miss T asked.
I replied "You'll see" because it was easier to dodge the question than explain. Besides, it was not something for the gals in the family, it was for the guys.
Bowling for firewood was making work into a game.
I had saved bowling for firewood for son Worshrag, who "came from Alabama with his wife upon his knee, his true love Busy Bee," la la la. They made a quick five-day driving visit home. They live in Alabama but he works in what used to be Fort Benning, Georgia. (The name was changed recently to Fort Somebody Nice, erasing another bit of the rotten old Confederacy from history. Civil War? What Civil War?)
Their excuse for the visit was so Busy Bee could attend a girlfriend's wedding. You know how it is: I came to your wedding so you have to come to mine, just like if I don't come to your funeral you won't come to mine.
But Worshrag's real reason for coming home was to finish siding the west end of our 1849 barn.
Using pine lumber cut on our farm, Worshrag, elder son Seed and I, with help from grandsons, had re-sided the east and south sides during First COVID in 2019, and did the lower part of the west wall before Worsh and Busy Bee got married in the barn in October 2021. Now the three of us would finish the project.
Tearing off and replacing plank siding high up on the eve end of an old barn involves hoisting long boards and trying to get them on straight (enough) as you balance on beams and ladders high up. It's hard, dirty, dangerous work, just the kind we Miller men like.
The view is lovely and novel. Friendly neighbors honk their horns as they drove by.
Working on a farm project with my grown sons is a tonic and a blessing, not to mention a lot of fun.
Grandson Lamppost Head, age 12, admired the finished work. "When will it have to be replaced?" he asked.
"Mark your calendar for 100 years from now," I said.
We got it done in three days. Still plenty of time for family socializing.
With the barn project accomplished and cleaned up the day before we opened Worshrag's Pumpkin Patch for the season in that same end of the barn, Honey invited the family to celebrate with breakfast Saturday morning. She cooked eggs, I fried deer tenderloin, and everyone enjoyed spreading new-made raspberry jam on her homemade bread.
With breakfast over, I announced it time to bowl for firewood. The grandsons knew what I was talking about. It's one of their favorite work games.
Readers of this column will recall that last winter I had professionals drop 10 big, and I mean, BIG, oak trees, 100-110 feet long, behind (and away from) our house. I sectioned the trunks from five trees in one area for timber, then cut the upper limbs to firewood length.
These particular trees were felled up a ravine, now scoured to bare dirt by dragging out the timber logs. The result was a slightly curving, slightly V-shaped bowling alley, down which to throw the firewood logs. A blockade of large sections was positioned at the bottom to keep the rolling, spinning logs from hitting the house.
Worshrag was up top, along with Lamppost Head, The 747 and The Favorite. Son-in-law Snickers and I stayed halfway down the slope to clear off stalled logs.
For an hour this macho crew threw logs, dodged logs, cleared logs. We shamed throwers whose logs sputtered out, and cheered when logs made it all the way, especially those that spun and leaped to clear obstacles, like running backs dodging tacklers.
Worshrag stayed behind when the rest of us left to open the pumpkin patch. I thought he might, because he had asked before they came home if there would be firewood to split. All the Miller men love splitting wood with sledge, wedge and maul, taking pride in hitting the same crack multiple times if necessary. It's a lovely sound when a log gives up with a satisfying "thunk."
Worsh had left for the wedding when I came home on a break. I was not really surprised to see he had been splitting firewood, but was by how big a pile he had split.
"You shouldn't have done all that," his mother told him when she saw it. "The grandsons could have split it."
"It was important," he said, adding with some surprise, "They can split wood?"
"They're growing up," Honey said.
Alabama's such a long way off.
Fred Miller's third book, "A Dead Carp on Shadyside Ave.," is $10, available locally at Calcutta Giant Eagle, Pottery City Antique Mall, Museum of Ceramics, Frank's Pastries, Connie's Corner Restaurant, Davis Bros. pharmacies and the Old Ft. Steuben gift shop.