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A volunteer work project Friday left our 10 participants happy despite being dog-tired and nursing aches, splinters and bloody scratches. We attacked an eyesore and cleaned up at least the most visible part of it.
The main reason to be pleased with ourselves was that it rubbed a little salve on a hurtful thing done to a trusting older couple.
The site was a small woodlot that had been timbered a few years ago. Brush piles and the tops of felled trees had been left to fester into a tangle of brambles and rotting wood. Most of the lot is over a hill and out of view, but the entry is at the top, between two houses in a nice subdivision. One of the homes belongs to Johann and Weezie, who own the timbered acres.
I heard about the prospective work party through our son Seed, but the idea came from church friend Scotchwurst, who knows the worrisome history of this woodlot and previously cleaned up some of it on his own. Seed told me about it because he knows I hate to pass up the chance to chainsaw something.
Did I mention I own eight chainsaws?
"Weezie said she's mad at everyone for doing this," my wife Honey said with a laugh. "She's a giver and it's hard for her to be on the taking end. I told her to suck it up."
Honey has long known them through church, and Weezie is one of her volunteer staffers at the non-profit used book store my wife manages. The couple has a particular fondness for one of our grandsons, The Favorite, because he's a redhead.
I met with Scotchwurst at the woodlot Thursday morning to get a feel for the project, and we ended up putting in a few hours of work. The plan we agreed upon was to clear away the brambles, cut up and haul out anything that was halfway reasonable for firewood, and drag the rest over the hill to brush piles that are out of sight. I would have loved to burn them, but that is verboten in the subdivision.
Johann came out to talk and see how it was going. He said he made a verbal agreement with the logger, who was to pay for whatever trees turned out to be worth something at the sawmill, and take the rest for firewood.
Well, what a surprise when not one of the logs hauled away turned out to be worth turning into lumber, in the logger's estimation. When Johann challenged him, he said, "I know my business."
"Get off my property," Johann said.
The sight of the mess left to grow up beside their home has been a daily irritant to Johann ever since, and him no longer physically able to do anything about it.
You hate not to trust people, but a written contract and money up front is the rule with loggers.
Late getting to the work party Friday morning because that's my regular racquetball day, I was greeted by the happy buzz of a chainsaw and the thunk and ting of mauls, sledges and steel wedges splitting logs into firewood.
Seed had brought his three sons, Rufus, Bob and The Favorite, along with Jake, a friend of Bob's. Daughter Shark and her sons Lamppost Head and The 747 were carrying brush, trudging back and forth down the hill. To me, dragging brush was the worst part of that job.
Scotchwurst alternated between a chainsaw and a metal-bladed weedwhacker as he attacked a downed oak treetop and the multiflora rose thornbushes sprung up among its branches.
We all stopped work to examine a puncture wound on Bob's tender under forearm. He said a splinter flew from a log he was splitting, and he was convinced part of it was lodged under the skin. We took turns poking his arm, but none of us could feel anything in there. He got a brief rest and a Bandaid and went back to splitting.
Wearing short sleeves myself, my forearms were soon covered in blood from thorn scratches. I hardly noticed. When you get old your skin thins and the least nick bleeds like crazy.
Our little group worked past normal lunchtime, then trooped inside where Weezie laid out a handsome meal of chipped ham sandwiches and homemade minestrone soup.
Seed and I stayed afterward, using the truck to pull a few loose stumps over the hill. He took a picture of the cleared space with his phone and sent it around.
A good day, a good job, a good deed done on Good Friday.
(Fred Miller's third book of stories, "A Dead Carp on Shadyside Ave." is $10 (cheap!) and available locally at Calcutta Giant Eagle, Pottery City Antique Mall, Museum of Ceramics, Frank's Pastries, Davis Bros. pharmacies, and the Old Ft. Steuben gift shop.)