This is a true story of how I spent part of my childhood and youth growing up in rural Arkansas.

Sawing Logs


My dad has always been a do-it-yourselfer. He has spent most of his adult life building houses. So when I was a child he bought 22 overgrown acres in the country from relatives, cleared a spot, and built a house with his own hands (and some help from his brothers—he returned the favor a few years later) for our family to live in. Since I turned eight this has been the family homestead.

Dad built the place in the mid-1970s, when many rural families decided to beat the high cost of energy by burning wood. A big wood-burning stove served as our central heating. Feeding the hungry stove took a lot of work on Dad’s part. From an early age my brother and I shared in this.

Occasionally Dad would fell a tree on our property as part of his ongoing project to clear a large yard around the house. Now and then we would saw up a wind-fallen tree on our land. We also journeyed onto the immense clear-cut timber tract across the road from our property in search of tree-tops abandoned by loggers after they had taken the valuable logs.

Cutting and hauling firewood was a real adventure, especially when we scavenged for tops on the clear-cut. Clear-cutting, especially during the rainy season, devastates the land. It transforms it into a churned-up mess of muddy, rutted ground, strewn with tree-tops and flattened brush. Look at photos of the Western Front during World War I and you will get some idea what a raw cut looks like.

We had to go into that mess, and haul out heavy loads of firewood. To do it, we used a small garden tractor about the size of a riding lawnmower. It pulled a little trailer made of planks and a rusting frame and spoked wheels that came from I have no idea where. Dad improvised a little billet rack on the trailer for hauling cordwood. If the wood happened to be on or near our own property we could drive the tractor there and back. Otherwise the tractor and its trailer just fit onto a trailer towed behind Dad’s three-quarter-ton pickup.

We did most of our woodcutting on Saturday mornings during the cold part of the year. On especially cold days the light jackets we usually wore did not provide enough protection. Dad, who worked outside year-round, had a good pair of coveralls. My brother and I coped with the cold by pulling on an extra pair of jeans, extra socks, and a second flannel shirt. Since we did not have a good pair of work boots, we lined an old pair of tennis shoes with plastic bags in which our newspapers had been delivered in rainy weather. It felt funny to walk with a plastic bag between your socks and your shoes. But it waterproofed our feet pretty well.

The morning began with a good breakfast. After dressing in however many layers we would need, we went outside and checked out the tractor. We put a trash bag over the wet seat to keep the driver’s own seat dry. If it was going to be a long haul, Dad would carefully load the tractor and its trailer for shipping. When we got to the jumping-off point we unloaded the tractor, hitched up the trailer, and loaded Dad’s tools and gasoline can onto it. Then we drove to the nearest good vein of burnable wood.

Dad fired up his chainsaw. This took a greater or lesser amount of time, depending on the temperature of the air and the saw’s mood. While we stood clear, he began sawing up branches into lengths. The saw itself served as a measuring stick. Measure and cut…measure and cut….measure and cut. In a few minutes Dad had enough lengths of cordwood cut for us to begin loading. By now blue exhaust smoke and sawdust had filled the air. The fresh-cut wood had such an aromatic scent. If only the exhaust and sawdust had not made such effective allergens!

When Dad judged that we had a good load he killed the saw and pulled a length of cable out of his hand-held come-along winch. He looped the winch and its line over the stack of cordwood on the trailer and cranked it tight to hold the load in place. Dad had me work the winch sometimes. I would crank it as tight as both my skinny arms together could manage. Then Dad would give the winch handle a couple more turns for good measure, using little more than a flick of the wrist. He then returned to work with his chainsaw, while my brother and I hauled the load back to the truck or to the house.

I always drove the tractor, since I was the oldest. The method of starting it varied over the years. At first it started conventionally enough by turning a key. Then for a time I had to push a switch mounted onto a mass of wires protruding from the dash. Finally we just started it by touching the ends of two wires together.

I would sit on the trash-bag-upholstered seat and grip the fiercely-vibrating steering wheel with one hand. With the other I eased the tractor into gear. With a great lurch it took off at more or less a slow walking pace. It could go faster. On a littered clear-cut, though, you didn’t want to go too fast. The holes and branches and stumps everywhere made a real obstacle course. In some spots the path was only just wide enough for the tractor’s wheels. Now and then one of the trailer’s spoked wheels snagged on something and I had to back up and try again. On one occasion I ran over a stob protruding from the ground that nearly caused the tractor to capsize with me on it. The whole time the clattering engine made so much racket that conversation was nearly impossible.

At our destination my brother and I stopped and killed the engine. Blessed quietness suddenly ruled again. With still-vibrating hands I would back off the come-along to release the load. We unloaded the trailer and went back for more.

Some of the wood we acquired had to be split before we burned it. Dad was a good wood splitter. Since he often had other work to do, I found myself doing much of the splitting. Until late in my teen years I could not properly handle Dad’s splitting maul. I made do instead with a wedge and a sledgehammer. I could not really swing the hammer. Instead I picked it up and dropped its head onto the wedge. This was not the most efficient means of splitting wood. It took a lot of raising and falling to split the wood, especially if I had a big block of it. One tree on our land, felled some time before by one of the scariest storms I’ve seen, had a trunk so large that each section yielded two dozen pieces of stove wood.

Now and then I got a wedge trapped in the middle of an especially large, stubborn, or soft-centered block. I would have to take another wedge and start it in the side to free the first one. Occasionally I managed to trap that one as well. Then I had to try plying Dad’s maul as best I could.

One of my best memories of cutting firewood involves a Thanksgiving day. We had a big family gathering each year at my grandmother’s house. We usually spent the morning raking her yard. On at least one occasion we postponed this in order to cut her a year’s supply of firewood from trees on her land. The family divided into a cooking crew and a firewood crew. I had more experience with wood, and so I belonged to the latter.

We had brought Dad’s tractor and trailer to haul the wood to the yard beside the house. There we got to work splitting. Dad had a big double-bitted woodsman’s axe. Some of the other men used mauls. Others of us, including me, used the wedge and sledge. We filled the air with the thud of wood blocks set down on the ground, the crack of wood rent apart, the hollow clunking of new-cut stove wood tossed onto the woodpile, and the ringing of steel on steel. Now and then somebody’s wedge (usually mine) took a glancing blow and went flying off to the side.

We all worked up a good sweat as the cold morning warmed up. One of my cousins’ husband commented that this was why we called it Thanksgiving—we gave thanks that we only had to do this once a year. In all, though, we were only busy for a few hours. Then we washed up for the day’s feast. After that the men watched the games on TV, the women did dishes and visited, and the kids amused themselves in various ways.

With two exceptions. My brother and a cousin close to his age had managed to disappear during most of the wood work. They rematerialized just in time for lunch. After lunch, one of our uncles put them to work raking our grandmother’s yard. Usually we all pitched in with the raking. This time they got to do it all themselves.

I'm tired just reading it. But that Thanksgiving Day sounds like it was a sweet one.

Every Thanksgiving was sweet, while my grandmother was still there to make up her rolls. I've never had rolls like that anywhere else. When one of my uncles was a boy that's all he wanted to eat!

We certainly earned that Thanksgiving dinner!

D.L., you really make it vividly come to life.

A real glimpse into a life very foreign to me.

This is a wonderful story. Well written, and a true glimpse into a real life. Bravo.