“I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay. I sleep all night and I work all day.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus
What’s black and white and red all over? Two mimes fighting with chainsaws.
I saw a quote this week that made me smile a lot. I’ll share it with you:
“When God put a calling on your life He already factored in your stupidity.”
A few weeks ago, a tree fell down and hit our house during a storm. And by a tree, I mean a huge one. I had snapped off 15 feet (57 Joules) up the tree. It was nearly horizontal, and resting on my favorite roof.
I’ll admit that I was sitting in the hot tub during the storm that brought down the tree.
It was glorious. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a tree fall. It’s wonderful. Approximately once every five minutes, I’d hear the tearing of wood and then, after a pause for the amount of time it took for the vertical tree to become horizontal, the crash. The next day, one more tree fell.
It fell into my house. The Mrs. sent me a picture.
I waited until Saturday when The Boy was down from Upper Lower Midwestia University to solve the problem, because the one thing a boy home from college wants to hear? “Hey, son, glad you’re back from college for a weekend of rest. I’m going to grab you and your brother and we’re going to work all day in one of your dad’s crazy adventures. Oh, and it involves you getting up early and chainsaws.”
Honestly, he should be used to it by now.
Looking back, I realize that in a normal world, I would have called my insurance company. They’d send out adjusters who would look at the tree. They’d measure it, weigh it, and sensuously cup its fallen boughs, which still happens to be legal in my state.
I’ve heard you can save a lot of money on car insurance by switching. Switching to reverse and leaving the scene.
They would look in the book of “Tree Falling On House Payments.” They’d then tell me that elm trees falling on houses in Upper Lower Midwestia were excluded. I would then correct them because I live in Lower Upper Midwestia and the tree was actually a son of a birch.
Then he says, “Oh, you’re that John Wilder. Of course! Insurance will cover it.”
Then, I would call a tree company to come and move the tree. Since everyone in town had a tree fall on their house, it would take a month for them to show up for an estimate, and another month for them to remove the tree. After the tree company charged me $2200 to move it, I’d toss the bill to the insurance company.
I’d pay the deductible (which is currently set at my left kidney for my homeowner’s policy, and my cornea for auto), and that’s it.
But would that be the Wilder Way? Of course not.
I can sleep in on the weekends. The Mrs., who is borderline insomniac, feels that this is my superpower. Generally, I can get to sleep in less than five minutes, often in less than one. The Mrs. can only sleep on Tuesdays after 9 P.M. if it’s not Daylight Savings Time. The Mrs. has walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and returned to find me sound asleep. I can even do it when I’m driving, though my passengers don’t seem to care for it.
What’s green, fuzzy, and will kill you if it falls on you out of a tree? A pool table.
The reason I can sleep is only when I don’t have a Mission. When there’s a Mission? I wake up and I’m ready to go. I don’t even need an alarm clock. The tree on my house represented a Mission.
As it was, I had Pugsley and The Boy available, and daylight was burning. I knocked on each door as I went out to start work.
I started with the branch trimmer. Alone. The sleeping leviathans inside had yet to move.
Branch trimmers are like the scissors that Hannibal Lecter would use to, umm, prune a rose bush. This was my third set. The problem with the first two is that The Boy and then Pugsley pulled the handles too hard and bent the metal. Sometimes, living with them is like living with five-year-olds that don’t understand that they can twist metal with their bare hands.
So, a paid for the expensive trimmers this time.
Trees don’t walk. They lumber.
These trimmers were good enough to cut through about a 2” branch, which is pretty stout. I took the trimmer and started hacking. I was about 30 minutes into hacking when The Boy showed up. Pugsley showed up slightly later. It took us 10 years to convince him he had to shower, and now he has six of them a day. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he takes a cheese plate into the shower.
When Pugsley showed up, I had him get the chainsaw, mix gas, chain oil and chainsaw sharpener. I showed him how to sharpen the chainsaw blade, which took all of 30 seconds, but then he knew how it worked. I also showed him how to adjust the chain. These may seem like small things, but they are rites of passage. There are many tools in a cabinet, and some are mostly harmless, like a screwdriver. But a chainsaw?
A fear of spiders is called arachnophobia. A fear of chainsaws? That’s called common sense.
For the next seven hours we were like ants, taking branch after branch off of the tree, first with the branch trimmer and then with the chainsaw.
I had a dentist who used to be a lumberjack. He pulled a tooth by mistake. I’ll never to Axedental again.
Finally, we were down to two major branches. By the time we’d gotten there, I realized that what I had done was, slowly, cut off all of the minor support points. It seemed like a good bet. But it was also a nagging feeling that I might be making the problem worse.
I was. While sitting down, I heard a sharp crack.
Like wood breaking. The exact sound I had heard while having a beer in the hot tub during the storm.
One of the two branches left holding up the whole tree was cracking. Looking at the tree, I saw that it was big. I estimated that what remained was about 5,000 pounds (one metric “Your Momma”) and a quick check of my estimate that I did while writing this backed that number up, unless the tree was on a low carb diet.
That 5,000 pounds was going to fall on my deck, and if I wasn’t careful? 5,000 pounds dropping 15 feet is a lot of energy – enough energy to smash a deck, a Wilder, and maybe an insurance adjustor to boot.
I had The Boy and Pugsley run into the garage looking for whatever lumber they could find that was the right length to prop up this rapidly deteriorating situation. After ten minutes, I had two 2×4’s and one mangy plank holding the tree up. It wasn’t moving, but it wasn’t stable, and it was 10.5 feet (one metric Barron Trump) up in the air.
The Mrs. took a picture of my makeshift supports. She sent it to her high school friend list. One friend who is in city planning responded, “Oh, no! This looks like all of the ladder safety videos that they make us watch.”
I thought about what I’d do, and sent The Boy and Pugsley off to buy a 10’ stepladder and some ratchet tie-offs. When they got back, I propped the 10’ stepladder under the branch, shimmed it with lumber, and then got the chainsaw-on-a-stick.
The chainsaw-on-a-stick is just that – a tiny electric chainsaw mounted on a stick. This one has an 8” blade, and is meant to cut things far away. That’s good, because that’s exactly what I intended to do. I would have liked to cut this particular tree from orbit, because it was lopsided – it looked like it wanted to twist, hard, clockwise.
I used to be a lumberjack in the Sahara Forest. Well, it used to be the Sahara Forest. I’m that good.
I tied off the branch to a convenient tree so when I cut it loose it couldn’t fall into the garden shed. I further tied off one of the remaining branches so maybe that it wouldn’t twist as it fell.
Pugsley pulled out his camera to record the action.
“Nope. Put it away.” The situation that I had put myself into was less than optimal. I realize that as men we are here not to live a life without risk, but to live a life. And the Sun was now going down. It was now or never. One way or another that tree was coming down before the Sun went down.
Getting injured because you refused to let someone else clear the tree? That seems like a stupid and futile gesture.
Well, if you’re looking for stupid and futile gestures, you’ve come to the right place. I just didn’t want my particular stupid and futile gesture to result in YouTube® videos of my death. I proceeded to take the chainsaw on a stick and started to cut into the branch.
As far as tense moments go, having the stored energy of a Ford Explorer® 15 feet up in the air, dependent upon your calculations and being right?
It’s tense.
When I was back in Alaska, I could regularly drop trees within a degree of where I wanted them to go. Was I a lumberjack? No. But I had to lay in dozens of metric Your Momma’s worth of wood a year just to heat the house. You get pretty comfortable with a chainsaw doing that.
When I cut wood in Alaska, I didn’t get overtime, even though I logged a lot of hours.
But that was 15 years (3 centimeters) ago. I cut into the tree. I first cut a relief cut in the top of the horizontal branch. I didn’t want stress to build up there and hang the whole mess up. Then I started to cut from the bottom up.
You have to cut a tree that’s acting like a beam from the bottom up. If you cut it from the top down? It will bind the saw, and you end up in a crazy place where you have a stuck saw and a Ford Explorer®’s amount of energy dependent upon you freeing it.
I cut into the tree. A lot. Then paused. The opening the chainsaw had made grew larger as the stress pulled the tree apart. I cut into the tree again. By now, the entire 5,000 pounds was hanging by a 3” by 2” slab of wood. Still no movement.
Finally, I cut deeper. I hear the “crack” as the tree split. Pugsley was watching from a safe distance. He said the tree dropped perfectly down. I wouldn’t know – I was headed the opposite direction. Not only was there the 5,000 pound tree, there was also the bit still on the roof. I could easily imagine that part whipping around as it was pulled by the main branch.
The final crack came.
The tree did come down. Perfectly. The bit left on the roof? Didn’t move an inch. Exactly as I wanted it to go. I sat down as The Boy and Pugsley removed the rest of the debris. Pugsley even got me a beer and said, “You’re done, Pop. Have a rest.”
I trained my kids that if I ever choke on a beer, they should give me the Heineken® maneuver.
The damage to the house was minimal, actually. A bit of gutter needs to be moved back into place. One shingle lost its gravel in a small circle. A solar light was broken. I need to replace one deck board, one chair, and one plastic bench. Oh, and we spent 27 hours of labor. I was sore for the next three days.
If a tree falls on your house and that’s all you lose? You’re as lucky as me. Which is pretty lucky.
Or, more likely? God has factored my stupidity into my life.
Bravo. Your post reminds me of a former boss, his chainsaw, being alone, removing a tree from the neighbor’s roof (No, I don’t know what error in judgement preceded the event) and having a stub of a branch pierce his leg as the tree rolled.
He did manage to make his way to an emergency center, where they used a bottle brush to clean the puncture….without any pain medication.
It was a lesson to be learned: Never go to an emergency room with a sadist intern.
Ha! The thing I’ve learned in knocking down tree after tree is that an amazing amount of energy is released when these bad boys go down. Physics is a harsh mistress.
And bottle brush? I’m going to have to remember that one.
You, sir, may think you’re the fast-getting-to-sleep champion of the world … but I want a getting-to-sleep-fast playoff series before conceding the title to you. Just ask my version of the Mrs. (after 46 years of marriage, I’ve taken to referring to her as “the current wife,” especially if I’m out of range of her butt-kicking foot). She’ll tell you. It’s a very rare night when I last as long as 5 minutes after head hits pillow. And if I’ve just had my evening coffee? Even faster. I likes me my coffee, but as for caffeine, it’s a placebo. Doesn’t do its job. Many’s the time when I’ve sat down after supper with my after-supper coffee and a book, and been awakened by the coffee spilled on my lap by my sleeping hand. I’ve got a coffee-stained book or two as a result of such accidents.
Let’s have that sleep-off! It’s on like Donkey Kong.
Ha! I call The Mrs. my Last Wife.
Same thing for me with coffee. I can have a cup or a pot. Meh. Sleep is still easy.
You two are like my wife and brother out in 2 minutes. I am jealous. He can take a catnap during the day wake up and feel great. When I am really tired my naps are 2 hours and wake up to the wake up routine. But I am an early riser everyday without an alarm.
I do have that superpower, too. If I know I need to get up at a time (and I’ve had more than four hours of sleep) then I wake up before the alarm.
Reminds me of my early days. Thanks for the grins.
I’m a retired contractor that can still count to ten with shoes on.
Yup. When great energy is involved, I slow everything, and I mean everything down.
So that’s eight fingers and two shoes?
Ha! Count Toten! LOVE IT!
I live on the edge of a subdivision that 15 years ago was a cotton field cleared out of the woods. These woods are in the nearby creek’s flood plain, so converting the cotton field into our subdivision involved dumping a lot of fill clay from offsite to get the elevation up. As a result, my backyard is a grassy 30 degree slope down to the original forest level. The back end of my acre lot frequently floods, especially since all the drainage from 500+ houses flows directly into it from a huge nearby concrete trench. It’s ultimately connected to the Tennessee River a few miles away, so flooding in my backyard (and acres of the woods beyond) can (and has) persist for literally weeks if TVA holds the river level up during stormy weather in the reservoir between the two local dams.
I tell myself I’m OK with all of this (what choice do I have?) because I like having the woods as my backyard vista instead of somebody’s else’s wooden fence and their house like most of my neighbors must endure. Those woods wouldn’t be there if they weren’t flood plain, they’d have been cut down for more house lots. So I’m willing to endure a few weeks of flooding per year so I get a very picturesque and even beautiful backyard all the rest of the time. I grew up with deep woods behind my house to wander around in, and now at the other end of life I have that exact same setup and I like it.
But in the ten years I’ve lived here, it’s been hard on the trees. There were once a dozen huge ancient oaks within a hundred yards of my back door, equally divided between my lot and my good next-door neighbor’s lot. Between the slope fill dirt cutting off rainfall to their roots for the closer ones, and being submerged for weeks at a time for the more distant ones, at least a half dozen of these oaks have died in the past ten years. We had the three closest ones taken down by a tree service and WOW was there a huge bang when those final trunks came down only a few feet away from our roofs. The more distant ones are still standing and shed their widowmaker branches at random intervals. I wish Ralph would go ahead and cut them down, they’re on his side of the line, but they’re his not mine so for now they stand. I actually rather enjoy occasionally gathering up their fallen branches, cutting them up with my little chain saw, starting a bonfire over on my side of the woods, and sitting in a foldup chair by a campfire just down the hill from my back door, sharing the sight of sparks flying upward towards the dark sky with my good friend Jack…
https://i.imgur.com/W4WzlHv.jpg
A perfect place to hang with Jack.
Excellent. We have a new wood burning pit, and this is the perfect time of the year to use it.
After retirement some days I wonder, okay now what? This explains it!
“When God put a calling on your life He already factored in your stupidity.”
That phrase really did hit me – especially after all the stupid things I’ve done. And it explained a lot.
This brings back memories of being woken up early on Saturday mornings. Well, early for 16 year old me. The old man was showered, dressed, fed, and was drinking coffee. It was probably around 6 in the morning. He comes into my bedroom and booms orders at me in a Polish accent, “Why are you still sleeping? We’re cutting Mrs.Six-pack’s trees today. You’re food is getting cold. Get up!” I was showered, dressed, and eating in less than 20 minutes. We were on the road before 7. My Old-man never stopped. A dynamo of energy. He is still going strong into his 70’s. Suck on that Dr. Zeke Emanuel!
The man taught me what hard work is and why its important. He also taught me there are no free rides. Everybody rows the boat. Its heartening to know that there are more people out there rowing the boat, Or cutting the trees in this case. Cheers to you and your family! Kindred spirits, the lot of you.
Thank you!
Yeah, I remember those mornings, too. Sitting between Pop and my brother. The best thing was, sleepy as I was, I didn’t have to drive or think as we headed up the mountain to cut firewood.
I miss it.
This riveting account of birch-wrangling leaves just one burning question, JW. If you and your boys were engaged in battle with the tree and the Mrs. was snapping photos, who was holding your beer?
Considering how often these tools figure in some really great stories, its a wonder chainsaws don’t come with a cupholder.
Heh. No beer until the saw went up. Then I had plenty. The Mrs. did run the music, but she was an ex-DJ in another life.
I live on acres of heavy Ponderosa Pine that I occasionally harvest for firewood. Firewood snobs say pine is one of the worst woods to burn. Nonsense! Says I. The best wood to burn is the kind you don’t pay for. This place is loaded with pine, so it’s all free. I’ve been burning it for the twenty-one years we’ve lived in our secluded hilltop compound.
Another rule: The best way to not pay for firewood is to not get hurt cutting it. With that rule in mind, each tree takes about two days to fall: one day for me to wrap my slow brain around the best way to cut it, and another day to actually do the deed, limb it, and section it into rounds.
The fun part is splitting. Doing it Old School with wedges, sledgehammer and splitting maul is my preferred method. It’s said that firewood warms you twice. Not true. I count four times: Cutting. Splitting. Stacking. Burning.
Learning how to use and respect a chainsaw was one of my most valuable lessons in life. Though that didn’t stop me from slipping the other day and almost cutting off half my foot. My reflexes saved me in time, only cutting the bootlace and scuffing the boot tongue. Whew!
I didn’t tell The Missus.
Pop stayed away from pine, mostly. It all paid the same for me, though, mainly nothing (except food, room, clothes, lights, spending money, college, etc.).
I love splitting firewood. A Wood Grenade is better than any wedge.
I have some good memories of my Dad waking me up on weekends home from college to do the exact same thing. Cutting down trees to use to heat the house and also make maple syrup. He would have me set up a pop can, and he would drop the tree on it. I don’t remember him ever missing. While filling the chainsaw with gas, he would share stories of working in logging camps in California while he worked with the US Forest Service. Cutting down trees, dealing with bears, and occasionally fighting forest fires. Tough old man and great father, I was afraid of chains saws for many years, and was not allowed to run one until I was late in my teens. John – Glad you did not get hurt, or damage your house. Great story.
That might be the best memories – men working hard with sons. Kind of a symmetry with the universe, eh?
We all have different ways of attacking a fallen tree. What we do is start with the big a$$ pruning shears, Corona 30″ long “i’m done talking’ model. When the branch is too thick to cut in one cut, bounce the handle as deep as possible, rotate shears 45 degrees and repeat, then turn an additional 90 in opposite direction. I can cut branches 4” thick doing that.
THEN the chain saws. Always start with branches that are unsupported (not hung up) and NOT HOLDING THE TRUNK UP. Haul those out ot the way. By now, you are probably stuck with three or four main beams and the trunk. This is where it gets dicey and depending on the internal ‘DO YOU FEEL LUCKY PUNK ?’, will sometimes call in the guy with a tractor to pull the tree out of position. The trunk – that sometimes gets left in place. I have a mesquite branch about 2 feet in diameter that fell in the back yard. Am thinking of cutting out sections and make a bench of it , leaving it in place for bar-b-ques. Yeah, I wuss out on the real heavy duty work – I know my limitations and respect them.
Yeah – that was my mistake – there were about three that were supporting the trunk that I cut early. I still have to cut the trunk into chunks. Maybe go thin and cut slabs and see how those work . . . .
Huzzah.
Well told.
A cut above the rest!
Groan . . . . okay you win that one!!!!
Thank you, sir.
Back when men were real men, and women were real women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before, and thus was the Empire forged.
In these enlightened days, of course, no one believes a word of it.
” one deck board, one chair, and one plastic bench.” Isn’t that from the George Thorogood song? Oh wait….
The Mrs. played One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer while we were working. You nailed it!
Cutting like that is an art. Well done.
Thank you!!
And I am horribly out of practice. Which is why I went so very, very slow on that last cut.
God factors in your stupidity and sometimes protects you from it. Seven and a half years ago I tracked a 67 year old 3000 thousand pound [yes 3000] gasoline driven bulldozer into a fully crowned forest fire. The realization of stupidity that night are numerous but two really stand out. Standing on the very top of an 8 foot step ladder trying to throw buckets of water into the on fire lower reaches of a tree is one. The second was siphoning fuel from my escape vehicle into said bulldozer to track back into the fire. God does really look after fools with tools.
Oh, my! Reminds me of the time I put a potato box filled with sawdust soaked in motor oil into a wood stove. Had to open the windows – and it was 20 below.