Turn the clock back 40 or so years and I can see exactly
what my family was doing on a grey weekend day like today.
With full bellies after breakfast, a half dozen kids and two
parents would be lolling about the living room reading the paper and listening
to the radio. Dad would notice a fresh-looking
log floating in the cove in front of our house that had probably tumbled down
the Puyallup River during the spring rains.
A quick look through the binoculars would confirm that this one, with its
bark mostly intact and a little fresh wood exposed, was worth harvesting.
He and Mom, or sometimes an older sibling, would pull out
the dinghy, mount the outboard motor and hum toward the log before it floated
out of reasonable reach. This log
harvesting wasn’t exactly legal but was not harmful either. And besides – it kept our drafty old home
toasty warm in the winter with plenty of dry wood to stoke the fire.
My tall, strong Papa would drag that log up the beach, just high
enough to safely start cutting. Out came
his chainsaw and we would all plug our ears while sweet-smelling chips flew in
all directions. He would turn the long,
branchless tree into a pile of round, fat cookies. In a race with the inevitably rising tide he
would grab the ax and start chopping away.
We kids would scurry about a safe distance away on the beach searching
for treasures and playing with the shore crabs until we were called to
duty.
We were each required to stack as many splintery pieces as
we could carry in our arms and haul our load up the steep grass hill to the side
of the garage. There the wood would be
neatly stacked to dry out for the following winter. Being the youngest I always took the smaller
pieces, but it was hard work climbing all the stairs up from the beach
regardless. My folks are of the hard-working
type and they expected us to be hard workers too. Although incessant complaining was not
tolerated, we certainly grumbled plenty to each other, out of hearing range of
our parents
One of the rewards of this manual labor was when the day
ended much like it started. We’d be
lounging around the living room after a belly-warming dinner, basking in the
warmth of a fire built from last year’s log harvest. Dad, exhausted, would stretch out across the
carpet, half napping, while my sisters and I drove our Hot Wheels racing cars
all over Daddy Mountain.
As us kids grew up and everyone was too busy for these
communal projects, Dad reluctantly ordered and paid for cords of wood to be
delivered to our driveway in a big noisy truck.
We still were called out to stack the wood, but this job was much easier
without the steep hill to climb. That
purchased, delivered wood kept our house warm as well. But I think those fires built with the sea-salty
harvested wood, collected by my Dad and his strong work ethic that he passed
along to all of us kids, made the coziest fires of all.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
Thanks for all of the great memories and lessons along the way.
