Coming home to work

Now, you know that I like to work. I got out of the army, and I headed for home, just waiting to get a job and get to work. I got home, and after a little bit, my father, your great grandfather, came to me, he said, "There's a guy on my crew, he got hurt, and the crew is going out to cut some wood on his land. He heats his house with a wood stove, and since he can't cut the wood himself, we're going to make sure that he has enough to get through the winter. Want to come help?"

So, I said, "Sure pop." Now, what you have to know, is that my father was a lumberjack up in Canada before he came down here. He used to work in the lumber camps, with his brothers, and the come home only a couple of times a year. After he had done that for a bit, he taught himself how to read blueprints. He only had a fifth grade education, and he taught himself how to read blueprints, he was no dummy. He got a job working as a foreman, in marine construction.

Well, the day came, and we went out to the guy's land. It was me, my father, and my brothers, along with the rest of my father's work crew. Now, I was young, in good shape, I had just got out of the army, and so I said to my old man, "Pop, today, I'm going to show you how to work." So, we went to work. We took a two man cross-cut saw and started on the trees.

"Two man crosscut saw?" I asked

Yeah, it's a big saw, so big that you need two people to use it, one guy on each end, pulling back and forth. We didn't have chainsaws back then. So, my father and I went to work with one, him on one side, me on the other. Well, we went on for a few hours, and it came time for lunch. I was tuckered out. I don't think I've worked that hard in a long time. I flopped out on the ground exhausted, figuring that I'd rest up during lunch, and then get back to work. Well, I looked up from the ground, and there was my father, handling that saw on his own. He just looked at me and laughed. He said, "You just go ahead and show me how to work." That old man could work like nobody else.

[image credit: fine-tools.com]