Mason
On Sunday, Veterans Day, pastor John Williams at the West Bethel Union Church was talking to the children about the meaning of Veterans Day. As part of his talk, he displayed a large black and white photo of his dad among a whole battalion of soldiers taken in 1945 (near the end of WWII). One little boy raised his hand and asked, “Was that picture taken before they had color?” Everyone laughed!
I had a bad day last Friday while I was doing some logging. It started when I had to tinker one of my chainsaws before I could get it to run; that was my newest saw, too! Later, I felled a rather large maple tree and was sawing off the butt log just below the first crotch in the tree. Because the tree was suspended over a low place in the ground beneath, I made only a shallow curf on the top side of the trunk before beginning an “undercut” to finish severing the log. Somehow the pressure of the weight of the tree branch above the crotch bent the wrong way, and my saw blade was tightly pinched and was unmovable! No problem! I took my second chainsaw and began a new cut on the top side of the log just above where the first saw was pinched, thinking this would relieve the pressure on the other saw. Wrong! This saw was soon pinched and unmovable too!
After sitting down and thinking about where I could borrow another saw, I had an inspiration. I could take my bar wrench, remove the nuts attaching the saw body to the bar and chain, freeing the saw for further use, with a new bar and chain. I did this with both saws, in case the log should roll over when I finally severed it and possibly damage one of the saws. I just happened to have an old saw bar and a new chain hanging on the wall in my shop.
When I finally got the tree severed, one bar and chain was freed, but the other remained firmly pinched in the under side of the log. In order to relieve the pressure I had to roll the log over, but it was too heavily rolled against a stump to move with a cant dog. Another inspiration. I could bring the winch cable to the log at a right angle and hook a choker chain around the log so that it would roll the log over when I engaged the winch. Success! When the log rolled over, the other bar and chain came loose.
The final frustration of the day came when I was dragging the log over the berm at the edge of my little frog pond. All was fine until the tractor and I passed the pond about 100 feet, when “Clunk!” The end of the cable yanked out of the winch, leaving my log on the berm! I failed to notice that the cable ratchet released when the log topped the berm. The log remained attached to the cable, but the weight of the log allowed the cable to come unwound from its spool, and the end of the cable yanked out of the pinch fitting when it came taut! I then had to take tractor, winch and cable back to the garage, cut the frayed end of the cable, re-attach it to the winch spool and go back after my logs. A perfect end to a bad day!