My Job

My job description has changed.  I did my time out in the woods with Steve and the guys for years.  We'd drive up and down bumpy, narrow, one-lane dirt roads in the National Forests, permit firmly in hand, looking for slash piles left by logging crews until finding one close to the road, hopefully one where the crews had bucked off the brushy limbs.  A milk crate held the saw kit:  oil, file, gas can, and whatever other paraphernalia Steve could think of.  It wouldn't do to break or run out of something that far out in the wilds.  There were always two or three chainsaws in the back of the truck.  Once started, those chainsaws didn't stop.  Steve and anyone conned into coming along climbed up on the slash pile and the logs started dropping.  It was my job then to haul those logs and rounds, some so big I had to roll them, and stack them in the truck and trailer.  I also learned how to sharpen the blades on the chain.  Many times it was just the two of us.  We cut wood on 100-degree days and we cut wood in falling snow.  Steve had a don't-quit attitude and unbelievable stamina, and it was sometimes hard to keep up with him.  He recognized that when I started to stumble, it was time to stop for the day.  There would be a truck bed loaded to the gunnels and a trailer behind that filled to the top with logs and rounds.  Lunch on these trips became a tradition:  fried-egg sandwiches, a box of Cheez-Its, and a Milky Way bar.  Being the chief logger in charge, it was Steve's decree that we could not eat lunch until the job was done and we were back in the truck on the way home.  Nothing ever tasted so good as those sandwiches.

Dave and Clay got here while I was down in the barn and started testing their chainsaws while I finished milking.  They also found the cookies.  They were down in the pasture, already cutting on that three-feet-across limb, when I got back to the house.  It was a perfect day for the task, not too hot, not too cold, a nice breeze to blow away the sawdust.  When I figured they were due for a break (not my first time at this rodeo), I got on the little tractor, packed a couple of cold beers in a shoulder bag, and tootled down the hill where I was welcomed with big smiles.  A couple of hours later, I made that trip again; same smiles.  By the time the guys had come back and unloaded a big pile of rounds ready to be split under the front oak, I had lunch ready.  Clay had enjoyed the fried-egg sandwich tradition with Steve, so I upped the ante and made Rodeo sandwiches:  crisp diced bacon topped with eggs, a slice of onion, and cheese, covered and cooked until the broken yolks were set, the onion soft, and the cheese melted, served on toasted bread.  The cheese had to suffice because the feed store didn't carry Cheez-Its, and the cookies for dessert instead of a Milky Way bar, but the guys didn't seem to mind.  I know my job.