I lasted six hours

One of the older gentlemen at the church I attend asked if I could give him a hand.

I agreed. I assumed he needed the petunias growing in his window boxes weeded.

At 9:30 AM, sharp, I showed up with work gloves and a sunny disposition.

I lasted until 3:30 PM and could barely drag myself to the truck.

I felt at home. The 75 year old had a shooting range.

The 75 year-old has an interesting theory for conserving ammo. He fires one shot a day. After ten shots or so, he moves to the next dot. The dots are about the size of a pencil eraser and the target is about 70 yards from his garage.

The older gentlemen and his 75 year-old friend were still as fresh as daisies.

Last boards and stickers. Amazingly knot-free.

The gentleman from church and his buddy had cut 55 logs and hired a portable sawmill to come in and mill them into 3/4" lumber.

My job was to roll the logs to the lift-arm of the mill and to strip off the boards.

The "rounds" went to the burn pile.

The two-bark edges went into one pile.

One good edge went into another pile.

Two good edges went on the trailer.

When we had enough one-edge and two-edge boards we cut stickers.

Simple, no?

The two old geezers were skidding logs from various corners of the farm to the site of the saw-mill.

Green lumber has about the same mass density as water. A 12' long, 8" wide 13/16" rough sawn board weighs about 35 pounds and the distance between the end of the saw-mill and the trailer was just a little farther than I could walk in the time it took the 20 horse-power mill to crank out one-more-board.

Most of the time, one of the geezers would stop what they were doing in time to keep me from being swept over the waterfall. Most of the time.

My friend from the church supplied lunch. He is wise to the ways of workers who go off to lunch "in town" and don't come back. We had a half hour for lunch and were back at it.

I asked if I could go home at 3:30. I was "stupid tired". I was catching myself going through the motions and not checking the location of the clamps or the saw-head.

The friend from church had pity on me. He said I could come to work a half-hour later tomorrow. I expect them to have a mountain of logs staged by 10:00 AM.

I can already tell that compression shorts are going to be my best friend tomorrow.

Bella's lament

The "girl's room" has always had issues with ventilation.

Frigid in the winter. Sweltering in the summer.

In the interest of maintaining private space and minimizing bickering, I ask my kids to lock the door of their bedroom when they are not home. Bella pushed back. Leaving the door to her room open was the only way to make it livable.

I call "Balderdash!"

Bella, the absolute model of civilization and propriety, suggested that I look into it.

I used the same gauge I saw in a $500M automotive factory paint-shop. A strip of toilet paper and a piece of masking tape.

Cutting to the chase, the geniuses who built our house in the mid-1970s hooked up the air return in Bella's room to the high-pressure air feed ducting. Bella's room has two feeds and no returns.

The fix will be to put a vent over her doorway so air can exit her room. I fully expect to find my name engraved, once again, in the hall of heroes.

But it will have to wait until after my lumberjack career.