Woodcutting adventure

A few weekends ago, at the beginning of the flooding, the 12-year-old grandson and I went on a woodcutting adventure.

His parents had bought another house in Garnett, and this one came equipped with a fireplace. Last summer, while helping grandpa, he got into wood splitting with the use of a maul. He decided we needed to get some wood, so he could split it and keep the familly warm next winter.

Early on Saturday morning, I drove 60 miles through the rain and picked him up. Armed with a chansaw, we headed back down to Redfield to see if we could find a couple of likely trees we could use for the wood supply. The second motive was to bring him down so he could see all the flooding that was occurring. Paint Creek was way out of its banks, and what had been a field on the lower part of the property now resembled a muddly lake. By the time we were ready to saw the wood, the rain had turned into a drizzle. We managed the first tree without much problem but then decided we ought to get an oak tree, which proved to be a problem. After sticking the saw three times, we finally got it loose by hooking a chain on the trunk of the fallen tree and jerking it enough to get the pressure off the saw. by the time we were finished, it was hard to tell if we had sweat through our clothing or the drizzle had managed to wet us down.

We hauled the wood back to Fort Scott and, by that time, decided it was going to be late enough that he could stay overnight and return home the following morning. I had a short meeting in the late afternoon, so he stayed at the house and I went to the meeting. We were planning on going to the movie but, by the time the meeting was finished, we had missed the early showing. So we went to see "Evan Almighty" at the 9:05 showing. At 10:45, he was ordering a Big Mac, since he had missed supper.

On the way back to Garnett, we stopped at the Chicken Shack and ordered enough chicken to feed the rest of the family while he and I munched on some fresh onion rings for the remainder of the trip.

Now, there is a pickup full of wood stacked in the backyard, ready to split, but most of all, he and grandpa had a good time doing some real work.