The Summer of My Discontent! by Bob Kaufman

Stan Ghidossi's Wood Pile 2019

My friend, Stan Ghidossi, posted this picture on Facebook, November 16, 2019. Reading his post took my mind back to “The Summer of My Discontent!”

I remember vividly the summer, probably 1964 or '65, when Dad ordered a truckload of logs delivered to the vacant lot across the gully from our house. It was my task to turn the logs into firewood for the coming winter, load the finished product into the bed of Dad's '56 Chevy pickup, and transport the load to the woodpile in our front yard. These were not Lincoln Logs. At the big end, some were about four feet in diameter, certainly longer than the 36" guide bar of Dad's biggest chainsaw. Like slicing a carrot, I cut those logs into pieces short enough to fit our fireplace. No summer before nor since have I been so intimately acquainted with a chainsaw as I was then. Perhaps a close second was a few years earlier, 1958 I think, when lightning struck and destroyed the big tree on the corner of Plumas and Pine Streets...but that's another story.

Dad Sawing the Tree
Destroyed by Lightning

(Oh heck! Why not?)

When that lightning bolt jolted into my life, shattering parts of that ill-fated tree and cutting a spiral rift from top to bottom, I was at the street corner by the telephone office, just a short diagonal city block away, returning from a trek to Leonard's Market, toting groceries in a paper bag that felt like it could not hold intact for one more block's walk in the deluge. I think I may have sought shelter from the rain, pausing momentarily under the veranda at the entrance to the office. You know how a paper grocery bag silently rips apart when it gets wet, especially when it is full of bottled or canned goods? Well...how that wet paper bag didn't disintegrate, scattering the groceries all over the phone office parking lot and shattering the bottles, when I jumped, is a mystery. I do not remember having to break into my piggy bank for funds to replace the groceries, so it is possible that Marge had double-bagged them to ensure a successful delivery.

Mom Helped

When the time came to make firewood from that tree, I was too young to be trusted with running the chainsaw, so my duties were confined to gathering, loading, and unloading the log disks, and splitting them into fuel. There must be a mountain-dweller’s name for those log disks, but I’ve lived in the desert now for nearly a half century, so if there is one, it has floated away from my mental archive like the smoke from all those logs I made into firewood and burned in the old fireplace.

Both summers of my discontent I found myself wishing that Dad would buy one of those gas-powered log-splitters to make my life easier, something he did, finally, after I had migrated to the desert but too late for me to get any pleasure from running it. Actually, it is good that he didn’t buy that work saver. If he had, I would have remained a Casper Milquetoast, never having completed the physical training I needed to become the football superstar I was that fall! Nevertheless, those pre-log-splitter summers were my opportunity to learn that I NEVER wanted to make my living using a sledgehammer and wedges!

(Truthfully, by Thanksgiving that year, I had also learned I wasn't going to earn a living on the gridiron either.)

Dad Posing, I Think

Despite the difficulty of such hard labor, it is strange how the memory of the sights, sounds, and smells of making firewood in that vacant, sagebrush-covered lot, are pleasant to me, so many years agone. Pining for the aroma of sawdust and fresh-cut chips of Douglas fir ejected amidst the smoke exhaust of the chain saw; the wood pitch that stuck to everything attracting dirt and turning black; the clink of the sledgehammer hitting the wedge; the crackling of the wood fibers ripping apart as the log splits; the soft scent of the sagebrush, dampened by a gentle rain the night before; all make me wish, for a moment at least, to return to the mountains!

Perhaps again, in June, I shall return, roll up my sleeves and pant legs, and wade in Gold Lake one more time.

Dear Bugs, where were you during The Summer of My Discontent?

Firewood Was a Basic Necessity!