Wood Heating

To me, there is no better heating system than one fired by wood. The smell of wood smoke is definitely better than that of coal - even though coal makes a hotter fire. I've never tried burning cow chips or charcoal to heat a house, but I'll bet that wood smells better.

Wood warms you two times. You get warm when you're cutting, splitting and hauling; and you get warm when you burn the wood. I remember wood gathering parties that started early on a saturday morning when the temperature was in the low 20's that made you want to get a tree on the ground fast so that you could start working on it and stop freezing! On those mornings the chain saw would balk and sputter and finally crank. Sometimes we had to mix kerosene with the chain oil to make it flow down the blade.

When I was between 6 and 12 we only cut wood with manual saws and axes. Two people on a cross cut saw can fell a tree fairly quickly - perhaps in 10 or 15 minutes. But then you have to cut it into useable lengths. We had a cutoff saw near the house that would run off the PTO of the Cub tractor, but you had to get the wood to the saw and that was work.

Later, after Daddy died, Mac bought a Homelite chainsaw, and then a Poulan and then another Poulan. With one of those we could cut and split a truckload in an hour or so. We still had to split the wood with axes and mauls, but it was good wood and a lot easier to get. Then Ben bought a Husqvarna and a motorized splitter and we could really cut and split woodl. We have burned a lot of firewood in this family in the past half-century.

Fencing

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Fencing in my world never had anything to do with swords, sabers or epees. Fencing to us was an exercise in installing a long piece of wire which had been made dangerous by the embedding of sharp spikes into it every four inches or so. This wire had to be stretched really, really tight between the supports. Now, I say supports instead of fenceposts because on our farm you used everything available - like trees, big shrubs, rocks and etc. to support the wire. If you could stick an inch and a half wire staple in it, you did. There were no queensbury rules about repairing fences either - just mission accomplishment. The mission in all cases was to keep cows on the correct side of the fence.

Barbed wire fences have many enemies. It is really not unusual for a tree which is leaning away from the fence at a 45 degree angle to suddenly reverse its lean and fall directly on the wire. In such cases the repair involves a chainsaw and several posts. The wire, being stretched significantly by the tree becomes very loose in all directions and must be tightened. There is not enough wire present to join together with a twist, so you must always patch in a short piece of wire - making the resultant fence an engineering marvel, but an artist's eyesore. Other enemies of fences are hunters who wreck them for no reason at all, bulls and large cows who just have to have the grass on the other side and time which rusts the most expensive wire and rots the most resilient posts. If you own one mile of exterior (or perimeter) fence; odds are that at any given moment there is a weak spot or hole in it. Many times the hole will be large enough for 5 cows to elope with the neighbor's bull at the same time.

A cow that leaves through a hole in the fence will remember that place and return home - most of the time. However, before the prodigal decides to "make nice" she will generally leave a large pile of cow droppings in someone's rosebed, or trample an acre of sweet corn in order to get to the other side, or especially if she is completely black in color, she will have to stand in the road at night. And most neighbors and motorists are really not that understanding. A lot of times they want you to pay them for the damages! Sometimes they incarcerate your cow in a barn and keep her until you fix or pay for the damages! Many times, county law becomes involved making any serenity that you may have go up in flames.

I guess I don't know which is the worse - cows or fences...

Wood Shop

Now I thought that I was pretty much an accomplished carpenter in the 8th grade - that is until I took wood shop. We all had to take it while the girls did something like Home Economics or whatever. Our first assignment was to take a block of wood and make it "square" using only hand saws, chisels and planes for cutting; and a framing square for measurements. We quickly learned that making something square was not the easiest thing in the world. Change this angle on this side and you change that angle (or those angles) on the other side(s.) It was really discouraging. I finally did it, but I had the feeling that the shop teacher just got tired of fooling with me.

Once we had the block of wood square, we were allowed to use some of the power tools to complete our "project." Mine was building a rifle rack and I messed with that for the rest of the semester. The other project we could have chosen was a shoeshine box. Thank goodness I didn't do that one! It had "several" pieces of wood more than the 4 pieces used for the rifle rack. I finally finished the rack and stained it dark brown (I think it was supposed to be walnut, but dark brown was about as good as it got.) Then I varnished and shellacked it and managed to get it home on the school bus. In any event, I must have passed the class.

I think that class did more to discourage me from selecting a career in the carpentry/building world than any thing else. Once I discovered I couldn't even square up an 8 inch long 2x4 board and then learning that I didn't have any woodworking skills made me consider teaching as a career. At least if I were teaching I wouldn't actually have to "DO" anything!!

The rifle rack disappeared at the same time as all my childhood mathoms. I left it all in my room at home when I left for the Air Force and never saw it again. Oh well...

Marblebutt and the Bra

Image by Janrito Karamazov via Flickr

It has been a while - memory and creativity certainly wax and wane. Let's see, where was I? Oh, in the middle of Northside Junior High School; setting a pattern for all future adolescents. It definitely was among the worst of times, but I'm sure there were some "best of times" involved as well.
Ah! The bra prank! I absolutely had no involvement whatsoever. I was just a very innocent bystander. Arriving on the bus one morning I was immediately approached by Ronnie and Guy who covertly pointed to the top of the school's flagpole. There in all it's glory waved a rather large brassiere, white in color and humongous in cup size. We basked in the hilarity of it all, trying to blend with the crowd who were beginning to notice and pass along this delicious prank to each other.

The front door of the school, which NEVER opened before the appointed time sprang open. Out rushed old Marblebutt the principal. He went straight to the flagpole, blushing a very bright red, lowered the offending garment and placed it under his suit coat. Then, still not speaking, he rushed back into the school with the entire student body laughing unto tears! What a glorious moment.

I will say this for the old man. He may have done some quiet sleuthing, trying to find the authors of the deed, but he never mentioned it again. That had to take some class. As for Ronnie and Guy, my guess is that some unsuspecting matron left her underwear on the line on Sunday night and seeing it waving there in the dark sparked a most ingenious plan.

4-H Clubs

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My first ever "club" was the 4-H Beef Growers Club. There were about 10 of us in the county who grew our own show calf and fattened it up for the Fat Calf Show that occurred every year in the spring at Warners Sale Barn. We spent the winter feeding, grooming and training the calves to be led by a halter and to take a "show stance." Our club didn't meet but once per year and that was at the show. We all kept our calves and methods very secret and really didn't know each other's names very well.

The second year that I showed a calf, I had the Grand Champion of Greenwood County. Boy was I proud. I had named him Phillip and he and I had spent hours and hours together for almost six months. The problem was that I was going home and Phillip wasn't. Winn-Dixie food stores paid $1.00 per pound for him and he weighed almost 900 pounds. Hmmm. Let me see, Winn-Dixie food stores. It took me about a minute to figure that one out. I wasn't a happy camper, but I took the money. I hope Phillip pleased a bunch of steak eaters. I showed again for the next two or three years and had a Reserve Champion (second place) but never again won. The money that I saved from those calves went a long way towards paying tuition once I started college.

In the 9th or 10th grade Daddy wanted me to join the 4-H Tractor Club. I had skirted the periphery of 4-H and really didn't want to play, but we talked about it and I agreed. My friend Thomas went with us every Wednesday night to the George Davis Buick place where we met. There was a workbook and actual hands-on tractor work. We learned how to grease all the 29 points on the tractor that we were using for the club, how to change the oil, how to do everything with a tractor. One thing that I managed to miss was the excercise where we backed a 4 wheel wagon with a tractor. I had tried it several times at home and never had much luck. Heck, I couldn't even back a two wheel wagon!

Being in these activities qualified me to attend the one-week 4-H camp that was held every year at Camp Long in Aiken County. As I remember, 4-H camp was something that I enjoyed very much and always looked forward to in the Summer. We did crafts, sang a bunch of songs, took safety classes, swam, played ball and went to dances every night. I wonder if they still have 4-H camp there? I wonder if they still have 4-H camp anywhere?
　

Swift Strike II

Image by bill barber (very sporadic) via Flickr

At some point during junior high school the United States Army, in an effort to change it's way of fighting from a "front lines, head-to-head" type to one of dealing with insurgents decided to bring tens of thousands of soldiers to North and South Carolina for the most humongous excercise ever conducted. The exercise, dubbed "Swift Strike II" was not limited to military reservations, but was conducted on the streets, roads and highways of both states. Troops parachuted into our fields, road marched along our highways, trespassed in our gardens and orchards and suffered the ills of the south that they probably thought would be the worst they ever saw. There were thousands of soldiers bivouaced at the Greenwood County Airport and thousands more in the woods and fields all across the state.

These were the "blue forces" or the "good guys." Acting as red forces were the Green Beret's and other Special Ops folks who already had a taste of Viet Nam and irregular fighting methods. The red forces were assigned to recruit civilians and win our hearts and minds so that we could be used against the blue guys. I and my friends Steve, Jimmy, Jokie and Richard fell right in with them and provided them with water, food and gasoline. We all spied on the blue forces - riding our bikes up and down the rows of tents, counting, pacing, making drawings; but Steve and Jimmy actually rode their bicycles through the camp one night with firecrackers blazing. I'll bet that was a sight!

Anyway, even though we didn't know it at the time, we had been hooked and landed and would forever be in uniform. Steve went to the Air Force Academy, Jimmy and I went to OCS - to be followed a couple of years later by Jokie - and Richard enlisted in the Air Force. Steve went on to become a full Colonel, Jokie became a Lt/Colonel and a back seater in F-4 Phantoms, and I ended up as a Captain before leaving the Air Force and moving to the Army Guard. Richard got out as soon as he could and Jimmy was separated for a problem with his leg before being commissioned.

We termed ourselves the 601st Infantry and kept up the tradition for years and years after the Army left us to our own devices. Someday, maybe after I'm sure about the Statute of Limitations I'll tell some of the daring deeds that we did, but for right now you'll just have to imagine.

Jimmy's gone now to a cancer. Richard and Jokie live in Alabama and Steve lives in California. Guys if you read this, I still go on midnight missions along the roads and conceal myself in the bushes when a car is coming. I sometimes yell "CAR !!!!" to myself and remember our scrambling around. No raids though - I've had enough of the real stuff to satisfy my need to play. Review, friends - troops long past review.

Band - Mr. Putman

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Band was the one redeeming feature of Junior High School. In the band room I was one of the better trumpet (cornet) players and moved back and forth between 1st Chair 1st and 1st Chair 2nd. Once Mr. Putman made me play 3rd Chair 3rd just so I could learn to play the part. I thought I was pretty good. I don't even remember what we played - except it was usually some English march that sounded like it was played by a junior high school band. We tootled and honked and had a big ol' time at ball games and in parades.

Mr Putman - Bud Putman was the only reason that any of us really had fun. He was a funny man and had some really weird (weird but good) ideas about music, band and life in general. I remember one day that he stopped us from playing and talked for a while as our lips recovered. The subject that day was from the novel War and Peace. He said that somewhere around halfway through the book there was a statment that said something like, "If you want a life where you don't have to think, where your meals and clothes are furnished and where you simply have to do what you're told; then join the army. Now that I think about it, that was Mr. Putman's way of snickering at organized mayhem, but I took it as something that made a lot of sense. Not that I didn't want to think, but the whole idea sounded like something that I should maybe pursue.

After I returned from Iraq I had dinner with Bud and his wife Mary. They - like some other of us - are getting a little age on them, but they are fine people and we enjoyed reminiscing about those golden years so long ago.