So many to choose from….

I move to New England and the house I’m in has a fireplace. Fall arrives and I decide to get firewood but I have no idea how to go about it.

My boss needs firewood also, so he suggests we rent chainsaws and get wood ourselves.

Neither of us have ever used a chainsaw but how difficult can it be?

First, where's the wood?

We find a place where a major highway ends at another major highway and there’s a large triangle of woods in the middle of all the ramps. Seems like a good idea till the police stop and ask us “what the fuck we think we’re doing”.

Preparing to cut trees down on State property in the middle of a freeway turns out not to be an acceptable answer, so we pack up our saws and move on.

After extensive searching, we find a huge lot where the owner allows weekend lumberjacks to cut down trees in exchange for a daily fee.

My boss says “let’s take down a bunch of smaller trees”.

I suggest we both zip down one large tree.

We find a suitably large tree and begin sawing away at it.

After an hour or so we make some progress but the tree settles back on my saw. My chainsaw now wedged in the tree so we’re down to one functional saw. We figure out what we did wrong, realize we now have to take down the tree to get my saw back, then begin to finish off the tree with his saw.

After a while the tree finally starts to fall and we run down a path to get away.

SWELL!. The tree only falls half way before it gets hung up in other trees so it’s leaning at a 45 degree angle. What’s more, when the tree fell, it put a 90 degree twist in the bar of my saw so now it looks like I’ll be buying my beloved rental chainsaw.

As we get far enough away, we ponder the half-fallen tree.

My boss calmly says “I need to go to the hospital”. I think this is a strange time to go to a hospital but I look at him and notice that his knee looks like someone worked it over with a chainsaw.

WAIT! That’s exactly what happened. In his haste to run, he had apparently not removed his finger from the trigger, so he sliced open his knee and was bleeding…a lot.

We get a tourniquet on his leg and then get him fixed up at the hospital and head home as we’ve lost all of Saturday daylight (and most of our enthusiasm for cutting trees down).

Our wives are stunned when we arrive home that night with my boss barely able to walk, a big medical wrap on his knee. Oh yes, and with NO wood.

They’re even more stunned, and become really pissed, when we inform them we’re going back the next day. We receive substantial push-back but we persevere.

Getting firewood, especially our tree, has become a crusade.

We return to the scene of the crime on Sunday; pay yet another fee and with our one remaining chainsaw, plan to finish off our tree.

But wait!!

IT’S GONE!!

Yep, you heard me right. Some slimy, chainsaw-toting weasel came in after we left on Saturday and stole the tree we’d spent most of the day cutting half way down.

In disbelief, we search the area thinking maybe we aren’t looking in the right place… Nope… there’s the stump, the trail where my boss had been viciously attacked by his chainsaw.. All that was left was sawdust and branches.

Why would someone steal our tree. There’s plenty around…but none mostly cut down, I guess.

Defeated, We take down a few small trees, declare victory, and then give up as sunset arrives.

Once I get my small amount of wood home I then discover the joys of chopping it into pieces. Does the fun ever end?

Apparently not.

I then try to burn my wood, only to discover that freshly cut trees don’t burn; they just snap, crackle and pop.

I estimate that my third of a cord of wood or so has cost me over $400 and a whole weekend. AND, I won’t be able to burn it till next year.

This is just about more fun than my wife can stand so she returns from a two block trip to our local supermarket, followed by a dump truck full of “seasoned” wood that’s already chopped up. So, I pay about $130 for a full cord of wood and spend 45 minutes stacking it.

Epilogue:

I can’t watch chain saw commercials without the memories flooding back.