This afternoon I split up some logs from a tree we had chopped down this past summah into cord wood. (Regular port-swillers might be surprised to learn that I even know how, given the sort of esoteric blatherings in which I indulge here. Well, the truth is I learned an awful lot of basic guy skills in my yoot: I am (or used to be) a pretty good wing shot, I can field-dress a deer, I can handle a horse, build a rock wall and clear brush. And, more to the point, split and stack wood. Auto mechanics? Well, there you lose me.)
When I was a kid, I used to have to help the Old Gentleman with this task. I would hold an axe steady while he whacked it with the sledge. I still remember how much that used to make my hands sting. Like getting jammed with an inside fastball.
These days, I have found that those split-o-matic wedges work even better than an axe-head, although the sledge is, of course, still of the essence.
The Port Stands At Your Elbow 
1 comment
Comments feed for this article
November 23, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Kathy
I had to hold the axe steady too while my father whacked it with the sledge. Oy! I always feared he was going to miss, but, surprisingly, he never did, although Dad is not the handiest of people.
Years later, I found out that I had good reason to worry he would miss. When my dad was five, he was assigned the chore of chopping firewood. No sledgehammer here—just an axe. His little brother, Fritz, was helping, Dad missed and chopped off part of Fritz’s finger. Amazingly, given this happened in rural Nebraska, the doctors at the hospital (thirty miles away) were able to reattach Fritz’s finger. (Insert much amazement here that a five year old was chopping wood. What can I say? It was the 1930’s.)
When Dad broke his finger my mother called it “Fritz’s Revenge.”