It was Sunday, Father’s day, and I didn’t want to be there. Who cuts wood in the middle of June? I argued, as well as a 12 year old boy can argue with his father, but my words were deftly quelled, and there I was in the back of a pick up truck on a Sunday morning with a cooler full of lunch and an old gray box full of chains and chain oil and I remember the smell of that old gray box, the smell of power it had, the power to help a neighbor and the power to heat a home and I remember thinking that it was somehow important to my father to be here so I embraced it and I watched everything and I learned.
The world became ours, my world, my father’s world, we owned it, we were in charge, we made the rules, and we worked together and everyone I saw that day was in our world and I watched them, knowing my father would dictate what was to be done and how to do it and I was his helper and he instructed them and assured them and nothing, nothing, nothing could go wrong or happen to me when I was in that world.
So we dropped that huge elm that grew too close to the barn, and the rope held true and the tree fell true and there was cheering and I was proud and my father held me and laughed and we cut that old tree to pieces and the chainsaw roared and the sawdust flew and that smell was the greatest smell on earth, the power of it overwhelmed us and my father and I ruled the world on that day with our ropes and our chains and oils and cooler full of lunch and I remember thinking how happy I was because I spent father’s day alone with my dad and nobody else existed in that world that we had created.
And months later, when the high pitched whine of burning elm filled the living room my father said “That’s that tree we dropped at Clymer’s place, remember that David?”
And I said yes, I remembered.