The Buzz Pile

The other day, my daughter and I stopped in to see Ken Forgue at the automotive garage. He said, “It’s too hot out today for man or beast.  What kind of soda water do y’all want?  I’m buying.”  Edie answered him by saying, “What kind have you got?”  She’s not bashful.  Ken took a key out of his pocket and opened up the machine.  After we made our selection, we went into the office where it was cooler.  Ken told us a story.

“Last fall...I took off for the lake to do some fishing… I’ve got some wooded lots on the lake and I decided to take along an axe and a chain saw so I could do some hackin’ and choppin’ and sawin’ while I was there… I’ve got to tell you about the dumb thing I did… There was this big tree that had a low limb on it [that] I decided to cut off.  It was probably six or seven inches thick and was about five or six feet from the ground.  I revved up the chain saw and started cutting away right next to the tree… Unfortunately, I didn’t move [my] foot out of the way.  The…limb fell right on my foot.  Have you ever done anything so dumb in your whole life?  It mashed my foot good.  Matter of fact, now---six months later---my big toe nail is just beginning to grow back.”

Sure enough, his story reminded me of something that I did when I was five years old. Every year, Dad had to cut a lot of wood to last through the long, cold winter.  Usually, Lloyd would help him on the other end of a cross cut saw.  They’d cut down a tree first, and then trim it.  The limbs that were big enough to cut up for firewood were piled to the side and later hauled to the house on the bobsled.  The trunk would be too big to handle, so they’d just cut it all up with the crosscut saw right there on the spot.  This wood would be hauled to the house later when there was enough snow on the ground to use the horse-drawn bobsled.  When the limbs that were big enough for firewood were taken from the woods to the house, they were put on the “buzz pile.”

Dad had a big gasoline engine that turned the belt which operated the buzz saw.  The engine had a big fly wheel on a shaft, and the saw was made to turn the same way.  When they were ready to start sawing the small logs into stove-length pieces, the boys would lift one up and put the big end on a saw buck.  Dad operated this by pushing it toward the spinning buzz saw.  It would quickly cut the log in two.  Then the boys would move the log another stove-length and again, Dad would push it against the saw blade.  The blade turned all the time because there was no clutch on the gas engine.  It was probably dangerous, but it sure was effective.  They could saw up a big pile of wood in no time at all.

They never let me help---said I was too little.  One day during the winter, before I started to school, I decided to help in my own way.  Dad and my brothers had spent a Saturday hauling logs to the house with intentions of sawing them up the next Saturday.  But, there they lay all week long while Dad was in town, and my brothers were in school.  “Here’s my chance,” I thought.  Although it was cold and there was quite a lot of snow on the ground, Mom had bundled me up and sent me out to play.  Dad kept all his small tools, including the axe, in the garage.  It took me a while to get the small garage door open, but I finally made it.  Taking the axe out to the buzz pile, I started hacking away.

Guess what.  The axe came down on my right foot.  It didn’t seem to hurt all that much right away, but I could see that I had cut through the rubber on my boot.  I didn’t want Mom to see that, so I put the axe in the garage and went back out to see what else I could find to do.  Finally, I noticed that every other one of my tracks was all red.  Uh Oh!  Fast as I could go, I ran for the house.  “Mama!  Mama!  I cut myself!” I cried.

I was pretty much covered with snow and still had my heavy outdoor clothes on, but she gave her entire attention to my cut foot.  She unbuckled the boot and took it off.  Then I could see the cut in the shoe.  She carefully unlaced the shoe and took it off.  It was a mess---had a lot of blood in it.  Then, she took off my sock.  My foot was really bleeding because, you see, I had cut off my second toe.  The axe had cut well back into my foot, too.  Then Mom realized that even though the bone was completely severed, the toe was still attached by a thin piece of skin on the bottom.

While soaking my foot in cold water to stop the bleeding, she took the rest of my clothes off.  Then, with a roll of gauze, she bound my second toe to the big toe and the third toe, and then she doused the bandage with iodine.  Boy!  Did that ever sting.  The next step was to bandage the whole foot.  Then, the final step:  Mom held me in her lap and rocked me like she used to do when I was little.  But, I liked it.

Her home remedy worked.  My toe is still there---turned kind of sideways and with a big scar---but it’s still there. Mother love is good medicine.