I attended a Memorial Service for my last remaining brother last Saturday. He was 84 years old, six years older than I.  Although we were brothers, we grew up in a vastly different world and had strikingly different memories of our childhood and adolescence.

We in the family called him “Gene.”  To the rest of the world he was “Bill.”  In almost every way we were quite different.  He was short I was tall.  He was athletic I was not.  He had dark hair my hair was blonde.  He became extremely Liberal in his politics, while I became quite Conservative.  I inherited and developed some musical talent. Gene could barely carry a tune. He married a phlegmatic Iowa farm girl of Norwegian ethnicity.  I married a mercurial second-generation Italian girl from Chicago.  In his religious preference he became agnostic while I converted early in life to Catholicism.  We had only two similarities: We both became Educators and we both enjoyed Creative Writing.

As I have also done, after he retired he wrote several short reminiscences in which he told of his childhood in backwoods Oklahoma.  They were written primarily for his three children, but he and I exchanged and shared several stories with one another.  In comparison they describe unbelievably different childhood’s.  Much more different than the six years that separated us would suggest.  Had Gene known of “The Legacy Project” he would have enjoyed being a part of it.  Therefore, as a tribute and memorial to my brother, I will submit a few in his name.   The first has to do with his memories of:

CUTTING FIREWOOD

Written By:  Billy Gene Carriker  (1929 - 2011)

Not one of our homes in oil lease communities provided us with the luxury of gas heat or electricity for lights.  Running water happened if we took the water buckets and ran to the well where we got our water.  With wood being our primary source of heat it meant a large supply had to be available at all times.  A wood burning stove in the living room provided heat, if it was in a central location.  Back in the distant bedrooms it became pretty non-existent.  When we got up in the morning we made a mad dash to get to the stove.  That big old fire-breathing dragon of a heating stove took an unending supply of wood.  Added to this was the cook stove in the kitchen that needed its share if we were to eat.

With five boys in the family, Dad led the troops out to wherever he had permission to cut firewood.  Most all trees make great firewood if they were stacked in the back yard at home.  Post Oak split like butter and the Blackjack burned with a hot heat.  We stayed away from Walnut, for it left a lot of creosote when we burned it and that was dangerous.

Finding the tree to be cut, dad would use his razor-sharp, double-bladed ax and cut a deep v-shaped notch on the side the way he wanted the tree to fall.  He was a giant of a man in strength, if not in stature, and had learned the art of felling trees at a tender age in the Arkansas backwoods, where he earned money hewing railroad ties (he called it  “hacking” ties) with a broad ax.  On a bet, he would drive stakes in the ground about six inches farther apart than the width of the tree trunk, cut the tree down, and it would fall between the stake

After the notch was cut, the two older boys would take the crosscut saw and cut horizontally from the backside toward the notch until the tree fell with a resounding crash.  I liked that part for as a little kid I always screamed “TIMBER” at the top of my lungs as it fell.  All work was done with hand tools; axes, saws, wedges, sledgehammers and gluts.  Chainsaws?  Never heard of `em.  There were two types of crosscut saws, ribbon and belly saws, both kept needle sharp by Dad.

A Belly Crosscut Saw

When the tree was down, Dad continued trimming branches with an ax, while the older boys would begin to saw 15 to 18 inch cuts to be split into smaller pieces.  Being a younger one I was given the lowly job of pulling out brush and limbs and piling them up to be burned.  As I grew older I developed the ability to use a crosscut saw.  This was an art in itself and called for teamwork and synchronization of effort by both parties using the saw.  The stroke had to be done with a smooth pull and then released for the other guy to pull back his way.  Any riding down on the saw, making it harder to pull was cause for severe discipline on the part of the older brother who was on the other end of the saw.  He kept a pile of good-sized chips handy right beside the log being sawed and if I shirked, I could expect to have a chunk of wood hit me upside my head.

After the cuts were made the logs were stood on end and Dad would then show his prowess in splitting them into pieces.  It took his tremendous strength and ability in swinging a mighty blow with the ax.  He was able to “box the cut” in such a way that he would split the log in half, sometimes with only one swing.  I later learned to do the same thing, much to the wonderment of my son.

At the end of a hard day’s work in the woods, the split firewood would be loaded onto our trailer and hauled to the house where we stacked it by the back door.  It was stacked in “ricks” which is a 4’ by 8’ amount or half a cord.  If we had an overabundant supply of wood we would sell it for $2.00 a rick . . . It was a hard way to make a buck.