Regardless of my present

appearance I have not always been a stranger to physical labor.

At one time I subsidized my existence with a pulpwood truck. My grandfather had a “beef” operation down in Webster County and my grandmother had a small dairy when I was a child. There was considerable pasture land and an unlawful abundance of ticks and red bugs. (Red bugs are meaner than chiggers).

When I was in my 20s we converted the tick farm from pasture to soybeans and caught the financial slack for the conversion with a chainsaw and a wood wagon.

Some of the trees were cut for sawmill lumber and the closest mill was behind a country store five or six miles from the farm. That store had the best fried chicken in 14 counties and being addicted to crusty cholesterol I spent more time than the business strictly required.

I also got to meet the natives,

one of whom was a

70-year-old man of steel

who, despite his age, was a still timber thrower. He was overflowing with useful advice to a Flatlander with a chainsaw and not much else. (Including common sense).

I must admit that I probably looked as green as I was. Upon inspecting my rig and pointing out a few professional deficiencies he asked me if I knew how to do what I was trying to do. Then he proceeded to instruct me how to do it if I wanted to do it and stay alive.

That old boy’s advice

insured my survival

on more than one occasion. Cuttin’ firewood at Moccasin Bend was a far cry from cutting a 60-foot green pine on un-level ground. I wouldn’t have lasted a week without his “pointers.” He was the only “logslinger” I ever met who abstained from strong spirits. He was not a sailor but he’d lost a brother at Pearl Harbor and had always wanted to see the Pacific Ocean. He was a regular fixture at that “chicken and gasoline emporium” until one day he wasn’t.

All I could find out for a few days was the fact he was crewed somewhere in the Weyerhaeuser woods. Then there were rumors of carnage and disaster.

That old C-5 Homelite

had “got aholt of him,”

and on the hottest “bleed-out day’ we’d had so far. Still it was unconfirmed rumor. Then there was confirmation.

Now y’all know me thru this column well enough by now to know that I will not tell a story that won’t leave you smiling. (Although I know a few stories of the other story). There he was. Heavily bandaged and pale. On crutches. Chasing a fried chicken at the store. This is his story.

At some point he’d managed to get that old “lumber yard” on the ground, but while he was limbing it into a saw log the Homelite “kicked” and walked home — literally up one side and down the other. A big tree and a chainsaw have small forgiveness for human flesh.

One reason he made it was

because a skidder operator is usually in close attendance

to the timbercutter to transport the cut log to a truck. The skidder man returned the cut-site for another load to drag and saw Mr. James at the moment of the wreck. Blood, guts, bone, saw and all. The driver was a teen working a summer job but he had some advice of his own.

“Mr. James, you let me help you to the shade and you be real still and I’ll be right back.”

Mr. James said it sounded like a good idea to him so he did. That old man didn’t get that old without managing to know when to listen to good advice. However the original plan sort of came apart at that point.

A moment or two after he’d sat down and leaned against that old, shaded white oak stump he discovered he was perched atop a yellow jacket nest.

“Boy I knowed I was

a ‘goner’ when I sat down,”

he told me. “There was more blood than I thought a body could hold and it was mine and it covered about a 300 board feet of lumber on an acre of Weyerhaeuser ground. I didn’t expect to ever rise again.

“Them damn jackets changed my feelings pretty quick,” he continued, stating that it occurred to him several hundred yards later after he’d caught and passed the skidder that he wasn’t half dead yet.

Now I’m not a doctor nor a preacher and I never was much of a lumberjack but I have a few theories pertaining to the medical and religious aspects of that incident.

I think the swelling from the venom slowed the bleeding.

 I also submit that God wasn’t ready for him yet. As for my deficiencies as a logslinger, I have no comment. I simply found a job that I was better qualified for.

To this day I believe the varmints saved his life, but I think it was a rough form of rescue. He also had a young man close to hand that kept his head in a tight spot. That was a miracle in itself.

Just when you think you know it all is when a surprise will likely jump up and bite or sting you on your assets.

Ricky Harpole

(See more Ricky at Facebook.com/Harpoinms and youtube.com/freestateent.)