After ice storm 1991, a couple friends of mine put in a wood
burning stove. There was another storm, a micro burst that
blew down a lot of trees. Can't remember what year. But, I
hate to see good wood go to the landfill. I borrowed a
trailer to pull behind the van, and collected up some good
wood. We spent several days sawing.

About that time, he remarked that all we needed now was a
splitter. Hmm. See how that goes. As I took the borrowed
trailer back to John's, he was at the bus garage, at his
church. I remarked thank you for the use of the trailer, and
now all I need is a splitter. A voice on the other side of
the bus said "I've got a splitter". Without much thought, I
asked if I might borrow it for a couple days, and the voice
said yes. To my surprise. So, I got his adress, and went
there.

He showed me how the splitter worked. It was very under
powered. When I got back to my place, I pulled the engine
apart, and cleaned the valves. [Metal valves: the metal
content of the story.] Put in a new spark plug, and new
gasoline. Change the oil. Ran a lot better, then. More
power. And so I spent a couple days splitting wood.

Anyhow, as I was taking the splitter back. I stopped at
John's garage, and asked if he had anythign to split, while
I had the machine. Sure, had some gnarly walnut with the
grain all twisted. I put a couple of them on the machine. It
struggled a lot, 5 HP gas engine. Even the more power gas
engine was straining. But it got the job done.

John told me the rest of the story later. After he sawed up
the wood, his friend Corey stopped by. Corey was 19 or so,a
nd a very powerful teenager. Sports, and such. So, John
asked him to split up that wood out back. Corey whacked on
it for a while, and quit. Which is a good use of teenage
energy.

So, next week when Corey came back, John tells him "Oh,
Chris Young stopped by, and split all that wood." Corey
knows I'm twice his age, and the inverse square of his
athletic power. I'm sure Corey had a few choice words of
disbelief about Chris being able to split the wood. Went out
and looked, and came back kind of confused. I'm sure
eventually John told him that I'd used a gasoline power
splitter.

That's my smile for the day. A good memory.

--
Christopher A. Young
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