Fill that Woodshed!

by Eliza Paisley Lisle
(the Holler)

Git Me Some Firewood, Cletis!

Heating your house with wood can be difficult.

First you have to get Cletis to go up in the bush with his 4x4 pickup truck and maybe take just a couple of his buddies, not 5 of them.

If he takes his chainsaw, or his buddy takes one, try and convince them to sharpen it and take a can of gas.

It behooves you to make sure that you pick up gas in town the day before springing this mission on them, just to make sure they can’t jam out and use the lack of gas as an excuse to a) not go up the bush and get wood, or b) that they need to go into town to get gas, meaning that they will either a) go to the bar and drink too much, or b) spend the money you gave Cletis for gas on beer for taking up the bush while getting wood.

Either way, you won’t get what you paid for. If you have paid for a long run-on sentence, you got it.

Okay, so they have a truck, gas, and chainsaw and possibly some beer. Under no circumstances allow any firearms.

Off they go, while you wave them off with your hanky. Don’t cry, they’ll be back, hopefully with a truck full of specially selected wood for your house.

Best kind that you can hope for is from a tree that’s been dead a long, long time, but hasn’t fallen over yet. If they find such a creature, and don’t hurt themselves cutting it up, your life is blessed.

If they select the wrong kind of wood, you may find that you would rather cut off your own limb before asking them again to do this mission.

Never let on that you would do this, as it could enable a reluctance to take on this task in the future.

When they return, be sure to have at least a good rip-roaring fire going in the fire pit, and all the makings of home made hotdogs. If you have a three pronged pitchfork handy for them to toast the wieners on, so much the better, they will be hungry.

Beer is optional, depending on the success of the mission.

Get some heavy duty gloves on, girl, because you’ll be the one unloading the truck. Heaven help them if they haven’t split some of the big chunks in half.