Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

Househusband Macho And Chainsaw Love

March 27, 2010 · Activities | House | Glad Dad | Suburban Survival

What do you do, man, to feel more manly?

At-Home Dad Finds Joy Reliving Strong Back Past

Taking me back, man, the smells, the sounds. Sour snap in the air of wood fresh cut, perfume of gasoline and exhaust from the baby engine that putters soft at idle then growls up to working rpms. Once in a while, the tree I dismember pops like a string of firecrackers, and I step back and watch sap-heavy wood rip and finish the cut I started.  

Just ready to green up, this black cherry, except a crazy spring nor’easter blew it flat. Big trees went down all over the Unsuburb, knocking out power, punching into roofs of stately homes. Thus Nature/God/luck/global warming (nah) hath provided a chance to do what I used to in one of my outdoor jobs, more years ago than I like to think. I can cut lengths off downed trees for firewood with a chainsaw, my lifetime supreme favorite power tool.

Chainsaw in hand I am the guy I was.  

In spirit, anyway, if not in particulars. Like, the bod ain’t the same, and my saw is not the screamy gas-powered McCullough of yore. I work with a 3.5-horse electric unit bought online last year. In the yard, it runs on power from the closest house socket. This job, though, we go off the grid, and the saw sucks juice from our portable Yamaha generator. Burn a little gas, whiff fumes – nice.   

Criminal intent draws another line between now and the past. I cut wood in a public park. No way could this be legal, not in our snooty control-freaky Unsuburb. But there are higher authorities to answer to. By sovereign right of paying ridiculous property taxes, and a sacred obligation to get out and do manly stuff, I claim the blowdowns in a bit of parkland two blocks from home.

Risk of authorities even noticing seems minimal, anyway, ditto some park-guardian weenie citizen giving me grief. Here I count on Unsuburban eyesight. The same way frogs fail to see unmoving objects (is that really true?) locals are blind to guys running noisy machines and doing grunt work. They really are. Check out this mated pair of success bots in fitness clothes – guessing finance and/or law – who walk by so close it feels awkward not to at least nod. Buttholes look right past.  

Screw ‘em. Screw the miserable world they live in. I cut, then carry and stack in the back of my Toyota RAV4  – a truck today, bro – and creep back home with shocks squashed scary low by who knows how many pounds of wood. Then, I haul three carloads stacked in the drive around to the back yard. Almost all, anyway, because I give out and give up, tottering like geezer me, fewer years from now than I like to think. So good, though, to be all used up.  

This is good, too. Minerva, who has parallel needs for dirt work, comes out to garden. She smiles upon our new wood, so beautiful, so much, and admires what it took to get it. She actually gets the camera and takes a picture of me and the ton, at least, of firewood.

And what is all this pride and happiness? It seems sort of silly, sitting here at the keyboard, but it’s all about doing something the man in the house, and nobody else, could do. Because I love and understand the chainsaw, and because I’m strong. Good to be reminded that there is such stuff. Better, in this at-home momma-ruled Unsurburb I live in, to do it.

This manwork begat a hell of lot more. The wood needs splitting. Swingin' tools, dude, maul and sledge hammer and wedge, right out my own back door. 

You, too, feel the need to get he-man? What do you do about it?        

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