Best. Purchase. Ever

I was only about 4 but I remember one afternoon mom and dad had their Euchre friends over and while mom was showing the ladies our new deck, dad was showing the guys his new hydraulic wood splitter. At the time I was more excited about the deck because we now had a door from the house that didn't drop 2 feet down to the ground and I could actually use it. But, looking back now, the wood splitter served me much better; I have never swung an ax. This purchase also gave me my first purpose on the farm other than trying to find dad when supper was ready and getting the mail and paper: I was the operator of this new piece of equipment.

Considering Dad, Papo (my dad's dad) and I used to split wood for hours at a time during the winter...day after day after day...I always challenged myself to a little game with it to keep me from falling asleep at the lever. My goal was to make sure Dad and Papo never had to wait on me, I did not want to be the one that slowed this operation down. So I would look to see what piece they were getting ready to load and I would try my best to not let the hydraulic block go back any further than it had to for that piece to fit. That way we didn't have to wait for it to come back forward to push the log into the wedge. Of course, at the same time making sure it was back far enough that the piece fit and neither of them lost a finger in the process. This also meant that I didn't want the block to get any closer to the wedge than necessary so that the block was out of the way by the time they had the next piece ready to load. I am sure Papo and my dad never knew how complicated I made this simple task at that young age but to me, it was life and death.

I always liked splitting wood, I still do. My dad had a tree he was working on this weekend while I was in Indiana so we split a trailer full. I wish Millie could have been with us because she is the right age to start operating the splitter but she was with Rick visiting his parents. Maybe next time she can get in on all this fun.

At least we had Rosco running around like an idiot, stealing wood out of the pile and eating it while we were working.