Pilfering fire wood

[chrisinhouston]

Well, it's early Sunday morning and I just made a firewood run. Every day for the past week I've driven by a large oak tree that was blown over in the wind last week. It's on the side of a busy intersection, technically, it's probably on the wooded property of the adjacent business park complex. We only own an electric chain saw which is great for triming things around our house but not much good here. So I took my dad's old 36 inch bow saw, one of those ones with a very thin razor sharp blade; I remember him using it New York when we lived there in the mid 60's so who knows how old it is. I also took a broad axe.

I drove my old Suburban up on the grass and within minutes was knocking of small branches with the axe and then sawing up logs. I mostly went after branches in the 3-7 inch range; they won't need to be split and that is about the max to cut with a hand saw. I cut them to 6 to 8 foot lenths to load and recut later. Even though it is about 27 degrees I soon worked up a sweat and had to strip off a layer.

A stream of cars turned on the corner, it's an upscale area so many big fancy SUVs and the usual Lexus and Mercedes. Mostly people going to church I imagine. Many of them slowed down and stared. I figure in this area of town they just order fire wood delivered or just have gas logs and forego the firewood altogether. I think they would mostly see hispanic laborers doing the kind of work I was doing.

I wondered if what I was doing is legal, would someone call the police or the building management next door. I thought of that scene in Dr. Zhivago, where Omar Shariff is stealing wood from a fence in Moscow and his half brother sees him and follows him home.

All I know is, I really like the sound, sight and heat from a fire on a cold winter night!