Plains, Trains, and Wood Chippers

At this stage, it was a beautifully painted boat anchor.

Myra and I are to that stage in life when we get excited about things like wood chippers.

            “Man, all these willows along the road that need to be cleared… they would make great mulch,” I began anew the conversation we had been having since May when we ordered our DR Power Equipment chipper/shredder.

            “Yeah, would work great at the potato farm, playground, around our house,” Myra continued.

            It was a well-worn mental path that we continued walking down into late July when Craig Taylor equipment contacted us to let us know that the chipper they had promised us two months ago was finally ready to ship to us.

            “Just leave it crated,” I reminded them, “it’ll ship easier, and since it has never been fired up, we will avoid the hazmat charge when it gets air freighted.”

            “That is the plan,” the salesman assured me.  “I’ll get it dropped off to Alaska Airlines tomorrow.”

            Tomorrow came, and Alaska Airlines called me.  “Before we can proceed,” the cargo representative informed me, “we need to receive payment for the hazmat fee.”

            “It is brand new, in the crate, and never fired up,” I pointed out.

            “Yeah, probably has fuel residue in it though and that makes it hazmat.  It’s a $120 fee.”

            I mumbled to myself as I dug for my wallet.

            “And, since we don’t ship directly to Unalakleet, I’ll need to receive payment for transferring it to another carrier in Nome when it gets there,” she continued.

            “But, you guys do directly ship here.”

            “No, we don’t.”

            “Okay, but I saw a plane at the runway today that said Alaska Air Cargo on it.  It is still parked out there.  I can send you a picture if you want,” I said without being sarcastic (that is a difficult thing for me to do in cases like this).

            “No sir, according to my computer, we don’t service Unalakleet,” she insisted.

            “Well, according to Chuck Williams (name changed to protect the innocent) who came and did the training of the Ryan Air employees, you do service us directly,” I insisted back.

            “Oh,” recognition of the name evident in her voice, “I’ll have to call you back.”

            Fifteen minutes later, I received another phone call from Alaska Air Cargo looking for payment to ship the chipper/shredder directly to Unalakleet, “We do ship to Unalakleet,” the woman informed me.

            Another two days, and we received the long-awaited phone call from Ryan Air letting us know the anticipated freight had arrived.  Myra and I danced around the living room like two kids on Christmas morning as Ellen stared wondering what kind of mental breakdown her parents were going through.

            “You are going to want another guy or two to move it to the job site,” Myra recommended.

            “We’ll see,” I said absentmindedly smiling as I dreamed of feeding the huge piles of willow brush through the machine.

            Ryan Air forked the crate onto a borrowed trailer and I drove it out to our building site.  Upon removing the crating, assembly was pretty self-evident.  Two long bolts to put the feeding shoot onto the shredder and a spark arrester that easily screwed on to the muffler. 

            The machine weighs a little over 200 pounds, and so I did an interesting dance down a ramp I had temporarily erected from 2x10 header material.  My 42-year-old body was happy that the boards only bent and did not snap as I bounced down the ramp, dragged behind the chipper.

            Not heeding my wife’s advice, I had gone out to the build site by myself.  For some reason I thought the wheels on the chipper would be larger than the toy wagon wheels it came equipped with.  The pull handles on a DR chipper/shredder are just slots cut into the feeder shoot.  They are far from comfortable, but I had gotten the machine this far and wanted to try it out later that day.  Two months was a long time to wait to hear it run.

            “How hard could it be to drag it across fifteen yards of tundra and another fifteen yards of uneven, willow stump strewn ground?” the stubborn voice in my head piped up.  And as if I needed further encouragement, “Weren’t you a college athlete once?”

            Twenty minutes later, and it was my own voice giving the machine I was dragging “words of encouragement.” 

            “The next time I move this stupid thing, our driveway will have been put in,” I said to nobody in particular while wiping sweat from my forehead.

            I hobbled back through the stumps, tripped over the tussocks, and climbed back into the car.  I knew Myra would want to be with me for the first time the machine ran and needed to pick up oil since it was a new machine that had never been started.  It had been shipped without oil.

            We ate dinner, smiling the whole time about how much work we were about to get done.  Two twenty-foot long piles standing over six feet tall and another six foot at the base stood waiting for us.  I could see them start to quake in fear as I dragged the machine into place earlier.

            I grabbed a full quart of oil and another partial since the book said nowhere how much oil the engine should have.  It was a small little Briggs and Stratton motor, and I would be surprised if it took more than the partial quart, but I didn’t want to have to drive all the way back to the house for more.

            When we got to the chipper, I took out the dipstick, saw the oil reservoir was empty, added oil, and replaced the dipstick.  The plan was to allow the oil to run in and settle in order to get a true level reading.  In the meantime, I filled the gas tank.

            The dipstick (the one in the machine not the one adding the oil) still showed low oil and so I added again.  I began pulling the warning stickers from the machine. 

            “Do not run engine without oil,” was printed on one blocking the choke.  “Add oil before initial running,” was printed on a tag connected to the recoil rope.

            I took one more look at the owner’s manual and was greeted by, “Check oil before running,” on the very first page.

            I pulled the dipstick and saw the oil level was at that hashmarks, replaced the dipstick, adjusted the choke and throttle, turned the fuel valve to on, and pulled on the cord.

            “Ooofda,” I said looking at Myra, “this thing has some compression.”

            Four more difficult pulls and the motor sputtered to life.  I worked it through the choke and throttle settings until it was puttering at a strong idle and excitedly reached for the first small willow branch in the pile.  I smiled as I saw the branch consumed and turned to beautiful chips, turned to grab another branch and listened to the engine bog down and die.

            “What happened?” Myra asked.

            “Must have gotten that willow jammed in the chipper,” I said as I tried the recoil again.

            It wouldn’t budge.  It was stuck solid.  Because I didn’t want to be known as nubby or have people feel awkward when asking if I needed a hand, I removed the spark plug wire from the plug before beginning work on the chipper mechanism.

            The willow had gotten jammed in the flywheel and pulling a couple of bolts allowed access to a screen covering the works.  I pulled what I could reach that way, and attempted to manually turn the fly wheel.  It made a terrible screeching noise indicating that a willow was still stuck somewhere in the flywheel up against the housing.

            Two more bolts, and the feed shoot was removed so that I could reach down through the top of the chipper.  This was not the first time in my life that I wondered if being a contortionist might have been a wise and applicable job skill to have acquired at an earlier age.  I also wondered if this was normal practice after each branch.  The videos of this machine that Myra and I had drooled over while shopping for it showed none of this laborious process.

            The pencil size stick that had gummed up the works pulled free, the flywheel was able to spin again, and I put everything back together including pushing the spark plug wire back onto the plug.

            “Huh,” I commented while pulling, “the cord still won’t budge.”

            “I’ll look for the trouble shooting guide,” Myra said as she tried convincing Ellen to surrender the book the little girl had begun running around us in circles with.

            Ellen giggled in recognition of the new game.

            A trade agreement was reached, and Ellen walked away with the warranty information guide.

            “Jammed recoil… remove any material that may be jammed in the flywheel… well, that’s done,” Myra scanned further down the list.  “Pull spark plug and pull recoil rope.  Oil or fuel may have filled the cylinder and blocked the piston.”

            On the DR Chipper Pro 400, the spark plug has been strategically placed under a muffler cage.  I could only guess this was done to keep thieves from walking off with the valuable plug.  It was a sufficient deterrent as I struggled to get the spark plug socket past the cage and onto the spark plug.  I mumbled encouragement to the socket as I wriggled it into place.  Ten minutes later, and the plug and all of the tools used to remove it were free.

            “Huh,” I commented as the recoil again wouldn’t budge.

            Myra scanned further, “Check oil, engine seized.”

            “Really, it jumps to that?” I asked with disappointment evident in my voice.

            I pulled the plug wire again just to assure that this boat anchor engine wouldn’t jump back to life, and then began digging for the right socket to remove the drive belt cover.

            “If it is just a jammed recoil, the pulley on the back of the motor should still turn,” I reasoned aloud.

            It did not.

            “Well, I guess we call tomorrow when Craig Taylor is open again,” Myra suggested.

            We all walked back to the car.  I walked back defeated.

            “Yeah, that sounds like something that should be covered by the warranty,” the salesman at Craig Taylor said.  “I’ll start reaching out to DR, but they are usually more receptive hearing right from the customer.  You should probably give them a call.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ll communicate with them too, but they’ll answer you quicker,” he went on.

            DR’s customer service has some great bluegrass for hold music.  This was a real plus as I waited an hour for anyone to pick up.  I am prone to exaggeration, but in a world in which cell phones have timers on them for how long a call lasts… this is not an exaggeration.

            “DR Power equipment, how can I help you?” a friendly voice broke through the bluegrass.

            I went through my spiel and everything I tried.

            “Did you pull the plug and then pull the recoil?” the kind lady asked.

            Thankfully my eye rolling is not as loud as a teenager’s and was not audible on the phone, “yes, that was second thing I did.  I am thinking it is seized and that I got a dud.”

            “Okay, well, just bring it to the dealer, and we’ll get it checked out for you.”

            “Mam, I live in rural Alaska.  We don’t have a dealer.  The machine got here by air.  It will cost me as much as the machine to send it back and then get it sent back here after it is checked out.  I’m the mechanic you’ll be working with,” I said calmly.

            “Well, in that case, go out and take the drive belt off.  It might be binding and keeping the motor from turning over.”

            “If that doesn’t work, what should I do?” I asked to get the next step ready.

            “Call us back.”

            I waited for Myra to be done with work for the day so that I could go out and try the next problem-solving approach as supplied by tech support.  The drive belt cover was already off from the day before.  The drive belt itself was under considerable tension, but loosening the motor mount bolts allowed me to then work the bolt that adjusts motor placement and belt tension.  The belt came off and I pulled on the recoil.  Still stuck.  I grabbed a hold of the drive pulley and tried to manually turn it… didn’t budge.

            “It’s seized,” I shook my head looking at Myra.

            The next day I called back for my one-hour bluegrass session… “take the recoil off and see if it is jammed…”

            I did, it wasn’t.

            “Yeah,” the tech said the next day after I waited through another hour of the same bluegrass song on repeat, “sounds seized.”

            “So now what?” I asked.

            “Well, in order to be covered by warranty,” I was told, “we would have to have a shop look at it and determine what caused the engine failure…”
            This was sounding more and more like a large company escaping responsibility.

            “And so?” I asked during the pause.

            “Well, I can offer you a discounted motor for $300 plus shipping,” I was told.

            My blood pressure went up.  I had seen a motor on Amazon for $350 with free prime shipping.

            “Mam, you drive a brand-new Ford off the lot and the engine blows up on you, how much are you paying for the new engine that goes in it?”

            “I understand sir, but…”
            “So, how many days do I have to return the machine to the dealer for a full refund?” I quickly asked.

            “Excuse me?” came the other end.

            “How long for a 100% refund?”

            “Well… thirty days… give me a minute, I’ll have to put you on short hold.”

            More blue grass.
            “$150 is the best I can do, and shipping will cost $20,” she said.

            “Not as good as free, but better than $300,” I conceded.

            “I’ll just need your address so that I can tell the truck where to drop it off,” she informed me. 

            After all we had gone through in explaining rural Alaska, DR was still convinced they could truck ship me the new motor.

            “You’re not truck shipping it,” I said calmly.  “Put it in a box and drop it off at the post office.”

            “Well, we don’t do that, we truck ship.”

            “If we had roads, I would have driven it to a service shop, drop it off at the post office.”

            “I’ll have to work on a quote for you...”

            Three days later and we still didn’t have a quote.  I got someone new when I called DR for my bluegrass session who told me there was no note about a shipping quote on my account.  He’d get back to me… when he did he told me we were in luck since we received barge shipping in Unalakleet. 

            “You missed the last barge.  Next barge will get here in June of next year, put it in a box and drop it off at the post office.”

            “Well, I’m not sure how much the motor weighs, it might be overweight…”

            “Amazon says 41 pounds,” I informed him.

            “Oh, well, that is within USPS limits…”

            “Yup…”

            “I’ll get back with you in a couple days on a quote.”

            In a couple of days, he told me that he could ship it to Anchorage and that I’d have to figure out the shipping from there.

            “Ship it to my folks in Michigan.  They’ll put it in a box and drop it off at the post office.”

            He seemed relieved and I told him how excited I was to start chipping with the machine that looked really good… until he cut me off midsentence and said he really had to get to his next call.

            The motor was dropped off to my parents’ house in a crate.  My dad pulled it out and repackaged it, dropped it off at the post office and had it to me in a week.  Four bolts on the motor, a pulley puller to pull the drive pulley, all back together, filled with oil, filled with gas, double checked the oil, and the new motor fired up in one pull.

            “Wow, that sounds a lot better than the first one,” Myra commented.  “That first motor wouldn’t pull over and sounded terrible.”

            We let it idle for five minutes, and grinned as it began eating the willows we had ordered it to deal with three months ago.

            The DR chipper shredder works like the pro it is labeled as.  The Briggs motor happily spins the heavy flywheel with ease eating through pretty much anything four inches or smaller that it is fed.  What I didn’t realize was how much of a gamble it would be to work with a company like DR.  I was originally happy to work with an American company that used American made motors to power their equipment.  It really is a well-built machine and functions well… with an operable motor, but I don’t think I’ll be going with a DR Power Equipment product anytime in the near future.  They just don’t stand by their products.

            For some reason, at the end of this whole adventure, I felt like I should be eating Thanksgiving dinner with a shower curtain ring selling John Candy.  I guess feeding willows to a machine that finally runs will have to suffice.

It makes short work of our willows... just took three months to get started.

           

 

A Brand New Mourning: A bush funeral.

           

A Funeral in the Bush

           I grew up in rural northern Michigan.  Life was far from sterile.  I was pulling venison off of my dad’s meat saw in our garage by the time I could just see over the table.  I did my fair share of manure shoveling and spreading on the backyard garden and killed my first deer on my own when I was twelve.  I knew the feel of fish slime on my hands, dirt under my finger nails, and slivers in my palms.

            Losing family members and friends, on the other hand, was a very sterile experience.  I was a teen before going to my first funeral, and it was orchestrated from the beginning to remove me, as well as the rest of the audience, from the true act of the person passing from this world to the next.

            Don’t get me wrong, the tears and pain we felt at that funeral were real.  I knew that my great-grandmother was gone from her body, and what was in the casket was just her shell.  But, when the pastor was done, the last hymn was sung, and the casket closed, that was it.  I walked out to the car, and my grandmother was gone.

            I will never tell someone how to mourn.  That is a very personal experience and is a path that we all have to walk on our own, but there is something different about how we do it in the culture that has adopted me.  I don’t want to claim it is better, but it does work better for me.

            My family recently lost one of our close members.  He went hunting on his own, and while out, experienced a stroke.  Search and rescue was made up of family and friends.  We searched all over town, checking the homes of his friends, we looked across the river at his old cabin, and then finally took the search out of town where he liked to hunt spring bears.

            A friend spotted his four-wheeler from the air and called others to go out by four-wheeler to find him.  When they got there, he was conscious, but had signs of a stroke.  They loaded him on to a four-wheeler and met up with others who had gone out with a side-by-side that made transporting him easier.

            The clinic staff met us in the very early hours of the day.  The physician assistant was the spouse of one of our local teachers, his helpers my former students.  When our loved one made it to the clinic, there were no introductions necessary as we strategized how to best assist.

            Due to Covid, a medivac without an accompanying family member was arranged.  My sister-in-law flew in later to be with her brother.

            He didn’t get better, and the reports from the hospital indicated that it was only a matter of time and that we should say our final goodbyes and make arrangements. 

            Making arrangements in the village means that family contacts the pastor, speak with a  friend with coffin making experience, talk to the city about where to dig a grave, and decide who should make the grave marker.

Gary allowed me to learn from him.  Knowing how to build a casket is an important skill in the village.

            “You live in the olden days,” my sister texted me when she found out what was going on. 

            In Michigan, people don’t make caskets for loved ones.

            The school district donated pine, and a family friend (we’re all related in the village somehow) offered to lead building the casket as well as teach me what he knew.

            Dave, who donated materials and shop space, commented as the casket took shape, “Gary, if I go first, this is the style I want.  Looks like something right out of a western movie.”

            “Well, Dave,” Gary responded, “if I go first this is what I want you to make for me.”

            Dave and Gary are brother-in-laws.

            We worked on the casket for three nights.  Myra and Ellen came along for the last two with Ellen helping around the shop, sweeping up sawdust, helping to clear coat the pine, and picking up scrap wood. 

            “What are we building, Dad?” she asked at one point.

            Ellen is three.  This is a casket, would not have been a sufficient answer.

            “Well…” I started, “Uncle didn’t get better when he was sick.  This is a box to put his body in since his soul doesn’t need it anymore.”

            “Uncle isn’t real anymore?” she asked.

            Admittedly, her question took me aback.  She is three, but made me think about death in a whole new way.  We had been fishing plenty of times together recently and the way she verbalized the difference between the fish when they first came splashing from the water and what they were like after being in the plastic tub was the same.  Living fish were “real.”  Dead fish were “not real.”

            And, I had to say, that a person’s body after that person had passed looked nothing like the “real” person he or she had once been.  That body wasn’t a real person anymore.  What had made it real was missing.

            Where I grew up, the hospital and funeral home made all the arrangements for transportation.  In the bush, we worked with a friend on shipping, met the plane with a truck, and transported the body to the clinic where it would be until the funeral.

            Three guys and Ellen went to get the casket (we dropped Bub off at home before going to the clinic), and we carefully transported the beautifully crafted pine box.  We moved the body to the casket, and one of his sisters put socks on the body that she had knitted for him.  The funeral home had taken care of the rest of the dressing, though that is not always the case with bush funerals.

The casket matched the man: He was an outdoorsman who lived a rugged life.  The handles (not seen in this picture) were made from an ax handle that he must have used for years at his camp.

            Earlier in the summer, a friend, Bub (she goes everywhere I go), and I went logging up the river for trees calving off the river bank.  I had milled a number of them up into boards.  An electric planer cleaned two of them up, and I fashioned the marker for the grave.

            The grave it would mark was that of an outdoorsman and artist.  Its natural simplicity and straight lines were purposeful for who I was building it for.  The school shop teacher laser engraved it, and we decided to leave it natural spruce with just a clear coat.

            “He would have passed that tree on the river a lot during his life,” Myra pointed out.  “Now it is his cross.”

            The pall bearers assembled at the clinic and loaded the casket into the back of a truck and took it to the church where the same discussion we have before every funeral took place.

            “Do we need to take the center post out of the entry door?” I asked.

            “Nah,” another pall bearer responded, “the casket should fit.”

            After a failed try…

            “How does this center post come out again?”

            People were sent for tools that were brought to the church just as my nephew, Merle, was getting the center post out.  We will remember how it works for next time… and still have the same conversation.

            Covid has impacted everything, funerals only being one.  The viewing was limited to just a few family members and friends before we moved out to the cemetery.

            A long-time family friend and pastor, Chip Swanson, lead the service on the most beautiful day we had experienced in weeks.  Chip had spent a lot of time with the family, at times even sharing a room with the man we were now burying. 

            “Nowhere in the Bible,” Chip spoke, “does Jesus say, ‘are you ready?’  He just says get ready.  Now.”

            We laid the casket we had built with our hands to rest in the grave.  In Michigan, there is a fancy lift that lowers the casket.  In the bush, the pall bearers lower the box by rope by hand.

            “Those who believe in the resurrection of the body,” Chip said, “are welcome to put some soil on the casket.”

            The men then provided their final service to the one who had passed and began filling in the grave.  The city left around a dozen shovels for the job, and as one man tired, another tapped him on the shoulder for his shovel.

            The first shovels-full were somber and the workers sad, but there is something about the work and working together.  Stories were told of the person’s life, and smiles began.  It was rhythmic.  It was healing.

            “How will he get out, Mom?” Ellen asked as I removed my kuspuk in the heat of the sun.

            “His soul isn’t there anymore,” her mom answered.  “In the end days, the grave will not hold him.”

            Mourning is a process.  I won’t claim this way is better, but it works better for me.

Walter would have passed the tree his cross was made out of multiple times on his way up and down the river as late as this spring when he went out on the ice to catch trout.

Walter J. Slwooko
1/2/1954-7/2/2020