Fun with your chainsaw, i.e. god-damn piece of shit!

By dad has a bum shoulder, so he requested my help this afternoon in taking down 3 vine maple trees in the yard. Most of the work involved loping shears (and my rent�s have some kick-ass loping shears, let me tell you, these suckers were practically bolt cutters!) and a small hand saw � as my dad would tell me, it�s a �Japanese Hand saw.�

Let me tell you about this hand saw. As my dad explained, most American handsaws are crap, because they are designed to cut on the push stroke, not the pull stroke. This saw didn�t look like much, but I couldn�t believe how effective it was, and how much more efficiently your muscles are used when the cut is on the pull stroke. I�m telling you, and recall many exasperated efforts in my life with piece of shit handsaws, I have been saved� I don�t want anyone to underestimate the importance of this either � a small part of my faith in this world has been restored. And it proves what a backwards fuckwit society America can be sometimes (see, metric system, and VHS or BETA).

It was important that this handsaw worked well, as when it was time to pull out the chainsaw, it crapped out on us. I�ve always given my dad a lot of grief (too much, usually) about his chain saw. It all stems from firewood gathering expeditions as a kid, when the chainsaw would crap out and we�d be dead in the water. Later, when I was a little older and we�d have logs delivered in the driveway, it seems like every year there�d be a major hold-up in the sawing and splitting process while some sort of chainsaw maintenance was required. At some point in this time-scale, when I started doing a lot of the sawing (being a little young for such things before) a new chainsaw was acquired, one that actually worked when it was needed.

This fact didn�t keep my mom (you know how mom�s can be) from nagging my dad about making sure the chainsaw was ready when any such endeavor was coming up (although by this time my mom rarely had any part in such things herself). I guess I picked up on this, and would always give my dad a hard time (that half-joking, half-serious kind of thing) about the chainsaw. �I�m not going to screw around with the damn thing.� I�d always say. The chainsaw always worked just fine.

Today, I never once mentioned anything about the chainsaw beforehand. Oddly enough, halfway through the first trunk (of three) the saw crapped out. You can�t make shit like this up, this is just how life works.

The good thing was the kick-ass hand saw, I powered through the three trunks with it, and we finished the job, except for cutting the trunks into 16� lengths for firewood purposes. We�ll need the chainsaw for that� a little too much work with just the handsaw.