“Let’s go get the Wood Gittin’ Outfit,” my son said.

“OK,” I said unthinkingly, and thus innocently threw myself headfirst into one of life’s experiences.

I really should have given some thought to that invitation before I responded so quickly.  Had I done so I would have remembered someone saying that my father was less than thrilled when told at my birth that he had another boy.  I was the third son in a row.  “Oh, no, another boy to come up with projects for me,” he’d responded.  I was perhaps just a touch offended when I first heard that story.  Hadn’t I been wanted?  Wasn’t I loved?

I’m a parent now, so I can understand.  His statement had nothing to do with love, but everything to do with extracurricular work.  I have exactly twice as many sons as my father had.  Sons are a lot of fun, but my, oh my, how they do come up with projects!  As they get older, things only get worse.  Especially when they reach adulthood.  Plans become more grandiose, and frequently involve things in which I have no interest or skills.

Had I paused to think, when Aaron invited my help, I’d also have remembered that the “Wood Gittin’ Outfit,” (hereinafter referred to as the WGO), is a monstrosity that up to that point I’d managed to steer clear of.

“It’ll only take a half-hour,” Aaron said, and added with a chuckle, “to start.”

The WGO is a one-of-its-kind thing, and was bequeathed to “the Kerns boys” by its inventor, Champ Bond.  Champ Bond was a one-of-its-kind thing, too.  He was called by the draft board to report for duty in World War II, but never got inducted.  The area farmers were up in arms and threatened to start their own war if he was sent away.  He was vitally needed here, they said, and got up a successful petition to keep him home.  Champ was vital because he could do absolutely anything with metal.  He kept all the farmers’ machinery repaired, and even invented pieces of equipment for them that can be seen nowhere else in the world.  Sixty and seventy years later those pieces of equipment are still running and being used.  The WGO is one of them.

The WGO started life as a Chevrolet delivery van.  Its title is taped to the steering column, and says that it’s of 1958 vintage; but at first glance at the WGO, one could easily be fooled into thinking that it’s 100 years older than that.  The WGO sports a power-takeoff shaft which protrudes six feet out the back of the van.  Mounted to the shaft is a 4-foot diameter saw blade and a hinged table.  Two men working together lift  long logs onto the table, push the table into the spinning blade, which severs a chunk of wood, which drops onto an elevator, which carries the chunk up a conveyor, which drops it on top of a pile, where a third man is working feverishly trying to stack the wood to the side before the pile reaches the top of the elevator.  My sons and the WGO turned my log pile into 8 cords of neatly-stacked wood last fall in about 2-hours’ time.  I appreciated the boys and the WGO.

The WGO has a welder inside like no other.  Things like welding rods were in short supply during the war, so Champ fixed this welder up to use nails instead of welding rod.  Big nails were plentiful on neighborhood farms, so all Champ had to do was clamp a metal spike into the holder and go to welding.  After the war he installed the welder inside the WGO to make it portable.

Champ had an inventive mind—a good mind.  He loved things that made him think.  He loved the game of chess.  He periodically played chess with the Kerns boys’ grandfather.  Grandfather taught the boys how to play chess like champions.  After Grandfather died, it was only natural that they’d carry on the chess tradition with Grandfather’s competitor.  When Champ could no longer get out and about, they’d go to Champ’s place to visit and play several games.  In the course of those visits, and in helping Champ’s nephew get wood, the boys became intimately acquainted with the WGO.  When Champ died he left specific instructions that the WGO was to go to “the Kerns boys.”  It belongs to the boys, but I’ll probably be its keeper until I die.

Last fall the WGO left my place and went to Aaron’s, where he and his brothers turned his log pile into firewood as fast as they’d done mine.  And there the WGO sat, in an old orchard, unneeded and relatively forgotten, until Aaron moved the following summer.

“Let’s go get the Wood Gittin’ Outfit,” Aaron said.

“Do we need jumper leads?” I asked.

“Nope, she’ll start right up on about the 20^th try.  I’ve taken the battery out and down to the shop to be recharged enough times to know that the battery is all right.  I have a system.”

The “system” was an eight-step process repeated as many times as necessary to get the WGO started.  In this case 20 tries and a half-hour were insufficient.  I’d conservatively estimate that it was more like 45 minutes and 363 tries.  The eight-step process was:

1. Attach cable to positive terminal.
2. Attach cable to negative terminal.
3. Turn key to “on” position.
4. Stand on head, and ground a long screwdriver from the head of one screw to another on the starter while hoping for a spark, the engine to turn over, or at least a click to indicate some sign of life.
5. Turn key off.
6. Remove cable from positive terminal.
7. Remove cable from negative terminal.
8. Repeat above steps.

After the first 80 or so tries, Aaron’s legs were becoming shaky from the standing on your head part.  He asked me to relieve him.  He’d gotten enough promising clicks, sparks, and near-engine-turnovers that even I dared to believe he might eventually get it started.  My own attempts weren’t nearly so promising as his.  I wasn’t jabbing the screwdriver in forcefully enough, and as often as not, I’d miss the starter and waste the attempt by touching something else first.  On the times when my aim was true and a spark actually happened, my natural reflex was to jerk away, thus breaking the connection and destroying any chance for the engine to catch and start.

“Gimmee that thing,” Aaron said, and resumed standing on his head.  I helped him by sitting in the driver’s seat and turning the key on and off at appropriate moments.  Aaron persevered, despite a blister that was forming on his finger, and legs that threatened to go into fibrillation.

The near-engine-turnovers were getting more frequent now.  As many as five tries in a row now resulted in significant clicks.  “If you can make that six clicks in a row, it’ll start,” I told him.

And start it did.  The WGO roared to life without a sputter, and acted like it never even knew we’d been giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for hours and had brought it back from the brink of death.

Now that it was running, the next hurdle was to extract it from the holes that the rear wheels had sunk into while the orchard was being irrigated.  The differential was sitting on the ground where it was digging its own hole.  Aaron got behind the wheel, put it in gear, and tried to drive it out.  It refused to do more than rock back and forth an inch or two.  He gunned the engine, and tried again.

“Don’t kill it!” I yelled.

He killed it.  I wilted as I envisioned another 45-minute start-up routine, but was ecstatic as it restarted without so much as a whimper.  Again Aaron gunned it.  Again the engine died.  Again it restarted.

I got in my pickup and carefully wove it in and out among the standing and down trees of the old orchard, and got it positioned in front of the WGO.  We attached a chain between the two vehicles and pulled.  Nothing.  We tried again.  Still nothing.  The WGO was resisting.  I backed up, then surged forward and hit the end of the chain.  The WGO reluctantly came out of its holes and followed the pickup.

I was feeling some elation and seeing an end to the project as I climbed back in the pickup after having removed the tow chain.  My elation quickly turned to a worry over the pickup.  “I don’t remember this pickup being so hard to steer,” I thought to myself.  “It must be this orchard that’s making the difference.”

I backed the pickup around, and jockeyed it into a position where it could drive out of the orchard.  That’s when I started smelling antifreeze, and noticed steam starting to come out from under the hood.  I shut off the engine, and raised the hood.  The serpentine belt that runs from the camshaft pulley to the pulleys that run the fan and water pump, air conditioner, alternator, smog control, and power steering had come off.  Counting the tensioner pulley, that made a total of seven pulleys that the belt had to wind around in the proper order and directions.  How many different routes and combinations might be possible?

A bunch.

The pickup was in the shade of an apple tree when Aaron and I began trying to figure out how the belt might go back on.  There really weren’t as many possible options as one might think, but every route we tried ended up with the belt being either too short or too long.  The pickup was standing in the hot sun when we gave up.

At least we had the WGO to drive home in.  It started at the first turn of the key.  Aaron backed it around, and headed for the gate.  I seated myself on the welder.  All was going well until we hit the driveway and wanted to put it into second gear.  It resisted, and tried to die.  Aaron went back to first gear, got up speed, and tried again to shift into second.  Same result.

“It’s almost like it has its brake on,” Aaron said as he reached down and released the emergency brake.  The WGO now acted more eager to go, and readily allowed itself to be put into second gear.  “Maybe it might have come out of its hole better back there if I’d had the brake off,” he mused.

“Yeah,” I muttered to myself, “and maybe the serpentine belt wouldn’t have come off, either.”

We were now in third gear, out on the paved highway, and were rapidly approaching a sharp right-hand curve onto a gravel road.  This is when I was informed that the WGO had no brakes.

“Well, slow down then,” I shouted.

“Can’t,” Aaron said.  “The return spring on the accelerator is broken.  Once you push the accelerator down, it doesn’t come back up again.”

My attention was riveted on the rapidly-approaching corner.  There was no straight-on option.  That tall van was going to have to turn either right or left, and by my calculations would definitely be rolling over in the attempt.

I headed for the open door.  I was all ready to bail out as Aaron calmly reached down toward the accelerator and up under the dashboard where he manually released the tension on the accelerator.

“Where ‘ya going?” he asked with a chuckle.  “Everything is under control,” he said as we rounded the corner twice as fast as I thought we should.  I was still poised to jump at the first sign of the right wheels leaving the ground.  “This thing can’t roll,” Aaron explained happily.  “It’s tall, but all the weight is close to the ground.”

I could see that, now that I had time to think about it; but I had the distinct impression that the kid was playing with me.  He looked much too happy about the look of consternation that had become my permanent facial expression that morning.

We clipped along toward home at a fair rate of speed after that with Aaron alternately pressing on the accelerator, and fishing around up under the dashboard when he wanted to slow down.  We successfully negotiated all the remaining curves, and hit the straight-away leading to the hill below our driveway.  Aaron pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor to build up momentum to carry us up the hill.  By the time he was thirty feet up the incline he’d shifted down to first gear, and found that the WGO was threatening to die if he tried to give it any gas at all.  It was plain that the WGO would only go up the hill if it was allowed to do so at its own chosen snail pace.

Eventually we were able to park the WGO back in its place by my wood pile.  The feeling in the pit of my stomach is that it’s going to sit there for a long time.

The next order of business was to figure out the routing of the serpentine belt in the pickup.  That required a trip to town and a visit to a couple of auto parts stores.  Armed with diagrams for the routing of 7-point belts, we returned to the pickup.  A chance call to the son who owned the pickup saved us all sorts of time and heartache.  I explained our problem to him and was informed that since the smog control device had been threatening to seize up, he’d installed a shorter belt and eliminated the smog control from the circuit altogether.  That bit of knowledge enabled us to quickly reinstall the belt, and bring the pickup home.

“Let’s go get the Wood Gittin’ Outfit,” was a disarmingly simple request.  It only cost me a day of labor and a few years off my life.  I now understand my father’s lack of enthusiasm when informed that he had a third son.

And to think—I have six.