Unsetteled: Chapter 4

"Up and At'em"

The alarm clock rang with a deep metal clang that would bring Joe Frazier to his feet from the corner stool. But unlike a boxing-ring bell, Dad's Big Ben kept clanging until his finger shot intuitively through the dark to the little steel button on the back. Five to five. Time to wake the boys for breakfast.

But the three of us boys heard the noisy ring. Our beds were side by side a foot apart in the room beside Mom and Dad's, and the alarm, like an audible spatula, had turned us over-easy in bed. Our heads took cover under pillows, but we were awake.

“Up and at‘em, boys!” came the whisper at our door. We did not yet know it, but those five words just after the din of Dad’s alarm would begin the next few hundred Saturdays of our lives.

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The purchase of the property was final--went without a hitch just a few days before, and we were as excited as Dad for this day to come, this first day to work on the land, but the fact is the day had not yet come. Morning was a few hours away, and somewhere in the night our bodies had unharnessed the enthusiasm that kept us awake at bedtime. As we sat with bed-head hair around the kitchen table, rubbing the crusties from our eyes, the anticipation slowly returned.

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I have never been shaken awake before dawn to go fishing, but I think our groggy gleeful whispers that first Saturday morning were akin to those of fishing buddies in a cabin shared with sleeping wives. In our case, the "sleeping wives" were Mom and Kathy and little Jim who, knowing the clanging alarm did not apply to them, were still sound asleep. Later, much later, after they delivered Paul's papers, they would be bringing lunch out to us, but that would be at least another eight hours after the bowled breakfast Dad set before us.

“Eat hardy, boys, this'll have to tide you over ‘til lunch time.”

“What are we doing first?” Paul asked with a mouthful of cereal.

“Well, you know those weed scythes I bought last week? First thing we’re going to do is clear the old drive as far back as we can so we have a place to park the car, but that won’t take long at all. The old two-track is pretty clear for a hundred feet or so. Then it ought to be light enough for us to start surveying and clearing the south lot line.”

"Clearing like clearing a trail?" I asked. "How wide?"

"Not a walking path. Just clear enough to see through the transit."

"What's a transit?" I wondered aloud.

"It's that little telescope thing in that wooden box downstairs," Dave said.

"Yeah, that's it," Dad said, "It's not a telescope, but you've got the right idea."

Paul added, "It goes up on that wooden tripod with the pointed legs."

“How long will it take to survey?” Dave asked.

“Shouldn't take long," Dad said peeling a banana. "Depends on how much brush is in the way, and how many times I have to sharpen the chain saw. My goal is to get half-way to the creek by lunch time and to the creek by dark. Tom, you'll do most of the weed whackin', and Paul you'll be using that new post-hole digger--just push, spread, and pull like I showed you. Dave, you'll back fill the posts--spell off with Paul if he gets tired, and Tom and I will keep moving ahead, cutting posts from the trees in the way, and marking where to put 'em. Shouldn't take long."

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They didn't say anything, but Dave and Paul's eyes met on the second "shouldn't take long." Their eyebrows twitched upward and back into place so slightly that Dad did not see. For the moment he seemed content to watch how effortlessly his knife dropped banana slices on his cereal.

The creek was about two-thirds of the way down the south side of the property, 900 yards, three football fields. We did not make it half-way by lunch time, but we did reach the creek by dark--two Saturdays later! The east line across the back of the land was shorter, and since a developer had already cleared the trees beyond, it was basically a matter of sinking posts.

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Clearing the lot lines was the first project we completed with Dad that fall, and in doing so we soon discovered three things: First, the weed scythes were no match for this land--nor was Dad's first chain saw. He had to upgrade (and in the months ahead he developed an arsenal of saws for trees of all sizes). Second, Dad was the hardest working man we'd ever seen. And third, he was a good man, a good worker--honest as the day is long--but he was lousy at estimating how long "pioneer work" took to do,and each Saturday it seemed we bit off more than a day could chew.

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