Picket Fence

   

   The pile has been there quite a few years.  I advertised on Craigslist for weathered pickets.  It’s probably a good deal I never got any nibbles.  When I decided to convert them to firewood and began unstacking those pickets, I found most of them were rotted beyond any use.

     As I stacked up five or six pickets, lining up the angled tops so I could cut a bunch at a time and get sticks the same length, I couldn’t help but think of Dad cutting all those things.  I don’t remember exactly how he did it.  He may have had a jig or something.

      What I do remember is coming home from school one day while the project was active to find Dad not able to do much, with a big bandage on his right thigh.  He used his Montgomery Ward Power saw, a “Skil Saw”-type machine, to cut them all. 

      Apparently, he had some type of system where he could cut several pickets, one after another, without having to put the saw down.  He would make a cut, draw the saw back to his leg while he lined up the next board.  It worked fine until the blade guard failed to retract and the still-spinning blade contacted his leg.

      I don’t remember how many stitches it took, but he did go to the doctor.  I don’t remember how long he was out of commission.  I do remember the picket fence, not fondly.  I remember trying to paint the thing, the frustration, the fights between us painters that resulted in crimes and punishments.

      The fence was to keep the chickens out of the yard while the new bluegrass lawn established itself.  I also remember the smell of the wet, heavily manured soil when we sprinkled water on it to try to keep it damp enough to sprout the seeds.

      I remember laying down the old 1x12’s side-by-side, end-to-end, when the wind kicked up to try to keep the soil and the grass seed from blowing away. When the wind died down, the boards had to be removed and stacked somewhere off the lawn.  Getting that lawn sprouted and going was a real pain.  So no wonder we had to keep the chickens out.

      I’m not sure, but I guess the fence preceded the seed planting.  Then came the day when the lawn was mature.  The first mowing was fun.  Every mowing since then, eh, not so much.

     After the bluegrass established itself, keeping the gates closed wasn’t an imperative.  Some of the gates disappeared.  The chickens had free range inside the picket fence.  They said thank you to the lawn by fertilizing it.  I remember playing football on the lawn.  Tackling or getting tackled meant landing in chicken manure.

      We nicknamed the yard “Debris Field”, like “Lambeau Field” or "Soldiers Field" maybe.  The picket fence deteriorated.  No one wanted the job of painting it again.  Rather than removing it, we planted junipers all around the inside of the fence.

      I could hardly wait until the junipers got big enough so that we could trim and shape them.  I can wait now, quite a while sometimes.

     After the hedge got big enough to be a hedge, the pickets were in pretty rough shape.  Brother-in-law Jim removed quite a few of them back in the day when he was still trying to heat his house with wood.  He converted the pickets to firewood.

     Not too many years ago, I decided to go after not only the remaining pickets, but the rails and posts, too.  The rails were 2x4’s, mostly rotted, warped, and split.  The process was very difficult because the hedge had thrust its branches between pickets and then branched out on the outside of the fence.  I had to do some major trimming to get the job done.

      Many observers were sure the hedge would die as a result of my major butchery.  Not old Ralph.  He pooh-poohed that idea.  He said his neighbor cut them to within six inches of the ground and they came back.

     In Eastern Kansas they try to kill the cedars.  Try and fail.  Cedars are a weed there, a nuisance in fencerows and a grass killer in the pastures.  The hedge survived, recovered, and still has to be trimmed once a year.

     Once the pickets and rails were removed, there remained the posts that supported the rails.  They were steel fence posts set in concrete, about six inches in diameter and maybe eight to ten inches deep.  I didn’t have a Farmhand at the time.  My extraction tools were the 820 tractor, a heavy log chain, and a piece of the trunk of a 100-year-old locust tree.

      I backed the 820 close to the post, and rolled the big log as close to the post as I could get it.  Cedar branches kept me from getting the log too close.  I tied the chain around the post as close to the ground as I could get it, looped the chain over the locust log, hooked it to the tractor, and eased the tractor forward.

     In most cases, the post went up, then forward, then over the log, bearing its cement overshoe.  That process worked fine on east south and west.  The north was a little harder because I was forbidden to run the heavy tractor up on the north lawn.  I added some more chain and pulled with the tractor out of the confines of the bluegrass.

      All went well except for the south gatepost of the east gate.  It didn’t just have a cement overshoe.  Subsequent cement pours to form a walkway had infringed on the post’s territory.  I made several nudges with the tractor without too much success.  The final nudge was more of a jerk.  The post gave up, all right.  It was determined not to go alone it seemed. 

     It came flying up over the locust log, chain, cement chunk, and all, and slapped the backrest of the tractor seat.  A few inches higher, and I may not have been able to tell this tale.

      I just spent two half days trimming the old hedge.  Trying to do it all in one day is a bit much for the old codger now.  I didn’t do the best job, but from a hundred yards away, you can see that it has been trimmed and you can’t see the misses.

       The picket pile will soon be relegated to the ash heap of history.  As for the lawn, Mom would really be disappointed in me, how I have let that precious grass turn to dust.  It just took too much water, with the hedge demanding its share, too.  It was too hard to keep the weeds out of it.

     It doesn’t look like much, that lawn.  But it’s really no problem, except when it rains.  Instead of treading on bluegrass, you have to walk in mud.  Oh well, doesn’t happen very often.