If you’re of a certain vintage, maybe my age or a little older, the title of today’s post should sound familiar. It’s a line from a song. You might even hear the notes in your head.
The hyphen is intentional — the word “striped” is sung in two syllables.
“Stripe-ed.”
Jimmy Webb’s “MacArthur Park,” with a running time of 7:30, was uncharacteristically long for pop airplay in 1968. It’s instrumentally pretentious. Lyrically it’s overwrought, approaching disturbing. The song was recorded by a British actor who couldn’t carry a tune if he’d had a bucket — the performance was, in a word, awful.
And yet “MacArthur Park” reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Only Herb Alpert’s “This Guy’s In Love With You” prevented it from reaching #1.) It even won a Grammy.
The prolific Webb, then just 22 years old, composed the piece about breaking up with a girl named Susie (aka Suzy). He continued to mine that angst to write other songs, notably “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.”
Incidentally, Susie/Suzy and I share a common employer, which in the ’60s had its west-coast offices across the street from MacArthur Park. She ended up marrying Linda Ronstadt’s cousin.
There’s no good reason for me to be thinking about “MacArthur Park” right now, but I am. It’s been playing repeatedly in my head, an unwelcome earworm I’d very much like to exorcise.
That’s why I told you all this. I hope it’s stuck in your head now.
Bookending our Sunday were issues with our daily-driver vehicles. After loading baskets of laundry into the truck for our weekly trip to the ‘mat, I turned the key and got no response.
Dead battery. There must be a parasitic drain somewhere.
I fished our NOCO jump-pack out of the toolbox, hooked it up and let it do its thing. Ten minutes later, we were on our way. Driving recharged the battery, and we had no problems the rest of the day.
I’m going to detour briefly here and say that I’ve grown to love the Husky toolbox mounted in the bed of the Silverado. It’s not something I would’ve bought and added (it came with the truck), and yeah, it eats up valuable cargo capacity, but damn, it’s great being able to carry virtually everything I need.
Late yesterday afternoon, Deb drove her Jeep to Flippin to gas-up for the work week. Light rain began falling, and she switched on the wipers.
The driver-side blade shredded before her eyes.
She swung into the O’Reilly Auto Parts store — right across the road from her fuel stop — and picked up a replacement. I installed it when she got back.
That was an easy fix. I suspect that the Silverado’s electrical gremlins will require professional help.
A day without woodcutting is… well, whatever it is, this wouldn’t be one of those days. With freshly sharpened saws, pleasant weather and plenty of work left to do, I got after it early.
Every time I’ve passed the roadside oak since finishing with it, it’s annoyed me that I left as much as I did at the base of the tree. Granted, the Husqvarna had taken all it could handle by that point, but I couldn’t help wondering if it might be worth another try.
And so that was my first target today. I didn’t get greedy — just two more cuts, roughly two-thirds of what was there. That produced two monster rounds, each a hair over 24 inches in diameter. I left them on the slope to pick up later.
Turning off the road and onto the buggy trail, I continued on to Dancing Tree. This would be the day I’d buck the former widowmaker, and it’d be the first time I’d use the cargo sled to skid what I cut to where I could load it.
I swapped the Husky for the Stihl and the DeWalt and set to work making small stuff from bigger stuff. I’d stop every so often and pitch lengths into the sled. When it was full (or full enough), I returned to the Ranger and winched it to the clearing.
The sled idea worked flawlessly. Skidding it out that way saved me dozens of trips with armloads of heavy oak. My knees and my back are grateful.
The Ranger’s 4,500-pound Kolpin winch, which I’ve used now only a few times, did an okay job. Its cable, however, is in rougher shape than I’d like. Since I expect it to fill an important role in my woodcutting game, and for safety’s sake, I should replace it sooner rather than later.
Two-and-a-half sled-loads took care of everything I cut today. For now, it sits in a pile at Dancing Tree.
I stopped on my way Home to fetch the roadside rounds I bucked earlier. I’m not ashamed to admit that it took everything I had to wrestle them into the bed of the Ranger.
I won’t hazard a guess at what they weigh. Gravity helped me unload them at the wood yard, at least.
Every bit of sweat and strain adds to our stores of firewood for next winter, and perhaps the winter after that. It’s not always easy — usually, in fact, it’s hard — but it’s some of the most satisfying work I’ve ever done.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
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