The only heat we had at the Little House was a single fireplace in the front room. Daddy usually cut the wood for the fireplace with an ax. Often, he would bring long trunks of trees to the yard in a “woodpile,” and would cut them into firewood length with his ax. He laid the trunks across a “chop block” to hold them in place. The chop block was a fairly large piece of oak or hickory. Chopping wood produced “chips,” and it was my job to gather the chips in a bucket. They were useful in getting the fire started. They went just above the paper and kindling, in the fireplace and then came the firewood that Daddy had cut. When Daddy cut trees for firewood, it was usually oak or hickory. But we also got other kinds wood from time to time. I remember “slabs” from some sawmill, and I remember cutting up pine tops after timber had been harvested. “Lightwood”—very flammable wood from pine stumps—was plentiful, and that is what we used to start fires. Daddy would painstakingly split it into “splinters”—very small pieces, using his ax and the “chop block.” He used only one hand on the ax, about halfway down the handle (like “choking” a baseball bat) and hold the lightwood with the left hand and split the “kindling.”
I remember at least once getting to go with Daddy and a whole bunch of men into the swamp for a wood cutting. They used cross-cut saws, axes, and wedges. They used an interesting device for rolling large logs. The log rolling tool is still available:
There were mules and wagons. A fascinating project for a five or six year old!
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