Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods

Tools

TOOLS We had our hands full the first ten yearsjust getting up walls and roofs, bathhouse, small barn, woodshed. A lot of it was done the old way: we dropped all the trees to be used in the frame of the house with a two-man saw,and peeled them with drawknives. GARY SNYDER "Kitkitdizze," A Place in Space By cutting wood with an axe, the model is indeed near at hand. LU JI "Essay on Literature," fourth centuryAD very best friends to anyone who would attempt to live the self-sufficient life are his tools. Without the proper tools, a man is as useless to this life as any member of the natural order would be in trying to reinvent itself as a human and take on the manners and customs of the upright race. I am remembering an experience I had with Zoro, not long after beginning my life here in the woods, and the important lessonlearned on that day. As on many previous occasions, I had traveled by foot up Old Macedonia Road to Guice Road and Zoro's farm to lend him and Bessie a helping hand with chores. Helping them with various laborintensive tasks was a way of showing my thanks for allthe hospitality they had shown me and for the practical education and advice they had given me on woodslore and the business of simply getting by.On this particular day, after sweeping a winter's worth of pine needles from the tin roof and gutters of the house, hoeing out new rows for a second planting in the garden, and cultivating the earlypotatoes, Iwas set to the task of splitting kindling for Bessie's wood-fired cookstove. Bent over the woodblock, a small axe in one hand and a thin poplar limb in the other, hacking off twelve-inch lengths that would be used as tinder for starting fires or for adding heat to an alreadyignitedfirebox (which she used in all seasonsdespite the heat or the fact that she 36 <7*/hev v-x'self-su: had a brand new electric range there in her kitchen, donated by her children, that she had never used), Ihad alreadyaccumulated a generous pile of kindling from a huge pile of limbs Bessie had dragged up on one of her scavenging forays into the woods, when I was startled by the sudden presence of Zoro. He had walked up behind me and was standing over my right shoulder, watching as I hacked away at the branches with a novitiate, zealous, one-handed awkwardness. No sooner had I noticed him than he reached over my shoulder and grabbed the small kindling axe out of my hand, as if taking adangerous object away from a curious toddler. Taking a quick glance at the business end of the axe, and with an expression that was at once disgusted and fraught with pain, he peered down on me kneeling there amidst the woodchips and sawdust and said: "I can't bear to watch for nary another minute a man make so much work of such a simple job! How do you expect to cut anything with a dull axe? As tired as I am from just watchin' you, I may as well be out here doin' this for myself!" Embarrassed by Zoro's scolding and by the fact that I hadn't thought to check the blade of the axefor sharpness,I remained silent, having nothing to say in my own defense. As I knelt there in myopic mute self-examination,Zoro pulled a long thin filing blade from his overalls, laid the head of the axe on the chopping block in front of me and began to file smooth, steady strokes over the edges of the axe. As the axe blade started to take on a bright silver sheen, and after he had lifted it up from the woodblock and tested its sharpness with his thumb, drawing a thin line of dark red blood, and then running the filededge against the contour of the backsideof his forearm —cutting the hair on his arm as he went, like a scythe mowing wheat—Zoro looked down at me with something of a twinkle in his eye, handed me the axe, and said: "Aman's no better than his tools. If n he don't take care of his tools, keep 'em looked after and sharp, he'll end up workin' himself to death before his time. A sharp tool saves a man time, strain, and adds years to his life." With that proclamation he turned and walked in the direction of the barn and returned within a few minutes with an armload of old tools that looked to have been used for generations—so worn and filed down as to be barely recog37 I TOOLS nizable as anything that might have originally been store-bought or new. "Since you're settin' there filing that axe, IVe got these here other tools that need a few licks from that file of yours. It'll get you in the practice," Zoro concluded. He laid down the load of tools that included a shovel, mattock, sling-blade, hoe, hatchet, and threshing scythe and turned and headed back for the house with a knowing grin on his face. I remember sitting there on that chopping block for the rest of the afternoon filing Zoro's tools. I had watched Zoro file the axe and so made quick work of finishing his job, as well as sharpening the hatchet. But with the other tools I had to discover on my own the proper stroking angles and technique by trial and error. After a couple hours of filing, with forearms aching and fingers bleeding from missed strokes, Iwas whipped. AsIgot up from my knees and reached for the brush pile to test the newly sharpened axeon alimb, there was Zoro standingbeside me like an apparition, with a huge hunk of corn bread and a glass of sweet tea in his outstretched hands. "Idon't never ask a man to do anything without pay," he said, standing there smiling with that all-knowing look on his face. A little less embarrassed than at our previous encounter, I smiled back. Ashe sauntered away to the house, I made quick work of both the corn bread and the tea. Walking home down MacedoniaRoad at dusk, I noticed that I was feeling satisfied with myself. Not only from having done a day's work to help the Guices, but from something much less immediately tangible than a day's wages paid in corn bread and tea. I wasn't going home that evening empty-handed. I had been paid with knowledge and given a lesson that I knew would accrue interest over the course of a lifetime. In that sense it would prove priceless. It's spring again and two yearssincethat day I spent in front of Bessie's branch pilefilingtools. This time of year, when the weather begins to stay warm from day to day in longer stretches, the morels and hummingbirds appear, the spring rains come to soften up the garden soil that has been freezing and thawing allwinter, and there are fewer and fewer fires to be built in the woodstove for the purpose of providing heat, I get out my tools and begin the ritual of filing them down to 38 I ZORO'S FIELD that Zoro-sharp edge. Zoro's lesson of a couple of springs ago has become a seasonal ritual as well as part of my kinesthetic memory. A reflex action that comes on the heels of the blooming of the ornamental pear trees in the Revis family yard down the road, of the first sight of bluebirds and the return of chipmunks and woodchucks from their underworld winter dens. The longing for the sound and feel of metal on metal hits me like a hunger, and I know from this impulse, this yearning that comes from arm muscle and ear, that it is time to take care of the tools. For the small mountain farmer such as myself, there are a few essential tools that are as important as good health and the food we eat to keep ourselves alive. Tools that, in all honesty, spend most of the year in the slab-sided toolshed IVe built on the far side of the garden field. A few of these tools I have inherited as gifts from Zoro. I don't embrace them askeepsakesbut rather have,in some cases, re-handled them from grip-sized sourwood saplings and made them a part of my arsenal of friendly weapons with which I fight the good fight of self-sufficiency. I carry on the hand-tool tradition that has been passed down through at least two generations with Zoro's hoe, its blade barely half the original size, so much of it having been filed off by either rasp or loamy red-clay mountain soil. The list of tools that stand at attention in neat, orderly rows in my toolshed reads like a who's who in the history of agrarian domesticated life on the planet Earth:hoe, axe,mattock, maul, wedge, scythe, shovel, sledge, handsaw,crosscut saw,pitchfork, rake, hammer, hand drill, and level. Likebusinessmen sitting in raised chairs on the corner of a city street on a summer morning waiting for their shoes to be shined, my tools wait for their spring makeover and a call to arms from the raspyblade of my silverfile. This spring, like those that have come before, with the honeybees out of their hives and working the golden surfaces of the dandelions for pollen, each tool will take its turn out on the chopping block and will be sharpened carefully and properly until it has received a razor -sharp edge—allowing it to penetrate either earth or wood easily, as if it were a foot sliding into a pair of familiar shoes. The hoewill emerge from its session with file, its multigenerational blade yet another eighth of an inch shorter, and make its way to the north end 39 I TOOLS of the garden to furrow shallow rows for early spinach, leeks, spring onions, cabbage, parsnips, rutabagas, andJerusalem artichokes. The axe, with a fresh edge and maybe a new hickory handle after a rough winter's workout, will find its way into the nearby woods to cut dead branches a manageable length from fallen or standing-dead trees, branches that will become kindling forfiresfor cooking corn bread or simmering a cast-iron pot of stew. The mattock will leave the sharpening block to find its way to the south end of the garden, where it will turn up mulched cabbage, carrots,beets, and other tubers and hearty vegetables that have wintered over and need to be harvested before the warm soil and rain cause them to rot. It will also be used to dig out around the spring, to rid the springbox of silt and to open up the spring so that it can freely flow. The shovel will begin the spring turning the compost one last time before going into the rows where seed potatoes will be dropped. It will dig deep holes where the germinated tomato seeds, as slips, will be heeled-in later in the spring. It will dig pestholes for the locust poles that will carry the heavyweight of halfrunner green beans as they mature and spread out on the trellises during the summer months before becoming ripe and being picked by the bushel. The long tines of the garden rake are filed in a circular motion to get their tips almost to the likeness of icepicks, so they will glide through the turned earth creating waves of soil covering the planted and sown seed and will clear the paths through the woods and around the cabin of awinter's worth of matted and rain-soaked leaves and twigs. The working edges of the splitting maul and -wedge also will be sharpened to take that first bite into a round of wood still needing to be split for the last fires of the season or to create the poplar and pine kindling for woodstove firings for cooking during the spring and summer. A good edge to the scythe takes only a few minutes, with the thin metal being honed to a clean silver glaze and sharp sparkle in several long licks of the file, thus readying it for the clearing and maintenance work of keeping the briars and brambles at bay during the warmer months when untended grasses and weeds dominate the woods, orchard, arbors, andfields. Last but not least are the garden, kitchen, and pocket knives, which demand oil and a sharp edge by way of my whetstone. The smaller 40 I ZORO'S FIELD pocketknife demands special attention, as it is a constant companion —like a lover carried allyear long against my hip. It isnot uncommon to meet an old-timer here in this community who has carried a single familiar penknife his whole life — one that was given to him by his father and that belonged to his father's father before that. These knives carry with them the weight and bearing of a rite of passage amongst the male members of the community and are carried and brought out for show, conversation, and trade with pride and bragging rights. Added to those already mentioned, yet of a different family, is another tool that ispart of one's essentialcache:thefishingrod. With the annually stocked wild and scenicGreen River nearby, mountain trout has, along with squash, apples,corn, tomatoes, and potatoes, become one of my dietary staples. It isjust a fifteen-minute hike down to a section of river that israrelyvisited or fished because of the steep and rocky terrain. There I can alwayscatch my limit of trout—for smoking , for fish jerky, or for the instant gratification of an evening's meal. The short plastic pole I own is handy in getting around through the thickets and laurel hells down by the river and has allowed me to add a bit of soft meat and protein to my otherwise vegetarian diet. Here in the woods of Polk County, I treat my tools as I would a family, an automobile, or a mule, if Ihad such things to be responsible for. I remember Zoro telling me a moving story about his mule, who had lived for over thirty years and had, in essence, fed and provided for his family during all that time. When the old mule finally drew its last breath, Zoro walked out of the barn and sat down by the side of his house and spent the rest of the day crying, unable to be comforted —so much a part of him and his family, so much a friend had that old mule been. With this same kind of loyalty anyone who would live self-sufficiently must bond with his tools. Without them, without their being healthy, clean, and sharp, one is an all but helpless freak in these woods. My tools, like Zoro's mule, are my friends. I talk to them the same as I would talk to my neighbors, the rural-route mailman, or the animals that make their homes in these woods. I love to go into the shed in the winter and commune with my half-hibernatingtools, 41 TOOLS the rakes and scythes hanging from their nails against a backdrop of veined and weathered balsam boards. Like old-timers sitting around a pot-bellied stove in the general store, we swap stories and layplansfor the coming spring. The tarrying tools in the shed are a portent of the warm weather to come, of movement and exercise, and the welcome work of getting one's hands, feet, and whole body back into the dirt. By taking good care of the tools I have and learning how to use them efficiently, I have been able to be here, warmed and well fed,through three winters. (Admittedly I have been blessed with good physical health.) Mytools are evidence of my wealth. Though Ihavenomoney, I can hold up my tools ascurrency.Currency Iwould not trade for the bank account or the life of any man who is not living in the wild. Tve always thought it interesting that in some tribal or more traditionally agrarian cultures, to steal tools is a crime punishable by death. To steal the tools of another is tantamount to murder, since the victim wouldn't be able to survive without them. Thusly are tools in these cultures valued. With this kind of care and with this sort of ethic in mind, I keep my tools in good condition. For the same reasons, I follow the ethic that is practiced here in these mountains: that it is impolite to ask to borrow someone's primary tools, as no one wants to risk having someone else damage something that isessential to his family's well-being. By the same token I don't want to be responsible for having broken or damaged anyone else's tools. We keep our tools to ourselves and close to home. While the members of my immediate neighborhood are only too happy to offer a hand to anyone in need, I don't think I have heard of a native in this community who has lent out either his chainsaw or his mule for someone else to use. The chainsaw especially is a sacred cow in the social ethic of tools and the lending of tools because of the delicate and variable nature of the tool itself and its potential for breakage, its costliness, and the impact it has as a laborsaving device. One might, coming from the urban, outside world, find such attitudes and behavior amongst the mountain farmers of this region strange. But those of us living in the mountains on little or no monetary income anddependent upon our tools to make it from one day to the next would only 42 I ZORO'S FIELD laugh at outsiders who might make fun of such "selfish," "old-fashioned " eccentricities. Eccentricities and epithets aside, I have made a good life for myself here in these woods— a life that I wouldn't trade for any other—all thanks to good health, good neighbors, and my tools. TOOLS Silver and slick asvelvet the edge of the old hoe glistens, how IVe filed away this day— 43 TOOLS ...