ARCHIVE ENTRIES
LATEST ENTRIES

© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.

POSTSCRIPT:

A couple of ironies upon my return to Montana.  Firewood?  Purt-near the entire state’s on fire!  Temps in the high 90s and triple digits throughout July and into August.  No rain in sight.  Hard to believe, from this vantage point, that we’ll ever see winter again.  Hopefully, we will.  And, since we heat the Polish-Mafioso-Rodeo-Poet Abode in-part with wood, I try to keep 4-5 long cords on hand.  Used to cut it myself.  In fact, in Grad School back in the ‘70s, I supplemented my $218.11 monthly teaching assistantship wage by selling firewood to my professors and fellow writers—40 bucks a cord, split, delivered, stacked (Jim Welch wanted it in his guldamn garage!).  In those days, gas was, what, 58¢ a gallon?  Less?  To boot, I traveled a mere 25 miles in any direction outside of Missoula for prime/dry standing buckskin larch or fir.  (My Dad and I drive 2-3 miles to his 20-acre woodlot.) 

So now I buy it from my friend, Willy.  He’s traveling 150 miles round-trip for a jag of lodgepole pine.  His flatbed Ford likely gets less than 10 miles per gallon.  Got back to Montana—after making all those beautiful hardwood cords with Dad—and bought a hefty load for 200 clams.  (On second thought, I believe we were paid $211.18 monthly as teaching assistant grad students.)  I seriously considered packing a split stick of oak in my checked baggage.  Lucky I didn’t, as my suitcase weighed in at 47 ½ pounds (beer, cheese, pastys, and salami, the bulk of it) and 50+ pounds would have cost me one-fourth of Willy’s load in additional luggage fees.  Oh well, it all averages out in the end, right?