I caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye. I don’t know if she saw me or if she felt the same tingling sensation that ran down my spine, but I was overcome by her at first sight. I honestly didn’t know what I was getting myself into and I rarely make decisions based on novelty ideas or advertisements … but this was different.
Stihl made a chainsaw that had the words Farm Boss written on the side of the bar. I was in love, and now it was time to bring her home.
It seemed like I was turning pages for an eternity. I’m not much for manuals, but I figured I should at least look at it. After all, my best efforts to start the thing were completely unsuccessful. I figured out how to flood the engine in about a hundred different ways.
Each unsuccessful attempt was accompanied by my outbursts and childish behavior exhausting my entire repertoire of expletives. I began combining new adjectives and nouns to my colorful language and managed to make up a few new expressions for my library. However, I still couldn’t get the thing to turn on.
My wife always seems to have the answers I wasn’t looking for and this was no exception. She nods with her sign of disapproval and begins asking me a series of questions that make me feel like I’m being interrogated for a murder.
She wanted to know why I bought a chainsaw, so I began telling her all of the features that the salesman said it had. I talked about the weight-to-power ratio or something like that along with the reduced vibration technology that she didn’t seem to care about.
But most importantly, I didn’t tell her that I had to buy it because the chainsaw I inherited from my father was stuck in a tree in the back of the property. My plan was to use the new saw to rescue the other chainsaw.
Armed with the comfortable ignorance that allows me to tackle even the most difficult tasks, I took my shiny new chainsaw into the woods to conduct a rescue operation and ultimately save my pride.
It’s important to note that I have no formal training on using a chainsaw and really don’t have any idea what I’m doing. It turns out that I can barely muster the strength to hold the bar level to cut a straight line.
The only thing I can honestly remember my dad telling me about the chainsaw is that the fastest way to dull a chain is to touch it to the dirt. Well, it turns out that my dad was wrong.
As my unsteady hands began to maneuver the chainsaw into place, the sharp teeth bit into the tree, gouging on the cellulose fibers that were long dead. Sparks began to fly as I was unable to avoid the other chainsaw stuck in the tree.
Slowly, the guide bar slowed to a halt as I managed to bury a second chainsaw into the tree. I quickly wrapped a chain around the tree and let my tractor have it.
A loud crash and a thud were all that remained of the tree. My dad’s chainsaw was successfully rescued, but unfortunately, the tree mutilated my new chainsaw. I wasn’t mad that I had to buy a new bar, chain, some other pieces as well as a new handle. What bothered me most was that the new bar didn’t read … Farm Boss.
OMG!! My father had his arsenal of words that were only his, especially when he got mad. He owned a tree climbing/cutting service for a long time and I can still remember holding up his tree spikes thinking…man I wouldn’t want to fall on one of those. I learned more chainsaw safety than I ever needed, and to this day, has owned not one chainsaw. But my father made us listen anyhow. It’s ok your blade doesn’t say farm boss anymore..after all, you wouldn’t want your neighbors to know how you can rescue another chainsaw, right? They’d be asking you to do all kinds of things with your arsenal of knowledge. 😂😂😂😂