Men Pruning. Memory Lane.
At the end of city parking lots, where a fence has been taken over by vines and scraggly trees, there’s a narrow no man’s land. But poke around, bushwhack in, and there’s a hidden place: a tangled forest sprouting from the ground below the fence.
It happens on farm fences, too. On our little farm, that tangle runs the entire fence line. It’s about 8 feet wide. Pasture on one side of the fence, tangle on the other. It often seems endless as it wraps all the fields. It’s a fringe forest. A place I’ve learned a lot about life. Entering it is like going into a tunnel of crooked pecan trees, smooth China berry trunks, barbed cat briar, and memories.
Brush clearing is good cold-weather work that warms you up fast. Today, we’re here to cut all that back, to protect the fence from potential vegetative monsters or leaning branches that an ice storm would bring down onto the fence.
From the pasture, it looks impenetrable. But once I’m inside the tunnel, I see the tangle is sparse—a hidden place. Looking back, I see the rusty, rolled-up wire and rotting posts of the old fence we replaced when I was a boy. My saw is ready but I hear Daddy, “Boy, that is a powerful thing. That chainsaw is a tool. But it'll kill you too. Stop cutting those vines with it; they gonna catch in the chain, snatch it out’yer hands and cut you up.”
But today, there’s a lot of cat briar to cut, and since we skipped last year, it’s thick and woody. I’ll be fine. I look on up ahead toward one of the guys. Now I’m the one yelling out warnings, “Sam, don’t ever hold a chainsaw up over your head. Get the pole saw if you wanna cut that cherry laurel up high,” I say to my young helper.
He knows I'm thinking about his safety. I know he’ll do the right thing.
It’s cherry laurel I get lost in, looking back to that terrible icy winter when we cleaned this same fence line, stacked the brush pile, and left it to dry. The donkeys didn’t have any greens to graze that winter, so they nibbled on the brush pile. And we lost a colt to Cyanide poisoning. Cyanide is in the leaves of laurel. That sweet boy-colt came to me on an icy morning, came right up to me. Not a normal thing. I thought he came for warmth. But he came to me dying. Came to me to save him.
If Daddy had still been around, he’d have known better.
Today, there’s a lot of cherry laurel. Doug’s handling it. Every tree, every branch that comes down, he pulls to the fire and sprays it with diesel to make sure the leaves burn. We're taking no chances.
In the fence line hedge, we're making ugly cuts. If this were a pruning job, I’d be fired. But ugly cuts help create privacy from the road, which is outside the fence line. Cut one tree at the ground, the next 3 feet up, snaggle-toothed. Raw. In the spring, they’ll flush out green at different levels and give privacy fast.
Daddy never had to think about privacy. He would have let anyone who drove up, walked up, or arrived on a broomstick come right in. He'd have offered a cup of coffee and shown them the farm. Gregarious Gus. He'd say to me, “Talk to the man, son. Look him in the eye and shake his hand.” I looked at the ground.
Another man taught me to talk to people. But it was watching Daddy that made me know that’s what men do. Talk. Evaluate. Trust. Only now we cut this fenceline, even out here in the country for protection. On the tiny dirt road, a homeless man on a bike peddled by, peering in. He was bent up, crunched onto a little boy’s bike, with a tire strapped to his back. It’s cold as a well digger’s willie. I wish I could, as Daddy would have, offer him a warm spot—at least a warm smile. But the world has changed. I watch him to make sure he keeps on going.
My heart aches. In this tangled tree line, looking forward. Looking back.
“What are you standing there for?” Sam yells. We head for a coffee break on the tailgate by the fire—smoke in my eyes. Sam, Doug, Cole, we’re all quiet, so I ask, “Do you think about who’ll do this kind of stuff when we can’t?” No one answered. So I say what I was really thinking, “I wonder if Daddy thought about that. I mean, he was immortal and invincible to me, so from my little boy's perspective, I don’t believe he did.”
I know we four, sitting by this brush fire, all share something. We all lost our fathers. Even young Sam. I know they know this isn’t a time for jokes.
Doug, who's older, or at least wiser than any of us, always has a convoluted story that usually ends with something related to the question at hand. Today, it is different. He’s fixing to start, but there’s a rapid-fire crackling from the fire; we wait for the cat briar to burn up. Doug finally starts, “When my Dad was in the nursing home, I’ ‘d sneak him pieces of pickled baloney….” I have to interrupt. “Man, you are kidding me. I thought this was serious, but you’re making that shit up.” He looks bewildered. So I go on, “That’s not a real thing. Pickled baloney?”
Cole and Sam are already in their phones checking on this absurdity. Doug keeps talking, “Of course it is, I’m telling you a story in good faith about my Dad and aging,”
I say, “But Doug, one thing we’ve learned about men from Michigan, you being the only one we know, is that y’all like to try to fool folks. As my Daddy would say, “You like pulling our legs.””
“I am not pulling anything...." he pauses and looks at Sam, “Are you googling me?”
Sam gives me a nod of confirmation, “It’s real. He’s telling the truth. It even comes in different shapes.”
Now Doug plays the martyr, and his story is derailed. We look at so many new and unbelievable baloney shapes that Doug gives up, “Let’s go clear that fence line,” he finally says.
I walk back into that 8-foot-wide, endless line of terrible pruning cuts. For decades, it’s been pruned like this. I’m just doing what he did. Some stumps, some dead. So many bent branches, rotting moldy. So many vines that escaped our blades. Curled around trunks, wove their way across overhead like power lines. There’s a cat briar dripping gallons of blackberries.
There’s debris, too. Not trash, not baloney sandwich packs or cans. Yet. Nobody would have done that kind of messing up. Looking one way, I see this tangle that needs to be cut back. Looking at another, I see our raw wounds, what we did this morning. All in this narrow, shady hedge line by the fence.
Looking another way, I see smoke and a silhouette of a man wielding a chainsaw in complete control. Like it’s part of his body. I know I‘m looking at young Sam. But being in here is timeless. I see that man in the smoke, and I hear Daddy say,” Boy, that is a powerful thing.”
Wonderful story! Merry Christmas!