The Yooper Schooner (Part 3)

Things are really happening in the UP house building project. Not really, we should have wised up and quit!

Chapter Five: “The Gargantuan Pencil and the Yellow Monstrosity”

 

Experience is one thorough though tough teacher

 

When discussing all our logging fun, Karen reminds me of that one particularly large Aspen that stood where the septic field would one day lie. The tree was thick at the stump, thirty-two inches thick because my chainsaw, my new powerful one, would only reach halfway through the tree trunk. I sized up the Aspen, and it towered above the surrounding trees, but disturbingly, it was perfectly straight, plumb, and uniformly branched"I mean, perfectly balanced. I decided to drop it in the direction of the future driveway, a clear direction, so it would be easier to clean up. I started the chain saw with a few blips of the trigger throttle and commenced to saw.

The chainsaw bit into the tree and the sawdust flew, piling up at the tree’s base and my feet, which bore my suede combat boots from Desert Storm. There was a lot of tree to cut through. At this early juncture, I was still employing the American method of felling trees versus the Scandinavian method of felling. Basically, the American method finished with a flat stump while the Scandinavian left the log end flat"it was all about the notching.

I cut the first notch out on the driveway side, a good-sized watermelon-like wedge almost three-feet wide and a foot deep that the tree would lean into. I knocked the wedge out with my axe. The tree didn’t lean yet, but they seldom do at this point unless they leaned hard to start with.

I cut into the other side opposite the notch, just a single straight cut listening for a creak and watching the cut gap, an indicator that the tree had begun to lean. It did neither. I turned off and set the hot chainsaw down. I reaffirmed, this tree was particularly well balanced by looking up at this length of behemoth of a tree. Karen paced and watched from out at the road. I grabbed a long pole, actually a sizing pole a hundred inches long, and pushed on the tree. It wouldn’t move. I prayed for a favorable gust of wind, but unfortunately, there wasn’t a breath.    

I sized up the tree again, walking around it twice, studying it up and down. I looked to Karen. She didn’t say a word or make a gesture from her distant vantage point. I restarted the saw. Carefully notching alongside the large notch, I watched closer for any signs or sounds of movement. I know the more you cut from a tree, the faster it falls. The single cut I had made opposite the big notch is usually the best indicator to watch, and at only a quarter-inch slit, any tree movement or leaning is seen easily, but in this case, it remained a single, straight slit. Looking closer, I couldn’t be sure how deep this cut was so I buzzed it a little deeper"then a little more. Still no change.

I wondered how deep the slit was so decided to notch the tree on the sides. These wedges were not as large as the first, but now I could see that the two cuts were within three inches of each other. I cut little notches, a few inches or so into the sides, and stopped the chainsaw again. Now, I had no idea which way the tree would fall"a dangerous situation. Stepping back, the tree looked like a gargantuan pencil poised on its blunt point.

In my mind, I had established with no concrete evidence to prove otherwise, the safest place to be during tree felling is near the stump, not too close because of bouncing, but not too far away either. I thought a person could move out of the way faster on the tree’s pivot end. Makes sense, I suppose.

 I pushed on the sides with the long stick; the tree stood solidly, it would not budge. I shrugged and picked up the saw and began walking out the driveway toward Karen. Maybe the splitting wedge or log pike would help me convince the tree to come down.

Simultaneously, the tree creaked and Karen shrieked. I turned back to see the tree leaning slightly my way with the branches above shaking and dancing. I stood in the worse possible place, but the tree was in motion. I went cold and felt exceedingly small.

The huge tree looked like it was coming down on my head with no way for me to miss the huge mass of heavy branches above. I stood there frozen. In that following microsecond, the tree stopped leaning like a giant hand had grasped it, the tree top shook violently, and the whole tree turned forty-five degrees and commenced its fall to earth. I watched as the tree came down in perceived slow motion because of its huge size, and it crashed down through a clump of medium-sized maples squashing them to the ground in toothpick-sized splinters. With the crashing, snapping and a ground reverberating thump, the tree hit the ground and cantilevered eight feet up at the stump. My heart began beating again after it jumped higher than that and remained in my throat. After holding my breath an eternity, my breath expelled and commenced. I felt blessed.

I walked over to the huge log lying there as the leaves and twigs continued falling to the ground from the tree destroying chaos. Setting the chainsaw down, I examined the stump. Indeed, the twenty-ton tree had balanced on about a two-inch square point"the pencil point now crushed. It appeared that the huge weight of the tree had crushed the tree core remaining after my sawing. It fell in the direction of least resistance at first toward me in the driveway, but one of the smaller notches was angled in relation to the ground and forced the tree to do its pivot. If it had fallen down the driveway as I had planned, they wouldn’t have found much of me. Contemplating the event, I sat on the log, and Karen snapped a picture.

This particular tree felling proved the most perilous I ever encountered before or after. I have had trees hung up in other trees at angles or trees that don’t fall exactly as planned but never as bad as that one. Again, someone other than Karen was watching that day because the tree should have fallen where I had originally planned, and I stood right there when it decided to go. I knew better than to walk away from a tree cut like that, and I don’t know what I could have done differently in the sawing process. The rest of that day, we chunked up the tree and hauled the brush away, but felling more trees waited a few days until I recovered my courage. I never felt the same about felling trees.  

I’m glad the farmer was not involved with the huge tree, because he usually loved to rush over to help hogging up the fun “timber!” part. He would quickly fell as many trees in whatever direction they would fall, and then he would leave, creating clusters of brush that were nearly impossible to clean up, by only Karen and I, of course. Unsnarling, pulling and piling brush in the late spring humid heat nearly killed both of us. My joints never recovered and of all the pains suffered in my body from building the house, those attained during logging persist.

After a tiring day such as this one, we’d go home to our little room in the barn and sponge off in our 14-inch basin. My toes would curl up the sides of the cramped basin as I stood in the cool refreshing water after a hot, hard day of logging. It would take three or four changes of basin water before I felt clean enough to crash and sleep"and sleep came easily. 

 

In my years in the Air Force, I thought about owning a tractor, but didn’t have a reasonable purpose for one or the ability to ship one from base to base. Since returning to the UP, I remained vigilant in my search for a suitable tractor. Because the UP was never a widespread agricultural region, tractors were a rare commodity. After a short visit to relatives in New York, Karen and I located and bought a clunky 1969 John Deere 2010 tractor from a man in Munising. I justified my purchase with the hope of assistance with the log dragging and disposal of the unending brush that was literally breaking our backs and stressing our joints.

A few words about the clunky John Deere. I had a warm place in my heart for old John Deere tractors because I grew up on a farm with them, but this tractor was not one of those and didn’t meet my gleaming eye expectations one bit. When we saw it for the first time, it literally appeared clunky. It was completely yellow because the 2010 is an industrial tractor not the typical attractive agricultural green and yellow tractor. It had a square, phone booth-type cab on it and an aftermarket heavy-duty loader scoop. When I say heavy duty, I mean too big and heavy for the tractor, in fact someone had installed a counterweight rack behind the cab with fifteen, fifty-pound weights on it. Despite all the counterweights, when I had the scoop full and hit a bump, the drive wheels would bounce up and leave the ground obviously compromising traction and making for an unsettling ride. The tractor also came with a huge set of six-foot forks like those on a forklift that gave the same front heavy effect as the full scoop. The aftermarket scoop system bolted on to the power take off, so it was effectively out of commission. No other PTO-powered implements could be installed such farm implements or a very usable backhoe.

Later on when tractor maintenance provided me a closer look, I found the beast’s hour meter showed only a few hours on it, meaning it had rolled over"at least once. Compare that to a car rolling its odometer over twice-past a hundred-thousand miles. I also discovered it had a twenty-four-volt electrical system with two batteries providing power"well, for some electrical parts. For starting and charging, it had twenty-four volts, and for lights and such only twelve volts. Electrical problems turned out to be rampant and nightmarish. The light switch had six positions with various options and combinations between the headlights, fender lights, rear work lights, and rear spotlights. What a rat’s nest. I rewired the tractor because it shorted out under the tiny cramped dashboard. A serious short would have most undoubtedly ended the tractor’s “yellow” life with twenty-four hot volts fueling a fire right there under the fuel tank.

Along with the electrical system, it seems John Deere was into crazy tractor technological innovations in the late sixties. The PTO was out of commission, but so was the shuttle lever. This shuttle was supposed to allow quick changes from forward to reverse, but it didn’t work. Shifting the transmission was accomplished with a Chinese jigsaw puzzle shifter that operated like a multiple-position Las Vegas slot machine. It had a park, three reverses and ten forward speeds with only half of them functional. For example to get into tenth gear, I’d force the lever out of park with two hands with a resounding clunk, then with all the sliders and levers and linkages noisily moving around, I forced the lever down ching, left clunk, down rattle, right ching, down scrape, left ching, down clunk, down clunk, and finally right click. Jackpot! It was in tenth gear. 

Its steering box wasn’t directly connected to the front wheels either because it had high-tech hydraulic steering. This caused the tractor to wander a lot, making it impossible to drive in a straight line and the oily steering parts always leaked. To top it off the engine smoked badly. On the other hand, the hydraulic brakes worked super with never a problem, as did the hydraulic system for the scoop.

All in all these considerations, the tractor did help us a lot, but we still had to hand-carry the brush out of the thick woods to load on the tractor. When we considered stepping back and looking, the brush loads were impressive because we could load the tractor up with brush until it towered twice as big as the tractor itself. Perhaps buying the tractor was a mistake, but I did get some decent work out of it, as you will find out later on. I need to return to the house building progress because the house wasn’t only on the hard drive, there were real things to get done.

 

Be courageous for a daring man flourishes.

 

Chapter Six: “Weeks In”

 

Two of the first permits we received were for the two driveways, one main and another alternate driveway that allowed us to loop around with our truck and trailer alternately near the road or in front of the house site. The inspectors happily handed these permits over after writing the check, because there were not many rules and regulations concerning driveways other than roadside drainage stipulations.

As for the project’s progress itself, we were still at a standstill with the building permit. Satisfying the building codes and adapting our difficult plans and desires required more know how and patience than I possessed, so we chose to proceed with the sewer and water permits because those were approved by the Marquette Health Department. I wondered if we’d have better luck with those. The possibility that house building would not eventually proceed never occurred to me. We could have ended up with approval for and installation of water and sewer utilities but not the house! These two areas soon proved difficult to attain with their own set of complexities.

The Health Department was in Negaunee, and I pointed out the outhouse permit information to Karen"the one we didn’t know about when we built ours. We sidled away from that brochure. We quickly wrote our check and obtained the sewer permit with instructive brochures for both water and sewer installs. For groundwater septic absorption tests, we were accustomed to New York procedures that had you simply go out to the proposed area with a shovel, dig a hole two feet deep, and fill it with water. This so-called “perk test” gauged how fast the water seeped away. In Marquette County, they were a bit more scientific because they needed to study a cross section of the soil structure. Fine, okay, easy enough or so we initially thought.

Pay attention here because this is where things became a little strange(r). After digging the prescribed hole in the ground big enough for someone to crawl into, the Health Department gave us an appointment. A Geologist named Irwin came out, crawled into the hole, and studied our ground stratification intently. After some scratching, measuring, and ho-humming, Irwin hesitated some more and eventually forced out that he had identified a layer of clay six feet below the sandy-loam surface layer"it was just not deep enough. This clay layer wouldn’t allow us to place the septic tank and lines as deep as we needed with sewer lines exiting from under the purposed concrete footer five and a half deep in the ground. The only two alternatives they proposed were to install the septic system in a mound with a sewage pumping system or in a plastic pre-fabricated chamber system.

The former was definitely an expensive proposition with many dump truck loads of fill needed to make said mound and utilized an active pumping system. A nearby house retrofitted a septic system and required twenty-three dump truck loads of fill and a pump that ran every time they flushed or ran water. This was more complicated and energy inefficient than I cared for. When the latter alternative was installed it looked like rows of caskets in long, shallow graves, I kid you not, and very expensive also. Now on hold, I added the septic job to my hard drive. We eventually solved the dilemma by an alternative no one expected and the engineers did not suggest. Maybe it was one huge mistake ending to our advantage. I’m not really sure how it ended up the way it did anymore, but I’ll provide the details later on in the correct chronological order. We went to work on other things.

Here is my first helpful house building hint: One of the benefits of a DIY house-building project is that there are ALWAYS OTHER THINGS to work on. This small septic problem did not deter us.

Anyhow, during the following intervening work the septic level-location markers which were several bright green (not natural green but bright green) plastic disks nailed to the surrounding trees, and they bore deep into our psyche everyday. Irwin made a map with distances from the proposed septic location to the markers. He was adamant about us not disturbing, i.e. cutting the trees down, the markers that he hammered in our trees.

 I remember arriving onsite as the morning sun peeked above the horizon and there they were"bright green dots on our trees. As I worked, I’d look up and notice them, and the sight sent a chill up my back: Should we resolve this problem before doing anything else, I asked myself. The few knowing people we asked about this problem had no feasible solution because they were out of their comfort zone. Houses were just not built the way we were attempting to build ours"that is, without sufficient knowledge or skills.

The septic problem created fears in us with visions of permanent alternative backwoods lifestyles such as using the outhouse, washing dishes in a laundry tub, and ourselves in a basin, just like we were doing at the time, forever. Most people would have quit at this point to build elsewhere"no, not naïve us; we just pressed on with those other things I mentioned.

We began to sweat profusely when an unusually hot, sultry Midwest June rolled into the Upper Peninsula. I thought it would be nice to have electric at the work site, even though we could not actually build anything. We cruised to Marquette and wrote another check; this time to the Marquette Board of Light and Power. I proceeded to install our temporary electric pole. We needed a simple power source on a simple pole, and I installed, and braced it according to the handouts and permit issued by said Marquette’s Board of Light and Power. How simple is this set up? I knew electricity. The installation would be undoubtedly uncomplicated, and I stuck a simple electrical box on the pole.

 My installed power pole was pretty to look at"the follow-the-instructions engineering feat completed with a four by four and perfectly placed braces. The Board’s road crew came and stuck a telephone pole in the ground out front, attached a transformer on it, and ran cables into my box. There I went, all said and done with usable electrical power. NO! It should have been a simple power source, but I ended up with 220 volts instead of 110 volts. You know, 110 light bulbs burn very bright for about three seconds on 220!

There I went alright. Cripes! I put this problem on the hard drive as I studied electrical book to solve this problem. I called the board again. They sent troubleshooter John out, and he checked the power at the transformer, and found it was not too high. I returned this problem to the hard drive with no solution. Meanwhile, we returned to Marquette Health Department for a well permit. We paid our money, got a permit and more associated brochures. We were building quite a stack of brochures, but there wasn’t any house building occurring yet. We decided to have Dan, father of our son’s friend, Danny, drill our well. Well! We couldn’t dig the well ourselves could we? So we contracted out the well drilling job.

We contacted Dan, the well driller man, and he told us he could come over in a week. Fine. A week later, we were sitting in the open bay area of our polebarn sipping coffee, watching a wall of black clouds approach. As sprinkles began to tink, tink, tink on the steel roof, Dan showed up to survey the well situation. We offered him some instant coffee. but he said he was good, and that he wanted to witch for a good water location.

He asked if the well was going in the meadow area there next to the polebarn to the west. Adamantly, I told him no, that would be too easy and pointed across the ravine to the east. The rain began falling harder. Dan acted like he wanted to go out in the rain, but I stalled him by asking how witching would work in the rain. He said rain had no effect on the witching. We talked briefly about different witching sticks he used such as branches from fruit trees with pits. He now preferred peach. Dan told us that he was going to brave the rain and get the witching done. Just then, a flash of lightning slashed the sky followed seconds later by a thunderclap. Storm was pretty close already. Dan said he had to go back to his shop and would witch for a water source when they brought their equipment. He left. This began Dan’s and our not so fortunate well project.

Dan showed up a few days later in his pick-up truck. I asked about the witching prospects at the house site. He told me unconvincingly that he can drill anywhere and find good, plentiful water"where did we want the well. I pointed halfway between the road and the hole in the woods where the house would one day stand. As he eyed up the location, I asked if he would need electrical power. I told him about the 220-volt problem. He instantly got a sly look on his face. He asked if I had a screwdriver, which of course I did. We walked over to the electrical box on my four by four pole. He opened the cover and instantly solved the electrical problem by screwing down the brass ground screw. Simple things like that eluded me because we tried to do everything and those minor, irritating details were not covered in the books. This was the first of many times I received help from someone that just happened to know how to fix my current dilemma.

DIY House building Hint: If you have a problem that stumps you and have a professional on your property, ask him about the problem. Maybe you’ll get some free advice and/or help. (I implemented this hint many times.)   

Going into the well project, we wondered if Dan was normally cursed or if it was just us. Even before starting to drill our well, he ran into a couple more problems. Standing there waiting while he could have been witching, he got a call from one of his crewmen. The crewman’s truck broke an axle on the dirt road’s steep hill coming to our land. Dan asked if his son, Danny was coming along. Yes, he was. So, Dan told him to just have his son tow him the short distance to our land.  We waited around and finally saw the two guys walking up the street. His son sheepishly said his truck burned out a clutch when they tried to tow the other disabled truck.

Dan went home to get the monstrous drill truck, and he towed the two trucks to our front yard. The crewman and son Danny, went to work repairing the trucks. Dan in the meantime shoehorned the big drill truck between the trees and the new electrical pole that the board had installed. He started the drilling process: Bang! Bang! Bang! Over and over and over.

Then, the monstrous drill truck broke down"on the first day"and the third day"and the fourth day, we soon wondered if the well would ever be finished. When it functioned, the behemoth machine pounded and pounded deeper into the earth until something else broke on the dirty, greasy machine, and then after repair, it commenced to pounding again. The fifth, sixth and seventh days were good, but the truck broke four times on the eighth and ninth days.

Hydraulic oil, tools, and spare parts littered the well location with the machine’s maintenance done sun or rain (luckily for Dan, mostly rain now), there in front of our house site in a small alcove of maple trees. Finally, they hit water, not that much, not the best, but they found it after drilling down 252 feet! Seven measly gallons of water per minute. The well-driller’s crew was weary, the equipment was patched together, and Dan was eager to leave our accursed house site, leaving us with the deepest, most expensive, and least reliable well in the county"thirteen days in the digging, but we had some water from a small deep hole and a huge hole in our bank account! This small problem did not deter us.

 

Arise thirteen, our lucky number!

 

            Meanwhile, we had already logged and cleaned out the building site for excavating. Dragging and carrying all those chunks of wood and branches nearly killed us in the heat. Remember, we had spare time before finalizing our plans for the building permit, and besides, there are no rules against digging a big hole on your property. We could have made a hole into a pond without a building permit, not that the mediocre well could ever supply enough water to fill a pond!  I rented a transit and staked out the five corners where our dream house would one day sit. Five corners???? Remember the prow front had the point that stuck out like a boat’s hull.

The clunky John Deere looked sturdy enough for heavy digging, but I had already rebuilt the steering hydraulics, diesel fuel pump, and injectors because of working it hard for the neighbor-farmer in our spare time. The tractor worked great for logging and moving mountains of brush, mostly piled by Karen, but the old tired tractor proved weak on the muscle and reliability areas, so we gave in and had the foundation area dug by Big Bob and his new-ish John Deere equipment"one more of the few contracted areas. Normal people would have given up.

 

Author's Note

Thanks for reading! 'specially you, Wondering.

Reviews

[Cafe Reader]

Thanks for a good read!

[wondering]

keep going am eager to read more. I will remember never to try this at home. Thanks for the amusement