Chainsawing

[Jason Southwick]

No object quite completes me like a running chainsaw. You'd suggest maybe a frisbee, but a frisbee can humiliate you, in many ways.

The chainsaw is in a whole nuther realm; a chainsaw can KILL you. And, with enough friends helping, you can build a disc golf course with a chainsaw. Work gloves, it turns out, are not a necessity. Chainsaws are an absolute necessity.

Gotta go with the chainsaw as my favorite non-living, non-naked object.

Early on -- and I attribute this incident to 34 years of chainsawing without injury -- I got to witness its mutilating power while working on a big down tree on what now is the right side of Hole 1 Gold. Dad was cutting while I loaded the cord wood into the Bronco. The big down tree had bent over a springy 4-inch sapling, and all of a sudden the chainsaw flies out of Dad's hands. And we give each other a little "holy smokes that's dangerous" look, and keep loading.

Dad says his hand feels wet, takes off his glove, and his hand is covered with blood. He never felt a thing, and it's suddenly time to go to the hospital for what turns out to be 23 stitches. Dad remains completely unperturbed. I try to hatch a plan to tell Mom we're going to Spags. "You don't want her seeing your hand," I offer.

Dad wants none of it, marches inside with his hand behind his back and says, ridiculously, "Now Shirl, don't get excited, but I cut myself with the chainsaw and Jason's taking me to the hospital."

By the end of the day we were laughing pretty hard about the whole incident, especially the "don't get excited" part.

That and what Dad said while I was driving him to the hospital: "Slow down, we don't need another accident." He chuckled lightly when he said it there in the passenger seat, holding the clean white towel my excitable Mom had wrapped around his hand. Bright red oblongs oozed into the terrycloth.