Ashes

       The news from the laid back in Ho Hum County. (Laid back ain’t quite laid out, but it might be smoked.)

       Ashes are real easy to come by. First, you crumple seventeen newspaper pages, put a log on each side of the firebox, throw in a wastepaper basket worth of wastepaper, find a match, wad up thirty-two more pages of newspaper and stuff them in the firebox, then throw in forty-three small sticks, strike a match and smoke up the whole house. It works every time!
       You would think that a grandpa who has lit fires in brush piles, camp sites, rainstorms, roadsides, and burn barrels, would remember to open the draft on the stove. I can only say, in my defense, that brush piles, campsites, rainstorms, roadsides and burn barrels have an automatic draft built in so you don’t have to open it. But, I digress from the subject at hand - mainly that watching the woodstove turn firewood into ashes is quite a process (if you can ever get the stubborn thing lit to start with.)
       I’m not quite sure that I like the process of turning wood into ashes. I spend a lot of time in the woods scouting trees, dragging out trees, cutting trees and stacking tree pieces in old apple bins on a trailer. Then I take it home, unstack it and split it, stack it back in the bins and then stack the bins in a stack on top of each other. Then, in cold weather, I pull it from the stack, take it to the porch and re-stack it so I can pack it into the house and stack it in the woodstove. Once in the woodstove it all goes up in smoke and all you have to show for it is some ashes. You might even say it gets cremated (which can lead to some minor misunderstandings - read on.)
Ashes are very useful if deposited in the right place, which is on your raspberry vines. (I am talking wood ashes here, not cremated remains ashes - to prevent a minor misunderstanding.) The only problem I have with depositing ashes is this - who has fifteen acres of raspberries to put all their wood ashes on? My little patch needs about two buckets of ashes a year. I needed another way to get rid of too many ashes.
       My son’s mother-in-law came up with an old but new use for ashes (which is what caused the minor misunderstanding.) She wanted some ashes to use on her sidewalks and driveway. Being the nice person I am I agreed to save some for her. She even gave me an empty kitty litter bucket to put ashes in. (She isn’t the only person who uses empty kitty litter buckets to put stuff in. I find them handy for holding all sorts of stuff except kitty litter. I have several I keep in my shop for some such anonymous purpose.)
       I emptied the woodstove, in preparation for smoking up the house again, and I saved some of the dead ashes and put them in the plastic kitty litter bucket in my shop. This was no problem until I was looking for a container to carry some wood scraps and grabbed the kitty litter bucket. (It happened to be the one closest to me.) When I pried off the lid I found the wood ashes and almost spilled them all over the shop. Being the person of great foresight that I am I thought that if I just labeled the bucket then I wouldn’t make that mistake again. If I also put them on the back step then they would be out of my way and handy for her to pick them up the next time she stopped by.
       SO...... I wrote “LINDA’S ASHES” on the top of the bucket and put them on the back step where she would see them and take them with her the next time she came by.
       I, of course, innocently, had not made any connection with the term “ashes” used to mean a person’s remains after being cremated. I also did not laugh about what an officer might have thought had he stopped her (for one of her many traffic violations) and found “LINDA’S ASHES” in her trunk. (Now, whose ashes are these, Lady?)
       Or even better, what if my daughter-in-law had decided to deliver “LINDA’S ASHES” to her mother and been stopped by this nice officer? "You are carrying your poor mother’s ashes around in your trunk in a kitty litter bucket?" (The thought never even crossed my mind.) Also, I did not even think about how funny it would have been if I had delivered the ashes to her door and left them out front for her guests to see as they entered her house for the regular Thursday evening Bible Study.
       So, as you can see, I remain entirely blameless in my small part of this minor misunderstanding. (My liking for the whole process of wood to ashes did improve as I got into it, though.)
       Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. As you can see life goes on in its typically routine boring fashion out here in the country where even a minor misunderstanding is not enough to generate any excitement. Even my cell phone says “Borrring, Borrring".       Howdy from Grandpa’s Farm where the only action is inaction. Grandma and I have been sitting here watching the woodstove turn firewood into ashes. Quite a process.