Clearing the Idylwood Lot

The Idylwood house was on a half acre lot – seemed huge to me at the time. The front yard had a bar ditch for drainage. When we moved into the house the back yard was pretty well filled with trees and brush. Behind the house was a woods with a gully running through it. More on that later. So, my dad’s first goal after we moved in was to get rid of some of the trees and brush in the back yard and to get some St. Augustine grass growing. My dad loved hardwood trees and pretty well hated pine trees. So the pines were the first to go. He and some friends and Uncle Gordon cut down the trees, trimmed the branches from the trunks and burned the whole mess. Playing in the branches of a fallen tree was a lot of fun. I think it is cool that this was like a barn raising. My dad and several friends working together to accomplish a goal. When cash is tight , it is good to have friends like this.

Dad was particular about how he did a job and cutting down trees was no exception. Finishing the tree removal, he wanted the top of the stump flush with the ground. He did not notch the tree with an axe (as I expected from reading about Paul Bunyan) but used a cross cut saw. I am sure whoever worked with him hated using this saw from a kneeling position. After all of the cutting and burning there were just a bunch of stumps that Dad wanted to get rid of. Today, we’d hire a stump grinder and they’d be gone, but not in the 50’s. Dad drilled holes downward into the stumps and poured used kerosine into the holes. Then after having marinated the stumps in kerosine for several weeks (this involved several doses of kerosine), he would try to burn the stumps. This was only partially successful as the stumps would only burn down a few inches. So he’d give them another dose and do it again a month or so later. Where did the kerosine come from? Every time he worked on one of the cars, he washed the parts in kerosine. I learned this from him: clean what you are going to fix before you fix it. Then clean your tools to complete the job. Cars in those days took a lot of maintenance: oil changes, brake jobs, points and condensers, spark plugs, chassis lubrication and the list goes on. Every job produced some dirty kerosine in a rectangular pan about one foot square and six inches deep. One afternoon following a brake job, I was told to take the kerosine to the back yard and to pour it into the holes in one of the stumps. The pan was relatively heavy and the kerosine sloshy as I walked through the back yard. The target stump was half way back in the yard, but there was one closer, and, yes, I am lazy. The problem was that the closer stump was smoldering – it had been the day’s burnout location. I headed for the smoldering stump. My mom was in the kitchen and she relates watching me head toward the smoking stump with the pan of kerosine. She knew what I was going to do and there was no way to stop me. She says she saw me pour the kerosine and then disappear in a fireball that only lasted for an instant. I did not suffer any long term ill effects (or did I?), but in the short term I lost my eyelashes, eyebrows and the hair on my arms. I also learned about pouring flammable liquids on a fire and about allowing my laziness to drive me into disobedience. Well, maybe not so much on this last point.