After ice storm 1991, a couple friends of mine put in a wood burning stove. There was another storm, a micro burst that blew down a lot of trees. Can't remember what year. But, I hate to see good wood go to the landfill. I borrowed a trailer to pull behind the van, and collected up some good wood. We spent several days sawing.
About that time, he remarked that all we needed now was a splitter. Hmm. See how that goes. As I took the borrowed trailer back to John's, he was at the bus garage, at his church. I remarked thank you for the use of the trailer, and now all I need is a splitter. A voice on the other side of the bus said "I've got a splitter". Without much thought, I asked if I might borrow it for a couple days, and the voice said yes. To my surprise. So, I got his adress, and went there.
He showed me how the splitter worked. It was very under powered. When I got back to my place, I pulled the engine apart, and cleaned the valves. [Metal valves: the metal content of the story.] Put in a new spark plug, and new gasoline. Change the oil. Ran a lot better, then. More power. And so I spent a couple days splitting wood.
Anyhow, as I was taking the splitter back. I stopped at John's garage, and asked if he had anythign to split, while I had the machine. Sure, had some gnarly walnut with the grain all twisted. I put a couple of them on the machine. It struggled a lot, 5 HP gas engine. Even the more power gas engine was straining. But it got the job done.
John told me the rest of the story later. After he sawed up the wood, his friend Corey stopped by. Corey was 19 or so,a nd a very powerful teenager. Sports, and such. So, John asked him to split up that wood out back. Corey whacked on it for a while, and quit. Which is a good use of teenage energy.
So, next week when Corey came back, John tells him "Oh, Chris Young stopped by, and split all that wood." Corey knows I'm twice his age, and the inverse square of his athletic power. I'm sure Corey had a few choice words of disbelief about Chris being able to split the wood. Went out and looked, and came back kind of confused. I'm sure eventually John told him that I'd used a gasoline power splitter.
That's my smile for the day. A good memory.