***

 
 I burn wood as a supplement to home heating oil. My house is a large, old, 9-room colonial farmhouse with huge rooms. If I relied on oil heat alone to heat the place, especially at today’s prices, I’d be a pauper.
I’ve got 8 cord of tree-lengths piled up in the middle of my southern pasture. In the early spring, I climb all over that pile with chainsaw in hand, cutting the felled trees into stove-length logs. Then, during the late spring and early summer, I split the wood and stack it. The wood seasons over the summer and early fall. Then, I burn the stuff all winter long.
I’ve got me a Monster Maul, which is a twelve-pound hammer. It is actually a three-foot-long, straight steel handle with a wedged-shaped, solid steel head welded to one end. The widest part of the head is about 5 inches across.
Two years ago, I put away the maul and got a hydraulic wood-splitter that I hook up to the hydraulic system on my tractor. However, last week, Mary said that she wanted to hook up the brush hog to the back of the tractor and begin treating the pastures. Well, I can’t hook up the wood-splitter when the brush hog is attached.
So, last night after work, I went out to the pasture with my trusty old Monster Maul. I swung that 12-pound hammer for a solid hour, splitting log after log after log. At the end of the hour, the sun was setting, and it was beginning to grow dark. The sweat was pouring off of me in rivers, but arms and back were feeling really good. I was tired, but it was a really GOOD, satisfying tired.
When I stopped my labors, I stepped back and looked at the pile of wood that I just split. When I compared it to the pile that I split the night before during the same period of time while using the hydraulic splitter, I was dumbfounded! The pile I had split by hand was LARGER than the pile that I split using the machine! (I was soooo proud of myself! Not bad for a fifty-five year old man, huh?)

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Now, back to John Henry. Did you know that he was real? (So was Paul Bunyan, by the way.) Because I was thinking about him last night, I Googled him. He was born a slave in either North Carolina or Virginia sometime during the 1840’s and 1850’s. He stood 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds, which, at that time, qualified him as a giant. He had a HUGE appetite, a beautiful, baritone singing voice, and he was an accomplished banjo player.
After he was freed from slavery, he worked for The C & O Railroad Company driving drill holes into solid rock with a twelve-pound hammer to repair the southern railroad lines that were decimated during The Civil War. While most men could drill eight or nine feet per day, John Henry would drill twelve.
John Henry died while drilling a tunnel into the massive Big Bend Mountain near Talcott, West Virginia. (The tunnel ended up being 1 ¼ long.) Hundreds of railroad men died during it’s construction.
One day, a salesman showed up at the railroad camp with a new-fangled, steam-run, mechanical hammer that, he claimed, could out-drive any man.

John Henry challenged the salesman and his machine to a steel-driving contest in The Big Bend Tunnel. At the end of the day, the machine drove steel a total of nine feet. John Henry drove steel a total of fourteen.
Two days later, John Henry died. Some say from exhaustion. Others say from a stroke.
He was a hero to many, including myself as I was growing up. And now, I’ll bet you that most young folks never even heard of him.
If I’ve stimulated some interest in the man/legend for you, Google "John Henry" and learn about the man and the myth. I found it fascinating.
 

When John Henry was a little boy,
He was sitting on his papa's knee;
He was looking down on a piece of steel
Says, 'A steel-driving man I will be. Lord, Lord
A steel-driving man I will be.'