By Tom Kelly
Editor and Publisher

Kelly's First Law of Priorities: No matter what you plan to do, you'll always have to do something else first.

On the Wednesday afternoon in July when the big East wind blew through, I had just stood up from the supper table headed to the refrigerator for a refill to my glass of buttermilk, when I heard a loud, muffled "Crunch," in the front yard. Going to the front door, I looked out to see the beginnings of a fresh rain stirred up by a right sharp wind. Those, and the carcass of the old, 100-foot-tall oak tree--which stood about 30 feet from the house right opposite our bedroom--lying on the ground, aimed at the street, luckily.

The tree had been a two-stemmed monster, with one stem tilted directly over the house. Some months back we hired a tree man to take out the house-leaning stem, and left the main body standing, hopefully to continue furnishing the welcome shade from the afternoon sun. It wasn't long before the old hollow trunk began to split down the middle, dividing at the fork of the two stems. We told each other we'd have to take down the rest of the tree someday, yet were not too worried since it leaned away from the bedroom where we sleep. But, all it took to bring the old soldier down was a quick wind from the east--which rarely happens, but when it did, the result was fast and definitive. The trunk broke about ten feet up, right at the joint where the old stem had been taken out, and lodged there, with the big branches sprawled all over the front yard, shearing off limbs from several other trees out near the street as it went down

I turned immmediately and went to the phone and placed a call to the tree man, who showed up with his crew on the following Friday to begin dismembering the old oak carcass. I made clear that I wanted as much as possible of the thing cut into firewood lengths. After the crew had piled and loaded the debris, leaving a string of round oaken bolts lying here and there on the ground, I surveyed my woodpile-in-waiting, visualizing some manly hours of exercise swinging my trusty axe, with occasional use of my good old ten-pound sledgehammer and wedge to open up the bigger sticks. Of course, the July sun provided more than plenty of heat even while I was standing still, yet I could admire in my mind's eye the comfortable aroma of a nice crackling wood fire at my backside way out next February.

In an unaccountable surge of physical effort--not my usual style, which generally calls for a lot of study and mental preparation, often lasting days, weeks even--I reached down to pick up one of the bolts of unsplit firewood. As I came up with it, my eyes bugged out, my arms trembled, my knees threatened to buckle. I did manage to come upright and actually walk four or five steps before finding a ready spot to drop it. Thing weighed maybe sixteen tons, figuratively speaking. Didn't I once chop wood as a teenager, and lift sticks almost as big as crossties? Sure. Sixty years ago. Not really all that long ago.

OK, let's go round up the tools. Axe? Check. Sledge? Check. Wedge . . . It's here somewhere, in that old toolbox . . . under that pile of boxes . . . behind that stack of old window frames. It is simply amazing how much clutter can go inside a small barn, if you let it accumulate over a period of years, and pay little attention to how it is sorted and stored.\par }{\plain Of course, I had been meaning to straighten out that barn for, oh, maybe five years. Miriam even mentioned it a few times. Several times. And finally gave it up.

I began to find things . . . most everything . . . that had no earthly use to anyone, and, again unaccountably--being a dyed-in-the-wool pack rat who keeps stuff--I began to throw things away. Got the trash wagon and loaded it up once, twice, three times, and hauled to the burn pile. Grabbed a broom and began sweeping, restacked portable file boxes of 30-year-old business records (to be disposed of by my heirs; I haven't the heart), and gee, would you look at all that space! Nothing but floor showing, and the exercise machine that emerged from its deep cover suddenly emerged, right there in the middle of the room . . . Maybe I'll start working out again tomorrow morning. Maybe not.

Well, I thought. That wasn't too bad. Mission accomplished! to coin a phrase. Barn's neater that it's been since . . . whenever.

Observing the accomplishment, I mused that Kelly's First Law has been proved infallible once more. When you are going to chop wood, first you have to clean out the barn.

Wedge? Never appeared. And anyhow, I finally remembered that my son-in-law up in Ruston has a powered wood splitter. He'll be down soon to tackle that oak timber.

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