Word: rayed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...nobody lower than a woodcutter," but today his skills are more respected, and he tells proudly that the bank was willing to lend him money to buy his last truck. "I got a boy, though, he's 23, and he won't cut wood. Says it's too hard." Ray paused, watched the cigarette smoke rise in the still air. "Course he ain't no bigger than a bar of soap neither...
...price of hardwood that Ray cuts is lower, in part because the kilns buy more of the cheaper log slabs -- the cutoff outsides of logs when they are squared by a sawmill into lumber. These, along with the hardwood, are charred in kilns, put through a hammermill and mixed with charred sawdust, coal, limestone, sodium nitrate, borax, wheat paste and steam, which turns the mixture into a slurry that is pressed into briquettes and then put through a drying process...
...Ray had his truck nearly loaded. The temperature was over 90 degrees F. He worked effortlessly, cutting and loading. Sweat had soaked his short-sleeved plaid shirt, his jeans, and made a dark band around his peaked...
...making the long drive to the kiln. He drove slowly to keep his tires from overheating under the heavy load. Ray is a careful man. He cuts carefully, loads carefully and carefully tots expenses. "It takes two-days work to pay for one blowed tire." And he blows them often, because he has to overload the truck to make the 60-mile round trip from home to woods to kiln pay. His chain saw cost $500, and he can only run it a few years before it needs replacing. He has just had to overhaul his truck's engine; that...
...kilns are mounded, cavelike structures of concrete, lighted by air holes in the curved roofs. There is a door at either end, and Ray backed his truck in one. Inside the kiln, soot coated the walls. It was damp and smelled of wet chimney. Ray worked fast, standing on the truck bed, stacking his load on a base left by another woodcutter, filling the kiln up to the ceiling 5 ft. above his head. His safety depends on how well the previous woodcutter stacked his load. Once, warned by a slight noise, he had just enough time to jump away...