Word: truckful
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...lives near West Plains, Mo. He is 58 years old. He is 6 ft. 1 in. tall, a handsome man with a weathered face and a small mustache. He is in physical trim that a weight lifter would envy. Ray cuts wood every day, stacking six tons on his truck and unloading it inside one of the kilns at Craig's Industries in Mountain View, Mo., before the sun gets too high. He figures he lifts...
...woods with his one-ton Ford flatbed truck by 7. He had with him his chain saw, an 18-in., yellow Swedish-made Pioneer, a thermos of water and another one of coffee. He was cutting wood on a ranch where loggers had taken the big timber. He had bought what they had left, tops from big trees and an occasional standing tree. He commenced work in a clearing the loggers had left surrounded by woods that cut off the breeze...
...twice. And once a branch snapped back and threw the chain saw out of his hands, one of which was laid open; at the same time, he twisted to avoid the running chain and hurt his back badly. He wrapped up his hand in a handkerchief and loaded the truck, but he couldn't unload it because his back hurt too much. "Saw a doctor after I'd put up with it for a week, and he popped my back into place so's I was able to unload it." Has he ever had back trouble since? "No, never...
...started to load what he had cut. He had put stakes in the truck bed to hold the wood in place, and he built up the load in one corner to 4 ft. high. He tossed in 100-pounders or more not quite as effortlessly as matchsticks (he grinned after he chunked in a particularly big one, saying "Whew" in mock theatrics), but he was not breathing heavily...
...they raised them on his woodcutter's wages. Back in the days when he began, he says, "There weren't 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...