I know I left you hanging there with the story of Vic, and I promise I will get back to him soon. There's plenty more to say about him, about his shop full of curiosities, and about Marilyn. In fact, I've been thinking back and forth in my head about how much I should say, whether or not it's too much. These are the things you have to be careful about when you're a small town newsletter publisher.
There are other benefits to knowing folks and being known, and that includes being in the thick of Confluence's surprisingly vast and occasionally odd social scene. Sure, we have plenty of regular events that most towns have, oyster roasts, and benefit dinners, and so on. But there are a host of lesser-known parties, some seemingly underground, others approaching infamy. They are engagements that occur at set times established long ago, things like Ginny's St. Patrick's Day party, Julio's September 14th party, Will's Egg Nog, and the Bordeaux's Bastille Bash.
Now that I type them out, they seem awfully trite. People everywhere, I'm sure, celebrate occasions like these in their back yards with several dozen invited. (Well...now that I think about it...Julio is the only person I know who celebrates September 14th. I'll have to tell you about that one later.)
But the one party I always enjoy the most is Log Party. It takes place every April on the first weekend the weather is warm enough to enjoy sitting around outside. As you can imagine, this involves a mixture of forecasting, the duty of which falls to the Log Party host, Job Altmann. Job consults a variety of meteorological experts in setting the date: the Farmer's Almanac, his father in law's ankle (which swells when rain is coming), how much moss is growing in the forest, and occasionally, weatherchannel.com.
Anyway, once the date is set, the Log Party invitations are mailed--a surprisingly formal move on Job's part given the party's rustic intentions. I cannot say the guest list is a veritable who's-who of Confluence, even though it took me several years to gain my first invitation. There are folks who are well heeled, and there are folks who are not. This isn't the kind of party where anyone suffers the indignity of being asked what one does around town. What we do, actually, is sit around, drink beer, cook a pig, and engage in a competition of splitting logs.
Although his vocation is irrelevant to the story, I'll tell you that Job is the pallet man in Confluence because he hosts Log Party at his shop. Job builds the wooden pallets you see at the bottoms of truck shipments, and he constructs them in a large metal building that's well off the main highway on the west side of Tinton River. He owns a few hundred acres of pine forest out there, and the only way to the shop is a log truck road, a dirt path that winds around the forest floor before arriving in a clearing. He keeps a couple of trucks there, a second metal shed filled with wood, and a saw operation in the third. In the yard between these buildings, though, Job will erect a large tent, pull in a cooker for the pig, and set up the log splitting area. After the contest, we'll build a bonfire out of the spent logs and end the night.
It is a lonely place any time other than Log Party. Job works alone, every day, putting boards into a frame and tacking them together with a nail gun. He stacks them up, straps them together, and loads them onto a flatbed truck to sell. And that's it.
I must admit I've only been out to Job's a handful of times, and only once have I gone out there for something besides his party. A couple of weeks after the party two years ago, I needed to return a tool I'd borrowed from him, so I drove my Jeep down the path and found him working away mid-day. Job is very quiet. I have never heard him curse. He doesn't play music while he works. There's a large industrial fan in the corner of the assembly shed, but judging by the looks of it, he never turns it on. We didn't say much that day. I gave him back the tool, and when he walked me back out to the driveway, he showed me a hornets' nest out in a pine tree that had already grown to an alarming size.
Log Party is one of those things you remember around March, one of the things that keeps you counting down the weeks until, finally, the invitation lands--or occasionally doesn't--in your mail.
Last year was a good party, and the first time I participated in the sport of log splitting. Generally, Job sets up a dozen or so White Ash trunks, and our job is to chop them into two. Two men compete at one time, and the first to divide the log into two wins. You may have seen something like this on television; those men are professionals with real equipment. Our group, on the other hand, brings axes used at home. There is an edge to the game, but it is largely for fun and enjoying each other's company. I should also mention there is an element of danger to the entire event, as most of us have a few drinks in us before it starts.
I am a writer. I do not lift heavy objects in my job other than the thesaurus--which I still keep in paper copy. I grew up in a neighborhood with houses heated by natural gas. I did not learn to chop wood until much later in life. I am not a man admired by other, burly men for my barrel chest, and I assure you the majority of men at this party are barrel-chested men. Joining this spectacle of timber halving was rather intimidating.
But all of that has faded away since last year. I went up against Jerry, a fellow who works at a transmission repair shop. I had brought an axe I bought a decade ago at Sears. Jerry's axe made mine look like a butter knife.
I had a strategy, though, one I knew could pay off for me: simply, I made sure Jerry always had alcohol in his hand.
Perhaps it is cheating or unethical, but Jerry knew full and well that he was slipping off the pier and into the lake of intoxication. He knew that with it came the tendency to become easily winded. He was fully aware of beer's false bravado.
He also knew he was matched up against a novelist, and so by the time Job counted us off (quietly, steadily, he says, "Three, two, one, go.") I'm certain Jerry still had the advantage. We chopped and chopped. My arms ached. My hands grew trembly. I quickly broke into a sweat, but I never looked to see how Jerry was doing. I simply threw my axe into the White Ash, turning the angle of the head left and right, catching breaks once in a while when I'd carve out a good chunk of wood.
And before I realized it, I heard the men cheering, and I realized my log was split. I had won, barely. Job came over, a small grin under his beard, and took the cutlery-sized axe from my hand.
"Son," he said with a sigh, "I wouldn't even take this axe to a buzzard hump."
With a comment like that, who couldn't look forward to Log Party again? The chance to see friends, to eat pig roasted over fire, to bathe in wood smoke, to tell jokes until the laughter echoes in the forest. To do all of this under the guarded watch of my good friend, Job.
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