A wood chipper? Not for a true lumberjack

During one of my morning walks, I saw a tree removal crew working on my neighbor’s huge maple trees. I thought they were going to trim the branches of this beautiful multicolored leafed tree. A short time later, I walked by and there was the tree prostrate on the ground.

A wood chipper machine was performing an incredible feat. It sucked in the long tree trunk about one foot in diameter loaded with branches. This mechanical marvel chewed it up and spit out the chips in short order. The unit operator said it could devour a trunk up to 17 inches in diameter.

I told him my father Giovanni Lacivita was a lumber jack in Agnon, Molise, Italy a century ago. He said, “Your father would never believe this.”

Charcoal

My grandfather Felice, purchased plots of woodlands to harvest the trees to be made into charcoal. At age 12 Giovanni and his two brothers, Antonio and Carmen, along with Grandpa set up shop in the woods.

My father often related to me that some of the trees were so large that a grown man could not put his arms around them. Their tools were two man crosscut saws, axes and hatchets. It was a highly labor intensive occupation.

They lived in the woods along with the wolves for weeks at a time. They were highly trained hunters and shot wild game for some of their food. They returned home periodically to replenish their staple food supply.

As charcoal makers, the lumber had to be chopped up into small pieces, piled up into mounds, then covered with soil. A fire was started at the bottom of the mound and in time charcoal was the result. The sacks of charcoal were then sold to the villagers.

All of the Lacivita lumber jacks lived into their eighties in good health. I can only surmise that the hard physical labor at an early age kept their arteries unclogged, along with their homemade wine. They never heard of the word, cholesterol.

X Michael J. Lacivita is a Youngstown retiree and inductee into the Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame and Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame.