It’s no news that folks are trying to dump their SUVs
because of the crappy mileage, but it’s a tough trade-in with gas see-sawing
either side of four bucks a gallon. So why not hang on to that four wheel drive
boxcar and cruise the backroads for firewood? With wood pushing $300 a cord and
higher, piling in free fuel might get your albatross to pay for itself. And if
you haven’t already got an SUV, dealers are practically giving them away. In the
golden days of yesteryear before SUVs, when the geese commenced to flying south
and Steeley Dan rode the AM waves, it was time to cruise the country roads
looking for firewood road kill. Tasty trees and branches lying along the
shoulders, free for the picking. You’d carry a chain saw and a rat tail file
and pull over when some promising wood appeared. It might be a broken branch or
a bully tree trunk.

Maybe trimmings left by the power company after they did
line maintenance. Often the town road crew left behind brush and limbs after
making room for the plow to push back the coming snows. Since the town owned
the road to fifty feet either side of the center line, it wasn’t stealing as
long as you stayed on town land, and the road foreman was usually grateful for
the cleanup they hadn’t done themselves. A lot of
us filled up whatever beater of the year we happened to be running, station
wagons, sedans, VW’s with the back seat pulled out. If you had an honest to God
pickup, you could roll home with half a cord of wood. It paid to be
discriminating, because rotten wood wasn’t going to burn and conifers flared up
fast and didn’t make good coals. Hardwoods were the prime cut. 

One friend of
mine would cruise the back roads in his pickup with a chainsaw in the bed and a
coffee can for a spitoon on the floor. With a pack of Red Man in his pocket, a
can of Black Label between his legs (he drank with a straw after he
accidentally shot himself in the face one boozy evening), and his beagle curled
up beside him, Stan kept his good eye out for roadside wood. Every fall he sold
eight cords, and not a stick of it from his own land. So throw
out the soccer balls and hit the road before the snow flies and buries all that
free heat.