Performer: Led Zeppelin
Songwriter: Willie Dixon
Original Release: Led Zeppelin
Year: 1969
Definitive Version: Coda, 1982. It’s live and superheavy, just the way I
like my Zeppelin.
I was listening to Led
Zeppelin a lot in the fall of 1990 thanks to the release of the Box Set when I
accompanied Dad and my grandfather on a working trip to Torch Lake in October.
Dad was going to start building his new cottage (read: summer home) on a part
of the family compound, and he wanted to start cutting down trees in
preparation for the builders to come the next month.
I agreed to help out. I
thought it would be a good thing to do—be a part of three generations of
Christensens clearing the land. And they needed someone with young muscles who
could haul stuff around.
They came up from Columbus
and picked me up in Grand Blanc Friday night and we were off. We stayed in the
Little House, which was, at the time, the only of the three houses that had a
furnace and was equipped to handle winter—or fall—guests.
Saturday morning came early,
but fortunately I was on an early-morning schedule myself, so I had no problem
getting up more or less at the crack of dawn. I suppose it was to show that I
could willingly handle my share of the load and curry favor with the two family
patriarchs of whom my reputation was not always spotless in that regard, but I
made it a point to outwork both of them and not stop for any reason unless they
did first.
Dad would do most of the
main cutting; my grandfather and I would handle the small cutting; and I did
the hauling. We had a small open-sided trailer that we hitched to the lake
Jeep. After we piled the wood so high, it would be off to the burn pile in the
field across the street, which would be torched the next year before the start
of the summer season.
I had no problem in keeping
up a heavy work pace the whole day, which lasted until it started to get dark
about 6 or so, but I was wiped out and collapsed in an exhausted heap on the
couch in the living room area. (The only closed off rooms were the two bedrooms
in the back and the bathroom.)
Fortunately, this was during
the World Series, and my beloved Reds were going after an improbable title
against the heavily favored defending champion Oakland A’s. All of the pundits
said beforehand it would be a sweep. It turns out they were right, of course:
The Reds swept them in four straight.
I watched the Reds pull off
two improbable wins to start the Series at home in Grand Blanc, and Game 3 was
Saturday night. I wasn’t planning to do anything else anyway, so it didn’t
matter that I couldn’t physically move from the couch.
That first day, we worked on
top of the hill by the street, which was almost entirely hard-wood trees. The
easier stuff—the soft firs—were at the bottom of the hill closer to the lake
and would go down as smooth as grass the next day, so Saturday was the tougher
day, thank goodness.
One tree that came down
early was a big beech tree that stood in the middle of where the driveway was
going to run. Years before that, when it stood secluded in the middle of the
woods, a young lad had carved the initials of himself and his paramour into the
tough gray skin of the beech tree.
I took note of how the tree
attempted to heal the scars over the years and how the initials now protruded
dark and ugly—to the point where the initials were almost unreadable. Of
course, I knew what they were—mine and Beth’s. And I didn’t feel anything,
either melancholy or satisfaction when the tree feel and the initials went
trucked to the burn pile. I could quit her after all.
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