Hooking Up

I had hooked up with Gary Grab and the South Eastern Work crew shortly after a crushing rebuke from the leadership of the Savannah house. It was a rebuke that came out of their arrogance. I took quiet satisfaction the elders showed up after I left and rebuked the entire leadership for a perfectionist doctrine what ever that meant. There was a shake up in Savannah after I left and I was glad to be gone.
Planting in the South east was a different kind of sport. In the west we planted with hodads and a thousand trees a day was considered good.
“Did you notch today?”
“Yea, I planted one thousand fifty. We planted out about two o’clock.
Shiloh Forestry introduced hodads to Georgia Pacific in the South and in the plowed and furrowed level fields some guys planted up to thirty five hundred trees a day.
Jump seven feet, land with a tree in hand held like a pencil by the tiny trunk above the root. The hodad sinks effortlessly into the lose soil as you land and pry open an eighteen inch deep four inch wide hole with the right hand. With a flip of the left wrist the roots snap straight down. Hodad comes out of the hole and packs the loose dirt with one push of the blade. The right foot comes up and stomps the loose ground as it lands beside the freshly planted seedling launching the planter with another jump stride tree in hand hodad coming down seven feet from the last and four feet from the row of seedlings to the left. Do that thirty five hundred times a day and be a Shiloh mighty man of valor.