Leonard

This is a story about Miriam’s Dad Leonard.

Dad was in his early 70’s when this happened. He had been forced into early retirement by Parkinson's. There was not much in medications when he first got the disease and it went pretty fast. Later he got on some of the high powered meds, and it evened out a bit.

Dad and Marie lived in Boise 25 or so miles from us. Marie was a school teacher who was soon to change to nursing. She was very bright, graduated from high school at 12 or so, had finished a year or so of business college when she met Miriam’s dad. He was 35, she was 17.

His driving days were over, but he still rode an old single speed bicycle. He did not go far, and I don’t remember that there was a store close, but he would peddle around some any way.

There was a fireplace in the house and they still had some money from the sale of the orchard, but dad was an old woodsman. There was a dead tree in the neighborhood that just stood there intriguing Dad. The tree was not next door, but perhaps a quarter or a third of a mile away.

Finally he found out who owned it and asked if he could cut it down for the firewood. Permission was granted. The tree was on the edge of an empty space, not between houses, but it needed to be fallen in a certain place for reasons I do not remember.

The trusty chain saw was tied on the back of the bicycle and peddled over. Someone was watching him work. I do not remember who it was, but they told the story back to us.

The observer said that this old shaky guy gets off the bicycle and gets his saw out. Maybe the oddness of it all was what intrigued this person to watch, I don’t know. But he said to the family later that dad knew all of the tricks and he expertly dropped that tree exactly where he wanted it.

I am about the same age Leonard was when he did that. The main difference was that he had a truly nasty disease. Miriam’s oldest half brother has Parkinson's now. It is so sad to watch. Brother says that there were a lot of small orchards in the old days in that area, and that all of the old guys who farmed them have died of Parkinson's.

It took another ten or twelve years before dad died. It was not happy for him, nor for the family. But this day with the chainsaw and the bicycle, he pulled up the skills he had known as a young man in the oregon woods.