Eulogy for Amos Congdon

by Tony Donovan

He'd tell about buying their first truck. How he and his brother took the train to the Ford plant in Kerney, New Jersey and bought the bare frame of a truck. Someone gave them a wooden box that they tied behind the steering wheel for a seat and nobody stopped them and they made it home.

He'd recite from the Bible, "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall pass with fervent heat. The Earth also and the works that are there in shall be burned."

Or, "One generation passeth away and the other generation comes, and the Earth abideth forever." He'd found that contradiction in the Bible, maybe Anderson, the L.A. radio preacher had pointed it out, he worked it over in his mind and often spoke about it.

The great ecological disaster in his life was a fungus disease that destroyed the mature Chestnut trees across the state and on throughout the country. The Chestnut was once one of the most important trees on the continent, fast growing, straight and tall.

He'd say, "The Chestnut was our main tree then, more than half the timber in the woods was Chestnut. Now our great tree is gone. It grew as fast as their pine up north right here on our rocky soil. We'd go out early in the morning to collect the nuts before the squirrels. And now our rich tree is gone. Nineteen and thirty-five was the last of the green ones."

The disease swept into the state from the seaports, defying all attempts to stop it. Over a million trees and seedlings had been killed before the attack ran its course.

He'd say, "I don't know why they come at all." He'd get angry telling about the Chestnut and its half-life fate. He began to talk about the outsiders, that he had seen them in fact, poisoning the trees as an experiment, part of the fight between nature and what's good against something new.

He'd step up on the rollers with a file in his hand and kneel down beside the saw. Still for a beat to settle himself, he'd tap the file once, twice on the edge of the rollers. Then rising up, he'd lean over the saw and pull the first tooth toward him. All the mill's belts and pulleys turn that one portion of the circle with a soft, quick moan.

Holding the file in two hands, he'd touch it quickly to the front of the tooth, then he'd stroke the file across the saw tooth once, twice, maybe three times. The sound is soft. It hums off the blade and fills across the shed. He'd tap the file on the rollers again to clear it of bits of steel.

Then he might say, "Years ago everything was pure, the rivers, the air and the soil. Now that isn't so."

After the saw teeth are sharpened, they are often swaged. The word
has a soft "g" to it.

As the saw is used, its teeth become worn and have to be reshaped, made wider again than the saw rim, so the blade clears through the sides of the cut like it did when the teeth were new.

The swage tool is a piece of iron with a small chisel shape cut in its base.

He'd stand one legged, his right knee bent on the wooden shelf inside the saw, hammer in his right hand and the swage in his left. He'd set the swage on one corner of the saw tooth and tap it with the hammer once, twice, then on the other corner once. He'd straighten the swage across the top of tooth, hit it once again.

Pulling the circle to him, he'd set the tool on the next tooth and tap it once, twice. Each hammer strike sounds like a bell ring, softly rippling across the saw. And he might say, "It was better when everything was pure."

You'd have hoped for all Amos Congdon's love for his family and sawmill home that he'd have been allowed to pass away in his chair, with the fire crackling warmly just inside the kitchen door, catching a bit of mill talk from around the kitchen table.

Instead he found himself, still very much aware of the first hospital, then a series of nursing homes. He'd watch out the window of his last place and imagine the log truck pull into the yard at the end of the day piled high logs, all its red light burning.

I visited him here a few days after his wife died. I knew there was nothing I could say to comfort him. Cartoons were on the TV. To our right was a middle-aged man dressed like a business executive in a gray suit, stripped tie and dark-rimmed glasses. Brain damaged, he had a vacant stare. Across the room was a wild-eyed woman, huge disfiguring freckles all over her face, dressed in an old wool skirt and sweater, a man's white shirt, and an Aunt Jemima scarf like a bandage around her head. She was staring angrily at us, muttering something to herself.

A nurse brought Amos Congdon his lunch, a bowl of tomato soup, a slice of white bread, a cup of ginger ale. I encouraged him to eat. He looked around at all of us. Then he broke the bread in four pieces, offering a piece of each of us, the vacant man, the wild woman, and myself.

It's been a privilege and a pleasure to make pictures of Amos Congdon and his saw mill. I continue a relationship with his family and their place, making pictures of wood with a special interest in the designs of its grain.

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