That Ain't No Hill For A Stepper
When I was in high school, an old man from our church asked me if I wanted to make twenty bucks. At that time, twenty bucks was a tank of gas and a solid weekend of having fun with my friends, so I asked what he needed.
He had a cord or so of wood that needed to be stacked. I should have asked for more details, but didn’t.
A cord (for those who don’t know) is a pile of wood 4’ x 4’ x 8’ in size.
Google will tell you that there are roughly 700 pieces of wood in a cord. It was going to be work, but I was willing to do it.
When I got to his house, he led me out back, then down a steep hill through the woods.
At the bottom of the hill, he had cut up a dead oak tree.
He wanted the wood carried up the hill and stacked behind his shed.
The trail that led uphill was too steep and too narrow to use a wheelbarrow.
I said, “That is a pretty big hill.”
He replied, “That ain’t no hill for a stepper.”
In West Virginian parlance, that meant that if you were someone used to going up hills, a hill was nothing to you.
In our conversation, it meant that he was calling me a stepper. Or someone who should have no problem carrying 700 pieces of oak 100 yards uphill and stacking them neatly for twenty dollars.
Of course, to start trying to bargain for a wage increase at that point would have meant that I was not, in fact, a stepper.
I knew what he was doing, but unfortunately, he knew what he was doing first.
So I got to hauling and stacking wood.
I learned the lesson to be wary of old-timers, of course, but I also learned that being a stepper means becoming comfortable with discomfort.
That day was not the first time I learned that lesson, and it damn sure wouldn’t be the last, but it is one that we all need to re-learn occasionally.
Go out, be a stepper, and RTFU.
Until next week,
John
Life is Hard. Be Harder.
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