Member-only story
Schubert and Daughters
A Parable of Change
A long, lonely road led up to Ted Schubert’s Sawmill. No one ever came by, but I did, because no matter how lonely a place can be, a man broke and unemployed, with nowhere left to go, can find it.
I parked my truck by a pile of firewood logs that were turning black at the ends and growing fungus in the middles. The firewood pile going bad was a sign of good business and a chance he might be hiring. I didn’t know much about making logs into furniture, but I can cut up firewood. We can help each other before those logs turn to mush.
As I reached the end of the pile, I sprang back suddenly as a tractor carrying some beech logs cut me off. The tractor, a blue and white Ford 9N with a homemade front-end loader, whined by in fourth gear. The logs carried in front overbalanced it so that its back wheels lifted up off the ground and spun gravel. At the wheel of the seesawing tractor was a fifteen-year-old girl just home from school with a pack of books still strapped to her back. The sign in the yard read, Schubert & Daughters, Lumber Co., and this was Crystal, the younger of the two.
Years ago, we heard Schubert’s wife, Sara, had run off towards less lonely roads and left him with the two girls: Crystal and Leah. Ted put up a sign that read, Schubert & Daughters, Rabbits, and set to building rows and…
