Bruce Geiger’s neighbor in Lyndeborough told me this story. Bruce recently died, but is fondly remembered as a great Yankee character. He pronounced his name Geigah, of course. A tall thin man, good with horses, did a lot of work in the woods.
One day he was out in the woods working with his tricycle tractor. When his wife came home from work, Bruce hadn’t come in from the woods yet. She got ahold of their other neighbor, Tinker Johnson. “Tinkah,” she said, “I haven’t seen Bruce. He should have been home hours ago.”
So Tinkah went in search of Bruce and came upon a terrible scene, the tractor upended and Bruce pinned underneath. Tinkah rushed to Bruce’s side expecting the worse. But he realized his friend was still alive when Bruce looked up and said: “What took ya?”
Which reminded me of a story that may be apocryphal (that means an extra big lie), but then again may have some truth to it. Up in Colebrook, another woods mishap. The logger out all alone felled a tree the wrong way, got his arm pinned bad, and had to saw his arm off to escape. Then he tucked the severed arm under his good one and walked three miles out to the truck, drove himself to the hospital, and got the arm sewed back on.
“My gosh,” a fella said, upon hearing the story. “That’s about as bad as it gets, ain’t it? Having to saw off your own arm, walk three miles out of the woods, drive yourself to the hospital so you can get your arm sewed back on.”
“Could
have been worse,” the logger said. “Could have been my head.”
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