One of the side effects of the Arab Oil Embargo was a resurgence of wood burning appliances for home heating. Heating oil, as well as gasoline, had skyrocketed in price. So it was only natural that consumers would look at more affordable ways of heating their homes. We at J&L were lucky in a way, as Textron not only owned us, but they had a division called Homelite, which sold chain saws, among other things. As a Textron employee, we could buy these saws at a considerable discount.

There were several of us office workers that took advantage of the Homelite connection and bought a chain saw. Getting firewood was not much of a problem, as the state of Vermont sold roadside woodlots if you got your bid in early; and there were private landowners who needed their woodlots thinned out. I was lucky enough to hook up with a fellow in the programming department, who had a line on a woodlot up in Reading, off Grasshopper Lane. We had bought a Franklin stove from Steve Bromley (who worked inside sales at J&L), and had it set up in the living room. Not a very efficient unit, but it helped with the oil bill. Several of us office workers pooled our money and bought a hydraulic woodsplitter over at Agway in Claremont. Although most of this group has disbursed over  time, we still have the splitter at our house (two motors later).

We made a family day of cutting firewood, everyone would jump in the pickup truck and head to Reading. Back then it was perfectly legal for the kids to ride in the bed of the truck; and they would climb on top of the load of wood going home.

A lot of the office talk centered around wood burning, BTU’s and stove types. There were Scandanavian stoves such as Jotul and Morso; domestics such as Nashua and Garrison. The various tool requirements for working up a wood pile; types of axes, mauls and wedges. Everyone had a detailed list of the various northern hardwoods and their heat values (BTU’s). There was a joke circulating about some poor soul who had added up the cost of all this required equipment, along with the cost of a pickup truck, and several smashed rear windows from carelessly throwing the wood in the bed. Needless to say, the total cost far exceeded the price of heating the house with oil. But being thought of as “self reliant” was important to many.

There were stories about some of the workers at J&L building their own woodsplitters in the shop, out of sight of supervision. I’m sure this happened in all of the shops over time, as all the components were readily available. Eventually there were seminars given to educate people about the problems that wood burning creates. These talks were usually given by the fire department, and centered around creosote buildup in the chimneys. Chimney fires had become more common, and these discussions helped people to understand how to clean their chimneys, properly dry their firewood and run their stoves efficiently.