Melvin Weisinger owned and operated the only sawmill in Oakwood where he cut cross ties for the railroad. One day when I was at the gas station Mr. Weisinger asked me if I could run a...

 forklift. Since I had already been on a backhoe and had spent numerous hours on a farm tractor I said yes that I could run anything that he needed ran. Mr. Weisinger immediately offered me the job of running the fork lift at his mill.

When I said yes I had this image in my mind of what a fork lift looked like boy was I wrong. Mr. Weisinger's forklift was one of kind. By removing the cab from the chassis of an old log truck and attaching the forks and hydraulic system from an old fork lift and rotating the drivers seat to the angle required to be able to reach the necessary hydraulic levers while still maintaining the driver's access to the clutch, brake and gas pedals he had created his own forklift which while not ideal to operate was certainly his own intellectual property.

My job description was clear. Take the forklift and drive to the log piles, load the forks with logs then transport the load of logs to the designated area above the roller rack and behind the sawyers pit where I was to stack the logs so that I could then feed the logs to the Mr. Weisinger and the sawmill in a controlled manner.

I was gainfully employed and up to the task at hand and so I crawled up in to the drivers seat (which faced the right front tire), cranked the engine and went to work. As I neared the log pile and lowered the forks I quickly realized that the forks would not support their own weight when lowered rendering the idea that the forks would somehow hold up a load of logs pretty far fetched. The hydraulic hoses and cylinders belched fluid as the forks rose and fell in time with my constant tugs on the multiple levers required to control the mast and the platform and the forks but somehow I managed to make it up the sand hill from where the logs were stacked to the mill with most of the logs I had loaded.

As I came up the hill, my right foot was on the gas pedal while my left hand was busy steering the truck and my right hand was occupied operating the hydraulics. My left leg was straddling the corner of the seat so I could mash the clutch before I hit the berm of dirt in from of the log rack. As it turned out I hit the berm with enough force to pitch me forward causing me to lose my grip on the hydraulic levers and dumping the entire load of logs. 

As the logs sprawled uncontrollably toward Mr. Weisinger he somehow sensed the severity of his situation and laid down in the saw pit allowing the logs to pass harmlessly over his head. When the last log had landed on the offside of the mill, he crawled out of the pit and walked over to where I was still sitting on the forklift. I can honestly tell you I did not know what to expect. I was in absolute shock. All he said was "We better get you some brakes."

I somehow assumed that meant we would add brake fluid to the master cylinder but that idea was soon proven wrong. As it turned out the brake lines leaked as bad as the hydraulics and so Mr. Weisinger elected to fill the master cylinder with water instead all the while chiding me to remind him before winter to purge the brake lines before they froze.

The water filled brakes worked enough to prevent a repeat of the near tragedy at the mill but I was never quite sure what to expect next. After several weeks of hauling logs and loading trucks I decided that I was better suited to breaking horses and working construction than I was to working at the sawmill but it was an interesting time and I certainly consider my time spent working with Mr. Weisinger to have been educational.     

Cecil Bell Jr.