By Will Tuell

Wood has always been in our family. 

My great-grandfather, Stephen Tuell, used to cut logs at the head of Hadley Lake and haul them down the lake with a workhorse before tractors and mechanical equipment ruled the day. My grandfather, Richard “Hooker” Tuell, grew up in the woods and talked about some “David Brown” -- who, for the first couple decades of my life, was a real person, not a type of tractor -- and developed a knack for making ash, maple, and oak baskets which he sold on the corner of Route 1/191 in East Machias for thirty-some-odd years. 

During my childhood, my father, Wayne Tuell, would cut and sell firewood to friends and neighbors, and I would be recruited -- for $5 a load or maybe a rootbeer, depending on the neighbor -- to help deliver between 15-20 cords of firewood a year. 

Long story short, sawdust has always been in our veins. I mean that quite literally. Going up and down a flight of stairs at our house was, and still is, like dodging landmines. You never know when you might drive a stray “splinter” the size of a two-by-four into your foot. 

In all seriousness, though, the past three generations of Tuells have been deeply involved with the production and sale of wood in some form. Sunday suppers would involve deep, and often animated, discussions about wood, chainsaws, tractors, winches, skid trails, and how logs are measured. A blustery, wintry evening might involve complex computations that would leave an advanced calculus student scratching his or her head as Father would sit and figure up board footage for hours on end. 

But, I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit. In the summer of 1996, Father went out and bought a portable sawmill. Looking back, it was a runty little thing compared to his “new” 2004 mill, though it seemed quite grand at the time. It was the perfect thing for a custodian at UMM who wanted to work with wood off hours and weekends. 

At that point in my life, I was just finishing high school. My brother Joe was just starting, and my sister, Dorrie, was ten. When Father got the sawmill, he decided he’d build a shack to keep it out of the elements. Who do you suppose helped build that shack, most of which is somehow still standing today? Well, I wasn’t cut out for it. Joe wasn’t interested in it, being a freshman in high school, so that left Dorrie, the ten-year-old, helping Father pound nails and such. (There’s a reason why she is, was, and always will be, “The Favorite Child”, though I leave it to you to decide if that was it.)

Over the years, Father developed quite a colorful clientele. If you don’t think so, join me on the campaign trail someday, and invariably you’ll hear somebody ask, “How’s your father doing? Is he keeping busy at the mill?” or, “Tell your dad I got a log for him to saw,” or, “Is Wayne around? I gotta stop and see if he can saw something out.” Next to Mother, who worked at Machias Savings Bank for over thirty years, it was one of the most frequent lines of conversation I’d hear whenever I knocked on doors -- even as far away as Lubec. 

Another thing I hear, and have been told many times, is that Father is a hard worker. He’s always been that. He worked at UMM for 27 years before he “retired” seven years ago. Before he bought his sawmill, he cut firewood for people, made wreaths, and kept active in the woods -- accompanying my grandfather and Uncle Harold, who also spent a lot of time in the woods. Today’s world would call it “a side hustle,” but that really doesn’t do the fact that he has sawed tens-, if not hundreds-of-thousands of “board feet” of lumber in the 28 years he’s been “milling around,” justice. 

I have no idea how many hundreds of customers have stopped by the Hadley Lake Sawmill over the years -- ten below with the wind howling, mid-40s with a cold, driving rain, or 85 with humidity so thick he could probably saw a 2-by-8 chunk and sell it -- but they’ve come, and kept coming. 

Some come in big logging trucks with mountains of logs they’ve had cut for them; some in pickup trucks with trailers; and others stop by just to see what he’s got on hand for sale. Before we discontinued the landline last year, people would routinely call and ask if “ya got any cedar logs?” or, “Is Wayne around?” Because, naturally, he couldn’t hear the cell phone over the steady whine of the sawmill, much less stop to answer the phone. 

But it isn’t just customers or people looking to see if he’s got anything on hand. There are plenty of people who will stop and paw through the half-frozen “slab pile” where Father throws all the waste from the logs he saws. These slabs are free, and in some cases, just as good as the regular logs, but odd-shaped, uneven, and disfigured in some way. They make great kindling for the woodstove, maybe “fall wood” when you don’t want to dip into your firewood supply, or, in other cases, help when you run short. Some have used them for arts and crafts. High school kids have grabbed a few for a bonfire now and again. But people paw over the pile like miners grubbing for gold in olden times. 

And then, of course, there’s the people that just like to stop and chaw over life at the mill. I’m not sure how many of these there are, but on any given day, all you have to do is look out the window to see a steady stream of beat-up pickup trucks hauling into and out of the mill yard. 

I know I’m probably laughing and joking a bit more than I ought to in this story, but it really is a testament to the reputation Father has built over the years that I can do so. We have heard from dozens of customers who swear by the quality of his work, the workmanship and precision with which he saws logs for people building homes, garages, outbuildings, or laying flooring, wanting shingle runners, or even parts of their lobster traps. 

Father is almost 70 now. He says he’s slowing down. And maybe he is. But he’s still up at 4:30 a.m. building a fire at the sawmill, meeting customers, and cranking into full gear by 6-6:30 most days, earlier in the summertime when it's too hot to work at midday. 

But Father is a woodsman, just like my grandfather, great-uncle, and great-grandfather were before him. None of us kids ever will be, so I fully expect Father will be “milling around” till the day he dies. Then again, Dorrie has picked up the skill saw and done some woodwork on the side, so you never know. The tradition may carry forward in unexpected ways. 

Either way, I have been blessed to have Father in my life all these years, have learnt a lot even when I pretend to be half-listening to his stories of the Sawmill, and am thankful that there are still people like him in this world, just milling around.

Wayne Tuell, busy at work loading logs onto a trailer, which he took to his sawmill on Hadley Lake for processing. Photo By Will Tuell.

Wayne Tuell has never been a fan of sawing “big, honking logs” like the one pictured here. So, if you want to get him worked up, just ask him if he can saw a 21-inch (or bigger) log at the stump. He can’t, but it sure is funny to listen to him explain why not. Photo By Will Tuell.