Elm, sure enough, doesn't like to split. When Dutch Elm Desease swept
through the mid-west in the late '50s and early '60s it left a lot of dead
Elm standing on the stump along the cricks at our place just outside Elmwood
(actual name, not made up for this story), Nebraska. My dad and I used the
Red Elm in cabinets and furniture for its fine chocolatey-red color, but
there was so much of it we ran a lot through the mill and into our stock
tank production. The Red Elm could hold up to a lot of kicking in the feed
lots because it was resistant to splitting with its overlapping layers of
criss-cross grain. I was back there in 2001 when old Earl Kunts pointed at
the Red Elm stock tank under the wind mill in his coral, briming full of
water, and wondered if could I make up a couple more so his grandkids
wouldn't have to worry about stock tanks.

John Leeke, Hayseed

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