I ordered a truck load of firewood for my office yesterday.

A 'healthy' face cord of oak lasts me two years. I order it from a farmer whose family, Jules, is connected to this place going back to the revolution... down the street from us is the homestead of one of the obscure signers of the Declaration, William Floyd.

The Floyd family over the years intermarried with the Nichols family. That is the Nichols family of John Nichols, writer of the Milagro Beanfield War etc. John as a kid used to spend summers at the homestead. I understand somewhere he has written about that experience though I have not found it. The Jules family were caretakers at the estate which numbered in thousands of acres in the 1800's but over years has whittled down to a few hundred.

Friends of mine met John Nichols at a timber framing conference they went to in the SW where he was a keynote speaker. They later met him in a grocery store and spent some time to talk with him.

So I did some work a few years back at the Floyd Mansion and in the process got to talk with the park superintendent (National Park Service) and when we got to John Nichols... there was an exhibit in the mansion about then that had been put together of writings of the family through the generations -- I was curious... I was asked if I could track down John Nichols.

The reason that I was asked was that Bill Jules, who was a childhood friend of John Nichols -- that Bill's mother had died and that Bill was in a bad way. Bill, it seems, was in a bad way since Vietnam. His mother took care of him, and as the park superintendent explained she kept him on an even keel. It would be good to get word to John Nichols that his childhood friend needed to hear from him. That was all that I knew of it.

I went to my friends and explained to them the need to make a connection. Nothing came of it for who knows what reason and as with many things we all moved on.

But yesterday, in the middle of talking with Mr. Jules the farmer and owner of our favorite farm stand about his rebuilding a '38 Ford coupe into a roadster -- it was a long conversation that we got into before he dropped the load of wood, I had the temerity to ask him what had become of the fellow in his family that had the problem with Vietnam. I figured he might be reserved.

After he figured out who I was talking about -- it took a bit of us to both run around in circles for this stranger buying firewood to be asking such a personal family question -- then when he got what I was on about he opened up.

It was his cousin, Bill, and Bill’s brother that lived with their mother who had died. They stopped eating and cleaning up after themselves and the family just recently had moved them to a home over in Bellport... about five miles east of us.

I asked how old they were, he said in their mid sixties. So you can figure where that may have put them in how far back in Vietnam.

He told me the brothers are not stupid though people seem to think that they are. I know folks like that and usually they become my friends. As he told me they are very well book smart. Just that their mother always took care of them. When she died the dirt got deeper and deeper in the house. I don't know what all else to imagine in that.

Then he went on to tell me what happened to his cousin Bill in Vietnam.

A helicopter had come in to pull him and his group out and everyone ran for the helicopter to get on it and the hell out of there as quick as possible. Bill saw that there was fuel leaking out of the helicopter and he screamed at the guys to get out. But they would not hear him. He tried to get the pilot to shut down the helicopter. The helicopter began to take off then suddenly exploded in a ball of flame with bodies and blood blown all over the place where Bill was standing. He was never the right since.

That is my firewood story.