My father pulled this out of the back of his truck recently after loading firewood onto his trailer. “You don’t find them like this anymore. It’s a twelve pounder – a ‘big-daddy.”
I asked him to recount the circumstances that sheared the handle clean off of at the head. All that came to his mind in our brief exchange was a smile and a mention that he and his cousin Jeff were in a fencerow or the woods or somewhere at home when the maul met it’s maker. For twenty years he figured, it had been in the barn since that day. I hope to give this back to him this fall, firmly hung on some strong hickory, clean and sharp – Maybe that then, it will jog his memory and I’ll get the full story behind the Big Daddy.