Clark hoisted the maul backwards and, with a quick shift, slung it in a looping semi-circle that split a log with a resonant “Clomp!”
Then he did it again. And again. And again. Clomp! Clomp! Clomp!
“All right!” he said with earnest enthusiasm. “It’s good to get blood flowing again.”
Then he said something that made me do a quick scan of our surroundings, checking to see if anyone else was within earshot.
“I’m a poster boy for Obamacare,” he declared. In many parts of Georgia those are fighting words; I wanted to make sure nobody else heard him.
Clark is Clark Ashton, an artist and jack of all trades, a wiry fellow with an east Georgia piney woods twang who lives on North Druid Hills Road. His front yard, which is full of huge, artsy metal contraptions, has become something of a local attraction. Once, it found itself on Charles Osgood’s news show.
He makes do by selling his stoves, selling some art or playing with his band, sometimes supplemented by the odd construction job. He told me a gig putting up Sheetrock in Florida one summer officially qualified him for Redneck status.
Like one in five Georgians, he was, until recently, uninsured.
Each fall, Clark throws a full-bore party in his back yard with dozens of iron stoves burning a small forest of wood. Being appreciative of his fire, music and keg beer, I suggested last weekend that he partake of the mother lode in my front yard, a dying 100-year-old oak tree that I was having taken down.
But after making the offer, I had second thoughts. Just a month ago, Clark was a heart attack waiting to happen. In early December a team of surgeons had to dig into his chest to install a bypass for a blocked artery. I was worried that I’d have to call 911 while frantically trying to remember CPR.
Don’t worry, he insisted, he’s good as new. Doctors have urged him to remain active. That’s how post-operative care is done these days — get your feet on the floor and start moving. Lying around and waiting to regain your strength is old-school.
Still, I insisted that I do most of the lifting and he do the sawing and chopping. Actually, I tried chopping, but quickly got a nasty stinger in my newspaper-guy hands. So he split the wood.
But back to Obamacare.
In 2013, Clark tried to sign up with the new guvmint program. But when he finally got through to an operator he was told he didn’t earn enough money to qualify.
“They said I’m not poor enough for Medicaid but not rich enough for Obamacare,” he said between chops. “I fell into some sort of nowhere vacuum.”
He figured he’d remain a customer of Grady Hospital, where he is still paying his 50 percent portion of a $32,000 wrist operation from three years ago.
That’s a whole other saga about the convolutions of health care American-style.
A Grady clerk once told him his annual income was so low that he should only have to pay 20 percent, instead of 50 percent.
She wanted to know why he made so little. What about the music, she inquired, that makes money, right?
Well, Beyonce does pretty good. But playing Tuesday nights at Blind Willie’s pretty much just keeps you in PBRs and tip money.
How ‘bout your art, she inquired, you make money doing that, right?
Yep, when I can sell it, he said.
“So, you’re pretty much doing what you want to do, right?” she inquired.
“I guess.”
“OK, then,” she said, apparently fed up with his lack of business drive or acumen. “We’re gonna keep you at 50 percent.”
In May, he decided to give Obamacare another go. This time he lucked out.
“I’ve been doing this since October, and it changes every day,” the operator told him. The guy enrolled Clark in the silver plan, which has a $6,600 out-of-pocket max that can be lowered depending on the person’s income.
In December, Clark was picking up a load of bricks from a construction site — you never know when you’ll need a pile of perfectly good bricks — and he felt a tickling feeling in his chest, “kind of like I inhaled some fur.”
A visit to the doctor brought an immediate referral to a cardiologist and then a quick trip to the hospital. There was a 98-percent blockage, so they did a graft (technically, a left internal mammary artery (LIMA) to left anterior descending artery).
“They call it the widow maker,” said Clark. He’s not married, so in his case it would have been a “very-sad-girlfriend maker.”
Three days later, he was released from the hospital, and two days after that we were drinking beer, eating chicken wings and watching the Falcons lose on Monday Night Football. Modern medicine is a marvelous thing.
“My cardiologist said I wouldn’t have lasted a week,” said Clark, who has heart problems in his family tree.
He’s a hard-working fool, a throwback to another era when men worked with their hands. He could have been moving one of his big iron stoves or toting some lumber and suddenly he’s a dead middle-age guy in flannel shirt lying in his yard. It just happens like that, he knows it now. And he’s grateful for each breath going forward.
“I always thought it was a benefit that I’m not sitting at a desk. I’m on my feet all day,” he said. Now, he gets the irony: “Here I am railing against society and people chasing after something they’ll never catch. And then I almost work myself to death.”
But, he said, the health plan from The President We Shall Not Name, “made me feel comfortable that I could call my doctor.”
He did, and here he was a month later, teaching me the finer points of splitting oak.
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