Next to duct tape, there really isn’t anything more useful out in the country than a good wooden pallet.
You know the kind, two layers of slats separated by a 4×4 block on the corners.
They are typically stacked willy-nilly behind big businesses such as Home Depot and Lowes, or in the gravel parking lots of garden stores waiting to be recycled or trashed.
Like most people, I didn’t see any value in this garbage until I traded in a 15-minute commute on the metro from our house to downtown Washington for a 60-mile, one-way trip from a part of the world that is more West Virginia than Dupont Circle.
The light blinked about 18 years ago when we went to the Loudoun Valley High School homecoming parade in little Purcellville, Va. There was a stack of pallets in the parking lot of a local business.
It seemed weird until I was told that it was going to be lit for a sundown bonfire.
Of course, we decided to stay for that, backing my rusty Toyota Tacoma in between all the other pickups to watch the blaze. After it was lit, there were lots of cheers and milling around. Pallets blaze bright and hot. Not only is the wood typically dry, but all that open space really feeds on the oxygen. They have a lot of surface area for their volume.
But the fire didn’t last long because nobody had collected more pallets to fuel the conflagration. So much for high schoolers being true pyros.
That was about the time when the backyard fire craze began, and hardware stores started selling little pits to burn logs in.
Having witnessed a pallet blaze, a half barrel-sized pit wasn’t going to do it for me. We went big, 12-feet wide, ringed by stone two feet high. Big enough for the fire to be seen by an astronaut glancing out of a window of the orbiting International Space Station.
Once upon a time, our pit was deep, but we’ve burned so many pallets over the years that the ring of stone is filled with a mound of ash and nails.
Over time, I’ve gone all in with the pallet life.
They’re good to store firewood on. I’ve set them up to protect the heat pumps on the side of the house from snow in winter. They are also great for makeshift outdoor storage for mulch and kitchen compost. One neighbor even uses them as his goat fence. It looks like hell, but it works.
This winter, we made a pallet dog house for our aging lab. Even installed a light bulb to warm her.
Of course, you need a source to be a true pallet hoarder.
Luckily, we have a local stair-maker who puts out scraps, including pallets, for anybody to take. Sometimes there is one lonely pallet, sometimes a bunch. I can fit up to 10 in my pickup, and that always seems to happen when I’ve been in a news interview for the Washington Examiner, all dressed up in my Sunday finest. There have been some nasty rips and cuts from lifting the pallets into the truck.
Now, after 18 years, my pallet sickness is established. At last count, I had about 50, stacked neatly at the corner of our property, beside the shed where we hang deer and park tractors.
One thing is for sure: When we have a bonfire, we won’t run out of pallet fuel.
Paul Bedard is a senior columnist and author of Washington Secrets.
