My father used to sell firewood harvested from trees he had cut down while clearing lots. This was long before people owned answering machines, or had more than one telephone number, much less websites set up for small businesses. Instead of just saying "Hello?" we were all supposed to answer the phone by chirping, "Reid's Firewood Service. Fifty dollars a cord, twenty-five dollars a face cord!" We were like the in-house cord coordinators. A cord is a unit of measure for wood that, when "ranked and well stowed" (arranged so the pieces are aligned, parallel, touching, and compact), occupies a volume of 128 cubic feet, according to Wikipedia. A face cord is about a third the volume of a full cord, and is also known as a "rick of wood" in the Midwest. The word cord probably derives from the cord or string that is used to measure it. We cordoned off 12 cases of Cordinat* in OhioLINK today, and 563 in WorldCat.(A full cord of wood, 8 August 2009, from Wikimedia Commons.)
Carol Reid
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