Eighty-eight-year-old Linwood Tyler of Freeman Township cuts trees into lumber with his Wood Miser Wood Cutting Machine recently. (Laura Dunham photo) FREEMAN TOWNSHIP — Pushing 90 years old, most people spend the last of their years either sitting on the front porch watching the world go by or running from one doctor to another.

This is not the case for a Freeman Township man who at 88 years old never took a pill and is up every morning at 5:30 a.m. busy at his sawmill.

Linwood Tyler, who was born and raised in Phillips and graduated from Phillips High School in 1942, was one of 12 children —six boys and six girls.

“It was tough having to take care of 20 head of cattle and walking four miles to get to school from Tory Hill. I went to school every other day so that we took turns taking care of the younger children,” Tyler said. He was a sophomore in high school when he lost his mother.

“Our cellar was full of apples that we sold for $1 a bushel and string beans that we sold for seven cents a pound. We made our own cider vinegar,” he said.

“My father filed big saws and was by far the best filer around these parts.” So maybe that’s why Tyler followed in his father’s footsteps by selling saws in the area and was in fact the first local Husqvarna dealer to sell over a million dollars worth in 10 months.

Tyler is busy every day sawing lumber on his new Wood Miser Wood Cutting Machine. Right now he is set up at the home of Noni Badershall in Freeman where he saws logs into lumber that Badershall will use to construct a new barn. Tyler said he has already sawed over 10,000 feet of lumber and had a pile of six-by-sixes to show for it.

Tyler also enjoys working in his garden and using his John Deere tractor to help friends and neighbors with projects.

“You need to get up and have a purpose in life or you will just deteriorate if you sit all the time,” Tyler says.

He works at least four hours a day at his sawmill, he says, then goes home, has his one beer a day and then thinks about maybe going fishing.