Understanding Logging & Timber Practices across Oregon

 This is a follow up on the question of what timber companies I interacted with during my career with the Forest Service in timber sale contract administration.

I interacted with 17 mills on four National Forests (Six Rivers, Plumas, Siskiyou & Umpqua) from 1974-95.   Out of those 17 mills only 3 are still in business today.   Some of these mills went out of business due to labor union disputes, bought out by larger mills, a declining lumber market during the 1980's and a decreasing supply of logs.    

The Oregon Forest Resources Institute shows some interesting data in their 2019-20 edition of Oregon Forest Facts.  What they don't address is the number of logs that are exported to Asia from private timber lands, which has been as high as 1 in 3 logs and mostly from larger timber companies, such as Weyerhaeuser (Weyco).  Logs from public forests are restricted from being exported.    When Weyco did a hostile takeover of Willamette Industries  between 2000-2006 they liquidated much of the private timber holdings that they acquired from Willamette Industries and exported that timber to help pay for the takeover.   Other large timber companies have done the same.  

Oatmeal Pancakes/Waffles

 I'm not one for recipes, but this one has been with me for years.  

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup oatmeal

1 egg

Tablespoon of oil

some baking powder. 

some milk.  The amount depends on how thick you want them.  If available throw in some fruit or whatever you can find in those dark corners of your refrigerator.  

 

These will stick with you all day, no need for lunch, maybe no dinner either depending how heavy you make them.    Good to have during these hard times.  

Mike

The Stranger from Heaven

Got up to 98 this afternoon, too hot to be outside, so more writing.   This story is taken from a writing exercise with the group 40 Days and 40 Writes I was with last year.   Some of you may have seen this before

In the late summer and early fall of 1997 I drove from Oregon to Indiana to visit a sister.  On my return trip I wanted to take a few extra days to see some historical sites in Wyoming, such as Fort Laramie and South Pass, where the Oregon Trail crossed the Rocky Mountains.   While driving past Lander, Wyoming it started snowing hard and when I got to the junction of the highway to go over South Pass the gate was closed due to the snow.   I had no choice, except to stay on the main highway and get back to I-80 at Rawlins.   This involved going over a mountain pass called Muddy Gap, elevation 6000 feet.  Tire chains were required which I put on my front wheel drive Ford Escort and proceeded on as the snow started blowing, making visibility difficult, if not impossible.  There was a truck I could see that had gone off the road and not much traffic after that.   Almost to the top of the summit I could feel the car slipping and losing traction.   I stopped and noticed the right front chain was gone.   It was cold and visibility was not much beyond 50 feet with blowing snow.   All of a sudden a man in an old Jeep pulled up behind me.  He had a cowboy hat on and wearing a Levi jacket and in one hand he had my tire chain.  With a big smile he asked, “Did you lose these”?   He helped me get them back on the tire as my hands were freezing.   Afterwards he said he had to check on some cattle and turned off the highway and disappeared.   How he ever saw those tire chains in the snow is beyond my imagination and I could not see any road leading off the highway where he departed, but again it was blizzard conditions.    I proceeded on down the hill to Rawlins, where I had to spend the next three days in a motel waiting for the storm to end and I-80 to reopen.  Who was that strangers?  

Holiday Stress

 Thinking back on family holidays brings one word to mind—STRESS!  There was the holiday traffic to contend with, meeting everybody’s expectations, and good old family friction.   Holidays for us usually centered on food and drink.  Two of the most memorable holiday events I can recall were when we had Christmas dinner at my mother’s parents’ house in southern California back in the 1950’s.   My grandmother had prepared her usual pot roast with all the side dishes.  My grandfather had a habit of partaking of a little drink in his garage before dinners.   He came into the house and sat at the head of the table and began cutting the pot roast.    The roast slipped off the platter onto the floor.  Like nothing had happened he stuck the carving fork into it and brought it back up on the table and continued cutting.   During all this he muttered out a word that I will not repeat here.   Being about 10 years of age I did not know what the word meant and asked my dad, who sitting next to me.  He said, “Never mind and be quiet”.  

The second event was later in life when we had Christmas at my first wife’s parent’s small farm near Lodi, California.  The kitchen was small and more than three people in there was a crowd.  The women were in a heated discussion on how to cook this and that.  My father-in-law looked at me and said, “Let’s go to the barn and leave them to it”.  In the barn he opened a bottle of Wild Turkey and all the stress went away instantly.  

Cats

 When Celia and I moved to Douglas County in October of 2006 we brought along 16 cats from our place we sold on Ash Street in Cottage Grove.  Now you’re probably asking yourself how did we acquire all those cats?   It was a combination of cats Celia had at her house on 1st Street in Cottage Gove and a few I inherited while living in Eugene from 1991 to 2000.   Some were left to me by my daughter when she left home and others that wandered in after being abandoned from an apartment complex a few blocks away.   We don’t remember the exact number when we got married in 2000 and bought a house together on Ash Street in Cottage Grove.    The people that we bought the house from had been feeding stray cats that lived in the alley behind the house.   They asked us to continue feeding them.  There may have been three or four at that time.    Over the six years we lived in the Ash Street house more cats showed up.   They must have sensed this was a good place to hang out.  There were white cats, orange cats, black cats, multi colored cats, skinny cats and few fat cats.   Two more cats showed up that were left behind by a couple that were renting a house down the street from us.  There was one cat that started showing at the back door whining for something to eat at night.  He was a black cat Celia called Marvin.  He would eat then run off.  Eventually he would let Celia pet him.   During the winters many of these cats lived under the tool shed we had in the back yard.   In addition to all the cats there was my dog Jack, who was raised with cats when I lived in Eugene.   

In 2006 we sold the Ash Street house to a woman who was allergic to cats and a condition of the sale was all the cats had go.    It took a week to trap the wild cats and bring them to our new place in Douglas County.   There is a shop by the house where we put all the cats to have them adjust to the move.  The first night they figured out how to open a back entrance into a dog pen behind the shop.   The next day we had cats scattered all over the mountain side.   For the next week we could see cats running through the woods, the neighbor’s pasture down near the highway and in the meadow on our lower 10 acres.  Over the next few weeks most of the cats came back, except Marvin who we never saw again.    My old dog Jack never made the move either, as we had to send over the Rainbow Bridge due to health issues that come with old age.   With winter coming on I built a two story cat house in the back of the shop with a heater where cats could take shelter from the cold weather.    There never was a rat problem in the shop.  

Some of our domesticated cats stayed in the house during the winter nights.  In addition to the cats we moved from Cottage Grove the previous owner of our new property left us her cat since she was moving near the highway in Elkton knowing her cat would not survive there.   Over the years cats started disappearing, we suspect from critters, such as a Bob cat that has been spotted in the vicinity.   We call him the Boogie kitty and many of our cats have become cautious of getting too far from the house.   Other cats died from diseases or were taken to the Vet for the trip over the Rainbow Bridge.  Some of these were replaced by other cats that wandered onto the place, either from being dumped down the road or one we call Joe that we believe had been abused by a neighbor up the hill.   Joe is still with us.

After 14 years of living here we are down to four cats and the oldest being Toby pushing 20 years.  He was picked out of a box of kittens in front of the Cottage Grove Bi-Mart by Celia in 2000 or 2001.   There is sadness thinking back on all these cats that were part of our family.    The good side of the story is most of these cats had a good life because we took them into our care knowing many of them would never had made it without us.  

The search for Home

 After hanging out together for three years Celia and I decided to get married and the date was set for October 7, 2000.   The big question was where were we going to live?   Her house in Cottage Grove and my house in Eugene were out of the question since both were too small.   We both had our criteria in what we wanted in a house.   Celia visualized a white picket fence, roses growing over the front door and the basic amenities to make life comfortable.  A few things men do not give much thought to.  I was more interested in a garage or outbuilding where I could work on my power equipment, have all my tools and do what men have to do, basically things women do not understand.   We both had common ground in wanting some space for a garden.

Our search went as far south as Douglas County, as far west as Veneta and north to Harrisburg and Junction City in Lane County.  Some houses looked good, but no garage, others were in need of some repairs, some too expensive and a few in bad locations.  We even looked around Eugene and Cottage Grove, but nothing met our criteria.  Then we made a trip to Wallowa County in the northeast corner of Oregon.  This is beautiful country with the Wallowa Mountains, valleys and Hell’s Canyon.  We stayed in the town of Joseph for three days looking at houses in the area, including a trip to Imnaha on the edge of the Hell’s Canyon with a population of 50.   The down side to living here was the long cold winters, a short growing season and the thought that our children would never come visit us.   At this point I was getting discouraged, but Celia kept looking.   One night she called me about a house she saw on the west side of Cottage Grove.   She wanted to make an appointment to look at it and wanted me to come along.  I reluctantly agreed.    The house had an attached garage, had been remodeled, in a quiet part of town, reasonably priced and the best part it had a work shop in the back yard along with with enough space for a garden.  As we departed the house I noticed a mail slot by the front door and thought how convenient.    We started walking toward the car and I turned to Celia and said, “let’s buy it”.  She was stunned!

Working on a Grass Seed Farm 1996-2000

 In the winter of 1996 I enrolled at Lane Community College near Eugene and took a course of study in Agricultural and Industrial Equipment Technology.   After completing two terms I received a certificate in Diesel Electrical Systems.  An alumni of the course, who was a shop foreman on a grass seed farm out of Harrisburg asked the teacher if any students would be interested in a seasonal job.   I raised my hand and the job was offered to me.   Basically I became the chief grease monkey operating a service truck and running from field to field each morning servicing farm equipment.   This work consisted of filling fuel tanks, checking oil levels, greasing the machines, blowing out radiators and air filters.  Don’t remember doing much electrical work.  Shop work was more of the same working on fork lifts, trucks, machinery in the warehouse and running into Harrisburg for parts once or twice a week.   Most of the equipment was operated by local high school students.   Whenever one of them did not show up in the morning or have to leave before the end of the day it was me that replaced them in the cab of a combine.   This was monotonous work going round and around with four other combines equipped with pickup headers going wherever the windrows took us.    The north wind would be blowing and the dust would follow us, sometimes going ahead of the machine where we could not see much beyond the cab.    By late afternoon my eyelids would start getting heavy and the fear of falling asleep would overtake me, even with the a/c and radio going.   Sometimes I would have to slap myself to stay awake in fear of the combine wandering off course and going in some nearby ditch.    The days were long, 10 to 14 hours depending on the air moisture in the evenings.   At the end of the day there would be some trucks filled grass seed that had to be driven back to the warehouse and emptied.   It would be 10 or 11 pm some nights when I got back home in Eugene.   The next day I would be up and gone by 7 am to beat the rush hour traffic.   My lunch box had enough food for lunch and dinner.   Sunday night dinners were provided by the farm consisting of a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and all the side dishes for those working that day.    It was delivered out in the field to each combine or tractor operator to eat while working.   I definitely don’t care for that stuff anymore.  By mid-August most combine work was done and all hands had to operate a tractor to work the fields in preparation for seeding next year’s crop.   Burning of grass seed straw was no longer permitted and the straw had to be worked back into the ground by plowing, disking, and harrowing until the soil was almost turned into to dust.  This work would end each day by 5 pm and usually completed by end of September when I was laid off for the season.   There was no overtime for this work and during periods of rain the crew was laid off until things dried out, sometimes for up to a week.  If we worked the entire season until we got laid off we received a bonus check near Christmas time.  

I continued doing this job for the next four summers.   One morning in August of 2000, while driving north on I-5 to the farm I missed the Harrisburg turnoff and did not realize it until I saw the sign for the Brownsville Exist.   It was time to call it quits, plus Celia and I were getting ready to move into our house in Cottage Grove and get married in October.    I could not imagine adding another 20 miles to the daily commute.    No bonus check was received that year.

Farming

I recovered this from the original posting to publish it again for those that may not have seen it.    With the high cost of food today, labor shortages and climate change it is worth reviewing. 

 Farming is a risky business.   There is the weather to contend with, the market, and a certain amount of debt load to deal with.   Farmers usually don’t get a monthly income from the sale of their crops, but the bills keep coming in on a monthly basis making it necessary to take out loans.  Payments for crops can be lump sum or paid out periodically depending on the contract between grower and buyer.    It is usually the buyer or market that sets the price, not the farmer.   

Most farms are passed down from one generation to the next along with the same old risks.   There is the high cost of farm equipment, maintenance, fuel, soil amendments, fertilizers, seed, labor costs, insurance, overhead and more.   Profit margins can be slim.   Most of the labor on family farms are the family members and from experience I know they can be overworked and under paid.   Today many family farms are going under.  Personally I saw my own dad take on too big of a debt load where he got behind on payments and had to sell off everything to satisfy the bankers back in the 1960’s.   

Farming is highly mechanized.   Fifty years ago it took three tractors to do what one large tractor can do today.   The only difference back then was the operator was exposed to the weather, the noise and the dust.   There were a few hazards with the job, such as a hydraulic hose breaking and spraying oil on you or a flying piece of metal from some mechanism blowing apart.  Today the operator sits in an air conditioned cab with a radio, maybe a tape deck and the biggest hazard is falling asleep.   

Immigrant farm labor is critical for the crops that can’t be mechanically harvested.   Most the fruits, veggies and meat you see in the market was picked, slaughtered,  processed and packaged by somebody from south of the border.   They might be here illegally or under the H-2A agricultural work visa program and without these people there would be critical food shortages.    You do not see many white people doing this work.   

Next time you’re in the market think about where that food came from and who processed it.  Tomorrow it may not be there.  

Living on the GI Bill

 After serving two years in the Army I was entitled to two years of school under the GI Bill.   In the fall of 1968 I enrolled in a two year forestry curriculum at Lassen College in Susanville, California.  My monthly allocation was $130 to live on.    Initially all my text books and school supplies had to be purchased from this monthly amount also.   There was some savings I had that went toward these items and my 1963 Ford pickup cost me $800 from money saved up while in the Army.

My monthly rent was $50 for a small room behind a house where I had access to the landlord’s house through the back door to use a bathroom and utilize a space in their refrigerator.  This left me $80 to cover my monthly insurance premium on my 1963 Ford pickup, (don’t remember the amount) gas and grocery money.    My diet consisted of potatoes, cereal and a few can goods, don’t remember any fresh produce or meat.    I do remember the price of beer at $2.09 for a 6-pac of Hamm’s Beer and a $1.89 for a gallon of Red Mountain wine.   After making friends with some classmates we would combine resources and share a meal at their house a few blocks away once or twice a week.   Eating out was rare, but do recall eating hamburgers and French fries at the local Denney’s now and then.

After my first year I worked as a seasonal firefighter for the Forest Service on the Modoc National Forest as a GS-3 earning $2.39/hour.  There was still a food expense, but housing was free consisting of a bed, closet and wood stove in a cabin at the Hilton Spike Camp Guard Station.   Somehow I even saved some money for the upcoming school year.

During my second year of college a friend from Willows, who had served three years in the Air Force shared an apartment with me for $150/month which included a kitchen and all the furnishings.   Our monthly allotment from the GI Bill had been raised to $175/month leaving us $100/month for everything else.    Don’t remember going without anything, even had meat in our diet and no shortage of beer.

Life in the Military

 This one took some time with a few revisions to keep from getting into too much military detail that might lose the reader.  

For those of you that were in the service it may bring back memories, both good and bad.   I tried to inject some humor from looking back at it all, but at the time some of this was not funny.  

Something the younger generation and grand kids can learn from and hopefully avoid in a peaceful world. 

February 1966 to February 1968

 

In September of 1964 I started classes at Chico State College studying agriculture.    My studying habits dissipated quickly as many of the classes reminded me of high school, which I never enjoyed and I started skipping classes.  Farm work was more interesting, since I was more the hands on type than academic.     After the first semester I dropped out.  The best thing about being a student was having the student deferment to keep me off the 1A list of the local draft board.   It wasn’t until November of 1965 when the draft board found out I was no longer a student.    I tried to get an agricultural deferment, but they did not go for that and classified me 1-A, available for military service.   In December Uncle Sam sent me an induction notice with a date to report to the military induction center in Oakland, California for a physical.    This place was like a livestock processing facility where you stripped down to your shorts, got in line and proceeded through different medical exams.   My conclusion when it was all over was if you could walk you were fit to serve.  Some people had x-rays of broken bones or some past injury, they really did not care as long as you could walk.   We returned home after this to await our fate.  Some enlisted in the Air Force or Navy for three years to avoid being drafted into the Army for two years with a high probability of going to Vietnam.   Not wanting to enlist and serve three years, I just waited and sure enough a letter arrived in January 1966 with my report date back to the induction center for another physical exam and afterward officially inducted in to the US Army.   From there we were bussed to the reception center at Fort Ord, California where we were tested for different skills, indoctrinated about military life and asked what kind of training we wanted to receive.   After a week or two we were sent to different military posts around the country for eight weeks of basic training.   I ended up at Fort Hood, Texas in the 41^st Mechanized Infantry Battalion of the Second Armored Division.  Fort Hood was as big place and had modern facilities, it was almost like living in college dorms, and even the mess halls were nice.    The daily routine was an early morning mile run, marching out to the rifle range, classes on how to maintain your M-14 rifle, how to march in formation and all the ways to do harm to the enemy.    I don’t recall much harassment from the drill sergeants.  During my 4^th week of basic training my left arm broke while doing pull ups before entering the mess hall for dinner.   The drill sergeant sent for the company medic who got me into an ambulance and off we went to the hospital.    After x-rays they discovered it was a bone cyst in my left humerus that caused the break.   I was placed on the orthopedic ward on the 3^rd floor of the hospital.   The next day the chief military surgeon, a colonel, paid me a visit to inform me my arm would require surgery and a bone graft.    After the surgery a hospital corpsman was trying to wake me up in the ICU.   I noticed a big heavy cast from my hand to my shoulder and all supported by a rope around my neck.   The cast was intended to be heavy enough to keep the humerus straight as there was no way it could be pinned.   A week or so later I was sent home for 30 days of convalescence leave.    When I returned to Fort Hood the cast was removed along with the wires that stitched up the incision that ran from my left shoulder to the elbow.   I went through a therapy program for a couple of months to regain strength in my arm.   After rehabilitation and being found fit for duty I was transferred out of the hospital to an old WWII barracks where hospital personnel lived.  I was assigned as a hospital corpsman on the orthopedic ward where I had been a patient.  It was on-the-job training and being low man on the totem pole my first assignment was taking care of bed pans used by bed ridden patients, many who had been wounded in Vietnam.   I took orders from everybody, including the head nurse, a female First Lieutenant, the senior Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO), a Sergeant First Class and all others that outranked me.  About 75% of the patients on this ward had some kind of injury from the war, mostly land mines, booby traps and a few gun shots.   It was customary that the wounded would return to the nearest military hospital closet to their home until they were well enough to go home.   Over the next few months I did a little of everything from treating bed sores, changing bed linen, taking vital signs, issuing mediations, including two beers a day to bed patients and assisting the medical staff with all kinds of procedures .   I was told the beer helped flush out the patient’s kidneys.   It was Budweiser beer which today is the last beer I would ever drink. 

Somewhere during all this I was promoted to Private First Class (PFC) where you get one stripe to wear on your uniform.    By December orders came from above for me to return to basic training at Fort Polk, Louisiana.   This place had to be the armpit of the world and made Fort Hood look like a vacation playground.   The facilities were WWII vintage and it was cold and wet in the winter.   The senior drill sergeant had special names for us that I can’t repeat here.   The barracks were drafty with little or no heat that I can remember and the bathrooms were one big room with toilets and showers, no privacy here.   Since I was a PFC they bestowed upon me the rank of acting platoon leader, but soon was demoted to a squad leader since nobody could keep in step with my stride when we marched.    We were up at 4 am and had 15 minutes to wash, get dressed, make our beds and be ready for morning formation.  For those that did not get up promptly the drill sergeant would turn their beds over for a rude awakening.  After the first week maybe four to six people couldn’t take it anymore and deserted.   Each morning we ran a mile, ate breakfast in the mess hall where no talking was allowed and then the five mile march out to the rifle range.   Lunch was usually rations or a hot meal of swill from canisters.  

Some of the most exciting times were out on the rifle range where we were provided with a warming tent that had a pot belly stove in the center.   The tent was so full of people that by the time you got near the stove the drill sergeant yelled at us to get out and let the next squad in.   We were constantly cold.  At the end of the day we had the privilege of riding back to base in trailer trucks covered by a canopy.   The front of the trailer was left open to allow the cold air to blow through the trailer for added excitement.  In many ways we wished we could have hiked back to the main post.  

After completing eight weeks of basic training we were assigned our advanced individual training (AIT) assignments.  Since most of us were draftees we had little or no say so in what kind of AIT we would receive.   It consisted of infantry, artillery, armor or becoming a medic.   Some of us were assigned to Fort Sam Houston in Austin, Texas for 10 weeks of combat medical training.    Life was much more pleasant here with little harassment from the cadre.  Each day consisted of class room instructions, watching horror films of combat casualties, practicing different medical procedures, such as dressing wounds, applying splints, IV’s, morphine and much more.   At the end of each day we were free to do as we pleased, except we had to remain on the post.   The choice of many was the beer garden for few rounds before having dinner in the mess hall.  Weekends we were able to venture off post into Austin.  

After completing this 10 week course I was assigned to Fort Stewart, Georgia as a medic with the ambulance section of the hospital that provided medical rescue support for the training of helicopter pilots.   Fort Stewart was the biggest military reservation east of the Mississippi River consisting of pine forests, swamps and surrounded by small farming towns.  This place was hot and humid.  Every afternoon thunder storms would develop breaking the humidy build up, then it would all start again.   We lived in a mental ward of an old WWII hospital with no air conditioning.   The non-commissioned officer (NCO) in charge of us was a Sergeant First Class named Sergeant Farley.   He had 27 years of service, including a veteran of WWII and Korea.  I suspect he may had a drinking problem, as he told us to come to his office any time if we had a problem where he had a bottle in a desk drawer.   As long as we kept the barracks fairly clean Sergeant Farley never inspected it and even allowed us to have beer after work hours in the barracks.  All he asked of us was to follow his weekly work schedule.   It showed our assignments where we were required to go to the motor pool every morning, get our ambulance, convoy with a military fire truck and a flight control truck out to a staging field where helicopter flight training took place.   Two medics were assigned to each ambulance, one as the driver, the other as the attendant.  There would be six to eight staging fields operating at once with up to 100 helicopters flying.  Most accidents were fatal where fire was the end result and usually no survivors.   The ambulance was required to park alongside the fire truck during operations.   If there was an accident a horn would be sounded by the flight control truck and the ambulance would follow the fire truck to the scene of the crash.  The days were hot and there was not much for us to do.  A helicopter would bring canisters of hot food out to the staging field for lunch.  Usually the bugs were so bad it was hard to swallow anything without a bug going down with it.   It was tempting in the afternoons to lay down in beds in back of the ambulance and take a nap.  This happened once during a drill, the horn was sounded and off went the fire truck with no ambulance following.   The flight officer in charge, a major, came to the ambulance and told the two of us to stand at attention the rest of the afternoon in front of the ambulance—not fun.   After work hours most of us went to the Post Exchange, better known as the PX to buy beer and spend time in our barracks playing poker before dinner.   All our meals were served in the hospital dining hall and the food was not that bad, since officers and doctors ate there too. 

With only eight months of active service remaining I was promoted to Specialist 4 (equivalent to a corporal).   Most of the medics on this unit were draftees and had over a year of active duty to serve and a few received orders to go to Vietnam for a year of duty.   The Army had a weekly newspaper, the Army Times that Sergeant Farley would share with us.  The paper had a death list of those that had died in Vietnam over that week.   One afternoon he informed us that one of our medics, which we all had known was on the list after only two weeks in Vietnam.   It was a sobering experience.

During my last month of active duty the US Navy ship, the USS Pueblo was seized off of North Korea.  There were rumors I might get extended and my beer consumption increased.    Finally I was down to my last week with no threat of being extended.  My last assignment was to visit the company First Sergeant, the top NCO.   He tried to get me to reenlist, telling me I could be promoted to Specialist 5 (equivalent to a sergeant) if I signed up for three more years.  I was not interested and few days later was officially discharged from active duty and on my way home.

 

P.S.

Looking back on what happened to my arm it may have saved my life from not having enough time in my two year tour of duty to go to Vietnam.    It was known that during combat the radio man and the medic were usually the first to be shot at with high probability of being killed or wounded.   

After two years of active duty I still had four years of reserve duty, which included two years of active reserves and two years of inactive reserves.   I only received one notice to report to Fort Carson, Colorado for two weeks of training exercises in the summer of 1968 and that was followed with another notice that it was cancelled.   I never heard any more from my reserve units and was honorably discharged February 1970.