The smoke is back. Got up to 93 degrees yesterday and no rain in the forecast. For the water year ending today we received 33.64 inches, 8.36 inches below our average of 42 inches.
Being a timber sale contract administrator meant working independently with Purchasers, logging contractors and sub-contractors. You were always subject to audits and inspections, sometimes scheduled and sometimes when you least expected it. It was important to have all agreements, minor contract changes, acceptance of work items and notices of non-compliance documented. Most inspections were performed by my immediate supervisor, who was either the District Timber Management staff assistant or designated Forest Service Representative and sometimes the District Ranger. They usually rode with me out to whatever sale(s) I was going to that day. Comments would be made about logging problems, why did I approve this or that and sometimes there were surprises that were beyond my control. One such case was on a salvage sale on the Cottage Grove District of the Umpqua National Forest. My supervisor, Wayne, was riding with me on a timber blow down salvage sale, don’t remember the sale name or the number of units. After visiting a few of the units, some with completed work and a unit where logging was still in progress I turned onto a road to show Wayne one more unit where wind thrown trees had been removed above the road. Wayne said there should be no units out this road since it was in spotted owl territory. I showed him the unit on the contract map and he was totally caught off guard. He said he would to talk to Jim, the presale technician about this. In reality the mistake was Wayne’s for not reviewing the completed contract package before it went up for bid.
One of my
first inspections by a forest review team under the Region 5 certification
program was when I worked on the Orleans District of the Six River National
Forest in the 1970’s. It was a large
sale purchased by Sierra Pacific Industries out of Arcata. It
was during fire season and the operators were required to have all the necessary
fire tools and equipment in place and in good working order. While inspecting the fire truck and hand tools
on a landing where yarding and loading was in progress the team focused their
attention on a D8 Cat that was parked off to the side and used to construct
landings. This piece of equipment was
required to have a fire extinguisher, an axe and shovel mounted on it, which it
did. A member of the team tried to
pull the shovel from the bracket, but only the wooden handle came out of the
shovel blade--not good. In addition to
that the purchaser was hauling logs over a segment of uncompleted road
reconstruction which is not allowed under the contract, unless otherwise agreed
to, which it wasn’t. Simply put I failed
and had no idea about the road with uncompleted reconstruction requirements. A letter was sent to the District Ranger by
the Forest Timber Staff officer on items in need of improvement.
While
working on the Greenville District of the Plumas National Forest the District
Ranger would make surprise visits on an active sale to see what was going
on. On one occasion he drove up to the
Davis Timber sale where they were hauling 60 loads a day from three tractor
sides on a 20 million board foot partial cut sale purchased by Louisiana
Pacific. He came across the logging
supervisor and asked if he had seen me lately.
The logging supervisor jokingly replied that he had not seen me in weeks. The Ranger was not amused.
Some Forest inspections
were made for log accountability. One
such inspection was on a sale being hauled off the east side of the Gold Beach District
of the Siskiyou National Forest to a mill in Grants Pass. The Forest Check Scaler and my supervisor
were with me as we were stopping log trucks at a wide turnout along the haul
route to inspect load receipts, number of logs on the load, painting of logs
for export control and branding of logs.
One truck driver for Ireland Trucking did not stop and yelled out the
window he did not have time to f**k with us.
We got the truck number and reported it to the Purchaser. An apologetic letter was received from the
Purchaser and the driver was told to apologize to us, which he did. We
learned he was the son-in-law of the owner.
The forest
timber staff assistant for contract administration on the Siskiyou was named
Don and he would make early morning visits at the Gold Beach office when we
usually came to work at 7 am. He must have left Grants Pass at 4 am to make
the three hour drive. He showed up one morning asking where I was
going that day. I told him I was
planning on staying in the office, just to give him a bad time. His reply was no, we are going out to look at
some of your sales. Don was an intense
character and non-compliance with fire precautionary requirements got his
attention. On one sale we walked down
to check the clearing around cable blocks where a 10 foot radius clearing was
required in case of sparks flying from the moving cable. When we got down to the block the hook
tender was busy scraping the clearing to achieve 10 feet and we suspected he
saw us coming and did not want to get in trouble. Don got into a rampage, telling the hook
tender how important fire prevention is and how it did not matter if they had
1000 men on the landing with the best fire tools that still would not prevent a
fire. The hook tender had dealt with Don
before on this subject and quietly listen.
In 1981 I
went through the Region 6 certification program, which required passing a
written test on the contract and passing a field inspection of an active
sale. The inspection team was made up
of a team leader, the Siskiyou Forest Timber Staff Office, who was also the
Contracting Officer, a soil scientist, a couple of people from other Districts
with a back ground in timber management.
The clear-cut units on this sale were very steep and required full log
suspension to reduce soil disturbance. This
required the logger to rig tail trees at the bottom of the units at least 20
feet up the trees and to guy the tail trees back to keep them from being pulled
over. There was no way to obtain the necessary
deflection by going to the opposite slope because of the distance and lack of
big trees. Due to the shallow soils and
steep angles it was impossible from not pulling over the tail trees, even by guying
them back I had the forest logging
engineer come to the sale to verify the impossibility of obtaining full log
suspension. An agreement was written up allowing the operator
to yard with only one end suspension. On
some skyline roads they did obtain some full suspension. Water bars were required to be constructed
by hand as designated by myself where needed.
Grass seeding was also required during the fall seeding period in
October. I received a conditional
certification pending acceptance of the seeding and fertilization requirements.
The Purchaser
hired a sub-contractor to apply the seed and fertilizer during the seeding
period. This contractor called me to
inform me they had completed the seeding and needed my acceptance in order to
get paid by the Purchaser. I went up to
inspect their work and noticed seed and fertilizer on the cut and fill slopes
of all the landings. When I walked down
into two of the steep units I saw no seed where it was needed. I inform the sub-contractor of this and he replied
that they thought I would not go down there to look and said they would go back
and do those disturbed areas. A week
later it was inspected again and accepted.
I became the first certified sale administrator on the Siskiyou.
This story deals with log utilization standards of what the Forest Service required and what the Purchaser wanted. It may be a little technical to some readers. It also shows that those of us on the ground did get some support by those in management at the forest level instead of the usual chewy out.
Gold Beach Ranger District
Siskiyou National Forest
Mountain Fir
Lumber Company had purchased the West Indigo Timber Sale on the eastern portion
of the District, off the Burnt Ridge Road.
Their mill was located in Williams, south of Grants Pass, and their
specialty was long dimensional Douglas-fir lumber, normally 20 feet in
length. Utilization standards in all Forest
Service timber sale contracts are the same; minimum diameter of 6 inches, minimum
length of 8 feet and all logs with at least one-third net scale had to be
removed from the sale and presented for scaling to determine how much the
purchaser would pay the Forest Service based on their bid value. There was a flat per acre rate charge for special
cull logs and utility cull logs. These
were logs that could be utilized as cull peelers or utilized for chips. A provision in the contract did allow these
logs to remain on the landings if no market was available in the vicinity of
the Purchaser’s mill.
There were
two contract loggers operating on this sale.
Sherman Brothers from Nesika Beach was logging on one road system and
Warren Cook from Grants Pass was operating on a separate road system. Loggers and truckers are paid by the Purchaser
based on gross volume as determined by a third party scaling organization that
also determines how much the Forest Service would receive based on net
scale. As each unit was completed it was my
responsibility to check if all logs meeting utilization standards were
removed. As work progressed during the
summer I noticed the loggers were leaving special cull and utility logs decked
on the landings. The loggers told me
that Mountain Fir had instructed them to leave these logs on the landings as
there was no market for them. This was
documented on a timber sale inspection report with a copy that went to the
Forest Supervisor’s Office in Grants Pass.
Soon thereafter I received a phone call from Don, the assistant forest timber
staff in charge of contract administration.
He informed me there was a market for those cull logs at the Medford
Corporation (Medco) cull log processing facility south of Grants Pass. I informed Mountain Fir of this and they
told me they could not afford to pay their loggers to remove this
material. I relayed that to Don, who said Mountain Fir
had a reputation for doing this and only wanted logs that met their product
specifications. A meeting on the sale
area was scheduled with Don, Pete the District Ranger, Dwight the acting
District Timber management assistant and myself to see how much of this
material was being left. The day we
drove up to the sale from Gold Beach it was an Industrial Fire Precautionary
Level 3, which means all logging operations must shut down by 1:00 pm. We arrived
on the sale after 1:00 pm, driving out the road system that Sherman Brothers operated
from. They had shut down and were gone,
except for their fire watchman. As we
got out of the vehicle we could hear logging equipment operating across the canyon
where Warren Cook was working. We immediately got back in the vehicle and
drove over to the other road system where yarding and loading of trucks was
still in progress. Everybody in the
Forest Service was shocked as I approached the loader operator asking why they
were still operating. He said they did
not know it was a level 3 closure. They
stopped operations and were given a notice of non-compliance. Back in the office a phone call was made to
Mountain Fir of this serious breach of contract, which states the Purchaser cannot
resume work until authorized by the Contracting Officer. This time another meeting was held on the
sale with all parties involved, including the Purchaser’s representative,
Warren Cook, the logger, Don, the timber staff assistant, the District Ranger
and myself. The purchaser’s representative (don’t remember
his name) said they do not condone any violations of the fire precautionary
provisions of the contract. Warren Cook
said it was his fault for not paying attention to what the fire precaution level
was, even though it is broadcast over most two-way radio systems the day before
and posted on road signs leading onto the National Forest. Don told the representative from Mountain
Fir to send the Forest Service a letter ensuring this would not happen again
and by the way get these special cull and utility logs out of here since there
is a market at the Medco plant. A
letter from Mountain Fir was received by the Contracting Officer addressing
their intent not to violate the fire precautionary requirements and under
protest would remove the cull logs in question. A few years later Mountain Fir closed their
mill at Williams.
Don, the
timber staff assistant from the Supervisor’s office was one of those people in
management that would stand up for us grunts on the ground. He retired after I transferred to Cottage
Grove in 1988 and shortly thereafter died of brain cancer.
This story tells about my decision to remain with the Forest Service and the difference between how employees are treated by the government versus the private sector. It is human nature to always be looking for greener pastures and sometimes we don't realize what we have until we look down the road at something else.
LOOKING FOR
A BETTER JOB
Sometime
after graduating from forestry school at Lassen College in Susanville,
California in 1970, I had an interview with the Weyerhaeuser Company in Klamath
Falls, where they had a mill and large timber land holdings. The job involved locating property lines,
marking timber, mapping and timber cruising.
There was no housing provided and came with a monthly salary and a
pickup truck. I declined the job offer and
don’t remember why. Instead I took a
seasonal job with the Forest Service on the Summit District of the Stanislaus
National Forest. The Weyerhaeuser mill in
Klamath Falls shut down in 1992.
After
getting married in 1975 while working for the Forest Service at Orleans the
thought of working for the private sector intrigued me again after experiencing
some management problems with the Forest Service. I learned that the Diamond International Corporation
with a large mill south of Red Buff, California had a vacancy for a forestry
technician. I was given an interview at
their Red Bluff office with the chief forester and land manager. Here again there was a monthly salary with
benefits, a pickup truck provided and a company house available at their forest
camp south of the small community of Paynes Creek, east of Red Bluff. During the interview they advised me to
drive up to the camp and take a look at the facilities and meet with the field forester
in charge, who would be my supervisor.
The camp consisted of 4 houses, a shop used for maintenance of equipment
and fuel storage tanks. The houses were
more like rustic cabins surrounded by a pine forest and dusty roads. Three
of the houses were occupied by the field forester, another forestry technician
and an equipment operator that did road maintenance work. The
houses had no yards and there was not much privacy, it was basic living
quarters.
The field forester
was very informative about what my duties would be, mostly locating property
lines and marking timber. He said I
could do improvement work on the house with material provided by the company
during my off time. I could see there
was a need for much improvement. He
also informed me of things that they did not tell me about at the Red Bluff office. Such as the requirement to do fire patrols
during deer season after work hours and weekends without compensation, in other
words no overtime. All I remember of
Paynes Creek was a store, a state forestry fire station and maybe a small grade
school. Red Bluff was the nearest city
for shopping about 30 miles from the camp.
We drove
back to Orleans thinking life in our little rented cabin eight miles downriver
from Orleans was not that bad and how I could cope with the management
problems, plus there was over time pay for burning slash and fire suppression
work. I declined the job offer.
In the late
1980’s or early 90’s the mill in Red Bluff closed putting many people out of
work, including those working in the woods.
Guess I made the right choice.
Over time I
learned management problems are universal, no matter who you worked for. Many of these large forest product corporations
are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and can be sold or taken over at any
time. There are more concerns for the
shareholders than the employees. I will
never forget the young forester that went to work for Champion International
Corporation that had the plywood mill in Gold Beach. He had only been on the job a few weeks when
they closed the mill and he was instantly out of a job. He came into the Forest Service office
looking for a job and the District Ranger told him there was nothing
available. It made me feel fortunate to have a job with
the Forest Service.
As the Fall rains bring an end to most of the fires that have burned a record amount of land, destroyed small towns and many homes the same old question comes to surface: Why do we have these catastrophic fires year after year? Frustration and anger is what follows after the smoke begins to settle, especially from those that have lost everything. There is the sad story of a ranching family that had a grazing allotment on the Plumas National Forest in California and are out looking for their cattle. They have found many dead, some needing to be euthanized and a few roaming along forest roads in search of water and feed. They, along with many others are angry with mismanagement of the National Forests over the last decades. They don't blame the local Forest Service employees, but those in Washington DC that have no understanding of how the forest should be managed at the local level. Fires have always been part of the ecosystem. Over the last 100+ years we have suppressed fires letting the forest floor build up with an understory of brush and small trees. Years of uneven-aged management on both federal forests and private timber lands creating second growth plantations susceptible to fire under extreme fire conditions. Then there is climate change as the summers become longer and warmer with less rainfall and snowpack in the winters. Over the last 10 years more and more conifers at the lower elevation are dying from drought and insect infestations increasing the fire risk.
The other day while taking a nap in my favorite chair my cell phone rang waking me up from a deep sleep. My first mistake was not turning it off before going to sleep. I usually take a nap and put a hat over my eyes to keep the light out. It was like a dream when the phone rang as I thought it was night time and the first question to come to mind was, why a phone call at this time of night? Then as reality set in I thought it must be an alert call from the County Sheriff to evacuate because of a raging wildfire. With the phone still ringing I slowly came out of my stupor to see daylight and realize it was not night time. Is this a symptom of post traumatic stress and will life ever be the same again?
We received .03 of an inch this evening, along with thunder and lightning. Hopefully more rain tonight and tomorrow
Not sure if smoke is bad or very bad or just getting used to it. Do know it is bad down in Sutherlin whenever I go to town for groceries, etc. Not a drop of rain yet, maybe Thursday to Friday, will believe it when I see it. So far we are 10 inches behind on rainfall for this water year, unless we get some between now and the end of the month. With a La Nina winter predicted we are in the middle of a wet north and a dry south.
Another smoky day, no rain, maybe some showers by Thursday night. See on the morning CoCoRaHS rainfall map a little rain north of Portland and along the coast. Picture is of a stressful looking oak tree on our place. Wonder what the long term effects will be on the weather, acid rain possibilities, and vegetation due to all the smoke and ash? Sure glad we planted 25% other than Douglas fir, 10% Incense Cedar, 10% Ponderosa Pine and 5% maple/ash.
This is the latest from the Archie Fire, about 16 miles to our east. This morning at 7 am it was 51 degrees with RH of 77%. As of noon it is 62 degrees with RH of 73% and NO WIND at our place. 30% chance of rain Monday and increases to 60% Tuesday through Wednesday.
For our location there is a 50% chance of rain Monday night and a 70% chance on Tuesday. Between now and then the usual with variable winds up to 10 mph, mostly from the northwest. Looking at the forecast to the north and the south of us there is more of a chance of showers than rain as shown for our location. These 5 days will be like 5 years and this forecast could change for the better or worse.
This picture was taken at 4:45 pm looking south from the deck, much better than yesterday at this time when it was dark. Very little wind. Nearest fire is east of Sutherlin.
Took this picture from above our place at 3 pm looking south. So far no wind and hope the weatherman is wrong with his forecast for northeast winds. Now almost 3:30 and almost dark outside.
This fire started 33 years ago. The recovery project to salvage log afterwards was more intense than trying to suppress all the fires around the Silver Fire, including the Galice, Longwood and others I don't remember the names of.
THE SILVER FIRE
In the late
summer of 1987 a dry lightning storm moved across northwestern California and
southwest Oregon. It had been a dry hot
summer and fires were reported all across the Klamath National Forest in
California and the Siskiyou National Forest in Oregon. Fire crews were dispatched to many of the
communities in the Illinois Valley to protect life and property from what was called
the Longwood Fire. With many other fires
burning across the west there was a lack of resources to cover all the
fires. There was no major initial
attack on fires burning in the back country.
This included much of the roadless area east of the Illinois River in
the Indigo and Silver Creek drainages. The only initial attack on what was called the
Silver Fire was smoke jumpers being dropped into the fire area. They
no sooner landed then they had to hike out because of safety concerns as the
fire exploded out of the Silver Creek drainage into the Indigo Creek watershed. The use of aircraft was limited due to all
the smoke.
Many of us
non-fire District personnel and Zone 2 engineering people from Gold Beach were
sent to the Longwood fire camp near Cave Junction to provide support in the
transportation section. We spent two
weeks driving trucks, delivering supplies, fire tools, lunches and water to
crews on the fire lines. Due to a lack
of vehicles the Forest Service even rented U-Haul trucks. We used many of these trucks to move
equipment and supplies to a spike camp being set up at Bear Camp. The
National Guard was also helping out, but their Humvees were so wide it was hard
to get by them on some of the narrow forest roads.
During our
entire stay there we never saw the sun because of the dense smoke. All we could see was an orange ball during
the day. Some residents near the community
of Takilma were desperate for fire suppression help to save their crop of marijuana. At times we could get a smell of it burning
along some of the roads through that area.
In short many of these fires burned until the Fall rains arrived and
extinguished them.
Then came
the recovery project. Before the smoke even settled Congress was
putting pressure on the Forest Service to estimate the amount of timber that
might be available for sale. In many
ways, mostly through lobbyists, it was the timber industry wanting to gain
access to the timber in the roadless area since the environmental community had
been fighting to keep it roadless for years.
Foresters and engineers were detailed in from other Regions to help out
with the planning and layout of these salvage sales. I
ended up working with a forester from Montana surveying the burned timber in
the Indigo Creek drainage. This
involved hiking from the end of an existing road coming in from the north off
the Burnt Ridge Road. We spent days
hiking through large stands of old growth forest that had been completely
burned. These were some of the biggest
Douglas-fir trees I have ever seen. In
places we estimated 80 to 100 thousand board feet per acre. That would be equivalent to 10 to 15 truck
loads per acre of mostly three log loads.
Crossing Indigo Creek involved
using a bosun’s chair rigged on a cable crossing the stream. As winter storms started arriving it was common
to hear the falling of burned trees off in the distance. A camp consisting of some wall tents, cots,
sleeping bags, cooking stoves and utensils was set up on a flat between Indigo
Creek and the Silver Peak ridge for timber and engineering crews to stay at
while working long periods of time locating unit boundaries and proposed road
locations. During a period of time when the camp was not
used bears invaded the camp helping themselves to some food and dragging the
sleeping bags from the tents and using them for beds. They did very little damage.
Engineers
surveyed different proposed road locations and a possible sites for
constructing a bridge crossing of Indigo Creek. They concluded it would very expensive,
involving full bench construction due to the steep side slopes. Over time environmental groups, such as
Earth First, became aware of what was happening on the ground and when Forest
Service personnel were not in the vicinity they would remove flagging used to
locate unit boundaries and road locations.
Some logging equipment on a nearby Forest Service timber sale was
sabotaged by this group doing much damage to their yarder by putting gravel in
the transmission. The logger was
allowed to put up a gate with a combination Forest Service lock and his
lock. He also wanted to put killer dogs
on the sale area which was not agreeable with the Forest Service.
In the end,
no roads were constructed across Indigo Creek.
Roads were extended from the existing roads on the north side of the
creek and the timber south of the creek was removed by helicopters to landings
to the north. When this was implemented
I had transferred to the Cottage Grove District on the Umpqua National Forest
in the spring of 1988 to be closer to family living in Eugene. In the summer of 2002 most this area burned
again in the Biscuit Fire, the largest fire in the history of Oregon.
INDIAN TALES
These are
stories told second hand to me while working for the Forest Service on the
Orleans District in the 1970’s. There
are two tribes of Indians along the Klamath River, the Karok or upriver Indians
and the Yurok or downriver Indians. The
only reservation at that time was the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation which did
not look favorably on the Yurok people.
I can remember signs posted just south of Wietchpec on the north
entrance into the Hoopa Reservation that said, “Yurok dog stay out.”
The Yurok
tribe mostly occupied lands in the Lower Klamath River from where the Trinity
River meets the Klamath River, at the small community of Weitchpec on Highway
96. There was a store there when I lived
in Orleans, not sure what’s there today.
Alcohol and drugs were the
biggest enemy of the Indians. Most of
these people were hard working as many worked in the woods on logging crews. After work when the beer and wine started
flowing you did not want to be near some of them. The more they drank the more they wanted to
fight. There is highway 169 that goes down the
Klamath River after crossing the bridge at Weitchpec. This highway ended at a place called
Johnsons. At that time there was not
much there, except a few dirt roads leading off to God knows where, some small house
or camp trailers scattered in the woods, some vehicles not in operating
condition and a fair share of debris piled here and there.
The Forest
Service operated a fire guard station at Bluff Creek during the summers that
was about five miles up the Klamath River from Weitchpec on Highway 96. Most of the funding for this fire crew came
from the state of California to protect private lands along the Lower Klamath
River since the state did not have their own fire crews in the vicinity. The foreman of the fire crew at Bluff Creek
was named Don and he enjoyed spending much of his off time fishing the Lower
Klamath River. On one occasion while he was fishing a
stranger approached him, introduced himself as Mr. Smith (don’t remember the
name Don told me, so will go with Mr. Smith) and asked what he was doing here
and if Don knew any of the people living along the river. Don said no, and Mr. Smith said the further
down this road you go the meaner the people get. Don asked Mr. Smith where he lived and he
replied at the end of the road. Don called it a day and left immediately as
Mr. Smith said don’t come back.
Most of the
fires set along the Lower Klamath River were started by the Indians in the fall
to regenerate the bear grass that was used in making their baskets. They had been doing this way before the
arrival of the white settlers. These
fires were report to the Forest Service by people traveling along the highways
and Don and his crew would respond with their fire truck. Rumors
were that the Indians would report some of the fires just to have the Forest Service
extinguish them after the fires had accomplished what they intended for them to
do. One night Don and his crew were
dispatched to a fire across the Martin’s Ferry Bridge leading to the Bald Hills
Road off from Highway 169. While the crew did a hose lay to the fire
uphill from the fire truck, Don remained with the truck to operate the pumper
engine. Don was in the cab of the truck
to listen to the two-way radio when he noticed head lights coming across the
bridge. The vehicle stopped in front
of the fire truck and out came a few of the local natives that were a little
intoxicated according to Don. After
asking what Don was doing there they threaten to throw him off the bridge. Don had a hand gun in his fire pack knowing
someday he might need it from some of his past experiences. He tried to get them to change the subject,
but they insisted they were intent on throwing him off the bridge. Don put his hand on the gun just as the crew
was returning to the truck causing the locals to leave as they were outnumbered.
Another
story is about two Forest Service people trying to find their way to some
isolated parcels of the National Forest located outside the main boundary of
the Six Rivers National Forest. They
ended up on a dirt road that came to a dead end at a rundown house with a few
broken down vehicles around it and some dead chickens that had been shot in the
front of the place. They said it
looked like a scene from the movie Deliverance.
They started turning their truck around as a man came out the front door
with a rifle, who looked like he was having a bad day. They did not look back as they hastily
departed.
Today the Yurok
Indians have their own reservation along the Lower Klamath River and have been
noted for their restoration of the fishery resources and other improvements to
their culture. Hopefully it is a little more civilized.
St. Monica’s
Church
Willows, California
1950’s through into the 60’s
We would
arrive about five minutes before the start of Sunday Mass at 10 am. Our family would parade to the front of the
church, since most of the back pews were filled to capacity. There
were eight of us in the family and we almost filled the entire pew from the
center aisle. I wished we could sit in
the back pews, since those people were blessed with a quick exit at the end of
the service. It was always the same
people that occupied the back pews. They
must have arrived an hour early to lay claim to those pews or maybe they had
some kind of reservation on them.
Leaving church was the slowest process I can remember as a
youngster. It seemed like everybody
would stop as they got to the doors and talked to the priest as he was there to
greet everybody as they departed. There
was not even enough space to squeeze between people. It was like trying to get through a defensive
football line. Maybe it was my
punishment for not paying attention during the service and for just thinking on
how fast I could make my exit.
The service
was scheduled for an hour, but then there was the sermon that sometimes lasted
an hour itself. It seemed like
days. The sermons covered many topics, some that I
was too young to understand at the time.
There were discussions on church facilities, church functions, money,
and people in need and of course the need to avoid sin. There was a sermon on the subject of
fornication which I had no idea what the priest was talking about due to my
ignorance of that word at a young age.
Later at home I asked my mother what that meant and she said, “never
mind”. Years later I found the
definition in the dictionary. There were other sermons about how the young
girls were leading young boys into sin by the way they dressed.
After
communion some of those people in the back pews started leaving early. A good friend of mine with his two sisters
and their dad would leave early as we could all hear the dad starting up their
old 1949 Chevy truck parked in the back parking lot. We
could see an expression on the priest’s face that he was not impressed with
those leaving early.
By the time
we finally got out of the church many of the men would light up a cigarette,
including my dad, who would get into a conversation with an older farmer by the
name of George. They would talk about
how their crops were doing as George would roll his own cigarette as he got
tobacco from a blue tin placing it on the paper and sealing it up by licking
it. I always found this fascinating. My
younger sisters would stare at the growth of hair shooting out from his ears
and make comments later at home about it.
Finally at home mom and dad would
make a big breakfast as we were all in the edge of starvation since eating
before communion was not allowed in those days. Then the thought would reoccur that in
seven days we would have to go through all this again.
