Christmas 2020

 MERRY CHRISTMAS from the empty streets of Oakland and hopefully a better new year.

City Life vs Country Life

 

Eugene was the biggest city I ever lived in from 1991 to 2000.  My house was a block off Willamette Street, the main street running north and south through the city.    The noise of the traffic was constant, but one gets used to it with time.   Everything I needed was within walking distance, including a market, bakery, a few restaurants, taverns, banks, even my dentists.  Neighbors were an assortment of different types of folks.   John and Lori across the street became good friends.    Other neighbors ranged from social misfits to renters that would come and go.    Crime was an issue.  I had a bike stolen, somebody at night broke through my back gate and there was the fear of someone knocking on the front door at odd hours of the day.   There were people asking for handouts, sales people, and activists wanting to change the world.   Some people that stood out included a woman selling a cleaning solution.  She came in the house and cleaned my stove with it to show me how good it was.   After that I did buy a bottle of it.  There were university students selling a vacuum cleaner and demonstrated how good it was on my dirty rug.   Did not buy it since it was too expensive and that was the only rug I had in the house.  One of the most interesting encounters was with a man in a wheelchair that saw me working outside and asked if I had any old carpet pieces.   After telling him I had some in the garage he got up out of the wheelchair to take a look.

 

Where we live in the country now is the most isolated place we have ever lived.   It is very quiet, except for the distant sound of the train whistle in the valley or the sound of traffic on I-5 six miles away when weather conditions are right.  

Most of our neighbors are friendly and we help each other out whenever necessary.   Sharing the expense of road maintenance has been a problem causing conflict with some neighbors.   There is the fear of being burned out from wildfire in the summer and the fear of a big snow storm in the winter causing power outages and the challenge of keeping the road open down to the highway.   So far we have not had a crime problem, but have been suspicious of strangers driving up our road.   A few of our neighbors have enough weapons to fight a war and heaven help those that might have bad intentions of doing harm to them.   Most of all we don't miss the city traffic.    We never see any sales people, but sure would not mind seeing the woman with the cleaning solution again, and let her demonstrate how well it works on our stove.    

A Christmas Story

 This story I have shared over the years, so it might be a repeat for some.   At the time I was working for Jenny's and Company, a property management company in Eugene in the Fall of 1995 to make ends meet after leaving the Forest Service in the March of 1995.  

Merry Christmas!

It was the week before Christmas of 1995 as a co-worker and I were cleaning up a parking garage under an apartment building in Eugene.    There were three homeless men taking shelter there from the cold damp weather next to the dumpster and under the influence of some Christmas cheer.    It was customary for me to wear old work clothes for this job and there were days when I did not shave, this was one of those days.   As I approached the dumpster to empty a bucket of trash, one of the men informed me there was nothing of any value there since they had already looked.   Another man, with a quart of beer in his hand asked me where I was spending my nights since the mission was full.   Before I could answer, he offered me some refreshment and said I was welcome to spend nights in a storm drain where they stayed.   I tried to inform them that I was going south in a few days to be with family for the holidays.   Not really hearing me, one of them said it was not a good time of year to ride the freight trains because of the danger associated with cold weather.   With that, I thanked them for their advice and wished them well.  They wished me peace and warmth in my travels. 

The Weather

 Old men seem to have a fascination about the weather or at least it is true for me.   These days the weather offers more entertainment than anything else, maybe more than sitting in the Bi-Mart parking lot.   To hear the rain falling on the roof, the wind blowing through the trees or the dead silence of a passing storm during the night and to see snow covering the outside world the next morning.   The changing of the seasons is always something to look forward to, especially after the long dry hot summers Fall can't get here fast enough.  

For over the last 10 years I have been measuring the rainfall as a volunteer observer for the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (www.cocorahs.org).   It is interesting to compare our rainfall with all the other volunteers in Douglas County, the state and across the country.    At the end of the water year they provide data that I can use to predict our water supply and what to expect in regards to management of our forest vegetation.   My daughter is a hydrologist with the Northwest River Forecast Center in Portland and tells me this data is utilized by them also in their forecasting.   One thing I have learned over the years is that water is our greatest resource and the protection of our watersheds is vital.

Mike

Station OR-DG-22

Sutherlin Bi-Mart

 The other day I had to make the weekly trip into the Sutherlin Bi-Mart for prescription refills and a few other items.    The parking lot was almost full, but once in the store there were not that many people.   When I returned to the parking lot I noticed some vehicles with people sitting in them, many by themselves.   There were some loggers in muddy pickups talking to each other.   A few women were talking near the shopping cart return area, but many people in their cars were just watching people come and go.   Once I got into the car I spent a little time watching people, plus there is the parade of log trucks on Central  Avenue hauling all the burned up trees from the Archie Creek Fire east of town.   It was kind of entertaining.  With restaurants and taverns closed this might be the new place to socialize.

Writing

 Writing is a hobby for me.   The more I write the more I remember, might be a good way to keep the old brain in good working order.   I took up writing in the 1990's while living in Eugene where I enrolled in some non-credit writing classes at Lane Community College.    These classes were at night and most of the students were working adults wanting to write their life story.  What most of us had in common was that we barely made it through high school English.

In my advancing years I find it entertaining to reflect back on life, even laugh at myself and wonder how I ever made it this far.  Looking forward under present day circumstances can cause anxiety not knowing what tomorrow will bring.  In many ways writing is a way for me to escape reality sometimes.  Some authors that have influenced me are Edward Abbey, some retired Forest Service people that have written about their careers, the local author Robert Heilman with his book, Overstory Zero and a few others.    

Soon this pandemic will become part of history and we can feel safe again to return to whatever kind of life we think is a resemblance of normal.   In the meantime I will think of more to write.  

Mike

ps--thanks for the stories you have shared

Excitement at Brightman Flat 1970

 Brightman Flat is an area along the North Fork of the Stanislaus River before going up the grade on highway 108 over Sonora Pass at over 9000 feet in elevation.    This highway is closed in the winter just above Pinecrest.   A recent wildfire has destroyed most of the campgrounds, the Dardanelle Resort, including most of the cabins and the Brightman Guard Station.   I believe the original lodge at Kennedy Meadows is gone too.

Some of this may have been rebuilt?   It was a very picturesque setting just below the tree line of the high Sierras in California when I worked there in the summer of 1970. 

EXCITEMENT AT BRIGHTMAN FLAT

 

In the summer of 1970 the Forest Service hired a local contractor with a backhoe to dig new holes for the outhouses at the Brightman Flat Campground and cover the remains of the old holes.   Bob and I were seasonal employees working on the recreation maintenance crew on the Summit Ranger District of the Stanislaus National Forest.    Our assignment for this day was to assist the contractor by making sure nobody was using the outhouses as they were moved from their old location to the new holes.   The procedure was simple:  Bob and I would make sure nobody was in the outhouses before we would tip them over onto the bucket of the backhoe tractor and set them up over the new hole and use a shovel to cleanup around each outhouse.   (Today this practice has been replaced with vault toilets and are pumped out when the need arises).

Bob and I seemed to get all the dirty jobs from hauling garbage from the back country campgrounds during the week and maintaining the restrooms at the Pinecrest Campgrounds on weekends.   This day we were in for a break from our usual routine.   In the afternoon while working in the campground we noticed smoke coming from the forest up the hill across highway 108, the Sonora Pass highway.    The fire patrolman, who was stationed at the nearby Brightman Guard Station, drove into the campground and requested we help him suppress the fire.    We followed him in our work truck to a point where we had to walk up hill to the fire.   It was burning through a ground cover of mostly pine needles and duff.    The fire area was less than a quarter of an acre in size.   As we started scraping a fire line we noticed articles of clothing in the center of the burned area.   Some of the clothing had been partially burnt, including a pair of jeans, t-shirts and women’s underwear.  The fire patrolman suspected the people who own the clothing were responsible for the fire and might be making their escape to the parking lot downhill near the Dardanelle Resort.  He instructed us to remain on the fire as he left.   A short time later the fire crew from the Ranger station at Pinecrest arrived and took over mopping up the fire.   Bob and I returned to the campground as we saw the District Fire Management Officer drive by in his truck with red lights flashing.   Later we learned a young couple had been found in the parking lot nude trying to retrieve clothing from their car.    The Fire Management Officer wrote them up a citation as they stood there with only their shoes on.    The story goes that they had been smoking marijuana, fell asleep after engaging in love making to awake to fire and smoke all around them that was probably caused from dropping the joint on the ground.   In a panic and confusion, or maybe just stoned the couple made a run for it.     Bob and I continued cleaning up around the outhouses, wondering why we hadn’t had the good luck to help out in finding them, but somebody has to do the dirty work.    

Holiday Stress

 

                                                      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. 

Log Scaling

 Log scaling was not one of our primary jobs working on the timber sale preparation crew, but we could be called upon to fill-in if one of the 3 full-time scalers assigned to the District called in sick.   In 1971 when I went to work on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers National Forest we were required to go through both the timber cruising and log scaling certification program.   

Our instructor was the Forest Check Scaler, named Leonard Shamburger, nicknamed Sham.   He was a big man in his 50's and looked like he enjoyed his food and maybe a beer or two.   After Sham and a little help from Ron, the lead presale technician, and a few visits to the various test plots we became certified timber cruisers.   Ron was also a certified log scaler and was called upon to fill-in whenever one of the full-time scalers at Hoopa called in sick (usually hung over from the night before).   Ron eventually transferred to the Tahoe Forest two years later.   Log scalers made more money than the District Ranger based on all the overtime they put in, usually 10 to 12 hours/day.  

About a month later Sham took us to Hoopa to show us how to do production scaling on the two truck ramps at the Humboldt Fir mill.   First thing he told us was to forget all that stuff we saw on the training slide picture program.   He said you don't have that kind of time here with log trucks lined up waiting to be scaled.   In addition to the Forest Service scaler there was also a company scaler on the ramps.  Together we would measure log lengths, then separately measured small end diameters and deduct any defect.   For defect deductions Sham told us to take an inch or two off the diameters for any sap rot or a foot or two from the length for any conk rot, excessive checking or just cull the entire log in it looks bad from end to end.  The big thing he told us was not to make mistakes identifying species, especially with Incense cedar, Red cedar and Port Orford cedar, since there was a big difference in their value.    For example, Incense cedar might have a value of $50/thousand board feet (MBF) while Port Orford could be $500/MBF or more.  If you wanted to get the attention of the mill owner or Forest Service fast, misidentifying these species was the way to do it.   There was a trainee scaler by the name of Don, who had a hard time with determining cedar species and more than once had people from both parties checking on him when he became the scaler on the Orleans truck ramp.   He later transferred to a forest in Washington and we learned he had a hard time telling the difference between Douglas-fir and Larch.   

In 1977 I transferred to the Greenville District of the Plumas National Forest doing sale administration work and had to get recertified.   Most scaling on the Plumas was mill deck scaling and some ground scaling in the woods on small sales where portable saw mills were utilized.   We, along with others from adjacent Forests, including Ron from the Tahoe were sent to the Diamond International Mill in Red Bluff, where they had pulled logs from the mill pond for us to scale, many were as black as coal and hard to identify the species.   There was one log nobody seemed to be able to identify, not even the check scalers that were there.   Ron called it a Port Orford cedar and all the check scalers finally agreed.   How it ended up in that pond was a mystery since most Port Orford cedar was exported to Asia because there was not much of a domestic market for it at the time.  

After transferring to Gold Beach in 1979 most scaling was being done by third party scaling organizations, such as scaling bureaus.  There still remains Forest Service and company check scalers to check on the third party scalers.    

The Christmas party at the Gold Beach Ranger Station 1981

 It was the Friday before the Christmas week and most employees were taking the next week or two off to be with family and friends.  That morning Earl, our supervisor with his office upstairs, told the three of us sale administrators in the downstairs office to come to his office at 4 pm, which was a half hour before quitting time.    At the end of the day we ventured up stairs where Earl proceeded to pull a bottle of Jack Daniel's from a deck drawer and we all had a drink or two from paper cups.   It didn't take long to get into the holiday spirit with that stuff.   At quitting time the rumor was that the party would continue in the upstairs office over the fire warehouse near the back of the compound.   At the time my wife, two young children and I lived in a government house on the station, so driving home was not a problem.  As we walked from our office building back to the warehouse we were feeling no pain and the festivities were well under way.   It was turning dark as some of our wives showed up to persuade some of us it was time to come home.   It was good my wife came to get me as I don't think I could have found my way in the dark.  It was the last Christmas party of this magnitude I remember on a ranger station.   Every Christmas party after that was family oriented minus the alcohol.  

Holiday Cheer at the Cottage Grove Post Office

 When I first moved to Cottage Grove in 1988 to work for the Forest Service, I rented a P.O. Box.  The Post Office was located up town at the corner of 5th Street and Washington Avenue, if I remember correctly.  The only available parking was on the streets.  It was a week or so before Christmas.   After work every day I would drive up town to pick up my mail before driving north of town where I rented a small house on Lynx Hollow Road.   This day there was a package slip in my box, so I got in line at the front deck to receive the package.   There may have been 3 or 4 people ahead of me.   I noticed only two people working, one at the front counter and a man in the back sorting mail.  There were packages of all sizes scattered down the aisles and piled on selves, it did not look very organized.   One of the men ahead of me in the line handed his package slip to the clerk.   The clerk spent a good part of 5 minutes walking through the aisles looking for the package with no success in finding it.  By this time there were a line of people going out the door onto the sidewalk.   The clerk returned to the counter and asked the man if he would come back later.  The man waiting for his package was stunned, including those of us standing nearby.    By the time I got to the counter the clerk did find my package.  He seemed  to be spaced out, maybe overworked or had been smoking something besides tobacco, who knows?   The other man in the back continued sorting mail in slow motion as if he was the only person there.   Wonder where the Postmaster was?   As I made my way out the door people were starting to lose the holiday spirit and the streets were filled with cars trying to find a place to park.  

Today there is a new Post Office in Cottage Grove, and it even has a parking lot.

Happy Holidays!

Mike

PS-- there will be more short holiday stories as they come to mind, some of these have been told before.