FRED & ORVILLE

In the spring of 1972 the Orleans Ranger District (RD) hired two seasonal employees, Fred and Orville, to work on the timber sale preparation crew.  They had previously worked on the Stonyford RD of the Mendocino National Forest together doing timber work.  Orville had a four year degree in forestry, but was hired on as a forestry technician as most of us working on that crew were.   Fred was a refined hippie, who had family in Napa, preferred good food, fine wine and marijuana,   Orville was an old Kanas farm boy, who would eat anything, chewed tobacco and drank cheap beer and wine.   Orville had a small dog, named Charlie and a horse.   Fred and Orville rented a single wide trailer in one of the nearby trailer parks.   They were not gay, but it was better to split the rent in order to save money, plus there was a shortage of places to rent around the community of Orleans with a scattered population of about 600 people.   They were definitely the odd couple as Orville was more laid back and Fred tried to keep some sort of order in their housekeeping.   There were mornings when Fred came to work in a grumpy mood, probably from smoking too much Humboldt tobacco and complaining how Orville was a Neanderthal man.    If I remember correctly Orville kept his horse tied to a tree near the trailer and used his horse trailer as a barn.   After a couple of years at Orleans they went their separate ways.   Fred went back to school at Lassen College in Susanville to get a two year forestry degree and Orville got a foresters position on the Gasquet RD, north of the Orleans RD, planning and writing environmental analysis for proposed timber sales.   While at Gasquet, Orville met a woman by the name of  Toni at the Rusty Nail Tavern, they eventually married and lived in a trailer on her parent's property along the Smith River.   After a year or two of doing paper work Orville quit his forester job and did odd jobs around Gasquet cutting firewood, garden work, etc.   Orville and Toni did visit me and my family when I was working on the Gold Beach RD from 1979 to 1988.  Orville was hired again on the Mad River RD as a technician doing field work which he preferred more than office work.   Fred met a woman also studying forestry at Lassen College, they eventually married and he got a job on the Rogue River National Forest doing timber sale contract administration.   While I was working on the Gold Beach Ranger District in the 1980's, I met Fred at a training session near Medford and he invited me to his house in Central Point for dinner with his wife and two young daughters.  

After I left the Forest Service in 1995 I lost track of these two characters.   Sometime in the late 1990's, I found out that Orville had been working as a wilderness ranger on the Toiyabe National Forest out of Carson City, Nevada.   He had suffered a heart attacked on a tour of duty in a wilderness area and was brought out for triple bypass surgery.  After that he was put on limited duty until he was forced to retire.   I met up with  him and his wife, while visiting my sister Ann living in Yerington, Nevada.  Orville and Toni were living on high desert acreage near Silver Springs, Nevada where they had horses.   Orville no longer had his dog Charlie and told me he ran off one day when they lived near Ruth Lake on the Mad River RD and never returned.  

A couple years later I received a call from Toni that Orville died at home from a heart attack at the age of 72 or 73.   I found a phone number for Fred and called to tell him of Orville passing away.   Fred had not been in contact with Orville for years.   He had left the Forest Service and took a job delivering mail for the post office out of Medford until he retired.