Sleep Crawler

When Hank woke up at three in the morning to go logging he had only been asleep for an hour. Most people would just come home from a logging day and go to sleep but not Hank. Hank was the only logger in creation that had a nightlife along with 5, 18 hour, logging days.

Hank didn’t eat breakfast; he just crawled into the back of the company rig and went to sleep. He would get his lunch from the boss who rarely ate.

Slade, Hank’s boss, was not surprised to see Hank stumble sleepily out of the rig when it reached the job site. They were moving their equipment that day up a steep and treacherous winding road. The sides of the road sloped steeply into the timber below on one side and there was a steep cut bank on the other side.

Hank realized they would need the Cat to help pull the 160,000lb yarder up the mountainside. Hank was overjoyed that they would be using the Cat because he considered himself an expert when it came to running a Cat. He bothered Slade, the boss, constantly; “C’mon Slade, let me drive the Cat!”

Slade had little choice but to let Hank drive the Cat and help pull the yarder; “Alright Hank, you can run the Cat but keep the speed steady and stay in close to the bank.”

All started out well but Hank’s attention span was no longer than a mouse’s tail. Slade was driving the yarder and the Cat was out front with a large cable hooking the Cat to the yarder. They moved steadily up the treacherous mountain road. One mistake could send the Cat and yarder plunging off the steep road side into the timber with the likely result of death for the Cat operator and both of the operators on the yarder.

Suddenly Slade noticed that, instead of the Cat making a turn, it was heading straight up an old skid trail (trail that was used to haul logs in prior years; very steep; far too steep for a yarder. Slade had to jump out of the yarder as it still crept forward because he could not seem to gain Hank’s attention. Slade ran up onto the side of the moving Cat with great urgency, but not fear, because Slade was never scared.

There driving the 18,000lb Cat pulling a 160,000 lb yarder on a deadly treacherous road was Hank asleep. Slade knocked Hank out of the way and put a stop to the deadly direction of the Cat. The moral of the story is: If you ever employ a logger with a nightlife you may want to check your sanity.        

Chainsaw Chaser

Hank was a chaser. A chaser is a logger who unhooks cables from logs so the loader can work with them. The loader is a large machine that lifts and maneuvers logs. The chaser works on the logs, cutting them into the right lengths and cuts the limbs off them if the de-limber machine is not present.

On this day that Hank was chasing logs the de-limber was broken. This meant that Hank had to de-limb, with a chainsaw, each limb from each log that was dragged to the top of the mountain. Hank didn’t mind a little work, but cutting off every limb from 409 pieces of timber in 10 hrs is a little bit too much work for anyone. Hank’s crew that he worked with was in the thick of a logging unit that was wonderfully stacked with medium sized timber. Every time the yarder brought logs to the landing there was up to 9 pieces in the bunch. Hank had run his tail off and that was setting his temper on a short string.

Hank had plenty of energy but he also had a cell phone and was easily distracted. He was a man of medium stature who had been in a lot of trouble already in his life of 25 yrs. Hank was a good man to have on your side but to become enemies with Hank was to gamble with your life. He had been known to go a little crazy at times.

The loader operator’s name was Rick. Rick was a perfectionist and an old timer who expected a lot from his chasers. Rick didn’t like Hank and made Hank do more than was necessary. Rick had a horn in his loader and he would honk it at Hank to gather his attention and get Hank to hurry up. Rick was only slightly smaller than Hank but he was around 60 years of age. Rick smoked cigarettes constantly and his health was near ruined because of it. Sometimes Rick would get angry enough to get out of his loader and yell into the face of the chaser on the ground.

Hank was at his boiling point already when Rick got out of his loader the first time. Rick yelled and cussed Hank up one side and down the other. Hank wasn’t one to take much off anyone but he held his tongue and went and bummed a cigarette from the yarder operator to calm his nerves.

It wasn’t much longer before Hank had Rick hopping mad up in his loader once again. It was getting towards the end of the day and both Hank and Rick were tired. Rick clambered out of his loader once again and ran to where Hank stood. “I leave a log down here and you ignore it. When I leave a log down here it needs more work, crap for brains!” Rick screamed.

Hank just stood still, trembling, with his eyes looking at the ground. Rick continued to yell and scream at Hank for some time. Just when Rick was about to turn and go back to his loader, Hank snapped. Hank spun on his heel and sprinted for his chainsaw that lay beneath a bush on the side of the road. Rick, seeing what Hank was thinking, began sprinting in the other direction, back to his loader. Hank reached his chainsaw, picked it up, and pulled the start chord as he sprinted back towards Rick. Soon the chainsaw was at full throttle and stretched out, held at arm’s length, in the direction of Rick as Hank ran towards him. Rick made an impressive flying leap up the steps into his machine as the chainsaw chased him down roaring. Rick barely escaped maiming or even death when he was able to slam the door to the loader’s cab just before the saw reached his body.

From this point on Rick, the loader operator, respected young Hank, the chaser, and only sounded his horn when very necessary. Rick wasn’t the kind to press charges being as he was an old timer. Such happenings, to an old timer, were of a regular occurrence and reactions like Hank’s just proved to Rick that there was some grit in ol’ Hank’s belly.     

Hung-Up Tree

Well we were logging in the Cricket area down at the end of the big long winding river and it was winter time. There lay on the forest floor upwards of 4 feet of snow. The timber fallers had fallen some timber when there was a foot and a half of snow on the ground but now there was 2 and a half feet more on top of that. We were trying to pick up the fallen timber before it was too late and the snow buried it.

Mikey and I were down the mountain beneath the big logging machine called the yarder and were hooking logs up to the cables that were sent out by the yarder for hundreds of yards. We were wearing rubber gloves to keep the snow and falling sleet from freezing our arms and hands as we dug out holes around logs to wrap choker cables around them.

Mikey was a wild one, prior speed addict, current alcoholic that was doing all he could to shirk our duties and find an excuse to go home early. Mikey liked to hook up as many logs as he could to the cables and see if he could break something. If he could break something then we would just build a fire and get warm while everyone else fixed it. It worked out that way sometimes but, often enough, they made us walk up the mountain and help them out.

I was looking for more buried logs when I notice a tree that the timber fallers had cut and it hadn’t fallen to the ground. The tree was huge, about 3 and a half feet in diameter and over 125 feet tall. It had slipped off its stump when they cut it off and stuck 3 or 4 feet into the soft Cricket County dirt. The top of the tree was hung up in a bunch of other trees. This meant that when I put a cable on it and the yarder started pulling on it there wasn’t no telling which way it would fall. The base could slip out of the hole and it would fall backwards away from the lines. Or the base could stay buried and pull the whole tree in whatever direction the chain of events and natural obstacles led the tree to go.

When Mikey started pulling on the standing cut tree with its base buried he gave out a yell of warning. I was standing in snow up to my chest trying to dig holes under logs when I heard, “Watch out!” I looked up to see the massive tree falling right in my direction. The base of the tree was buried enough and the tree was big enough that it was toppling over my way pretty slow like in the movies. Slow enough that I was able to hobble through the snow about four steps and crunch myself into the base of another tree face first.

The huge tree that had been hung up seemed to follow me to my hiding place. It came crashing down alongside of the tree I was standing beneath. Limbs piled around me tinking off my hard hat and brushing my arms, shoulders and legs. I tried to hide under my hardhat and was motionless, scared stiff, when the big tree finally quit falling and its top landed a foot and half away from my leg.

“Ya alright?!” yelled Mikey.

“Sure,” I replied and ran out of the way so he could continue dragging the tree up the mountain.

 The lesson I learned that day, and followed from then on, was that you should never run from anything before you know just where it is going to go. If I would have stayed in my original position I would have been ok. But I ran right to where the tree fell. I have seen since many old timers to the woods wait until the last second to duck and dodge obstacles of nature flung their way because you never know what something like a rolling root wad or a falling tree might do.  

Logging Junkies

They needed a man down at the end of the winding river in a town called Orleans. The last logger to give the job a try had backed out within a week. You see, the side rod (or overseer of that particular yarder) had hired locals from the Cricket/Weepa area to work on his crews. Out of his 9 man crew only three belonged to the local population. The rest belonged to the regular bunch of employees located far from home but willing to work in such a dislocated area. It was winter work and that proved hard to come by in those parts.

The logger who quit had had enough with the local boys he was working with. They smoked dope all day and were just dangerous to be around even if the environment was safe; which it isn’t, of course, when you’re logging. These local loggers weren’t of any real experience and came from rugged backgrounds from the rugged town that was nearby. The man who had hired them, Sam Kurns (the side rod), was known for his rebel way of doing things.  No one else of the regular population of employees, upriver, was willing to relocate downriver so Sam had hired locals from Cricket and Weepa known to be filled with drug runners and druggies.

So I volunteered to go down there and help out. Cricket is a grand place for loggers from up river in my opinion. The trees stand much taller and are much bigger than trees up river. The temperature was cooler in the summer time and milder in the winter. And there was always the excitement of the possibility of running into marijuana gardens while working. Or the excitement of getting one’s neck broke in the local bar/restaurant after work.

I fit in okay for the first while. The local loggers smoked dope, now and then, all day but that wasn’t anything too new. Logging does take a bit of mind work if you are to succeed smoothly in your logging operation. Logs come out of the brush and trees much easier if you think out a route before you start yarding on them. These local loggers Jeff and Shan, liked to hook up the logs and then try to pull them through half an acre of tan oaks sideways because it was hard work to walk back up the mountain and find a better angle to pull from. So I often offered my advice and sometimes it was taken.

Jeff was an high school state champion heavyweight wrestler, native to Weepa, didn’t know his real parents, was raised by a grandma who was the mother of his mother who he had never met. He was cool as long as he had his marijuana and he wasn’t crashing off the meth; which occurred every two or three days. When those boys were on that meth high though, they were a force; logging machines. Of course they needed me around to direct their amphetamine fueled madness or they would snap cables and break merchantable logs all the day long.

Shan’s head had all kinds of scars and dents in it because he had been in 5 car wrecks, 3 almost fatal. He talked a little slow and his thoughts didn’t connect right all the time but considering his upbringing and the way he had treated himself it was amazing he could talk or function at all. Shan and Jeff often talked of Shan’s brother who had gone back to prison for the fourth time just recently. They said that Shan’s brother seemed to have grown a liking for prison. Shan’s brother had accidentally shot someone while driving 90mph down the road. There was a truck full of hostile family enemies who were in pursuit of Shan’s brother when he fired his hunting rifle, one handed, over his left shoulder out the driver side window. The bullet had scored a hit and that explained Shan’s brother’s first incarcerations which had started a chain of many to follow.

The day started out fairly regular with the winter wind blowing through the limbs of the tall timber; tough loggers sauntering around giving each other crap and laughing about it. Myself and Jeff and Shan headed down the mountain where we would spend the rest of the day hooking cables up to logs in order for them to be yarded out by the big machine at the top of the hill called the yarder.

I notice Jeff and Shan were exceptionally tweaked that day. Both were working with a frenzy that had an intensity beyond the norm. The problem was that I wasn’t getting to do any work. As the cables (chokers) were sent back by the yarder Shan would pounce on them like a gorilla or yeti and drag them off to wrap on logs. The feeling of uselessness came over me as I watched these two supercharged logging monsters do my job and theirs with ease. I knew that the next day was likely going to be a different story. These two would be crashed off their drug and I would have to do their job; it was always how it went. But this time they weren’t leaving me with any work at all.

My old boss had told me, “You got to want them chokers. When they are sent back; fight for them. Just shove the other guy out of the way and take em.’”

“Well why not,” I thought. I’ll just shove Shan out of the way and get some work done. Shan just stared at me like a shocked banshee the first time I shoved him. The second time I wasn’t so lucky. I knocked Shan out of the way, threw 6 cables over my shoulder, and began to drag them away. Suddenly there was a great wild beast on my back. His weight threw me to the ground and his arms wrapped around my neck. He beat me in the face with one arm while the other remained around my neck and then he put me in a choke hold and started to apply pressure. My neck was on the verge of breaking when Jeff said, “Get off him Shan!”

Shan slowly got up screaming obscenities at me. I just looked at Shan and yelled, “Next time how bout’ face to face like a man?” I was hoping he didn’t actually take me up on that right then because I felt like I’d been hit by a log truck. Shan and Jeff saw soon enough that it was all kind-of a funny joke or something because we were pals again by the end of the day. But the moral of the story remains: never turn your back on an enraged, confused, neuron deficient, adrenalin junkie, who is also doped up on at least two different substances.   

New Kid Joe

There was a logging outfitter, sold everything you might need if you ran a high-lead logging outfit, and he had a son. Just because your son grew up around logging and helped sell every kind of logging equipment, from cable to gloves, doesn’t mean they should go out in the woods and see what it’s all about. This young whippersnapper was rarin’ to go when he arrived on the job site on the early morning of the first day of the job that season.

It was my second season on the job and I was to run the rigging. In other words, I was to signal the yarder operator when to pull on the cables. It was my responsibility to keep everyone safe in the brush. By those in the brush I mean those down the mountain hooking up cables around logs. I would take another cable that extended from the yarder and hooked it to cables that were hooked to logs. Complicated.

But this logger supply outfit honcho had a son and here he was, a new guy on my crew, and we were going logging. It wasn’t like he was a know it all, he just was real curious about everything. He was curious and not scared and that is a bad combination. Me, I was always scared for my life ever since I showed up on a logging job. They told me when I first showed up that I should always run away from logs being towed away or trees being fell and when I thought I was safe I should run ten feet further. I got in good shape fast. But this guy, Joe by the way, was always in the bite. When a logger is in the bite this means they’re in the worst spot they could be. The bite is often right where the cable would hit if it broke or right where the top of the log would fling if it flung.

So there was Joe, always in the wrong place at the right time to get killed, and there was me in charge of him and his safety. Joe’s pa, the logger outfitter, and Mark, the Boss of our logging company were good pals and should Joe’s safety be compromised their friendship would likely end. These thoughts stressed me all through the day as I watched out for curious George and had to do half of his work for him too.

One time Joe and I were trying to get a choker (15 ft cable) wrapped around a big ponderosa pine log. We got it all wrapped up and then I looked over at Joe and said, “Man, you got ants all over you! Red ones.” About that time those ants decide to bite and I quickly began to knock them off of Joe. But Joe got bit several times and I’ll be danged if Joe didn’t start acting faint after that for awhile. I never heard of ant bites causing faintness but I am glad they weren’t bald faced hornets or Joe would have been done for.

The day finally rolled to an end and found Joe and I wore out, at the bottom of the mountain, and now, with the challenge of hiking our way back to the top. We had already been to the top a few times that day in the swing of things and I decided we would call for a “tow out”. A “tow out” is illegal and it is where the yarder operator sends down a cable for you and your rigging buddies to get towed out with. The cable comes down the big line on a roller car and has a couple of chokers (15 ft cables) on the end of it. Joe and I were the only ones down there and so I handed him a choker and signaled the yarder operator to start pulling us out. Only an expert yarder operator could be trusted in a “tow out” but Kenny was a seasoned veteran and I had no real worries.

Joe was having a blast. His temporary illness from the ants had vanished as soon as the cable started towing us up the hill. The length of the cable has to be adjusted for the different types of terrain that a logger comes across while being towed up the mountainside. For instance, if we were to come across a gully we would have to signal the yarder operator to stop pulling us and give us more cable from the roller car so that we wouldn’t be swinging twenty feet off the ground instead of walking on it. That is just what happened. The roller car, with the cable running through it, was sitting about 60 to 70 feet in the air and Joe and I needed to get some slack so we could walk through a gully.

I was pretty new to the way the roller car spit slack out so what happened was a total accident. Joe was standing over there at the edge of the gully with two chokers in his hands waiting for me to signal for slack. I had handed Joe my choker so I could use my signaling device. When the yarder operator heard my signal he kicked a bunch of slack out of the drum and the line brake inside the roller car went off at the same time. This sucked up the line, and two chokers that Joe was holding onto, at a rapid pace. The problem is Joe held on.

As I saw Joe begin to fly into the air I said, “Let go!” but then, a split second later, he was at 30ft and climbing fast, and I said, “No hold on, hold on!” I signaled a stop and when the cables stopped Joe kept moving upward and then downward with gravity and then was jerked like a ragdoll when the cables came to rest. He still held on. Joe was now at least 50 ft off the ground, hanging there, saying, “Oh that was so fun man, let me do it again, c’mon let me do it again.”

I signaled for slack and Joe was let quickly down to the ground where I informed him we were done with the “tow out” business and we were hiking out. The illness from the ants must have returned because Joe hung his head and began trudging up the mountain.          

Bear Trouble

There was a bear bothering the loggers as they camped out on a job along the mouth of the Sacramento River above Lake Shasta. Hitch, the occupant of a tent in the campsite, was most concerned out of the crowd because the rest were sleeping safe in camp trailers. Hitch let his concerns about being mauled by a bear be known over and over again until he was finally listened to. Con, the yarder boss, decided that the way to take care of the bear was to leave a live trap set over the weekend and see what might appear when they returned for work on Monday.

 This live bear trap consisted of a 50 gallon drum laid on its side. One side of the drum was open with a makeshift trapdoor set up over it. Con would bait the trap with some rotting salmon by putting the fish at the far end of the barrel. As the bear went in for the fish it would trigger the trap door and be locked in till the crew returned.

The crew went home to their regular houses over the weekend and when they came back it wasn’t till after work on Monday. There was a bear in the trap. Con and Hitch could tell that the bear had been in the trap for a long time; probably since right after they had left camp on Friday. The reason they could tell this is because the bear was feisty mad. There were rusted holes here and there in the sides of the barrel and when members of the camp would venture near the paws and mouth of the bear would dart viciously out from those holes frightening the logger close to the trap and amusing the onlookers.

The loggers got to talking over the campfire that night about what to do with the bear. They couldn’t just let it go right where they were at because it would be bothering poor Hitch in his tent again and this time it would likely be hungry enough to do more than just bother him. Then Con, the boss, came up with an idea that they would load the bear up into the back of his truck and take it up to the job in the morning. Con decided that he would give his hard working crew a break and a bit of recreation. Con had always been a little curious to see if he could whip a bear with his bare hands and now him and anyone else who wanted the opportunity could give “bear wrestling” a try.

 Con’s curiosity, as to whether he could whip a bear or not, stemmed from the fact that Con ‘had’ whipped a bear a few weeks prior to this happening. Con never claimed he whipped the bear but when you hear the story you’ll be like his crew and believe it to be true. Con is a pretty good sized logger, and when one says logger, Con is a logger. He’s been logging since he was 8 years old and so natural at moving around in the woods that a person might think he is half lynx. So, though Con is of no supernatural stature, there is an aura about the man that warns those in his vicinity of the possibility of savage consequences should he be crossed.

This same Con was out, toward the end of a logging day, taking care of the white flag business on the edge of a logging unit. Upon finishing his said business Con meandered out into the uncut timber at the edge of the unit and started walking through, back up to where the yarder sat. Con is a hunter and a real watchful type so it wasn’t long before he looked over and noticed a bear, about 150lbs, walking parallel to him about 75 ft away. Con stopped and then the bear stopped and they looked at one another. The bear was foaming white foam out of its mouth and breathing heavy. Con was curious to what might be wrong with the bear and it looked like he would get a closer look because the bear was suddenly charging right for him. When the bear was about 5 ft away it leapt into the air and as Con said, “Seemed like it wanted to give me a hug like I was its old friend or something.”  Con stepped sideways and decked the bear in the side of the head as hard as he could. The bear landed a few feet behind Con and stood there, looked at him a bit, shook his head, and Con said it was like the bear said, “What did you do that for?” Then the bear walked away and Con continued up the mountain. So it could have been that very incident that decided Con to take the bear up to his crew and let anyone wrestle the creature if they wanted to. Who knows?

The loggers of the camp loaded the bear up into Con’s truck Tuesday morning; all were very excited. When they reached the job Con backed his truck into the log landing by the big yarder and instructed his crew to take the occupied bear trap out of the back of his truck and put it into the middle of the log landing. The crew was all present; even Randy, the timber faller, was there… well he was kind of there. Randy might have had some bad experiences with bears because, though he was there, as soon as he saw the bear he climbed up on the yarder. Randy kept climbing on the yarder for awhile and then yelled down at Con, “Con! Hey Con! You think I am far enough away yet?” Everyone laughed at the sissy Randy and the rest of them made a horseshoe around the opening of the trap.

Big Dave, a 20 year high-lead logging veteran with red hair and a short temper, stood closest to the trap opening with a big stick in his hands. Well Dave was closest besides Hitch and Con. Con actually stood on top of the trap holding a rope. The rope had a slip loop tied into the end and was dangling over the opening of the trap in order to lasso the bear when it came out. As a matter of fact, Hitch was the closest to the trap and he would be in charge of opening the trap door to let the bear loose.

This is not recommended behavior as many of you have guessed already. Intentions of harming the bear or upsetting the cycles of nature were really not considered seriously. Loggers just like an adrenalin rush now and then. Some people have to have extremes before they even start to feel anything emotionally.

The hatch slid up, the bear bit Hitch in the knee, he screamed, Con dropped the rope, Dave dropped the stick, and they all ran off like rabbits. The bear ran too with the rope attached around its belly. Con had managed to lasso the bear but then decided he didn’t want to hold on anymore. Moral of the story: don’t mess with nature because nature is free. And the bear was free and the loggers went back to work except for Hitch who had to get a bite looked at.      

Crew Trouble

It was a fine summer morning on Castle Mountain just west of Mount Shasta City. I lived in the forest by my lonesome next to a nice mountain stream and the base of the mountain. The crew picked me up nice an early a half hour before dawn. We made our way up the mountain in the old ford crummy smelling of variety of things including: stale sweat and rotting feet; unwashed filthy-rotten drunkards who had spent much of the night vomiting whisky and liver particles; and a banana peel crammed in some hole that no one had the energy to search out and dispose of. Shoot, it made everything smell better anyhow. 

Not much was ever said, when I was around at least. I was acting hook tender and therefore a sort-of authority. Many were older than I and knew more than I but a hook tender had to be in good shape. Enough said. I sat in front, in between the Yarder Operator and his brother the skidder operator, Frank and Tom. They liked to drink and had a good percentage of Indian in them though the two characteristics are not necessarily related. Lewis was another large factor of this day and, to give you a little insight to his kind, he drove his own vehicle 80 miles a day, at his own expense, so he could be away from the crew that extra 2 hours of travel. Lewis was my only friend besides Sam. We saw Sam ahead parked at the side of the road in his red and grey 72 dodge and he flagged us down. I looked across the front of Tom and saw Sam holding a large, wood handled pistol. “Hey boys, morning to ya! Hah!” Sam was always in a fairly good mood it seemed; an understanding man, of loggers and truck drivers alike. “Yeah, here, give this to Lewis; its his and tell him I don’t want to buy it.”

Tom took the gun, threw it in the glove box and we continued up the mountain to the job site. Upon arrival we saw Jerry, the loader operator, early as usual, and tweeking over his machine as if he were a young child playing with his favorite toy. We finished up a road line (picked up all the logs lying under a stretch of cable extending from the yarder) and moved to the next setting. It was my job to choose the setting and many times folks didn’t agree with where I set things. Nobody said anything this time but Jerry was busy with his loader clearing out spaces for logs and for his own extra perfectionist peace of mind.  

After the yarder was in place they handed me the sky line, a very thick cable, and I started down the mountainside with it. I had left a chainsaw down the hill that I could use to notch a stump out for the skyline to wrap onto and hold. After securing the skyline I signaled the yarder operator, Frank, to pull it tight. The line came tight and all was ready for logging. The hardest part of my job was done and now I needed to go look at the next yarder setting. I picked up the chainsaw and started walking back up the mountainside beneath where Jerry, the loader operator was, still shoving dirt and brush around to make himself a cozy workspace.

 Then I heard what sounded like the chariots of hell sweeping down on me. Jerry had loosened up a 400lb boulder with all his fussing around and now the massive object was barreling down the mountain directly at me taking out small trees. I had time only to take one step and drop the chainsaw behind me so it wouldn’t be smashed. With that one step I put a 16inch tree between myself and the raging boulder of death. The boulder smashed into the tree nearly crushing the base and sending needles from the above branches showering all around me. The boulder then split into smaller death hurtling thirty pound decapitators that zinged by me on both sides of my head stinging my ears.

Without waiting for my life to flash before my eyes I ran up the side of the mountain till I had Jerry and his machine in my sights. I began grabbing up rocks and throwing them with all the force I had at the preoccupied middle-aged man in the loader. I cursed and threw rocks until I calmed down and then, muttering slurred hateful thoughts, I picked up the chainsaw and walked to the next tail hold tree.

This would be where the yarder was anchored from behind and I had to find a large stump. I spotted a good sized sugar pine and began to cut it down. As I started the back cut I noticed the tree come backwards a bit in the direction it wasn’t suppose to go. I shut-off the saw and chatter on the radio, attached to my belt, alerted me. “You goofy ratbrain,” snarled Frank over the radio, if you were to censor his language. “That ain’t how you do it,” the radio cackled, again picking up Frank's voice.

“Why don’t you come down this hill and show me how its done you big mouthed bonehead,” yelled back Lewis, the rigging slinger, also in that language if it were censored. The radios went dead and I shook my head. Frank and Lewis were always bickering back and forth over the radio telling each other how to do their jobs.

Whatever the case I had to go get some wedges and an axe to try and persuade this tree to fall the right way. The yarder wasn’t too far away and being as my saw needed more gas I put it on my shoulder and walked that way.

Frank was standing in front of the yarder  with his hand up leaning on the machine as though having a heart attack. As I drew near he turned suddenly and in a show of great emotion said, “I didn’t mean to kill im’. I just jumped down thar an’ choked on him a while til’ he quit movin’.”

One of the crew showed up on the road with us. “Aw he’s awlright Frank he up an’ ran off soon as you left. Ran off towards the crummie.”

“Shoot,” I said, “that gun is in the crummie; I’ll bet he went to get that gun.” I walked around the side of the hill to where I could see that the crummie had disappeared along with our ride home. Lewis had took off with our ride being as it seemed he’d ridden in with the boss that day not having his own rig with him as he usually did.

Well the boss showed up and calmed me down over my near death encounter and calmed Lewis down, who was going to press charges, and before you knew it we were all one big crazy logging family again.      

Big Darrel

It was a cold day in the Siskiyou Mountains with a fresh layer of snow on top the snow that already lay. A Crawford logging crew began the day of work in the usual way. Choker setters and rigging slingers went to the brush. Choker setters ran cables around logs and the rigging slingers hooked those cables to the main rigging attached to the great big yarder on top of the mountain. The yarder yarded the logs to the landing.

Darrel was the rigging slinger and in a jolly mood. Him, and the new boy Charlie were having a bit of fun in between the work with a friendly snowball fight. Darrel was a fairly kind man, simple in his ways, and a hard worker. He was around 40 years old and had been logging for 20 years. Therefore Darrel was a big man resembling a Siskiyou brown bear. The environment was friendly and the laughter rang through the air.

The crew was picking up the logs from a big clear-cut that had been buried in a couple feet of snow in the last few days. In order to make the story understandable one must draw a picture showing the reader that there were no obstacle between the crew and the logging road 200 yards down the steep mountainside. When a high-lead logger says steep he means hard to stand up on without falling over. In some cases a high-lead logger may even mean so steep a body can take a small jump and land 25 feet up in a tree. In this case it was not that steep but definitely steep enough a tenderfoot would have a hard time keeping his balance.

Charlie was a new boy who hadn’t quite figured out the crew. Darrel seemed like a good ole’ boy but Charlie hadn’t made Darrel mad yet. The snow ball fight grew a bit more vigorous and, being as Charlie had more time to prepare his ammunition and aim between the rigging rounds, Darrel was getting the rough end of the game.

“Aight Charlie, knock it off!” Darrel yelled directly after being pelted in the head with a snowball. Charlie laughed and said, “You given up? Hah Yer a chicken liver man!”

After a short period of time Charlie found himself curious to just what Darrel’s reaction might be should he let another snowball fly. The hard-packed ball of snow took Darrel between the shoulder blades and Charlie began to burst out laughing when suddenly he realized that there was a 200 lb ball of muscle and grit barreling down upon him. Darrel slammed into the 145 lb body of wire and bone, flipped him on his front and slammed both knees in Charlie’s back. Charlie had on brand new raingear shiny and slick. Charlie’s face ground painfully on the cold white crystals of snow as Darrel rode the poor new boy all the way down the mountain like a sled.

At the logging road in the bottom of the unit Darrel jump up off Charlie’s back and this time he laughed. Charlie did not laugh he was done. He cursed up a storm and walked away, got on a log truck head for home, and stayed away from high-lead logging for good.

      

A Day For A High-Lead Logger

Glazed watery eyes look toward the valley,

Step from the truck shouldering the morning load,

Aching bones ease to fluid movements,

Old machines croak and groan to life,

It’s hot already,

Engines roar, shouts blare, saws sing,

Dust blankets the scene and,

The cables start to zing,

Grapples clank on logs,

The air is heavy and warm,

While the riggin’ crew watches a swarm,

Trees buckle, tremor, and fall,

The day’s end calls for us all,

And then we watch the valley so pretty,

And thank God we ain’t from the city.