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.