O’er The Falls….In a Barrel!

After being laid-off from my job last year, my wife and I decided to go to Alabama to look for work. Why Alabama? … It’s the South! … My wife, Samantha (Sam) moved up from the south almost five years ago, and would love to go back. She has never adjusted to the Northwest climate. Sam spent nearly 14 years in Texas, after being raised in New York. She has a New York attitude with a strong Texas southern drawl. She is only five feet, four inches tall and weighs only 119 lbs, but with that New York attitude and that Southern accent, she can intimidate a Sumo Wrestler! Living with her for around five years, I have learned what NOT to do, and when NOT to do it….well, at least on some of the major things.

Being a middle aged man, I’ve spent a lot of time in introspection, learning about my quirks, idiosyncrasies, shortcomings, and whatnot. One thing that I know about myself is: if it’s moving, and I’m in it, if it has a steering wheel and a brake pedal, then I have to be in control over it. This road trip was about to bring these control issues to the forefront and give me the opportunity to face one of my fears head on.

Sam and I spent weeks preparing for this trip. I studied the route on Google Maps® for hours. I printed out close-ups of the major intersections along the way, so I was sure this drive would go smoothly. Time was limited, so we decided to buy a canopy for her truck, throw a mattress in the back, and drive in shifts. When the day finally came, we packed our clothes, loaded up a cooler full of food, and another with beer, and then at six o’clock on a Saturday morning, we were on our way to Alabama.

I took the first shift driving because I usually get up early and I wanted to be east of the Cascades before the traffic got heavy. Sam crawled into the back of the truck and snoozed while I drove. Somewhere in the middle of the Columbia River Gorge, the traffic got more than just heavy; it was bumper to bumper at seventy five miles an hour. For the first time in my life, I had a panic attack! Great! ... We’re not even out-of-state, I’m at the wheel, and I’m already scared to death! I pulled off of the interstate at the next exit and found a gas station. While filling up, I told Sam about what I’d just experienced and that she would have to drive for a while, so I could calm down a bit. “Yer just a little tittie baby,” she said teasingly with that ‘cute’ southern drawl.

I’m not one to start drinking that early but with my exceedingly high blood pressure, and heart rate, combined with being in the passenger seat, I had to slam down a few of those beers from the cooler to settle down. Somewhere in Idaho I got tired, then crawled into the back of the truck and went to sleep.

During the transition from deep sleep to consciousness, there is a dream world. It was there, where I was at home, secure, and in my own bed, and then slowly reality took over and I woke up. It was dark, fairly cool, and I didn’t have a clue as to where I was. “It’s yer turn to drive, Baby; I’m ‘tarred,’” Sam said with that ‘Southern’ drawl.

“Where are we?” I asked, wiping the sleep from my eyes.

“Goin’ that way” she said, in a ‘tarred’ kind of way.

We were about a hundred miles into Wyoming, heading east, when I took over. I planned on being in Nebraska before daylight. The traffic was light, but that was to be expected at three o’clock in the morning. I drove past old towns that I had only heard of in western movies, and old country western songs. This would be cool if it wasn’t dark and I could see them, I thought to myself.

We left the interstate in Lincoln, Nebraska, as planned. Sam had already gotten up at the last stop for gasoline. We were taking the back roads directly east to connect with interstate twenty-nine south. It was there, in Iowa, where I had Sam take over.

It was midday, very hot, and I was tired, but I couldn’t sleep if I had to. I stayed up front and rode with Sam. When Sam drives, she drives “balls-out,” testing the limits of her truck, the road, and my fear of crashing into a planet at thirty-four thousand miles per hour. I glanced over at the speedometer, “Aren’t ya goin’ a bit fast, Hun?” I dared to ask.

“Nine yer fine, ten yer mine,” she replied with an old cliché that I had never heard before.

After miles of dodging in and out of traffic at what seemed to be two-hundred-fifty miles an hour, reminiscent of the police chases seen on the network news channels, Sam looked over to me and yelled, “Knock that off!”

“What?” I replied, thinking, what the hell?

“Holdin’ on t’ that thing like that!” she said with that ‘slightly annoying’ Southern drawl.

I looked up at my hand that was holding the handle on the windshield post. My knuckles were white from tightly gripping it out of shear stress and absolute fear. At the next rest stop, I had a few more beers, from the cooler, to lower my exceedingly high blood pressure and heart rate.

With a road map and the Google Maps® print-outs in hand, I helped navigate us through Kansas City. It was a major city, and not fun to drive through. Little did we know; it was going to get progressively worse. St. Louis was a nightmare. The map of the freeway intersections looked like a bunch of night-crawlers in a tuna can on a fishin’ trip. On paper it looked somewhat straight forward, but on the ground it was far different. I tried to tell Sam where the exits were by the map, but she just grew that much more frustrated and then finally ignored me altogether. I was sure we had taken the wrong exit, but every time I tried to point it out…she …um…lovingly said, “SHUT-UP!”

“Hey! ...get off my ass!” I finally snapped back, feeling a bit cocky; being a man, my navigational skills are highly tuned.

Of course, she turned out to be right and we were on the right road to Nashville after all. I decided that I’d better shut up like she said.

Nashville, Tennessee, was bigger yet. It was a real challenge, so I followed the written directions to the tee and watched the map very closely. For some strange reason, something didn’t feel right. I was convinced that we were not on the right highway and finally convinced Sam to find a convenience store, so I could buy a city map.

It was upwards of midnight on Sunday night, and the area was very dark. It was the bad part of town. The store had bars on the bullet-proof glass windows, and a secure walk-up window, much like a drive-up teller window at a bank. There was a scary looking man outside of the store near the window. He was trying to carry on a conversation with me while I was asking the teller….err…I mean…cashier, for a map. Reluctant to take cash out of my pocket, I went ahead and paid for the map and then hurriedly headed for the truck. Sam, seeing what was happening, brought the truck around, and I quickly got in. We took off like suspects in a bank robbery get-away. It turned out that we were on the right road in the first place, which made Sam none too happy.

As soon as we were out of the Nashville city limits, Sam pulled off of the freeway for gas, coffee, and a bathroom break. Before leaving she said, “Y’all git yer happy ass in the back! You need to git some sleep…NOW!”

Sensing her anger and frustration, I complied. At this point I had been up for more than twenty four hours and was not in very good shape attitude-wise either. She took off like a bullet, and I knew that sleeping was not an option for me.

At the Alabama state line, there stands a rocket. It’s there because Huntsville, Alabama, is known for the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. I thought it was there because we flew into Alabama at rocket-speed and we just happened to catch up with one.

If you’ve ever been to Alabama, then you’d know the condition of their highways and how they drive. ‘Insanity,’ comes to mind as the best description.

Here I was, in the back of our truck without a seatbelt, airbag, or even a windshield post handle to hold onto. An intense feeling of helplessness came over me. We were moving at a rate of what seemed to be at least ninety miles an hour. Sam was passing trucks from left to right. There was road construction in the works and the freeway had one lane that was paved, the other was not, and was full of potholes. There was an abrupt edge in between the lanes. Every time she would change lanes, I would be thrown to the other side of the mattress. My face and hands were smooched up against the front window of the canopy like a Garfield® window ornament, hoping to get her attention. I wouldn’t dare pound on the window out of fear of shocking her at this speed, and the fear of getting my butt kicked. With every mile, my blood pressure and heart rate went up a notch. No amount of beer was going to bring it down this time. I felt as though I was put into a barrel against my will and sent over Niagara Falls. I could feel myself falling and knew the crash at the bottom was only a matter of time. I took all of the blankets and pillows and bunched them up against the front of the pickup bed, curled into a fetal position, and then braced for impact. When Sam finally let off of the gas and decelerated to around Mach II, I thought, maybe I would get to live another day.

We came to a stop in the parking lot of a truck-stop. While I was climbing out of the back, Sam was already outside of the truck. “Bluh bluh bluh bluh…bluh….bluh,” she mumbled, then crawled into the back of the truck and then went right to sleep.

I stood there in stunned amazement thinking, was I in the back of the truck at ninety miles an hour, with her asleep at the wheel? After several moments, I regained my composure, and then waddled into the truck-stop. After a hot cup of coffee and a change of breeches, I was ready to take on the last leg of our journey.

We arrived in Huntsville at four o’clock early Monday morning. I found a motel with vacancies and went to the counter to get a room. “Y’all want smokin’ or non-smokin’?” the man asked.

Grrrr….that’s right! … Everyone talks ‘like that’ down here!

Sam and I spent a little more than a week in and around Huntsville. We looked for work and a possible place to live. We met some terrific people and had a great time. We drove several miles together without even crashing! I may have even been able to resolve some of my control issues, but -- you can stand anywhere in Huntsville, Alabama, and throw a rock. Chances are you would hit a rocket scientist or some sort of pointy-headed engineer with it. My question is: -- Why can’t they design a simple transportation system that doesn’t cause my blood pressure and heart rate to ‘skyrocket?’

Having not found what we were looking for in Alabama, we turned back and made it home safely. I may have not been cured of my control issues, but I learned a few things about what NOT to do along the way: when Sam is driving, do NOT touch the windshield post handle for any reason. Do NOT look at the speedometer under any circumstances. Do NOT ride in the back where there is no seatbelt or airbag, and, for God’s sake, y’all, keep yer mouth shut!

Ode to an old Time Poet

It’s been years since my father passed on. It was only since my English composition class, in the spring term of 2006 that I’d even considered the wonderfully descriptive poetry that he had written over the years. It was almost overwhelming how many of the words, the lyrics, the poetry, had come to the forefront of my consciousness in the few weeks that followed my first assignments.

My dad’s poetry was very rhythmic, and one poem in particular seemed to haunt me. It was my favorite poem that my dad had written. He wrote it shortly after he found his father (my grandpa) peacefully laying at rest in his bed. My father’s poem “A Son’s Farewell to an Old Time Logger” has beautiful voice, meter, and rhyme, but also needs to be put into an historical perspective.

It was the early 1960’s when my grandfather died. He followed my grandma by only a short period of time. He was a healthy man with a skip in his step right up until the day he died. My family had always assumed that he died of a broken heart. He loved my grandmother dearly.

Grandpa was a very large man of the time. He was over six feet tall and towered over all of the other men; to me he was a grey-headed “Paul Bunyan.” I was only a child at the time and my recollection of him is vague at best. I remember an older neighbor telling me that when he was a kid, he’d seen my grandpa with lanterns in hand, hiking the railroad tracks, in the wee hours of the morning, whistling, while on his way to work.

I later learned that grandpa had bought a cabin built on old “donkey” sled for six dollars (two large logs that the donkey was mounted to), but stayed at home with grandma because she didn’t want to be alone.

It was at least five miles from grandpa’s place to “Camp Walker” where he worked as a logger. He and his partner would take their “misery whip” (cross-cut saw) and they would “fell and buck” (cut into logs) trees all day long.

Logging in the early days of the twentieth century was a far cry from the modern methods of today. Some of the processes are the same, but the rigging and the lingo has changed over the years.

In those days, steam engines powered our economy. Trains, rivers, and flumes were the only practical way of transporting the logs to the saw mill (as a child, my father severely broke his arm while playing around a log flume).

The railroad companies would build “spurs” off of the main track to allow the timber companies to transport their logs to mills. The train engines were a gear driven type of steam locomotive that were called, “shays.” After the area was logged, the spurs would then be taken up and moved to the next location. The trestles (bridges) would be removed of the ties and then the creosote-soaked pilings, struts, and beams were just left behind.

The process of bringing the timber from where they were cut into logs, to the site (landing) where they were loaded onto the “logging cars,” was similar to what they call “high lead” logging, today. Rather than a huge steel tower attached to a large machine operating several cable drums, referred to as the “yarder;” the yarders of yesteryear consisted of a “rigged spar tree” and a steam powered “donkey.”

The donkey was the early concept of today’s yarder, and its operation was basically the same. There were three cable drums: “main-line,” “haul-back,” and “hay-wire.” The main-line was the largest cable of the three and was used to pull the logs to the landing. The purpose of the haul-back was to pull the main-line to the logs. The hay-wire was multi-purposed, and in relation the other lines; it pulled the haul-back line through the “corner” and “tail” blocks (pulleys), that allowed the haul-back to pull the main-line away from the donkey and to the logs. The hay-wire would also be used to assist in rigging the spar tree.

When the landing was established and the railroad spur finished, the donkey would be brought in and secured to the ground. The spar tree would be selected by strategic location and strength. The “hook tender” would don his climbing gear and begin the task of preparing the tree. With spikes strapped to the instep of his corked boots, a harness, strap, spools of hay-wire, smaller blocks, an axe and a small crosscut saw, the hook tender would ascend the tree “bumping knots” on his way up (chopping off the limbs). Near the top, the tree would then be cut off and then it was ready to rig.

As mentioned earlier, the hay-wire was multi-purposed. It was designed to be used for lay-out and do any task too heavy for the crew to do.

The “bull-block’ was a very large pulley (sometimes weighing as much as two tons). The bull-block was the pulley that the main-line ran through. After the main-line was threaded over the sheave of the bull-block, the hay-wire would be used to hoist the bull-block into place at the top of the spar tree. Guy wires were secured at the top to hold the spar tree steady. Below the bull-block they would place a block for the haul-back line. Then more guy lines were placed at the middle of the spar (buckle guys) to further stabilize the tree. They were almost ready for logging at this point.

At the end of the main-line they connected the “butt riggin’.” The butt riggin was a term for the large “bead-like” swivels that were used to connect the chokers (cables that were wrapped around the logs). They sometimes referred to them as “jewelry,” resembling a very large necklace.

Once the hay-wire pulled the haul-back through the corner block, then tail block, it would then be connected to the butt riggin’. As soon as the communication link was established, they were ready to log.

As with all steam engines, the boiler pressure needed to be watched closely. If the pressure was too high, it needed to be released. With steam locomotives, the pressure was released via a whistle. The whistle on a locomotive signaled warnings at crossings, among other things such as pressure relief; the whistle on a donkey was used for pressure relief, also, but most importantly, operational directions.

A wire would be strung from the whistle lever to a tree or a stump. The man that was responsible for the communications between the yarder engineer and the men “down in the hole” (choker setters and the “riggin’ slinger”) was the “whistle punk.”

The riggin’ slinger was the lead man “in the hole” (hooking logs). He would use hand gestures and signals to the whistle punk. And the whistle punk would toot the steam whistle in a specified series of toots that told the yarder engineer what to do.

• Four quick toots: Slack the main-line
• Three toots: Ahead on the main-line*
• Three toots followed by three more: Ahead on the main-line (but --slowly)
• Two toots: “skin ‘er back” (pull on the haul-back, bring back the main line)
• Two toots followed by two more: same as above but --slowly
• Two toots followed by three: Standin’ tight line (pick the butt riggin’ straight up)
• Three toots followed by two: Runnin’ tight line (pull and lift, pick em up over the stumps and go!)
• One toot: STOP! (the most important whistle blast of all)
• A seemingly long series of whistle blasts: MAN DOWN!!!
• Log- stilled: release the pressure, shut it down and go home.

As advanced as our communications systems are; most of these signals are still being used in “High Lead” logging operations today.

A very dear cousin of mine once told me, “When you get fir needles in your blood, they never go away.” There is a great deal of tradition and pride in the hearts of loggers.

After being tucked away in a drawer for many years, the voice of my father can once again be heard in this heartfelt goodbye poem to his father, my grandpa.

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‘A Son’s Farewell to an Old Time Logger’
--Bus Dickason--

That heart so warm, so strong, so true,
No longer throbs within your chest
But I’ll have memories of you
‘til my soul too has gone to rest.

Of how through miles of wilderness,
My arm supported in a sling,
you bore me with such gentleness
Your fledgling bird with broken wing.

Though pain and panic at the start,
Brought forth my frightened childish tears
While nestled near that stalwart heart
Of death itself I had no fears.

I hold your cold and lifeless hand,
Once firm and warm, now thin and pale.
In memory once more we stand
Along a faint, familiar trail.

The barren hillsides lived anew,
We viewed the green and silent wood
And saw how tall the saplings grew
Where once the steaming yarder stood.

A rusted Bull-block lying near
Where rambling, thorny briars entwine
Its sheave which had in yesteryear
Whirled freely with the singing line.

Among the ferns and moss I found
Oil bottles each with rotted thong
Where once you worked and heard no sound
Except your shining crosscut’s song

Bright soots of yellow hillside clay
Outlined the path of roadbed scars
Where once the broad-stacked smoking shay
Had shuttled strings of logging cars.

It seemed as though you heard again
That long-stilled donkey’s whistle blast
I realized this must have been
Your farewell to an era past.

Such phases measure life of man
One segment finished, one begun,
We crossed the tie-less trestle span
Toward the setting Autumn sun,

I stretched my step to match your stride
Mere words my joy could not define
My young heart swelled with love and pride
The greatest dad on Earth was mine.

I clasp your shoulder once again
In life so broad, so firm, so brave
I grasp it gently now as then
That dreary day at Mother’s grave.

I sought to comfort if I could
To let you know I shared your cross
As we with other mourners stood
To face our greatest tragic loss

So valiantly you fought to hide
The grief, the pain, the anguished tears
For fate had claimed from you the bride
You’d loved those many, many years

You struggled as the strongest tries
A shattered spirit to control
And yet your tired tear-flooded eyes
Revealed a bleak, heartbroken soul

I touch your silent waxen brow
Brush back a tousled snow white lock
No other sound around us now
Save muffled ticking of a clock

With heart still full of love and pride
So grateful for the paths we’ve trod
Reluctantly I leave your side
Goodbye, dear one, rest well with God