You wood grubbs git to business!!!
"Sticks and Ticks" or "How to kill the romantic ideas about logging"
I stood there in that never-ending motherlovin' rain, watchin' the wood ticks climb up my boots, thinkin' what in the hell is soo fun about this. I attempted to light another Lucky off the last one, it wasn't happening. When I leaned over, a minor deluge poured from the hardhat, soaking them both and my Zippo was still full of mud from this morning's mishap. MacNaughton wandered over to find out why he wasn't hearing McCulloch noise, I almost smacked him in the head. I let him live another day, he had a lighter that worked. When I let my dear cousin MacKnothead talk me into this, it was a nice sunny day, it stayed that way for about ten minutes, three weeks later, the rain hadn't let up long enough to drain the Cat tracks. The first week was a scene from Hell, fresh burnt second growth Redwood timber, an inch of rain a day, the ash and mud made a slimy paste, we won't even discuss the smell. When we got to the green timber, it was even worse, the sticks, the ticks, Christ All Mighty!!! Second growth Redwoods are nothing but a pole covered with sticks, with the sticks covered with ticks. Sticks!!!, every night I dreamt of sticks, heaps of sticks, windrows of sticks, sticks covered in ticks. Insanity was close by, I used bits of it to power my way through the sticks. Oh, but the sticks knew this, they used everything they had to impede my progress, I was beaten red, black and blue, from the elbows down by the time I called it quits. Did I mention the ticks? After work, MacKnothead and I went to a dive logger bar off Broadway in Eureka, we sat in one of the back rooms and picked off ticks, tossing them with ill-concealed glee, onto a hot stove. The older gal that brought our beer and dinner laughed at us, saying we looked like monkeys picking bugs off each other. Sometimes the little bastards made their way down in my boots. The next morning, we were back at it, sticks be damned, we had a mission to pull the shade off the ground. This stand was old as far as second growth went, it had been logged in the late 1800s, regrowth was vigorous to say the least. Average DBH was around 42" with a few closing in on five feet. Scattered around were leftovers, mostly half dead burnt out snags, some of those were pretty big, we taped one out at 19 feet dia. we left most of the snags alone, but took a few, a couple were very nasty, one of the first times I saw MacKnothead sweat from performance anxiety. One snag we felled had already been partly undercut by the old hand loggers, why they quit remains a mystery. I finished what they started with a 797, wondering what the oldtimers would have thought about putting their tree on the ground in a tenth of the time. It was shortly after that when I switched to the Super 250, having done in the sprocket tip on the 850, I swear the sticks did it. I stole a set of spikes off a CP125 to put on the Super, the bark was thick, very soft and loose. Besides, jabbing the long spikes into those stick covered poles was therapeutic. The fourth week found both of us tired and beat-up, we had been doing the seven day work week, with a half day on Saturday, we started at first light, stopped when it was near dark and it was still raining. We did have a good pattern down, I mowed them down, MacKnothead bucked and played in the sticks. He was using a new Stihl 045, the sob cut crooked with it, must have been the color scheme. By Wednesday I had enough of wet, ticky sticks, I thought MacNaughton was going to start weeping with relief, he had been clinging to the last of his sanity. He had only stuck with it, because he didn't want to quit first. We retired to the bar at 10 AM, by noon we were warm, dry, tick free and an hour away from being asked to leave, something about the noise level and a bullet hole in the floor. We dragged our sorry asses to his folks house for dinner, Aunt Nancy was a fine lookin' woman, I forgave her for havin' a Campbell in her family. Mac Knothead begged me to trade him the Super, even offered his sister Di-Di as part trade. I took pity on him, did a straight across trade for the 045, besides Deirdre was a redheaded spitfire and had kept me intimidated since I was 16. Nearly 30 years later, I got the Super back from him, looked like he didn't use it much. Oh yeah, Di-Di still has me cornered.
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