The Rain Makes Applesauce

When my brother and sister were young, they had a book titled And the Rain Makes Applesauce. I don't remember what it was about but for some reason Mom would use the line whenever my sister uncorked a whopper. "The Bogeyman ate all the cookies!" "And the rain makes applesauce." They had another one called A Apple Pie but it wasn't nearly as memorable. Anyway, It has been an incredible year for apples and the old Gravenstein behind the mo-beel home has been producing dozens, scores, hundreds of yellow and red apples that land on the ground with a thump. The local deer can't keep up with them and the turkeys come by every morning and peck a few. I make pies out of them and gallons of applesauce which I freeze in the new freezer. The old one from the 1950s finally died. I make at least a gallon a day and sometimes two. The apples bruise where they hit the ground so I have to pare a lot of brown along with the peeling. The later in the season it gets, the riper the apples and the finer the sauce. Our tree ripens the first in the neighborhood and then there are many more later apples to steal. Should be able to have applesauce until next summer at this rate. N

Work Day at Andy's Place

Had a wonderful time working on Andy's place upstream of Leaburg, downstream of Vida. Andy served in the same unit I did a decade or two later and is now in the NG. He is having some serious health issues so Vince organized a work day to clear up his place since he can't any more. Somebody organized 60 volunteers to come on down and bear a hand on his over run forested lot. Before the White Elephant NG bus arrived with the volunteers from Portland, I attacked a blackberry jungle that had come roaring back in the 90 degree stress panel I built to hang the gate on. I used my 357 chainsaw. Love the name. As the berries splattered on my saw chain, I looked down and found one of Boone's balls that had landed in the thicket. He had been running around trying to get people to throw sticks. I tell him: "We don't do sticks--go find a ball." I held it up and as he came running, I threw it in the Leaburg canal a few times to play wash the dog. When the volunteers came trickling down the dead end road I learned that they were a company of accountants. I had somehow suspected that they would be NGs. Vince, the NG rep held a briefing and then started looking for jobs different people. I wound up with four young men who looked physically fit. A fir had fallen over across the fence and the top just crossed the wire. I had cut thirty feet of the top of the log before the gang arrived. I ribboned the old wire fence that had disappeared into the black berries so no one would trip on it. I continued cutting the log and brushing the line. The stout young lads packed the rounds and shot put them over the fence. I cut the rounds shorter as the tree got bigger. It started getting hot. Soon all the wood was across the fence in a big heap. The macho men were all over splitting the rounds. None of them had ever done this fun. They learned that it takes more than just muscle to bust wood. This was a particularly tough bunch of rounds. Soon we had one pair busting rounds in half with a sledge and wedge. The shaker would throw the halves to the other pair who would chop them down with an eight pound maul. I taught them to position themselves so if the head flew off their maul, it would fly into the brush and not hit somebody. Another crew worked on graveling the road with stolen gravel from a BLM stockpile. Mike Dalton brought his PU bed trailer. Somebody brought a plate compactor. Three people saw where I had cut the berries in the fence corner and attacked the berries with loppers. I used Andy's truck to drive around the house with a load of split wood as a crew was digging in barko mulch trails--one to the woodshed. Somebody used the power polesaw I had borrowed and cut back a lot of stuff that had encroached onto the house. The volunteers were moving cut vegetation like ants to form a huge pile in the middle of the yard. It will have to be swamper burned this winter. Boone was in hog heaven. There were dozens of people willing to throw his new found ball. There were four or five other dogs on the scene and they all played well together. Somebody brought about 40 pizzas from Ike's just up the road. After lunch we hit it again in the heat. The macho men finished up the wood and left the last round for a chopping block. Channel 16 came out and needed some action footage so some volunteers stacked the busted wood. If you see it on the news tonight, I'll have you know, I cut that wood. Andy had to leave at 1300 for a Cat scan or some such. There is no good news. Boone wore down and didn't bother people to throw the ball any more. I gathered my gear, loaded my PU and fled the scene. N

The Boat

My father died on Mothers' Day of 09. He knew he was terminal but never got around to doing a will. Under Oregon law, when you die intestate, your spouse gets half your property and your children, be they one or fifty in number, split the other half. He did say a couple weeks before shuffling off this mortal coil that he wanted his wife to have his money, such as it was, and his two children to have his personal property. He said this in all of our presence. Sis and I split the duty of changing diapers and administering morphine with his wife. I was recovering from minor surgery but managed the heavy lifting. Sis is a lawyer and went back to New York with the outline of a will for Dear Old Dad. But Dad went into a coma and died even sooner than we had imagined. No will. So be it. I liberated DOD's fish poles and firearms as I seemed the most likely of the three of us to use them. Ted, Sis' boyfriend, and I hauled the hospital bed Dad spent his last days on from the living room to the garage after the undertaker hauled his body away. I put my hand on his head through the body bag and said good bye. The funeral was a week or so later. It didn't take long for the fireworks to start. Dad's wife, Emily declared that I had stolen Dad's firearms and fish poles. Not long after Dad's ashes were interred at the Eagle Point National Cemetery, She tried to file a police report on the theft. The police officer who got to listen to her complaint labeled it a "family dispute" after talking to Sis on the phone. He never called me. Dear Old Dad had never been a father to me. My mother had divorced him for being a terrible drunk before I was a year old. He was in the military where you can be a functional drunk--or used to anyway. I have few childhood memories of him. My very earliest must be when I was about three years old and he took me fishing with his stepfather on the Coquille River. Alcohol and firearms were part of this story. Dad's truck was in both his and Emily's name so she was able to appropriate it with no hassle. Dad's boat was another matter. It was in his name only so it had to be probated. Sis looked into it and decided it wasn't worth the effort. I monitored the boat's ownership through the Oregon Marine Board for a year or so. Suddenly the title changed from Dad's name to Emily's. I called the OMB and explained that Emily wasn't the sole surviving heir in this case. The woman I talked to showed interest in this and one way or the other, the boat title was revoked or rescinded. I tried to talk to her lawyer about negotiating a satisfactory settlement to our situation. He told me to buy Emily's half of the boat for $$2,500 or quit bothering him. I quit bothering him. Eventually the OMB got tired of holding the boat title in limbo and printed out a fresh title in all three of our names. I called the woman who had been dealing with this mess and asked her to send the new title to me. Jane said that in her 13 years working at OMB, she had never seen anything like this. So now, here we are, bargaining for Dad's military medals, photographs and other few souvenirs like used car salesmen. What will happen next? Stay tuned.

A wienerdog walks into a bar...

Sande and I rode over to Florence on my Rocket III this morning to eat a big pancake breakfast at the Rebeka's Jesse T. Jones camp ground. After we pigged out and Sande caught up with everybody we went over to see Randy and Colleen. Randy is raising koi all over the place. We caught up on all the news and then we left. While it was cool in the morning, it warmed right up by the time we left Florence. We stopped in Mapleton so Sande could get some water and stretch. While we stood there in front of Frank's Place Bar, a little red wienerdog wandered in through the open door. I immediately said: "A wienerdog walks into a bar..." Haven't been able to think of the punch line for it but it is clearly an excellent beginning of a joke. Five minutes later, the wienerdog came wandering back out of the bar. I guess they wouldn't serve him. We rode back on Highway 36. The parking lot at the slide at Triangle lake was packed. I have no doubt that the swimming hole was shoulder to shoulder. Sande had never been on that segment of 36 before. Turned right on Poodle Creek Road and looked at Greg's place. No apparent break ins. Stopped in Noti for gas. The R3 got 39 mpg on that fill up. A good 150 mile ride. N

Last Day at the Salt Mines

Today is my last day at the salt mines. I received a maple burl clock made from local BLM wood with a thin bread sliced piece of the original Oregon & California RR rail with 1985 to 2012 on a small engraved piece of metal. The O&C RR Co was granted hundreds of alternating sections of Oregon land in a checkerboard pattern after the Civil War as incentive to build a rail road through the Willamette Valley from California to Washington State. The O&C RR didn't get around to it in a timely manner and the government repoed the land. It was just land covered with trees anyway. In those days, the first thing you had to do was get rid of all those damned trees in order to do anything with the land. The Government Land Office took control of the defaulted land. After the Second World War, the GLO disbanded and the Bureau of Land Management was formed. The O&C RR Co had laid down some track so now when Oregon BLM employees retire or move on after 10 years, they get a piece of the rail on a Big Leaf Maple (BLM) plaque. Gary Wilkerson made us a clock for our wedding back in 93 so I brought it to work and Dave Mattson superglued on a chromed piece of the rail. He even went out and found a new clock mechanism to fit in the recess as the original had died. I aim to crash Dave Reed's BBQ party (we retired on the same day) next Friday and have Dave Mattson read excerpts from The Velveteen Rabbit and all the names of the temps who got to sign it. I hope to work part time gigs at Tyrrell Seed Orchard on occasion in future, but this is it for the 9 to 5 commute to town scene. I will not miss the ce-ment plant across the fence. I got my piece of the rail superglued to the maple burl clock made by Gary Wilkenson for our wedding in 93. I moved back to Eugene from Ashland in 1985 to use up the last of my GI bill at the U of O partying—I mean studying journalism. Eventually I ran out of dough and decided it was time to get a job. I happened to be listening to the radio one morning when I heard the announcer babbling about help wanted in the Eugene Springfield area. At the end of his list, there was a half breath spent on the Eugene BLM needing four temporary forestry techs. Down I went to the Pearl Street Office and submitted a SF 171. A week or so later, I was hired along with Brett Jones, Mark Herron and Weird Albert. We were all promptly banished to the red house where the other three were snapped up by the silviculture and timber shops. I was assigned to Wayne Tinglum, Lorane RA’s surveyor, as his point setter. I didn’t know anything about surveying but I did know how to cut brush so I hacked line for Wayne and picked up a basic understanding of land surveying. Found some original corners and three naval stores trees in my time in the woods. One of my fondest memories of being a temp was the time I didn’t get a paycheck. Remember paper paychecks? Anyway, I gave it a few days before going to see our payroll technician. I discovered that I had been terminated two weeks previously but nobody had gotten around to informing me of the fact. After a couple of seasons with Wayne, I applied for a temp position on the cadastral crew. I got the job but was only allowed a GS-4 rating because I had been working as a forestry tech for Wayne. I pointed out that I had been working as a surveyor’s assistant the past couple seasons but this failed to cut any ice. Mark Herron also wound up on the cadastral crew with a GS-5 as he had college education in forestry. GS-4 it was. I spent a couple seasons on the crew with Mark and Rad Brad. Eventually Pete Pisani and Oscar joined us for the Deadwood abuse. We visited places that time forgot and got introduced to devil’s club and giant Pacific salamanders walking through the woods. And then it rained harder. While working out of the Pearl Street Office, I originated the seasonal fun of jumping out of the shrubbery wearing a hockey mask and starting a chainsaw on Halloween morning to greet people coming to the front door. There was plenty of camouflage, cover and concealment. The shrubbery was too small when we moved to Chad Drive so this fine tradition languished and died. During my second season of cadastral fun, I applied for a permanent position as a forestry tech. Fire fighting was a significant portion of the PD and I didn’t have so much as a red card. Still, I went for it. The District planned to hire four forestry techs. I came in second on the list of eligibles (with veteran’s pref) and felt that my future was secure. I was wrong. I kept asking when I was starting in my new position—and encountered a stubborn silence. I was forced to call a meeting with the state director. He was coming to town on other business anyway, and so he brought the state office head personnelist with him. I had put together personal flip charts for all parties that demonstrated conclusively that I should be hired. There was ever so much more to this story but I will omit it in the interest of brevity. Eventually, I was advised by my boss that if I didn’t quit causing trouble, my fine GS-5 (finally) cadastral temp job might not be waiting for me the beginning of next survey season. I decided that it was time to roll the dice. On the last day of my term, I discovered the boss’ brand new yellow rain jacket in the rig as I was putting stuff away. I found a magic marker and drew a fine target on its back, at least a foot in diameter before folding it up and putting it away for the winter. Sure enough, I was not rehired the coming spring. I was working for a private surveyor but heard through the grapevine that the yellow rain jacket was a huge hit on opening day of field season. Eventually, after 20 months, the Office of Special Counsel finally arrived on Eugene District and interviewed 36 people. The official attitude changed from: Go away Boy, you bother me—to Can you start work next Monday? I had told my current boss that I was going to force the BLM to hire me but I don’t think he believed me. He did when I gave him a week’s notice. My original plan was to take a week off before starting my new permanent job. My old boss couldn’t find anybody to replace me so I wound up working the interim week after all. As luck would have it, my first day as a permanent fell on an all employees’ meeting at Harris Hall. Ron Kaufman, the DM, asked all the department heads if they had any new employees to introduce. When it was Brad Krueger’s turn, he denied that he had any new employees. Feeling slighted, I stood and raised a fist like a victorious boxer . I had broken the temp barrier! I had taken my position by conquest just as had William taken England! I had boldly gone where no temp had gone before! The rank and file cheered and clapped. Most of them were aware of my struggle to shatter the temp barrier. “Oh yeah,” Krueger finally acknowledged, “Hamar’s back.” And that was that. I ordered a custom license plate for my new pickup that read X-TEMP. I was careful to always park the rig (when I wasn’t riding a motorcycle to work) so its front was pointing at the main employee entrance at Fort Chad. I wish to go on the record here to state that the X-TEMP plate was the idea of Ian Johnson—a recovering temp who finally turned to teaching at the age of 45. When I was a wannabe permanent, I would say things like: “When I become real I will do thus and such.” After breaking the barrier, Dave Mattson gave me a copy of the Velveteen Rabbit. Since then, all temps who become real get to sign the fly leaves of the book. I have left it in the stewardship of Dan Christenesen for future ex-temps to autograph. I soon found myself resentenced to cadastral crew as a permanent. The mutual fondness between me and the boss hadn’t waxed any and so I sought to break the gravitational pull of the CC. Eventually I succeeded and then I discovered that there was the GS-7 barrier to break. Myself and some other ceilinged GS-7 FTs utilized the formal EEO process on this one and after 20 months (is this a magic number of some kind?) we all achieved Mach II, and became promotable to the GS-9 level. I got to participate in the fire program. Got a red card finally. I remember paddling across Waldo Lake with shovels when a boat motor wouldn’t start on the High Spirit Complex. Warner Creek, Warm Springs, Montana—too many fires to remember. I hiked Storm King while doing helicopter duty in Glenwood Springs in 2002. We moved to the new office on Chad Drive. There was a lot more room. John Peacher was killed in an automobile accident and I inherited his junk car program in 1996. John liked to utilize the system of employing the road department with dump trucks and backhoes to round up abandoned automobiles and store them out at the Triangle Lake Maintenance Yard. I elected a more low tech method. It took some doing but eventually I trained Oregon’s Dept of Motor Vehicles and Schnitzer’s Steel to do it my way. I would write a paper giving me (representing Eugene District) the right to own a junk car and sell it to Schnitzer Steel for scrap value. Our LEOs liked this system. Adam and Jon would get email reports, pictures if they wanted, and for the most part, the junk cars would move quietly out of the woods to the steel yard where they started the long road to reincarnation as a new Toyota. I dealt with camp trailers full of crap, boats, cars, school buses, trucks & major appliances. Sometimes I poached junk off the reservation but nobody seemed to care. At one time, the 5310 used car fund exceeded $80K. The used car program at least defrayed its own expense. I got the National Guard to participate in this fun and the motor section would use a five ton wrecker to yard up junkers that Bubba and Billy Bob had pushed over cliffs to reinact their favorite Dukes of Hazzard scenes. The members of Echo Company’s motor pool seized the opportunity to practice extricating heaps out of canyons. Now the price of steel has risen to the point where you rarely find an abandoned car in the woods. Old fiberglass boats appear to be the medium of choice of today’s recreational dumpers. I got involved in a land watch group and help resist the Oregon Military Department’s attempt at building a new armory across from Lane Community College. Lane County’s Land Mngt Div ran interference for the OMD. Big name developers lurked in the shadows hoping for the success of the project so that there would be changes of zoning and free infrastructure so they could make millions with nearby housing developments. Eventually the Russell Creek Neighbors prevailed. Not because of the many highly questionable and even illegal gambits attempted by the LMD/developer complex, but because the OMD would lose funding if it didn’t break ground soon. No good deed goes unpunished. It wasn’t too long before I learned that the BLM was going to share a roof with the National Guard, FS and others where the OMD found a place to build on Pierce Parkway. Time accelerated and I failed to evolve. I still did the same sort of labor intensive things I always had only a little slower each year. I participated in the removal of much of the junk at the foot of Blue Mountain. Suddenly I found myself in the aging parent zone. I discovered how to utilize my months and months of accrued sick leave as Family Friendly Leave I helped my father to the exit in 09. We were never close but I am glad that I did this. I used up the last of it over 2011 and 12. I learned way more than I ever wanted to know about foundations working on Mom’s house in Astoria to make it more user friendly for her decreasing mobility. I trained a replacement for my used car business. There wasn’t a line up for this collateral duty. I tried the indispensability test. I stuck my finger in a glass of water and removed it. There wasn’t a hole in the water so this meant I was not indispensable. Everybody is expendable—Everybody is replaceable. I remember that from the merry military forty years ago. Since I wasn’t indispensable, I decided it must be time to get a life. I did not wish to implement the Neil Armantrout retirement plan and keep coming to work until I expired noisily at my desk. I look forward to asking my wife to please make a little less noise in the morning when she goes to work. I can get plenty of abuse and rejection trying to publish a trash novel I wrote. Maybe someday I will get a new copy of the Velveteen Rabbit when I break the wannabe writer barrier. I met many fine people in my years on Eugene District. I enjoyed meeting the tree planting/thinning crews in the cold, wet dark and racing them to the bottom of the unit where I would stand on a stump and ensure quality by my presence. The Spanish speaking crews would call me Rojo. Now I am more Rojo y Blanco. Saw a lot of wildlife in my time in the woods. A big cougar stalking two branch antler bull elk on my birthday. Three cougars in the road one dark morning. Mom and two grown kittens, I assume. An all black bobcat. A three legged bear. Moose in Montana and Alaska on fires. I was born in Alaska before it was a state. And all the small day to day timber tigers one encounters in the woods. This morning I am busy throwing away junk and confining my keepings to one box that I will take home with me and winnow out later. I am sure we will run into each other around town. You might see me out riding my MC on a fine day while you are going to or from the field. Maybe you will see me doing an odd job at the seed orchard. I will continue to donate blood at the facility here until I find a better venue. The new generation will see my name around and wonder who I was. Maybe somebody will tell them that I am the X-TEMP who became real. Sure was easier getting out than it was getting in. N

Big Fish

Went to The Dalles, Oregon for a little sturgeon fishing this weekend. My friend Marc lives in TDs and knows all there is to be knowed about sturgeon fishing. He had caught a bunch of shad ahead of time for this event. Shad run by the millions up the Columbia in June and the great white sturgeon keg up under the dams to eat the unfortunate shad that get chewed up in the generator gatewells by giant turbine blades. For some reason Marc had always discarded the shad heads when cutting baits out of the narrow, bony fish. I asked why the sturgeon wouldn't bite on heads so we tried some and discovered that sturgeon like head too. He froze some shad heads in vacuum pack plastic. We got lots of mileage out of having to give the sturgeon head to get a bite. White sturgeon get huge. The biggest one I have ever caught was probably ten feet or a little longer. You are only allowed to keep one a day about four feet long. A four foot sturgeon is not very exciting to catch. Marc knows all the holes and how to fish them upstream and down from The Dalles Dam. June has been very cold and wet around TDs this year which regularly achieves 100 degree days. We were out early Friday morning in Marc's 25 foot boat. I boated a seven footer without too much effort. Marc released it with his needle nose pliers. The wind rose in volume as it blasted up the Columbia River Gorge. We don't use the word "wind" when fishing. If you say it, the wind always increases in volume. So we say; "The boardheads are happy." When the wind decreases, we say: "The boardheads are sad." Hood River, 20 miles down river, is the sailboarding capital of the US if not the world. We caught a couple more way too big sturgeon. When a giant jumps out of the water I like to holler: "He breaches!" like Gregory Peck as Captain Ahab. We didn't catch any keepers or too small fish by noon so we trailered the boat at the public boat landing. Thje fish checker was in our face wanting to know what we had caught. We went back to Marc's garage apartment where we ordered a Chicago stuffed pizza from Papa Murphy's. I drove down to the pizza parlor and took delivery and we baked in the oven of Marc's garage apartment. In this day and age, many parents have adult children "basement dwellers" living in their garage or basement. Marc is different in that he lives in the garage while his son, daughter in law and grandson live in the house. When company comes, you just assemble a one by two meter Cabela's folding cot to crash on. We ate our pizza and took a nap. Marc's two year old grandson and the yellow lab he shares with his son's family both came out to visit. Around five o'clock we decided to hit it again. You don't have to go very far to the boat ramp and the fishing hole we were using was only a mile upstream. I drove the truck and Marc idled around in the boat while I parked the rig at the top of the hill. We charged upstream and I dropped the anchor. I dropped a fresh shad head on a big hook over the side when I noticed the back of the boat was filling with water. Oh shit! Marc had plugged the wrong drain hole with the screw tight rubber plug at the boat ramp. I frantically plugged the hole from the inside with paper towels while Marc fired up the bilge pump. We raced back to the ramp and I got the truck and we pulled the boat out of the water and let a ton of water drain out the nickle sized hole in the back of the boat. I told Marc that I got a pass on any comments on my performance as a deckhand from this day forward. We got back to it and hooked a few more monsters. One was so big that we chased it with the boat and I couldn't do a thing to influence the big fish. Couldn't slow it or turn it or make it jump. I finally broke the line and we went back and found our cast off anchor line by the floats on the end. I made fast and we fished untill just before dark. A hefty eight foot sturgeon wanted some head and I wrestled him to the boat without casting off. It took a good 45 minutes. He possibly weighed 250 pounds or more. Marc released him and we called it a night. We turned on the running lights and avoided one fool who didn't believe in running lights. Saturday morning we were hard at it. Marc caught a 41 inch legal fish! It sure wasn't very exciting after muscling in eight footers. We bagged it around noon. The boardheads were grinning and the rain was pouring down like in the Willamette Valley in December. Marc let me off and I hiked up the hill to get the rig. I saw the fish counter sitting in her little PU and motioned her to roll down the window. I told her we caught a bunch of too big fish and one keeper thinking it would keep her out from underfoot. Wrong. She wanted to see the fish. I told her it was 41 inches. Still wanted to see the damned fish. Next time, I will tell her we just caught a bunch of too bigs. There were trailers and rigs parked everywhere as it was Saturday and the last day of keep a sturgeon season. I had to carefully jack back the fifty foot outfit up, being careful not to hit the motorhome some moron had parked behind the trailer. It rained harder. I backed down the ramp and Marc drove the boat onto the trailer. I winched it tight and pulled it up the hill, parking on an incline to let the water run out the drain hole after I removed the plug. The fish counter was there and made us stand in the pouring rain while she measured the sturgeon and looked for tags. Marc made beer batter and fried up some bits of tasty sturgeon. The smaller ones taste better than the big ones. We chowed down and took a nap and then I rolled for home. I have my 19th wedding anniversary tomorrow and my last week at the salt mines starting Monday. Might go halibut fishing next weekend if the weather cooperates. N

Fathers' Day

My parents divorced when I was a few months old so my father was never a major part of my life. My very first memory of Dear old Dad was fishing on the Coquille River near Myrtle Point. I guess Mom must have let him have me for a weekend or something. I think I was three or four years old. I can remember Dad and his stepdad and another man all casting from the bank with spinning poles into the small river while rapidly drinking cans of beer. My sense of smell was acute as a child and I can remember the biting smell of the stuff when they opened a fresh one with a church key. I believe Dad and the guys caught fish although I don't remember specifically. Then Dad broke out the firearms and I remember learning to shoot a .22 rifle at a beer can at a range of 15 feet. Dad coached me and propped the long gun over a log or something for me. Alcohol, guns and children. No problem. Happy Fathers' Day, Dad! N