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