you
you
the logger they are a different breed I think loggers are born and fishermen
are born I mean what is taking that guy out on the ocean to sit in that boat all
night long they're composed of different things than we are that's for sure I
look at them and I go man you're crazy and they're doing the same thing to us
with stuff flying over our heads cables breaking they're going whoa get me back
on the boat you know being way out there at sea where you can't even see land
that'd scare the hell out of me. Loggers by and large keep to themselves they have
their own interests their own projects their families they don't have any energy
at the end of the day to volunteer for some discussion group about X no they
are tied up in their work and so they really don't have a voice not the average
logger it is easy to say we and they and keep it that way we're just trying to
make it through it all best we can. All right boys we got to get out here alive
yeah somebody forgets their lunch they eat my lunch if they do it's not they're
wrong at work you tell them about it we care about them we care about what they
do at work we care about what they do at work we're buddies. You know things can
happen bad you don't want them to but you know it can happen if there's a weak
person on the crew they would be run off you would find a way to run them off or
make it so miserable you'd want to quit. You get run off because it's so hard
you're working as a team so nobody's gonna carry a slacker no way uh-uh
besides it's life-threatening and you only want to work with people that you
know and respect. You see in this game you are playing for keeps. You gotta have
common sense if you don't have common sense you're not going to make it and
you're going to get hurt things are going to get foul especially in a yard
or where the lines are above your head oh there's a lot to it and some guys come
out of there and they just say
This isn't anything I thought it was going to be. I'm not coming back tomorrow.
And there are some guys who just can't get enough of it they just cannot get
enough of it they're running around all day long and they want it all but you
have to meter yourself. That's right you've got to give up this bull of the
woods idea. That's mythology. It's fantasy. The thing is you got to be careful.
Work safe. Don't work too hard. When I was young
I bought into that whole fantasy. Kinda hard not to. I thought I'll show these
guys how much I could cut. I don't do that anymore though. Yeah. When I was young I
couldn't work enough hours. I always wanted more. Wanted more. I've had a whole
new kind of epiphany now. I could continue to work in the woods for the
rest of my life. My production is not going to be what it was but that's all
right. The thing is you could work in the woods your whole life but you got to be
careful and you've got to take care of yourself. This is the story of how we
lived. How we survived. How we loved. How we lost. How we put food on the table. The
story of the logger. Where we meet in the road.
Well some times we're gonna tear some bricks their god above. Some like the music nice
and mad. Some are drawn to the saw. Wherever they are wherever they roam. What they can't be said. They'll never stop. They're gonna log until they're dead. We are the loggers out here in the great northwest. We work our way to black our face and all the rest. And when the day is over we hand home to our families. We know that life is precious. We've been out there falling trees.
Well some folks who never understand us why we do this job. The food is rather day than
all the food in Kosovo. We are the loggers out here in the great northwest. We work our
And when the day is over we head home to our families
We know that life is precious to be out there all in trees
You know sometimes we get shut down for whatever reason
Sauce maps, a piece of equipment breaks down
So I just go lie under a tree, have a nap
It's the greatest thing in the world, this lion out there in those trees
We are the loggers out here in the great Northwest
We work our days, collect our faves, same as all the rest
And when the day is over we head home to our families
We know that life is precious to be out there all in trees
We know that life is precious to be out there all in trees
We know that life is precious to be out there all in trees
Woo!
Applause
Everybody's out there to have a good time
You're not just a standin' drone, every day is an adventure
Oh yeah, the weekend is always a honeymoon and it's a picnic every day
Alright, alright, alright, the thing is you get tight with these guys
Especially driving around in the crummy
You know the crummy is the company vehicle
They used to drive around town sometimes from Eureka to Oret to take the loggers to work
And it was called a crummy for a reason
The most beat up piece of shit
Now I remember when the crummy used to pick us up Monday morning at 4am
They'd make a sweep of 2nd street and then go down to the jail and pick up 3 or 4 guys
Not that they were being charged with nothing
They were just holding them there until the crummy came
And then we'd go out to the woods
The crummy would bring us home on the weekends and take us right back on Monday
It was like one big carry all
Now you see, everybody on the crew has a nickname
Nobody's actually going to tell you their name though
They have to hear it themselves because they don't even know it till they hear it
You can go over the Sierras and it's a totally different name for the same guy
Like Big Wood Dan becomes Over the Hill Dan
You see, as a crummy driver, I've got to count heads because I don't want to leave no one behind
That's how walking Bob got his name
Okay, what do we have here?
Wrong Way Walt
Go wrong way Walt because if an accident's going to happen, it's going to happen to him
Bend him up Clyde
He can bend up any piece of iron you can put him on
He is a cat-getter
Malibu
A spiffy dresser
Bullpain hammer
I am the son of the claw
Claw hammer Clyde
You see, they make a good father and son team
I'm Jekyll and Davis
Weird sense of humor
Eight day Clifford
He's not here. You know that guy can't work more than eight days without a saw breakdown or an excuse or something going wrong
Doobie Brothers
Doobie, doobie, doobie, doobie, doobie
Dagger Jenny
Women are rare but we are there
Ship Head Kelly
Penn Shaker Johnson
Starvin Marvin
Redwood Willie
Grandpa Eric
Bonehead
One of the most unreliable loggers around
Hollywood
Marv Dogg
Two Shoes
Walkin Bob
Gave Man
Frog
Lost Larry
Jump around Jody
Always jumping from one big tree to the next
It's just because the junk in my strip is getting a little too tight
Now you see, each one of these folks can be divided into four types
The punks, the preachers, the teachers, and the old faithfuls
Not that I'm saying you can pin a logger down
But really, can't all of us stick into one of these types on any given day?
The Logger's Dictionary
The logger is well known for his, and while less common, her flowery language
using vernacular and slang not understood or known by the greater community
I will now endeavor to interpret the dialectics of the logger
Get up, wolf down a monkey blanket
Grab my nose bag, head on out to the shape up
Sometimes a show has a couple of sides to it
But I'll head off down the top road and find my strip
If you're lucky in a day, you might find some side hill salmon
Hooey! That is a treat!
With a little sweetish steam, you can haul it back to the grummy
And the day might come out right after all
You've got to get some snus when you're hoot-owlin'
Because it gets so dry out there
You can't smoke
Oh, we don't talk like that
That is just some Hollywood version of a lumberjack
We don't sound like that
Get that thing out of here
I've been a cutter all my life
You see, the cutter, or the faller, and the bucker, they work together
Sometimes switching jobs on the same job from one week to the next
Faller one week, bucker the next
See, if the faller makes a mistake, ain't nobody can fix it afterwards
It is done, the mistake is made
If the faller splits a tree on the way down, well, that tree is junk
If the faller dumps a tree and it goes down into a bad fall, well, they're going to play hell getting it out
See, the cutter can make or break a profit margin
And profit margins for loggers are thin, always have been, extremely thin
So the whole thing has to come together properly for them to make a profit, really
Bucking is when you cut the tree into lengths that the mill wants so that they can match their orders
You have to cut the tree so that you get the most of it
We're called bushlers, someone who cuts for scales
That's being paid by the thousand, not by the hour
Other cutters, they work for the company
Now a bucker has to have a conscience
If I can buck it, I'm going to buck it
We get dangerous stuff all the time though that first we have to pull out and then buck it
Yeah, there's not the money there used to be
But fallers were always respected
We were like the high priests to the wood
High priests
Nothing happens until the fallers do something
You've got to have the logs cut
We're still respected, but not like it used to be
Now hardly anybody knows anything about it at all
The principles like to close left
2,000 feet of skyline out and 4,000 feet of haul back and I was running the yard
The tail load was up high and I had this big old boulder behind me so the guy lines were up high too
Well, as soon as we put a load on that thing, it lifted my yarder straight up, spun me around it and set me back down
I was like, whoa, whoa
So we slacked her down and got her back
We went and got this cat and parked it right next to me
I had another main line drum going straight down to it
So it was holding me down
Why we didn't think about that ahead of time?
I don't know
And I've only been running yarder for six months
Been around in my whole life, but actually sitting in it, running it, only six months
Now when he's in that yarder, he's controlling 11 different throttles with his hands
Four different things with his feet
And even though they got a self-leveling cab, he's the one who controls that
He finesses it
You could put the lines anywhere you want
But the hook tender, he's the one who makes all those critical decisions
Because you see, in a thinning, when you're thinning the trees, where you put the lines is critical to production
It's all about the lines, you see
We have a narrow corridor, maybe as wide as that truck right there
Going all the way down the hill, into the hole where the tail hold is
We're pulling all our logs in this way, and then back up the hill
Well, if you send your carriage down there, clamp it to the skyline where it won't move
Then you can save this tree by easing your logs around this way
Maybe let it drift down a little bit more and re-clamp it
And that way you can keep on pulling it, save that tree, sneak it around this way
And all the way up the hill, yeah, that's all about saving the timber
Some companies now clear cut though, and for me, there's not much art to that
Nah, not much art to that
One is stuck, one real long one is stuck right now, you should have already got it stuck
This is usually when your whistle misses, when you want to blow an emergency whistle
I don't know why, Murphy's law I guess
Three to lift the skyline, four to slack the skyline
Two, two, twos for your guidelines, two to go ahead on the rigging
Three, one's haywire, two and one is slack
But one, one is the most important one, we use whistles, but we also have hand-held walkie-talkies
And bugs to blow the whistle
But lots of times you have other yarders closer to you and you'll be bouncing off their whistles and that's when it gets confusing
Sometimes it gets tough
God Almighty!
Come on down if you want, but don't send your son, it's a job for a man
Now, it's the hook tender that said that, God got pissed off cause he said it
God had a raven come down and give too long
Arrrr! Arrrr!
And the operator thought it was the call ahead signal
They come full on, that hook tender got killed
Now Whistle Punks, the little guy, he's set up on stump and he blows all the signals to your yarder in there
And well, the hook tender, he's your boss
He's the story about Whistle Punks, he wanted to be a hook tender in the worst way
And I guess in his own way, he finally did
Well Whistle Punks P, he stood by his feet
He wasn't gonna get any bigger
But his main ambition was to hold the position
Hook tender and head rigger
He all lived, the boy did too
He was never gonna make it
He takes a pretty big man and that's an all around him
There's hardly any way that you can fake it
He's got a pocket of strap, a little piece back
He's headed in the wrong direction
He's set a new layout, pulling head wire
He couldn't even hold one section
He could climb all right, he didn't mind the height
And he got through the dark hole, darling
He was too small a tackle, he got a line shackled
He couldn't even hook up no molly
Well he was running around with a gal downtown
She was packed for kind of pretty
And we heard one day that they ran away
And got married in New York City
Happy with his wife, she was in love with his wife
Had such a sweet disposition, well it's supposed to be
Didn't know at the time, she helped him realize his ambition
Well his little wife Myrtle, she wore a full length girdle
And had 23 looks in eyes
It took a full hour to pick her up in the morn
But she'd be surprised
He was looking and thinking, he'd even get adrenaline
He joked, I'll stand him out
He said, Myrtle, hold your cow
The crew could only see me now
I'm a hook tender after all
Well I don't want to say lagers today are soft
But I don't know if I'm tough enough to do what they did a hundred years ago
Yeah, I'm afraid that they'd kick me off into the next crummy
And send me home packing
It was a hard life, lots of rough types
Drinking, gambling, lots of moving around
Whole families moving around
We moved so much
I must have gone to 15 different schools as a kid
Hard for me to make friends
One day I came home from school and everybody was gone
The house was empty
They forgot me
They came back a few hours later to get me of course
They were sure mad
I was just a kid
I spent three years with a foster family
I think those were the most stable years of my life
You see you had to go where the work was, up and down the coast
Sometimes you'd get there and work for a season
But then the company would end up not getting paid by the mill
So you were out of luck
No pay, no more work
On to the next town, the next job
Pack up the kids, the wife
It was a rough life
I met this boy
And I come home and Ma says
Pack your things, we're moving
And I thought, oh no, I will never see this boy again
So we went out and got married
That was 60 years ago
I was only 15
Had to lie about my age on the certificate
There was this kid who came to camp
This was before the depression
He never went to town, this whistle punk
Worked only five days a week
But he always stayed in camp
And he'd collect old clothes that the loggers had thrown away
He picked them up and he washed them and packed them and he wore them
Old rolls and old shirts
Well, Christmas come around and I was there
And he and I got to talking
And he said, I think I'm going to go back east and see my folks
He had about five, six hundred dollars saved
And that's enough money to go back east two or three times if you're going on the train
Well, they shut down that night and he had this package of clothes and shoes
And he runs into a trucker that can give us a ride into town
On the way, he said, I don't think I need these anymore
I don't think I'm coming back
And he threw those clothes down into the canyon
Well, we got the monkey in around in town
And he liked to gamble and he went broke
So we had to go back to work
Fourth of July come around, we always had four or five days
Same old story, he saved every penny
And then we went to town
We monkeyed around, had some supper, went to a show
Went here and there
Then we came across this gambling place where they play the games all night long
You could play blackjack, you could play poker, you could shake the dice
You could play bar booty, that Italian game, you could play everything
I won a hundred and fifty dollars
I quit and went home
But that whistle-punk, he stayed
And he went broke again
About three o'clock he comes to the door and says, you got any money?
I am going broke!
So I give him twenty-five dollars
He comes back with eighteen, nineteen hundred dollars!
Gives me seventy-five then
Well, that was the last I seen of that kid
He goes upstairs to bed and the next morning he took a train and went back east
He was a good kid!
He just had the fiend to gamble
I started working in the woods, was on a survey crew for the forest service
We had a camp cook
All the calories these ladies were trying to stuff into us
She's the only cook I knew who could take a half a cup of bacon fat
Stuff it right inside the egg
Everything was dripping in bacon fat
She was a good cook, oh she was good
Good food and lots of it
Sometimes I don't think I ever got full, just tired of eating
That was a long way back
There's been a lot of water under the bridge since then
I learned to cook, it was either that or starves
And I learned to cook fast
I was the cook for fifty man
Cooks are important
I have lived a life I would not trade for all the tea in China
No siree, I would not trade it one bit
It has been fantastic
I get up, put the coffee pot on about four, four-thirty or whatever time I could get away with
And that means building a fire
Average breakfast is bacon and eggs, not much ham
It is always bacon
That is the hardest part to cook that bacon
It gets all curled up in knots
You try to uncurl it and it curls right back up even harder
And gravy, pancakes, biscuits, bread
Because you have to sop the gravy up with something
One day I went in to get breakfast and there was a note on the table
We don't do this and we don't do that
And we don't want something else
We want this, we'll do this, we're gonna do that
That old bang, bang, bang, bang
Well I turned the note over and I put on the back of it
Get your ass down the road then if you don't like it here
And they did
My husband went out to get his men to go to work and he didn't have any
They all took off
He had to go down and around town and pick up all his men
I cook a lot of beans
If you don't have beans, you don't have anything to eat
I like a nice and juicy sopping up with your old pan bread
I cook whatever's on the shelf
And if it isn't on the shelf, I give them a shotgun and I send them out to get something
But there's a lot of danger out there too
It's usually some idiot getting himself tangled up with some animal
And then you have to figure out how to take care of it
Kill the person or the animal
Depending on which one's nicer
So I make breakfast, do the dishes
Make lunch, do the dishes
Make dinner, do the dishes
Sometimes it feels like there's just a little sheet for that plate left there
Pretty thin from all that washing
But you know, I think all those years out on the logging sites was the best part of my life
Mine too
Oh yeah, I like moving around
Moving around never bothered me
Put your hat on and away you go
Keeps you interested when it's interesting
Oh yeah, never a dull moment
If there ever was a dull moment, you were getting yourself into some trouble
Yeah, never a dull moment
Something exciting always going on
And some of it wasn't very nice
They come in, get dinner
They all have their own beds
Oh yes, this is the sad part
There's lots of liquor
Well they come in after a hard day's work, eat dinner and then spend a lot of time
Drinking
A lot of alcohol
In the middle of the night, one guy woke up having a screaming fit
And the first thing you know, somebody was dead
He got killed
Gun or a rifle
See, you're trying to protect yourself
And then you kill somebody else
The whole thing depends on what you think about
Everyone had a little bit of a different spot
See, I never really expect anything
I just take what I get
Everyone had a little bit of a different spot
And you just squeeze on over and you make room for them at the table
I'm telling you, you get out and you're stranded
And there is somebody whose life is depending on you
You find a way to do it
And you find a way quick
But you forget quick too
Well somebody had to do it and it got done
Sometimes it wasn't so pretty but it worked
Sometimes we didn't think too properly
Oh thank goodness we didn't know
It was better you didn't know about it
That way when it arrived you just did it
You have to make fun out of it
Because you have to live
You just grab what you can and let the world go by
Everyone had a little bit of a different spot
Every day is an adventure
You know, that kind of strength is rare these days
Too many excuses
Too many other ways to survive
But I lie a lot too
Is the struggle and strife we find in this life
Really worthwhile after all?
I've been wishing today
I could just run away
Out where the west winds come
With someone like you
A pal good and true
I'd like to leave it all behind
And go and find a place that's known
To God alone
Just a place to call my own
We'll find perfect peace
Where joy never cease
Somewhere beneath the kindly sky, kindly sky
We'll build a sweet little nest
Somewhere in the west
And let the rest of the world go by
I had a blue healer
That dog rode around with me wherever I went
I had a dog that would come to the job with me
She would always be in front of me
When we got to the fork in the skid road
She'd sit there until the skidder took off one way or the other
And she'd take off and head up the road
That dog was always in front of me
Now I had this little dog
Oh yeah, that little towawa
A toy fox terrier, excuse me
I had two dogs
Stitch one and stitch two
Stitch two is home still
But the first stitch, she would go anywhere
She was always in my shirt
She was all white with a black head
She went cutting an organ with me
And she flew in a helicopter once
She'd run down through the strip where I was
And she'd run into my backpack
I always had a sweatshirt in there
She always just curled up inside
She slept all day until it was time to go home
And I'd say, let's go home
Sometimes if she was in danger
I'd put the backpack on with her in it
And I'd go up over the hill and put her down out of the way where she was safe
She'd never get out until it was time to come home
One time something flew out of a tree and hit her
I heard this little yelp out of her
Well, when the day was over the guys would all bunch up
And Stitch would be there with us, part of the crew
She was a great doll
I was working on this one job
It was in the springtime
And I fell a tree up the hill
It brushed a clump of redwoods
I was working my way up, you know, liming it, making the log
When I got up to the top
I saw just inside of the tree that I rubbed
In the bark scene was a little tiny bird's nest
And there were three little chicks in there
They were so big I don't even know how they fit in the nest
Well, I thought to myself
Oh my God, now they're my responsibility, what am I going to do?
Well, seeing their age I thought
Maybe if I could buy some time they'll have a chance to leave
So I had another part of my strip
The other side was a class two creek
A lot more work, wedging, less money, I was avoiding it
I thought maybe I could go down there for a while
So down I went and I started digging the trees out of that creek
I did that for a couple days, I think there was a Sunday involved
Anyways, the next Monday morning
I came over the bank first thing to check on the nest
It was empty
Oh my God, and I started looking around for little dead birds
And all of a sudden I heard tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet
And there they were, they just left the nest
So I went back down the hill
Worked down there in that class two creek for another couple days or so
And by the time I brought it back up to the nest
The little friends were gone
I love it out there
I mean, I love the whole thing
Ahhhhhhhhhh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
God damn it, I hate bees
Give me a black bear any day, just keep those bees away from me
And yellow jackets
A yellow jacket is a mean critter, it comes out of its hole pissed off
That's if you disturb their entrance
They're funny, see, you can come and sit down right next to a nest like this
Doesn't bother them a bit
But the minute you touch that entrance
When you're working away, you're not looking for bees
You're looking whether or not you're going to trip and fall on your face
You're thinking where you're going to fall this next tree
And then all of a sudden before you know it, you can feel it
You're getting bit all over the place
You've got three on your neck and three up your shirt and it completely surprises you
It's not like there's a warning, no warning
It's always just like, and there is never just one
Now that is something, bees nest
Thinking you're safe and you're just standing in the middle of another nest
This one time we were sitting down having a snack
And someone hollers, bees!
And Buck just up and took off
And he ran right smack dab in the middle of a nest
He must have had 20 of them up his pants leg
Probably yellow jackets, stinging him over and over
And there he was trying to run away and get his pants off at the same time
Oh, that should have been on TV, we laughed so hard
Grouse ladders, when their limbs go all the way to the ground
Because that would make it easy for the grouse to climb up
School marm, if you can picture a woman upside down
That is why it is called a school marm
A snow break, a crook in the tree where the top's been blown off
But if the top's been blown off and another limb comes and takes its place as a leader
You call that a preacher seat
A jill pope
That could happen to you on a forest service call where some other guys come in and he's cut all the big trees
There's just these little tiny ones left that you've got to cut for nothing
That's called getting jill poked
There's another way to get jill poked though
See black bear, they like to claw the bark off of the redwood trees
Can't cambium
Yeah, yeah, they love that sweet cambium
So after they get done girdling the trees and gnawing all that bark off
It kills the tops and the limbs become all brittle
Well, one day I was falling a tree out of a bear kill clump shoes ready to go
I'm stepping back with my saw in my hand just like that
And one of those limbs broke out, speared down and jill poked me right there on the hand, popped it open
That's a jill pope from a bear kill
The whole thing about logging is you're moving extremely heavy objects from point A to point B
That is the basic principle
You're harvesting vegetables, really big vegetables
It's like farming
I guess the bulk of life is spent just trying to fall that one tree
So you don't take out too many others with it and make too big of a dent
Yeah, but your body sure does get beat up
Oh yeah, the old body sure gets beat up
Huh?
I said your old body gets some beat up
Oh, yeah, it's like my wearing hearing aids
I don't have the things I didn't get them this morning
And it won't be long for me
I always wear earplugs
Huh?
I always wear earplugs
Oh, well I went a long time without them
Yeah, a lot of old timers say they don't like wearing them because they want to hear everything come out of the canopy
But the fact of the matter is, once you get used to them, you can still hear all that
I use the yellow roll-ups
Oh, I use the green foamy soft on the ears
I don't like the ones where you punch the button and shove them in your ear and give me ear aches and headaches
Oh, I never use those, always the roll-ups
And if you don't have these, some toilet paper
And if you don't have that
Oh, filters!
From cigarettes
Yep, the old body gets some beat up
Yeah, I broke fingers in both hands
Look, broke my arm
Broke my collarbone
That stitches in 24 different locations
That three concussions, two crushed toes, and a partridge in a pantry
Yep, the old body sure gets beat up
Huh?
I said the old body sure gets beat up
Yeah
You get home, step into the shower, look down
You got two inches of skin missing off your shin
And where the blood is dripping ten inches down your leg and your wife goes, what happened?
And I, I don't even know what happened
Yep, you get beat up
You just get used to getting beat up
Huh?
I said you just get used to getting beat up
My father's generation
They told me to quit working in the woods because
It'll kill ya, it'll cripple ya
It's gonna make ya old young
So I decided I was gonna do something else with my life
I saw what happened to my uncles and my father
They were just beat down, broke up
They worked in the woods their whole life
But they loved it
And they will talk about it
Yeah, I'm going to be a cutter my whole life
Guess that means I'm gonna give up sleeping in though
Sleep in?
I can't sleep in
Can't do it
Not even on my days off
I've been getting up at five o'clock every morning for my entire life
You see all of them
Been getting up two hours before dawn
Sleeping in
Six a.m.
I'm not bashful though
I go to bed at eight thirty
Eight thirty, I'm in bed
Before I knew it I'd been working in the woods so long that
I thought well what am I gonna do now?
I may as well keep on logging
Don't know how to do anything else
Don't have any horses anymore
Has anybody tried looking for a job anywhere lately?
I had one put in my two weeks though
Yeah, in the woods there's no such thing as two weeks notice
It's more like hey, see ya
That's because one day, yeah, one day the boss will come out and he'll say
Oh it's gonna be a good year this year
There's gonna be work for everybody all year long
And then the next week he comes out and he says
I got it, fellas, I'm awful sorry but when you're done with that script
It's all over, you can just go on home
That is a long, rough time
Don't you stop and tithe me, don't you put me in a desk
It's for all that suffocates my soul
I need every dirt and tree to work my body to sleep
I am a logger to mow
Well the lady at the desk said retraining is the best
I can learn my way around and push that pin
At the end of my first day I watched my spirit die away
I'll starve before I push that pin again
Don't you stop and tithe me, don't you put me in a desk
It's for all that suffocates my soul
I need every dirt and tree to work my body to sleep
I am a logger to mow
I can't keep you half as poor, I can't do anything no more
To put my blood and bones to the ground
When the bark is in your blood and your shoes are full of blood
You weigh a witton in the bell
Don't you stop and tithe me, don't you put me in a desk
It's for all that suffocates my soul
I need every dirt and tree to work my body to sleep
I am a logger to mow
I guess I'll go back to the woods, the only place I'm understood
God and me know each other well
Got no hearing, got no need, my back is sore, my God knows trees
Sometimes my life's a living hell
Don't you stop and tithe me, don't you put me in a desk
It's for all that suffocates my soul
I need every dirt and tree to work my body to sleep
I am a logger to mow
I am a logger to mow
I am a logger to the ball
I am a logger to mow
applause
Oh, the things they bring home
They bring home a lot
The occasional paycheck
And a fistful of bills for that broken chainsaw
That closed call
And the gas to get to the job
Oh yeah
But, you know, I'm just glad that he brings himself home
They bring home a mess
I don't know how he gets so dirty
I mean, they are trees for heaven's sake
I try to get him to take his stuff off in the garage
But still there are wood chips everywhere
Yeah, and you know what another thing they bring home?
Poison oak
Yeah, right, it gets in their hair, it gets in their clothes
Oh, my grandma used to get poison oak so bad from washing granddad's clothes
Oh my goodness, it would get in his clothes and the whole family would get it
She used to get it so bad her eyes would swell up
Grandma's got poison oak again
You know, there is nothing you can do about it
Well, we had this one time when we all got it
Because oil stays in the washing machine
Me and the kids
I make my husband wash his clothes outside now
He has his own washer and dryer in the garage
That way it stays out of the house
Can you imagine those women out there with a wash bucket and a washboard
Washing those clothes and getting their pores all nice and open
And ready to receive that poison oak
That's a whole other level of commitment
I don't know how they did it
I know a lot of guys who get it
It doesn't bother me
Bill Boat, now there's a man who knows the woods
He gave me this special green soap for poison oak
It works like a charm
He gave it to all of his guys
In fact, I think I got a little piece of it right here
Man, is that good
There is this one fella that come in from the south somewhere
Got a job setting chokers on the high lead side
One night he comes in and he got everything packed over his shoulders
This is just about what he had to say
Isn't it Bucky
Yes
Well I'm sick of setting chokers in this dark armory
Got everything to lose, nothing to gain
I'm sick of climbing these steep hill sides
Well the seat of my brand new britches is slack
I think I got moss growing on my back
And I guess I'm a little just homesick too besides
Same old
Well I come out here to the mid-north woods
To try and make a killing
I heard the wishes was really good
And the logger's life was thrilling
I've been here quite a while and I ain't been through
A couple of times I was darn near killed
And I'm sick of setting chokers in this dark armory
Music
Music
Music
I come out here to the mid-north woods
To try and make a killing
I heard the wishes was really good
And the logger's life was thrilling
I've been here quite a while and I ain't been through
A couple of times I was darn near killed
And I'm sick of setting chokers in this dark armory
Music
Applause
Part of the job is managing discomfort
When you're so cold, wet, and miserable
That you can hardly squeeze a bug to blow off a whistle
When your hands are so cold that they hardly function
I broke down one time and I was down there as a rigging slinger
Me and this other guy lit this fire and we stood there for the longest time
Waiting for them to get the yarder going
And I tell you it was cold
It was raining hard and I had on this tin jacket and tin pants
Think about them tin clothes
They get slimy and they eventually soak all the way through
It was so cold I could even blow a whistle
So yeah, we pretty much shut her down that day
You know, taking your boots off at the end of the day
The corks
My feet must have been 400 degrees coming out of those god damn things
They get hot but you don't really notice it until the end of the day
It's when you kick them off and you go
Man, you feel the cool air on your feet
Feels good
You get used to the taste of dust in your mouth
You're spitting all day to get the grit out of your teeth
And if you're a cat skinner, you betcha
You better close your mouth
I used to work with this guy and he loved playing on that cat
He'd get in everybody's way and try to help, you know
He'd be on that cat like this
All the time and his teeth would be full of dirt
Tan oak
Tan oak
Oh man, that's some horrible yellow crud
It gets in your nose
It gets in your throat
It gets in your collar
Oh god, it's just like fiberglass back there
Choke oak's the nickname
You see, in the late summer they get this pollen underneath their leaves
And when you fall one of them, all of that pollen gets airborne
And while you're working it away, you're sucking it into your lungs
And it piles up in the back of your throat
If you look at them under a microscope
They look like little tiny sea urchins and that's why they get all locked up back in there
Sometimes it gets so bad that you go into like a kind of a gag reflex
And you know how you cure it?
You take a drink of water
You take a drink of water
Water, water, water, I'm begging you
Gargle
Then get back to it
There are a lot of smells
Especially if you're in an area that has a lot of pepperwoods
Bay laurels
They are extremely fragrant
And they are tough too, man
You can't break them
They are a tough strong wood
If you have to fall a tree through a stand of bay laurels
You are better off cutting them first
Because if you don't, you're just asking for some trouble
That's nothing
Port Orford Cedar
Now that's the scent
Oh, the smell of my strip in the morning
Man, is that nice
Yeah, Port Orford Cedar
God, I love it
You gotta love it
Yeah, you gotta love it
You love it when you come home
You know, when we were kids
We used to love to stand on the side of the road
To feel the whoosh of the logging trucks go by
They felt like they were so close you could touch them
And you know, when I was little
I used to have these nightmares about my dad's cat
You know a tractor?
I used to have nightmares that this thing was chasing me
Oh yeah, but my dad wasn't driving it though
You know, when I was little
It seemed so massive
It just scared the bejeebies out of me
We had these willows out in Carlotta where we used to live
We used to play in them
Well anyways, in my nightmare
This thing is chasing me through the willows
And it's just flattening everything
Oh my god, I was so scared of it
I think the danger with smaller timbers is that you're going fast
You're going so damn fast
That and the trees don't weigh as much
So there's not as much skill
And that means you're not making as much money
Always safer to cut bigger timber
When those trees fall, they're going to hit the ground
There's no two ways about it
Whereas you have a small Douglas fir like that over there
You can cut it down and flick it through the brush
But that thing's so light it can teeter and the bud end can come back at you
But if you have a six or seven foot thick tree
There's no way that bud end can come back at you
When that tree falls, it is going to hit
Danger is just part of the job
You can't think about it all the time
Some wives, they put it to the side
You just go on out there and make that paycheck
My philosophy, I give them over to the Lord when he walks out that door
And I take them back when he comes home
You know the feeling at the end of the day
When you're coming down off the hill
And you're thinking the front end of this truck could fall off at any minute
But this goddamn thing is going to get me home
Because I deem it will get me home
It's okay to break down on the way to work
But on the way home
On the way home
Every cell in your body is just vibrating at a pace that is
I know exactly what you're talking about
Endorphins
Yes, you're addicted to the endorphins that you feel during the day
Because when you come home that ride
Somehow you just feel transformed
Sometimes he would come home so tired from the day
He would fall asleep in his truck in the driveway
And I would have to go out and wake him up
Exactly
Because you have survived the day
And you're going home to your family
And it's going to be nice and warm and safe
To drive home can be just as worrisome as the day itself
They could fall asleep on the way home on the road
Lately he's had to drive so far to get to a job
The gas, the time, it all adds up
Oh yeah, that's the thing
You're going home
He comes home and I've got to keep the kids quiet
Because he goes to bed at 8.30 before them and wakes up at 4 a.m.
So tired
Every bone in his body is tired
That's because you're facing death
Every single day you're facing death
It's just part of the job
Somehow there's a thrill to that
You know, sometimes I wonder if he's just going to be completely worn out by the time he retires
Or if there'll be anything left for me
You courted me so heavily
You just would not give in
I never knew a lager ran
I said I never will
But the jam broke loose
Love gave way to your rock-van ready charm
I looked at you and said I do
And I knew I bought the farm
We bought that road
Hand in hand
That overlooks our lives
And it's cast and worn
Your knuckles torn
So tender and so strong
And I know we'll walk together
From this point from now on
First Neely came and then Leanne
A couple of crazy kids
You coached their teams and made their meals
When jobs were looking slim
The kids got so excited
To hear your truck on the street
And you would look so goddamn tired
And oh those stinky feet
We bought that road
Hand in hand
That overlooks our lives
And it's cast and worn
Your knuckles torn
So tender and so strong
And I know we'll walk together
From this point from now on
I learned to live with dread and fear
Of you out on the job
I put my faith in someone else
To bring you home alive
When calls came in that you were hurt
I thought well this is it
But every time you'd walk right in
Brinnin' like an idiot
A cold bright day
Not a cloud in the sky
The laundry on the line
Your shirt up blowin' in the breeze
Like your arms were waving goodbye
Then a call came in
And I hung up thinking why did they say that?
Your boots came home and your truck did too
And your dented golden hat
We bought that road
Hand in hand
That overlooks our lives
And it's cast and worn
Your knuckles torn
So tender and so strong
And I know we'll walk together
From this point from now on
We bought that road
Hand in hand
That overlooks our lives
Your hand in mine
Your knuckles torn
So tender and so strong
But now I'll leave you standing
At this point from now on
Yes now I'll leave you standing
At this point
I'll sing the sound of rivers birth and freeze
The waves so low
My axe laid down
This day is done for me
My home, my wife, my kids, my own
Are waiting there for me
I touch that cheese to sleep
I hold such sweet sweet memories
I've had my share of trials and woes
And times of misery
But now I rest in this fair goal
Where once I've felt a dream
Where once I've felt a dream
I had this dream
I have had this reoccurring dream
I have a dream and somehow it's connected to my knee problems
And how my body is holding up
I'm walking up through my strip
It's the end of the day
To get to your truck, you're walking through your sand and timber
And you're looking at what is going to come next
Always when you walk, you look down the strip and see what is going to be coming next
The next day and the next week
In my dream I come across a redwood that is so huge
It is monumentally huge
A hundred feet around
I look at it
It is in my strip, so that means it is my responsibility
But I look at it, how am I going to cut it?
I have no idea how to follow this dream
In my dream I look up and it is just a clump of these huge redwoods
And they just go on forever
Music
Applause
And when the day is over we head home to our families
We know that life is precious, we are out there falling asleep
Applause
Music
Applause
Applause
Music
Applause
Music
Applause
Applause
Applause