Ramblings With Ron: A Texted Photo Meander

Randomly Received Southeast Alaska Pictures and Anecdotes From My Dad

My pa is currently managing a rather unruly and dramatic herd of timber fallers on an island in Southeast Alaska. That in and of itself would be a rather tall undertaking, but he also had to hire all of those tree cutters while the logging camp itself was under construction. Things like non-normal snowfall, my dad's "assistant to the regional manager" hiring unqualified people without Dad's approval and bringing them to Alaska on the company's dime, and almost severed appendages have added an additional amount of crazy sauce to the logging stew.

Last night's conversation with Dad revolved around him catching one of his cutters "long thumbing." In this particular camp, the timber fallers are busheling. This term means that they have to keep track of the volume of board feet that they fall, and they are paid so much dollar wise per 1,000 board feet of logs that they cut. You can earn a lot of money this way. There is also the temptation for some folks to pad their figures, and yesterday Dad had to have a not so fun conversation with an employee who was attempting to do just that. Dad's top cutter, a twenty-one year old wunderkind has been averaging 25,000 board feet a day. That is a herculean, but achievable, amount of timber volume, so imagine his amusement and irritation when another cutter turned in his daily slip with 47,000 board feet as the volume total.

"I gave it back to him and told him he might want to double check his figures," My father told me as I simultaneously tried to play a hand of Magic and talk to him last night, "and the genius handed it back to me with a total of 51,000!"

After a bit of an investigation, and a series of fairly intense beration, the heavy-handed creature has been allowed one more chance. Apparently the man's personal circumstances are pretty dire, so I hope that he gets the second chance memo and sticks with it.

In reality, that bit of workplace shenanigans was nothing compared to what occurred earlier this week. On Tuesday, Dad's former trouble causing assistant, whom had been recently demoted to timber faller only, decided that it was a good idea to try to buck up a short log one handed. Logs tend to move when cut, and when the log buckled, the man's saw fell to the ground, and he fell with it. His wrist hit the still moving chain and was almost completely severed. Dad recounted the aftermath to me this past Tuesday:

"J came stumbling out of the woods with a glove over his wound." Dad began, "I grabbed his arm and put it in the air as I stuffed him into the crew bus. Thankfully there was a chopper getting ready to take off to Ketchikan for some supplies, and I ran out and flagged them down. We had him on the way to the hospital in less than 15 minutes from arm mangle."

Dad continued on with his tale by telling me that the poor guy has to have tendons taken from his knee, hip, and elbow to reconstruct the almost severed part of his arm. That just doesn't sound like fun, and I will be doubly sure to grasp my chainsaw even tighter in honorary remembrance of this story!

This picture is of the island that I spent many a summer playing little league and softball on. Yes, our ball field was on its own island!"

We also have chatted about various other things, like how the corporation that owns the timber sale's representative is a guy that went to school with me, that the room Dad was staying in until camp was built overlooked the old baseball island and what I fondly refer to as the "pneumonia house," and how he likes to torture my husband with pictures of sail boats that come floating into the harbor. It's pretty cool to have a dad that is an adventurer, for I never know what I am going to hear when I pick up the phone and we yell,"COME OOOOONNNNNN!"[1] to each other.

[1] Dad and I never say hello when we begin one of our phone conversations, rather we yell the phrase "Come on" into the speaker as loudly and obnoxiously as possible. It doesn't matter what form of company we are among, the yelling of that phrase of greeting occurs, loudly, and with billy goat-like braying intensity.

All of the images in this post were taken on my Father's archaic smart phone, on an island somewhere in Southeast Alaska.