The Drive

Along about April or May of every year when the high county around Hemlock Butte and Rocky Ridge Lake were still socked in and buried in perhaps 10 feet or more of frozen snow at over 5,600 feet in elevation…, Lewiston, ID at barely 700 feet above sea level…, had been snow free for many months and the flower and vegetable gardeners weren’t much worried about any killing frosts.  As we would head east up US 12 along the Clearwater River toward Weippe and home in our old car, my Dad would look across the river at that giant, smoke belching, rotten-egg smelling, Potlatch Forests, Inc. pulp mill and say, “Well…, looks like they are getting mighty short of logs…, guess I better sign on for The Drive this year.”  He never did sign on when I knew him though.  He had been on a couple, or maybe a few, before I was born, or when I was too young to remember.  Strange how those little details never seem to matter…, until it is too late to sort them out.

"Rack'em Up !"

It isn’t a feeling that I get often…, or ever often got for that matter.  It’s been a good many years since I shuffled around a pool table…, and even back in the days when it was an all too common occurrence…, I did way more rackin’ myself than I ever did instructing others to do so.

But every once in while…, OK, make that, great while…, I had one of those nights when the stars all aligned and that old pool cue had a laser light in the tip.  And you could literally feel the fear and self-doubt building in the local hustler as game after game was slipping away…, and after sinking another 8-ball…, you take a long pull out of a bottle of ice cold Hamm’s…, sit it down firmly…, look him in the eye…, and say, “Rack’em up!”

First Frost..., 11-19-15

That ought to finish off the spud plants in The Garden.  Yeah…, about half of them were still green and hanging in there.  OK…, the monsoon rains had beat them down pretty good…, but they were still green laying there on the ground.

A few very short years ago…, yeah the years are slipping away way too fast these days…, I wrote a piece for The Agonist called, “Biscuits and Gravy and the First Killing Frost”.  It was dated 10/12/09.  A very late first freeze this year…, and a very early spring and summer that helped set off a fire season for the record books in the Pacific Northwest.  The dry spell during the summer browned up our grass pastures here on the Olympic Peninsula to a state that I haven’t witnessed in my 25 years here.  We got some early rain this fall…, enough to green the pastures back up…, but it didn’t seem to cool off that much.  September furnished us with some hot flashes..., but not much out of the ordinary.  October was about average…, during the days..., it seemed.  But I noticed that it didn’t cool off much during the night.

Totally Pure - Joe Bageant Drops Out

I posted pieces about Joe’s books, “Deer Hunting in America: Dispatches from the Class War” and “Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball”and “Rainbow Pie”.  I noted that it took a few essays to really set the hook at first…, but hooked I was…, and am.  Probably…, hell…, no doubt…, my favorite essay is, Ghosts of Tim Leary and Hunter S. Thompson.  Yeah…, Joe and I had a lot of likes, loves and lusts in common…, liquid libations, lovely ladies and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.  And always..., always..., some music in the background.  The dedication to that piece was a teaser too, “This essay is dedicated to Gypsy Joe Hess (1919-1988).”

The intro to it was this…,

Everything Americans think they know, they learned from a televised morality play. It's all theater. You root for some good guy and boo some bad guy. You pick your own, but you dance to the tune of the men running the show. It's mind control, pure and simple, and if there is an American immune to it, then he is probably living in a snow cave somewhere in Alaska.

-- Gypsy Joe Hess (1919-1988), prospector, self-educated philosopher and horse trader


Damn right I Googled “Gypsy Joe Hess” when I read the essay a couple years back…, and got no hits.  I do now though…, after this title piece by John Lingan was run at The Baffler - Totally Pure - Joe Bageant drops out.

Gypsy Joe Hess & Joe Bageant

The First Time

I thought it would be more painful.  It wasn’t completely painless, to be sure…, but after 63 years of absolute abstinence, there was bound to be a little discomfort, at the least.  Luckily, it didn’t last long.  It was over almost before I knew it.  I was left with some feelings of guilt…, maybe remorse.  Time will tell about that…, I guess. 

I left my name, mailing address, phone number and email address.  No physical address.  I learned that lesson many years ago.  When all I used to give out was a post office box for an address and had an unlisted phone number…, not even the IRS could track me down.  And they were trying…, family and ex-employers told me so.  Two weeks after I got a phone listed in my name for a house I was sharing with the rest of the logging crew working on an out of town job…, an IRS agent left a note on the door for me.  But I digress…, in this case I want some acknowledgement of my contribution.  Then again…, I don’t want it to turn into a constant and relentless demanding…, or begging…, for more.

I Think I'll Skip Piketty's Book

Note:  I submitted this one to The Agonist a few weeks ago.  Got a few comments on it there.

Thee Book to read these days is Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty First Century”…, or so I have heard.  But my bookcases are all overflowing and I mostly buy books on the Kindle now…, and am just finishing up Michael Hudson’s (highly recommended) “The Bubble and Beyond”…, so I don’t feel the need or desire to tackle Piketty’s “Capital…”.    At 700 pages, it seems like a lot of space to tell me what David Michael Green told me on his blog a few years ago…, and that I shared with all The Agonistas around at the time.

Let me make it simple, in case anyone wants to share this essay with their idiotic, Republican (pardon the redundancy) cousin Buford: The story of American politics over the last generation is the story of the transfer of wealth from the people to the plutocrats. If you think there is anything else essential going on here, you don’t get it.

I got it right off.  I guess it takes academics like Paul Krugman a few more pages…, say about 700 more…, before they get the point.  PK seemed genuinely amazed, on the Bill Moyers show last week, to find out that there are some people getting filthy rich…,  while some others are wishing they had the bottom of a barrel to scrape.  He admitted that he should have “realized it” himself.  I wanted to ask him if he realized that upwards of 90% of the additional Keynesian Stimulus money that he keeps wanting to throw at this Great Recession would go right into the pockets of those same plutocrats that have been sucking it up before it hits the masses for the last 40 years?  I’m not sure he really “gets it”.

Complete List of All Stories

Just over to the right here..., I have added a link to a "Complete List of Stories".  This page is mostly for me.  Searching for stories when I don't remember when I wrote them is somewhat tedious..., at the least..., on the home page.  So now I can search for titles here and know just what year and month to click on to find them.  And now you do too, if you have a favorite old story you would like to read again..., at least I hope there some you would like to read again :)

Birthday Eve Ruminations

The Clearwater River looking down
on the Greer Bridge

Well…, I was going to say that I have now put my sixty-second winter safely behind me.  But after the winters that most of the folks east of me suffered through in the winter of ’13-’14…, I won’t be making any rash weather predictions.  Monumental snow and cold in the mid-west and northeast…, drought in California and Texas, hurricanes and floods, disappearing glaciers and the arctic ice pack.  There are still a good many politicians that are climate change deniers…, but nobody with a lick of sense or smidgen of self-respect will try to deny that what we have been doing…, and are continuing to do…, to this poor old planet is causing anything but great damage.  And there are some well-respected and credentialed folks like James Hanson and Guy R. McPherson who say that what he have already done has pushed us past the tipping point of being able to do anything about stopping runaway climate change in the not so distant future. 

So I will try to drown that sobering thought with a few more ice cold Hamm’s as I wait for midnight to officially put my sixty-second year behind me…, and listen to a great song from Tom Russell that brings back a lot of old memories.

Dave McIntosh

Born on 6-19-56
Passed  11-22-13

The last few years I have been doing a bit more than my share of bitching about getting old.  But last weekend after I completed the chores and was feeling ever older, I had a few cold beers in The Saddle Bar(n) and I started feeling a little frisky and particularly witty…, so I thought I better go into the house, log on to Facebook and have a little fun.  Yeah…, I thought I had a couple of good one-liners to post up and hope for a few “likes”.  Then I saw that an old friend, Dave McIntosh, who was four years younger than me…, wasn’t going to get any older.  The only words I could muster to another dear friend and his partner of 20 plus years were, “Oh my gosh Ellen…, oh my gosh…”.  And it still isn’t easy coming up with any words.

We called him “Snake” when he was a high school freshman playing basketball.  A little on the skinny side, mostly knees and elbows, but lightning quick, and sneaky too.  In the later years after high school, he put on a little weight and was a big, raw boned, lanky, fireball throwing fast pitch softball pitcher.  Unfortunately for our Fraser Hippie ball team…, he played for the Timber Inn from Pierce.  I’m sure it is a result of my old age and the Alzheimer’s that I can’t recall for you all the hits I used to get off him!!! Yeah…, Dave would get a laugh out of that one, for reasons I swear..., I can’t recall.  But he was easy to get a laugh out of.  In fact he was always laughing…, well…, almost always.  .  I do remember that one game when he was just learning to pitch…, and having a little bit of a control problem.  Of course our team was getting on him about it and he started getting a little frustrated, and like sharks smelling blood…, we laid it on.  You could see that he was getting mad…., and my cousin Jimmy started calling him “Mad Mac”.  Dave pretty much lost it there on the mound and said, “I’ll see you after the game Spencey!”…, and that wasn’t all he said.  When he gets up near those pearly gates on that field of dreams he is on his way to…, he’s gonna have some explaining to do about his language that day.  But after the game, he laughed it off…, and we were all real relieved.  Yeah…, he was always trying to make a joke out of everything.  He was always the life of the party…, though he wasn’t trying to be…, he was just trying to make sure that everyone was enjoying themselves as much as he was.  None did…, but it wasn’t for his lack of effort to make it so.

I never had the pleasure of working on the same logging crew with Dave…, but I have no doubt that all the glowing reports of his abilities, efforts and ethics that I heard from others in the business were true.  I can attest to the fact that he could be Johnnie on the spot and keep his cool in a pressure situation though.  I mentioned his role when I wrecked the crummy in the Robert Earl Keen story and video…, and Jimmy’s wife Debbie let me know that was only half the story.  Dave had to drive Jimmy and I on home that night.  I cropped out the missing finger on John Thompson’s left hand in the photo above…, Dave and another friend just happened to be on their way to Orofino when they happened upon the accident that resulted in the loss of that finger.  He got us to the hospital and a scene there that we needn’t describe here.  We got to have a good laugh about that one when I got to see him and John this summer out on the North Fork.

Dave wasn’t a singer or musician like the fellow in this Eagles song…, but he was certainly an entertainer who touched a lot of hearts.  So, this one’s for you Dave…, and for you too Ellenor.

One More Mountain To Climb..., One More River To Run

While putting together the “Tribute to Julie” video I went through a lot of old pictures from back in my “running days”..., and was reminded of my feeble attempt to write some song lyrics one night at our hunting camp at Weitas Meadows.  If I had met Julie around that period of my life I would probably have been writing it for her.  The truth of the matter is..., I was wishing I had a girlfriend to write it for.  If I had known her then my life would probably have been a lot different.  Anyway..., here are the lyrics and some old pictures.

One More Mountain To Climb..., One More River To Run 

Raindrops are fallin' on this old canvas tent

Are you still wonderin' just where it was I went?

Huntin' season’s almost over, tomorrow there’ll be snow

I’m sittin’ here sippin' whiskey, wonderin' where to go?

Maybe I’ll head south, just followin’ the sun

Hope you’ll forgive me someday, for what it was I done.

There’s just one more mountain to climb, one more river to run

I’ll be back to get you babe, when I find that shinin' sun.

But I can’t be happy with you, until I’m satisfied with me

I’ll be back to get you someday, just you wait and see.

Guess I should have stayed that mornin’, just to say goodbye

But knew I couldn’t leave, if I had to watch you cry.

Remember almost drownin' in the rapids, below that rocky point?

We laughed about it later, as we passed around a joint

But that night as I held you, by the dyin' campfire light

I could feel you holdin' on just a little bit too tight.

There’s just one more mountain to climb, one more river to run

I’ll be back to get you babe, when I find that shinin' sun.

But I can’t be happy with you, until I’m satisfied with me

I’ll be back to get you someday, just you wait and see.

The horses are gettin' restless, guess it’s time to hit the trail

Next hunter headed out, I’ll have him drop this letter in the mail.

Can’t say that I would blame you, if you hate me now

But if you can hold on a little longer, I swear I’ll make it up somehow.

And I was lyin' just a little, in that line about goodbye

The truth is babe, I didn’t want you to see the teardrops in my eye.

There’s just one more mountain to climb, one more river to run

I’ll be back to get you babe, when I find that shinin' sun.

But I can’t be happy with you, until I’m satisfied with me

I’ll be back to get you someday, hope you’re still waitin' there for me.