In the beginning, I thought the worst part of my new job was crawling out of bed at three o’clock in the morning. Then came the vicious winter storms that year, howling in off the Gulf of Alaska, with wave after wave of rain and sleet that bit sharply into your face like a fist full of needles.<\/p>\n
In the midst of the cold downpours, I did what the other “paper boys” in the city did that sodden winter. Weighted down fore and aft with a canvas bag stuffed full of newspapers, I crouched over the handlebars of my bike in the predawn darkness\u2014and kept pedaling. My new job was delivering Portland\u2019s morning newspaper, The Oregonian<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n My route fanned out from the eastern end of the Burnside Bridge. In the back streets, I delivered papers to aging bungalows and rows of sagging fiats and rooming houses\u2014while along lower Burnside Street, I covered shabby hotels, beer joints, storefront cafes, mom and pop shops, and the cheap apartment buildings of the tenderloin.<\/p>\n At the old Northern Hotel next to the bridge, I delivered two papers every morning to a whorehouse on the second floor. One morning, a thin, working girl with a sad, little smile on her lips presented me with a fat glazed doughnut. I had just plopped their two papers on a round table in the entrance. The doughnut was scrumptious.<\/p>\n To this day, I can recall the rich perfume of spaghetti sauce that saturated some of those old buildings, where I lugged papers up two or three flights of stairs. Other tenements, though, had a different feel to them. Gaunt shadows. And the smell of dank, dark hallways.<\/p>\n By five-thirty or six o\u2019clock each morning, I usually made it back into bed, where I\u2019d try for one more hour of sleep before crawling out again to get ready for school. I was in my junior year at Washington High.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The Oregonian<\/strong><\/em> heralded the opening of San Francisco\u2019s magnificent Golden Gate Bridge with a horizontal photo spread across the front page,, all eight columns, It was a proud day for the entire nation.<\/p>\n The new Golden Gate was the world\u2019s longest suspension bridge with twin towers soaring 746 feet above the water (as high as a 65-story building). Today, this monumental example of sculptural art and engineering excellence is the most photographed man-made structure in the world.<\/p>\n One foolhardy ambition of mine a few years after the opening was to make a low-altitude run under the Golden Gate Bridge in a Marine Corps TBF. Never did I get a chance to pull it off.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n As a teenager, I hated the sort of sedate travel book that celebrated a country\u2019s beauty and colorful people. I much preferred adventure, truthful adventure, even better if it happened to be an ordeal\u2014say, a shipwreck, a marooning, a kidnapping by Bedouins in the desert, or an attack by pirates in the China Seas. Richard Halliburton was more to my youthful taste. I read his books with enormous relish. I earned an \u201cA\u201d from Miss Kohns for a book report I did on his rollicking best seller, Royal Road to Romance<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n Halliburton was a dare devil American author and adventurer during the \u201820s and ’30s whose unabashed, enthusiastic style rankled the critics and delighted his youthful admirers. He wrote about his own spectacular feats in various parts of the world, as he embarked on dangerous adventures such as following the legendary routes of Ulysses, Cortes and Alexander the Great. At the age of thirty-nine, he disappeared while attempting to sail his own Chinese junk, the Sea Dragon<\/strong><\/em>, from Hong Kong to San Francisco.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Shanghai, 1930s, was like, a mystery wrapped in an enigma\u2014at once ancient and utterly up-to-date. A paradoxical crossroad of East and West.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n A raffish, cosmopolitan China Coast city of decadent cultures and current, international intrigue.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n That was the mystique of Shanghai. I had always found it alluring. However, the city as I envisioned it changed violently during my junior year, when waves of Japanese Mitsubishi bombers attacked the heart of Shanghai^ gutting the old districts along the Whangpoo River, and smashing into the famed International Settlement. In follow up action, a Japanese invasion force landed, eventually capturing the sprawling metropolis.<\/p>\n The attack was no surprise, Imperial Japans militaristic dream of a Rising Sun<\/strong><\/em> empire throughout Asia had been building for years. In 1931, Japanese armies had seized Manchuria. Worldwide condemnation followed, but Japan thumbed its nose at the rest of the world, set up a puppet\u00a0state in Manchuria, and withdrew from the League of Nations.<\/p>\n In the autumn of 1937, the Nipponese launched the next phase in their plan for control of Asia, They launched all-out attacks up and down the China Coast. In quick succession, Japanese forces captured Peking,. Tientsin, Hangchow\u2014and after a lengthy siege, the richest prize of them all, the City of Shanghai.<\/p>\n Then came Japan’s brutal attack on Nanking, newly established capital of the Republic of China. When that city finally fell on December 13, 1937, Japanese soldiers began a massive orgy of gruesome atrocity seldom matched in the chronicles of human cruelty. Historians call it \u201cThe Rape of Nanking\u201d<\/p>\n It was an ominous portent of things to come.<\/p>\n ***<\/span><\/p>\n Until Frank Simmons came along, I\u2019d Frank Simmons was the new man in my mother\u2019s life. He was a quiet man. Amiable, Soft spoken. Yet there was an air of authority about him and a low-key ruggedness that grabbed people\u2019s attention, I liked him. He had worked in the woods all of his life. As a youth, he had risked death as a high climber, topping tall trees for Weyerhauser in the days before the proud title of logger became a term of disdain.<\/p>\n Early on, however, Frank quit working for somebody else and went out on. his own. He said that he scraped a little money together and became a gyppo operator, a trade he\u2019d learned from his father. Gyppo was a slang term for a tough breed of small, independent logging and sawmill operators who competed with the big boys.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a rare thing in the timber industry today for a man and an employee or two to fall, log, haul, mill and sell a stick of wood.<\/p>\n During the \u201830s and \u201840s, however, the Pacific Northwest woods were filled with these wily, self-reliant gyppos.<\/p>\n \u201cAnybody with a ‘dozer and a good saw or a portable mill and a little luck could set up and squeeze out a livin\u2019\u2014or even a fortune!\u2019 he told my grandfather, Jim Dewey. The two of them were kindred spirits and heavy coffee drinkers. They got along like a couple of old pals.\u00a0Sometimes I would fade, into a corner and listen to them talk.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Frank said he still owned the remains of a downed sawmill, a cabin and some timberland in the foothills of Clackamas County. But he said his shoestring, gyppo days were over.<\/p>\n Now in his mid-fifties, Frank was one of an elite group of independent logging experts known as timber cruisers. The big lumber companies and logging outfits would hire these savvy, old pros to survey and evaluate stretches of uncut timberlands prior to buying or logging the land. Frank would \u201ccruise\u201d remote stands of timber, all alone, sometimes for weeks on end. Then he would come back with his notes and draft a written, mapped-out report on the timber resource\u2014quality and quantity.<\/p>\n The companies respected his expertise and they paid him well for it, Frank Simmons remained a man who answered only to himself.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Jack Kerouac, chronicler of the beat generation, was a man of my time. We were both born early in 1922, early in the \u201cRoaring Twenties.\u201d We both raced through adolescence during the bittersweet 1930s.<\/p>\n When I first read Kerouac\u2019s freewheeling book, On the Road<\/strong><\/em>, I was struck by the simplicity of his narrative structure: the story of two guys hitchhiking across the country in search of something they don\u2019t really find, coming all the way hack hopeful of something else. Inevitably, it pulled A tall, gangly, good-looking guy with intense gray-blue eyes and a Viking\u2019s lust for adventure, Cyrus R. Nims was his name.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n He was a year and a half older and a head taller than I. Already out of high school and looking for excitement in unfamiliar places, Cy hankered for a berth on a tramp steamer. Stringent maritime requirements postponed that dream. Then he began exploring with me the idea of spending the summer hitchhiking along the final leg of the historic Old Oregon Trail\u2014in reverse. He wanted to back track through the spectacular Columbia River Gorge east from Portland all the way to the high country up around the\u00a0Wallowa Wilderness Area.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe we can get a job picking fruit in Hood River or a job working the wheat harvest in La Grande. You know, that\u2019s where we could make some real money.\u201d<\/p>\n I,\u00a0 too, had an adventurous foot itch. After lining up a summer replacement on my paper route, I was rarin\u2019 to go. My mother warily agreed to the plan. When the time came, Cy\u2019s parents dumped us off on the outskirts of the city, along with our duffel bags and bedding rolls.<\/p>\n We left on one of those postcard-perfect June days in Portland when the rain stops and the. low-hanging cover of gray clouds gives way to sunshine and deep blue sky.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Hitchhiking on the road that summer, we came to know well the raw, windy backend of a flatbed fruit truck, or the jostling backend of a pickup truck whose rusted metal floor was strewn with a patina of dirt, sawdust and nails. And we came to appreciate the sagging back seat of an overloaded jalopy or the occasional back seat of an aging sedan.<\/p>\n Sometimes we stood by the road with thumbs held high for hours on end, as the cars and trucks chugged by. In desperation, once, we tried an old trick from the \u201820s.<\/p>\n And. it worked. We hid our gear in the brush just off the road, A middle-aged couple stopped in a big Buick. Quickly, we grabbed our gear and hopped in before they could drive off.<\/p>\n They turned out to be a jovial pair. She talked, talked, talked. Between the incessant chatter, he told us a few bad jokes.<\/p>\n East of Troutdale, where the river slashes through the Cascade Mountains, the historic, two-lane Columbia. River Highway climbed and curved its way high up along steep, craggy cliffs, through tunnels in the rock, over graceful, arched bridges and alongside one jubilant waterfall after another: Latourell, Bridal Veil Falls, Horsetail Falls, Mist Falls, Wahkeena Falls and the famed Multnomah Falls, highest of them all.<\/p>\n A young couple in a wheezing, old Ford picked us up and drove us over\u00a0that narrow, cliff-hugging road, a marvel of early 2.Qtil<\/sup> century engineering. When they stopped for a rest at Multnomah Falls, we walked down the trail together to the viewpoint at the base of the falls. As I stood there staring up into that mesmerizing, 600- foot drop of cascading water, a feeling of de ja vu\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>stole over me. Across my mind flitted images of standing on that same ground as a small child, clutching tightly my dad’s hand. I dimly remembered that we had trudged up a trail that curves around and across a footbridge spanning the deep chasm of the falls.<\/p>\n With the building of a fast, interstate highway at river level during the mid-1950s, much of the high, curving, Columbia River Highway was abandoned. Landslides buried parts of the road. Yet even today, most of the graceful bridges remain standing and quiet, mossy sections of the proud old road still lead to enthralling waterfalls. For me, they will always be the jewels of the Columbia River Gorge.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In the Hood River Valley, we had trouble finding a job. It was too early in the season for the apple harvest. Ugly \u201cNo Hiring\u201d signs turned us back at one orchard after another. Finally, we landed a job picking cherries. The orchard boss put us to work immediately, along with a gang of migrant workers from California, We camped in the woods, on the edge of the migrant worker camp. And we cooked our pork and beans and boiled coffee over a small fire of our’ own that we set in a clearing.<\/p>\n I think Cy and I were adequate cherry pickers, averaging more than a hundred pounds a day. One time, Cy picked almost 125 pounds. Yet at the end of each sweaty, daylong shift, we found ourselves credited on the books with tinder a dollar a day. I think the pay was less than a penny a pound.<\/p>\n No doubt about it, the last, painful throes of the Great Depression could still be felt up and down the agricultural valleys of the West.<\/p>\n Still, we remained in high spirits. The intoxicating feel of freedom on the road and the pride of making it on our own, day after day, was a heady mix. While working in the orchards, we even burst out in occasional song. Like many teenagers of the time, we knew the lyrics of just about every popular song of the day. High up in the trees, we\u2019d challenge each other, One of us would shout out the name of a song. The other would respond with the opening verse or opening chorus line. The two of us would then flail away on the full chorus, lusty and loud.<\/p>\n Nice Work If You Can Get It\u2014The Dipsey Doodle\u2014My Funny Valentine\u2014 You Must have been a Beautiful Baby\u2014The Flat Foot Floogie\u2014What\u2019s New?\u2014I\u2019m An Old\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Cowhand\u2014Change Partners and Dance With Me\u2014Two Sleepy People\u2014Music,<\/strong><\/em>Maestro, Please. <\/strong><\/em>We worked our way through all of them\u2014and then some.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Cy Nims was in love. He\u2019d met a Grant High School beauty named Crystal Ayers during spring term. Every night or two, he scrawled a postcard to her, while I curled up close to the fire and squinted at one of the two paperbacks I\u2019d tucked into my duffel bag. One was Jack London\u2019s <\/em>White Fang<\/strong>, The other, I don\u2019t remember. Five years after that summer on the road, smack in the middle of World War II, Cy married Crystal Ayers\u2014a joyful marriage that has lasted more than fifty-five years.<\/em><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n One Saturday night, we hitched a ride into Hood River to look around. We weren’t in town more than twenty minutes before two nondescript local girls picked us up in some kind of jazzed-up cabriolet. They said they were on their way to a swinging dance on the waterfront. A bit of double talk and some kidding around on both sides resulted in their taking us to the dance and paying our way. The dance was held on the top deck of a decorated old barge anchored on the river, where a raggle-taggle Hood River band tried in vain all evening long to stay on the beat.<\/p>\n As closing time approached, the girls began talking about going out for something to eat. Cy and I had about two-bits in our jeans, between us, We were embarrassed, but too proud to admit it.<\/p>\n That’s when we went to the men\u2019s room and never came back. We ditched the girls and headed back to the campsite.<\/p>\n As I think back now on our behavior, it was shameful. Opprobrious!<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n When the Hood River job closed down, we drifted on to The Dalles, where the Columbia River rumbles through a narrow canyon on its way to the Pacific, It was here the ruts of the Oregon Trail came to a complete stop\u2014blocked by the rugged Cascade Mountains. In the early years of the trail, before discovery of the Barlow Pass around ML Hood, there was only one solution. The emigrants floated their covered wagons down the Columbia River. Because of the swirling rapids, the trip down river was especially treacherous. A risky business.<\/p>\n On the outskirts of The Dalles, we camped in a hobo\u00a0jungle located in a dump of trees not far from the railroad tracks. We camped with a few older, teenage hobos from somewhere in the east. They\u2019d been riding the rails for months, living off odd jobs and handouts. And they introduced us to the remains of a Mulligan Stew, simmered over the campfire all day long in a gallon-sized can they called the Gumboat. What went in a Mulligan? Whatever any kid had scrounged up and stuffed in his pocket or his pack. Onions, potatoes, an ear of corn, ediblegreens, cabbage, dandelions, bits and pieces of meat or strips of chicken, a handful of navy beans, lentils, whatever.<\/p>\n Huddled around the campfire that night, Cy and. I talked about hopping a freight ourselves, for the long road back, once we got to wherever the hell we were going. One of the young hoboes, the one they called \u201cRusty,\u201d was more open to talk than the others. He gave us good advice on how to keep from killing ourselves if we went for an open boxcar already rolling,<\/p>\n \u201cYou run along the left side of the open door. You reach up and grab the big latch handle on the side and, then, with a heave, you swing your legs up to the right and into the car, Got it?\u201d<\/p>\n It sounded like a tricky move\u2014one that I wanted to practice first on a sidetracked boxcar<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n East of the rain country, east of Mount Hood and the Cascade Mountains, we began hitchhiking across Oregon\u2019s hot dry lands, pushing our luck. One scorching day, we stood under the white-hot sun from dawn to dusk without a ride. That celestial night, with canteens almost empty, we slept in the sagebrush under immense rolling skies. Two na\u00eff’s<\/strong><\/em> in the desert.<\/p>\n The following day, a few miles further east, we were dropped off alongside a small creek, zig-zagging its way toward the Columbia. For us, that rippling little creek lined with spindly willow trees was a lush, longed-for, paradise in the desert. We spent several hours, memorable hours, bathing, scrubbing, keeping cool and just horsing around.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The long, straight stretch leading into Pendleton was flat and dark in the night, A trucker dropped us off in the old Round-Up town around midnight. We had no idea where to roll out in the dark. We settled on a low, brush- filled island in the Umatilla River, which runs through the town.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That was a mistake. The hour that followed was a nightmare, We found ourselves brushing away strange hordes of crawling, biting insects inside of our bedding, while swatting swarms of mosquitoes around our heads, We fought a losing battle. Sleep was impossible, Finally,, we packed up our gear and stumbled back into town.<\/p>\n For the remainder of the night,, itching, dirty and swollen with bites, we wandered aimlessly around the streets of Pendleton,, where it seemed that everybody in town was roaring drunk\u2014except for stone-eyed girls, insinuatingly decorated, who beckoned provocatively from dimly lit doorways.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n When we pulled out of the old cow town, heading east, the gods were smiling. Shortly after dawn, on our first ride of the morning, a wheat farmer in a battered truck picked us up and took us all the way through the range lands of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, The tribal lands spread out around the base of the rugged. Blue Mountains. The farmer was an affable old geezer, but he had an ugly habit of chewing a wad of tobacco while driving. As we rolled down the highway, he would spit out the truck window between his thoughts.<\/p>\n He tossed cold water on our idea of working the wheat harvest and making good money. He informed us that we were too early for that year\u2019s harvest. Then, after shooting another gob of spit out the window, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and gave it to us straight. \u201cFellas,\u201d he said, \u201cyou also gotta understand. Most of the harvest crews hereabouts are regulars we\u2019ve already got lined up. Ya know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n We knew what he meant.<\/p>\n Beyond the Indian lands, he dropped us off at Emigrant Springs., which had been a popular campsite for emigrants on the Oregon Trail. We were bone tired, Settling in at the springs, we cleaned up, washed some clothes, set a fire for our fried spuds and boiled coffee, gnawed on some beef jerky and collapsed for a day or two.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I have trouble reconstructing how we made it to the very edge of the remote Wallowa Wilderness Area and a small town named Cove. I think we were already beyond the Blue Mountains, sitting on a park bench in the town of La Grande,, when we first heard rumors they needed fruit pickers in a valley further east, near the base of 10,000-foot Eagle Cap.<\/p>\n The\u00a0searing heat in La Grande topped 113 degrees. I remember that we lavished a few of our remaining coins on two quarts of cool skim milk. Under a shade tree in a stifling city park, each of us chug-a-lugged down a full quart. Then we faced up to the bad news. Our meager, duffle bag food supply was low. We were almost flat broke. Down to nickels and dimes. We needed work now, no fooling around. That\u2019s when we set out to chase dawn the job rumors\u2014rumors that for once, turned out to be true. East of La Grande,, near the isolated town of Cove, we got a job picking raspberries.<\/p>\n This was it. In all of our youthful forays that summer, we never had it so good. We\u2019d found our fairy godmother. I can\u2019t remember her name, but I remember she was a short, barrel-shaped woman with curly red hair. She owned a big berry farm with a fast ripening crop.<\/p>\n For some unexplained reason, she took an immediate liking to Cy and me. Close to a creek at the far end of her property, several of her migrant pickers and their families had set up a small encampment. But that wasn\u2019t for us. She said we could sleep in her barn and we could build our campfire in a small clearing next to her garden and her fresh water pump.<\/p>\n That was only the beginning, On the first night of our stay, she brought out to us a platter full of leftover meat loaf. Her own recipe, she said. And we hadn\u2019t even started working for her yet<\/strong><\/em>. That night, we attacked that meat loaf. We wolfed it down. Then we rolled out our bedding on a pile of hay in her barn and went to sleep with our bellies full for the first time in days. Strange noises from a cow nibbling at the hay near our bedding didn\u2019t bother us one bit.Shortly after dawn there came another unexpected surprise. Fresh eggs!<\/strong><\/em> On that first morning and every morning of the berry harvest, our inexplicable, redheaded boss supplied us with fresh eggs for breakfast. With all that, we were still paid the going rate for picking berries.<\/p>\n In return, we worked hard for our keep. I think we did a good job, although I couldn\u2019t break a continuing habit of nibbling at ripe raspberries while I worked.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The town of Cove was an odd little place. It amounted to one main street, maybe six blocks long, located in a remote valley on the edge of the Wallowas. Yet it\u00a0had a community park and modern, Olympic-sized swimming pool worthy of a Beverly Hills. In the summer heat, the pool attracted young and old from miles around.<\/p>\n Cy and I had no swim trunks with us. Besides, we couldn’t afford the thirty-cent fee. One weekend, we spent an hour sitting outside the iron fence just watching the human parade. Cy, with those sun-pale eyes of his, spotted her first. Climbing out of the pool, wet and glistening, in a clinging, almost transparent swimsuit, was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life.<\/p>\n That was my enthusiastic opinion at that moment. She was dazzlingly endowed. It was a pleasure just to watch her breathe.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Cy celebrated his eighteenth birthday during our stay at the raspberry farm by sitting comfortably up in the hayloft, staring out the barn window, and writing Crystal.<\/p>\n We were both entranced by the awe-inspiring view out that window\u2014a direct view of the wild Wallowa Mountains, looming east of the valley. Eagle Cap, Sacajawea Peak, China Cap, Chief Joseph Mountain, Aneroid and other jagged peaks stretched to the horizon, all capped with snow, all rising sharply to the sky.<\/p>\n A little-known mountain range for many years, the Wallowa Wilderness Area today is recognized as an American treasure.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The berry-picking job came to a close. And time was running out. We’d been on the road for almost two months and we had no idea how long it would take us to hitchhike all the way back to Portland, On our last day, we collected our pay, said farewell to our friendly, redheaded boss, shouldered our gear and headed out.<\/p>\n By the time we got to La Grande we\u2019ddecided that we would try to hop a freight and speed up our return trip. A worker on the railroad siding told us a westbound freight was due to stop in La Grande at midnight.<\/p>\n \u201cBut watch out for the bulls!\u2019 he warned. \u201cThey\u2019ll chase you off.\u201d<\/p>\n We hid in some tall, weedy grass a few hundred yards up track from the railroad station and sacked out for hours, awaiting the midnight call; Sometime before midnight, when I heard the distant whistle of a train approaching, my adrenals began pumping. We gathered our gear, positioned ourselves and waited. Then, out of the night came the big freight, hurtling down the track toward us, whistle blowing, throttle wide open.<\/p>\n In total frustration, we stood there and watched helplessly as the train roared through the station without stopping. Eventually, the flashing red light of the caboose disappeared around a curve. ***<\/p>\n Sometime in early August, we made it home\u2014dog tired, dirty, hungry, proudly independent, with about twenty hard-earned dollars still locked in our jeans.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Over the years, I\u2019ve sometimes thought about what I gained out of that adolescent summer on the road, besides a batch of marvelous memories to share with Cy Nims and a twenty-dollar bill.<\/p>\n Foremost, I believe the experience helped to bolster my youthful self-confidence\u2014much needed at a time when I was fused with teenage insecurities.<\/p>\n In addition, I gained an enormous, life-long respect for those brave and determined people who walked the full length of the Old Oregon Trail\u2014a grueling and dangerous 2000-mile journey that ended in the fertile Willamette Valley where Cy and I were born.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The heart of Frank Simmons’ broken down sawmill up in Clackamas County, on the edge of the Mt. Hood National Forest, was one of those old circular-saw-and-carriage contraptions\u2014the kind you’d see the villains, tying hapless maidens to in the old-time melodramas. The improbable arrangement had broken down. Frank planned to sell the mill, nearby cabin and adjacent land.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, he could sell off piles of slab wood and scrap logs as firewood if they were cut to size. Frank had one fellow already hired on the site,, but he needed help. That\u2019s where Cy and I came in. Frank offered us a job for the rest of the summer, sawing wood. The money looked good. We said, \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The third man in our crew was \u201cButch\u201d something-or- other. He was a beefy, ex-football player and Gonzaga dropout from Spokane. Using a five-foot, two-handled, \u00a0crosscut saw, the three of us went to work. We rotated jobs. Two of us on the saw. One of us stacking and resting in between.<\/p>\n The first day or two was pure hell. I was stiff. Hot. Sore. Aching, Sweat poured down in rivulets. For awhile there, I didn’t think I could take it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Somehow, my teenage body got into the swing of it, however, and by the end of the first week, I hardened to the task.<\/p>\n We bunked in a small cabin on Frank\u2019s land, drawing water from a well next to the cabin. We shared cooking and cleaning chores. At night, we played rummy or pinochle or just stretched out and talked.<\/p>\n Cy Nims and I thoroughly enjoyed the ruminating talks we had on the road that summer. And what a wide and wild array of subjects we touched upon\u2014<\/p>\n What the future might hold, in store for us\u2014Howard Hughes and his new round the world speed record\u2014names of the constellations\u2014baseball and the Portland Beavers\u2019 losing season\u2014pretty girls\u2014the Spanish Civil War\u2014 learning to fly\u2014good movies and bad movies\u2014Art Deco\u2014 juicy cheeseburgers\u2014FDR and the Great Depression\u2014 Orson Welles\u2019 recent radio scare, \u201cWar of the Worlds\u201d\u2014modern architecture\u2014Benny Goodman, the King of Swing\u2014Adolph Hitler\u2014the launching of the S.S. \u201cQueen Elizabeth”\u2014life cycle of the Chinook salmon\u2014working at the Portland, Rose Festival\u2014favorite books we\u2019d read and some we hadn\u2019t\u2014our parents\u2014Don Budge\u2019s Grand Slam championships\u2014adventure in the South Seas\u2014Fascism vs. Communism\u2014skiing at Mi. Hood\u2014the University of Oregon Web foots\u2014our favorite movie stars\u2014Willamette riverboats\u2014the blues and all that jazz\u2014\u2022and on and on and on.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nnever heard of a gyppo operator\u2014or a. timber cruiser. I soon learned.<\/p>\n
\nme back to my own summer of \u201938, when I went on the road with Cy. Nims.<\/p>\n
\nI have no idea what went wrong. But we felt like damned fools. Early the following morning, we were back on the road, thumbs held high.<\/p>\n