The Times of Your Life Read online

  The analyst persuaded his stock brokerage firm to hire a recently-discharged army major to personally investigate the quantity of what could be a major resource of timber for what the analyst predicted would become the post-war housing boom in America. Accepting his assignment, the major packed his Gladstone travel bag and boarded the crack overnight Twentieth Century Limited for Chicago. At his train depot in the Windy City he hailed a waiting Parmalee taxi, especially built to rush transcontinental passengers from one of Chicago’s several train stations across Chicago to another, as there were no other fast links. At his second station he boarded another train to make the long two-night journey to Portland, where he transferred to a third train, this one a milk train that chugged slowly south through the Willamette Valley and on into the hills of southern Oregon, finally arriving at the old brick railroad station in Roseburg.

  De-training, the major asked around town for someone who could attest to the magnitude of these vast forests of Douglas fir trees. Several people promptly directed him to their local authority, who they respectfully referred to as “Old Fred.” They told the major Old Fred held forth in his suite at the Rose Hotel “down on Main Street,” a few blocks away.

  “He’s our timber cruiser,” the major was advised.

  “What’s a timber cruiser,” the major asked.

  The local laughed. “You’re not from around here.”

  “New York.”

  The local laughed louder. “No timber in New York, I guess.”

  The major shook his head.

  “Well, a timber cruiser ain’t no boat. You see, Old Fred, he cruises through the timber astride his horse, and then he tells you how many board feet of timber—that’s lumber, ya know,” the local advised and went on, “there’s a-growin’ up thar in them thar hills.”

  “What’s a board foot?” the major asked.

  Trying to be tolerant of this city man, the local explained the accepted measurement of saw timber and saw logs, “One foot square by one inch thick, but, as Old Fred’ll explain, a thousand board feet is the accepted measurement for buyin’ and sellin’ timber around these parts. I don’t know what they use in New York.” The local laughed.

  Eager for answers, the major went directly to the Rose Hotel to consult Old Fred. He found the bewiskered man sitting in his well-worn rocking chair, smoking an old corncob pipe. Old Fred didn’t get up, barely extended his hand in greeting and kept on puffing. His slow and seemingly wise puffs, his mannerisms connoted to the major a wisdom of the West—a timber wisdom.

  Being from New York, the major wasted no time with informalities of anecdotes from his long train trip, of the roses blooming in the town of Roseburg, all of which would have consumed a half hour or so of his valuable time. Unbeknownst to the major, that was the male way “Out Here,” a technique that could have served to endear him to this rocking regional timber authority.

  Instead, using the accepted Manhattan conversational approach, the major immediately demanded to know, “How much timber—Douglas fir, I mean—board feet, that is—grows up in those hills around Diamond Lake?”

  Old Fred puffed for a while, as if mentally doing math calculations, his silence annoying the impatient major. Old Fred was in no hurry.

  A hundred years earlier, Roseburg had begun as a stage stop on the old Applegate Trail, the Fort Hall, Idaho offshoot from the better-known Oregon Trail. Down through the intervening years not much had happened here in good olde Roseburg. The Umpqua River continued to rage west toward the Pacific Ocean as it challenged the annual migration of its bounty of Steelhead. The rains returned every winter to nourish the fir trees. In this relatively mild climate, the live oak trees always presented their green, and the local truck farms always brought forth their yields of beans and other produce. Perhaps exploding populations breed a certain frenzy of activity, while here in this remote sparsely peopled place there was no bustle, no hurry, no impatience.

  The major fidgeted. In the Army in the vitality of the War, he had learned to overcome fatigue, hunger, and inconvenience. But, damn it all, the War was over, and he was impatient to set aside confrontation and return to the civilities of peacetime. He observed that Old Fred was too old to have been in the recent War. Yet this local icon was confronting a bona fide War veteran with his failure to cooperate in a New York-sponsored inquiry that simply sought facts.

  Behind his bewiskered countenance, Old Fred smiled, and then finally spoke. “Bet you didn’t know we almost formed our own state out here—Jefferson, so our new constitution called us—yup, we had adopted a constitution for our new state—southern Oregon and Northern California counties back in the 20s. Ya see, during the Great Depression, we got no roads, no federal money. We’d been sucking hind teat out here for years. You Easterners back there in Dee Cee and New York—you all ignored us. Ya see, none of you ever came ‘way out’ here, west of Yellowstone and north of the Grand Canyon.”

  The major said he didn’t know about that, and asked again about the Douglas Fir trees and board feet.

  “The Japs attacked our Pearl Harbor.” Old Fred went on with his explanation, “War brought the end of the State of Jefferson.”

  “The trees?” the major insisted, annoyed, his jaw set as if he was ordering his troops to prepare for a charge. “I hear there are massive stands of century-old Douglas Fir Trees up there.” He gestured over his shoulder toward the hills rising to the east of Roseburg.

  A hint of a smile appeared on Old Fred’s face as he rocked and puffed. With authority he drawled, “Naw, there ain’t enough trees up thar to pay for you to buy saws and hire the loggers. Now you go back to your limestone skyscrapers and your canyons of Wall Street and leave us Oregonians in peace.”

  The major looked surprised. “But we in New York heard…”

  “Well, ya heard wrong,” Old Fred said, smoke rising from his corncob pipe. “Give my regards to Broadway, ya hear,” and he guffawed.

  Dutifully, the major retraced his long train ride and reported his negative findings.

  Time passed and the national demand for housing grew stronger, more widespread, more urgent.

  Another Wall Street analyst heard rumors about unbounded supplies of Douglas Fir “Out West.” In his research he talked to the first analyst who told him all those stories of great stands of timber were false. Yes, Sir, he had learned that from the regional authority on the matter.

  The second analyst thought the potential profits so alluring that he decided to find out for himself. This time he hired a discharged colonel—a bird colonel, too—to go “out there” to Oregon.

  The colonel, a decorated war veteran who was known for quickly sizing up situations, prepared himself with all the old maps he could find of Oregon and especially Douglas County. There weren’t many, because this far-western territory had remained virtually unexplored. He read several of Zane Grey’s novels on the long train journey west, through his transfer in Chicago, and while waiting at the old Victorian Portland railroad station for his connection to the milk train south to Roseburg.

  In a repeat of the major’s experience, the colonel was directed by locals to the Rose Hotel and to Old Fred, their respected timber cruiser, who he found rocking and puffing away. A conversation similar to the earlier one with the major ensued. Discouraged, the colonel left town and returned to report his findings to Wall Street.

  More time passed and across this victorious nation the housing demand was growing out of control. Synthetic materials were being developed, substitutes for wood, such as aluminum studs and strong, color-baked-on plastic wall panels known as Lustron® that were stuck to these aluminum studs with bolts were all being explored. Regular bricks, and even adobe bricks made of mud and straw and dried in the sun, were all being advocated as alternative building materials.

  But those in the know knew wood, knew that Douglas Fir lumber was the best, the cheapest, the easiest for house framers to fit to size on the job and then to hammer into place. Yes, they argued, Douglas Fir
was by far the best solution to satisfy this national housing appetite, which was now threatening the stability of the body politic so much so that the future of democracy itself hung in the balance. Civil unrest, especially given the Cold War with the Soviet Union looming on the horizon, was the last thing the United States of America needed. In view of this evil Russian threat, a repeat of this country’s communist and socialist movements of the 1930s was not to be tolerated!

  Now, there are two possible endings to this story of Old Fred, our timber cruiser and Gatekeeper—two entirely different endings. You, Dear Reader, must choose.

  The first ending unfolds as follows:

  All the security analysts in New York forgot about Oregon. In those days homebuilders were small one-man companies, none of which had the time or inclination to investigate Douglas County on their own. What if the rumors were true, they worried, and big business got into their business? They’d be wiped out. They preferred to preserve the existing status quo, the balance, the security, the void offered by continuing uncertainties.

  Besides, conventional wisdom is conventional wisdom, an accepted folkloric wisdom that everyone knows to be true. Wisdom from someone who knows must never be questioned. Nevertheless the demand for housing escalated across the country. Neither the factories of the plastic people, those of the aluminum advocates, the adobe bricks, or the brick ovens came anywhere close to meeting the demand for housing as generated by the American conquering armies returning home. Discord grew. Unrest prevailed. People were living in tents, huddling in cardboard hovels, sequestered under railroad bridges. In these unromantic environs, the explosion of the Baby Boomer Generation remained unborn. And if anyone thought of such an unusual generational label, they were characterized as being a bomb menace, a child abuser to what few babies were then being born. Revolution ensued. Communism, with its promise of housing for the masses, prevailed. Brick housing projects built high rises, eventually, too late for creature comfort, too late to help spawn and explode any such heralded boom of babies.

  Douglas County remained virgin, an environmentalist’s vision of the ultimate utopia of Mother Nature. One day a man named Ralph Nader became its appointed commissar. The citizen comrades, astride their horses, emulated the cruising of their idolized legend, Old Fred, wandering along the faint wilderness trails, as the vast and seemingly unending forests of Douglas Fir trees remained untouched, the gin-clear waters of Diamond Lake shimmering at its core. The steelhead romped along the rushing Umpqua River, and every year the rains came and the roses bloomed anew. Few today know of Douglas County, Oregon, for this Connecticut-sized region is officially called the Peoples’ Republic of Jefferson.

  Or, if you prefer, here is the alternative ending to The Gatekeeper:

  Finally, a security analyst from Wall Street who had grown up on a farm in Upstate New York and knew about horses, wilderness exploration, and trees flew on a propeller-driven commercial DC-3 airplane directly into Roseburg, landing on its dirt airstrip. He located a farmer and told him he was here to see for himself about this purported unlimited supply of Douglas Fir trees. The farmer mentioned Old Fred a-rocking, but this third analyst insisted on finding out for himself. Shaking his head in disbelief that anyone would bypass Old Fred, the farmer finally rented this New Yorker a horse. Outfitted with camping gear and a camera, our third analyst rode off east and disappeared into the wilderness of Douglas County, emerging weeks later, the radiance of his discovery beaming from his countenance.

  The rest is history. Lumber mills, plywood mills, chain saws, logging roads, logging trucks, jobs, and undreamed of economic prosperity reverberated throughout Douglas County, Oregon. Houses, suburbs, and material happiness spread across the United States of America. Old Fred, the forgotten Gatekeeper rocking away in the old Rose Hotel, died a few years later when a truck carrying dynamite destined to destroy a rocky abutment lying in the way of a new logging road blew up in front of the Rose Hotel, raising the hotel and everyone sleeping inside. Departing into oblivion went Old Fred, one of the last of the great Gatekeepers, no longer single-handedly holding back this nation of innovators.

  Now, I ask you, Dear Reader, do you know other Old Gatekeepers out there plying their inhibiting trade?

  The Tall Tree

  How I envy the tall tree that rises higher, quite a bit higher, than the other trees by our house. This tree is the first to see the sunrise, the last to bid the sunset good evening. All day long it senses, indeed experiences the breeze, soaks in the days when the rain comes and is host to the all-seeing birds, large and small, singing, calling, speaking their bird calls and their unique and special songs to the neighborhood.

  The tall tree looks down upon us as if it were an all-seeing, all-knowing, all mapping deity or, in today’s terms a broadcasting GPS, recording us and our movements ever so ethereally, its compiled data soon to be swallowed by other unrecorded events in the passage of time.

  Yet, would I want to be this monarchial tree on its throne of importance? If I were this deciduous giant, then I would have to put down roots for life in this place and reconcile myself to stay forever rooted in this soil right here under my feet. No, not for me, for putting down roots is the bane of freedom of movement.

  The Celebrity

  The idol of to-day pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of to-morrow.

  --Washington Irving

  With frustration growing into acrimony we argued among ourselves over who held the throne as the greatest celebrity of our time. Advocates proffered names that, to them and their cohorts, were well-known and popular. Mostly our candidates were generational, revealing the range of ages of those of us playing this celebrity game. Some candidates were convicted criminals, others of politics and government, many associated with Hollywood or often seen by viewers on television monitors. Name familiarity, face recognition, all proved to be known or presumably known quantities to these fans.

  Boomer Rules

  My Lady told me that at any given time in the history, and even in the prehistory of society, there were rules. “This is the way we do it.” Whether the rules were written, codified she said was the legal term, or unwritten, as in “everybody knows,” there are rules. Rules for behavior, rules for thinking, for believing, for disbelieving, for interaction between individuals. The behavioral alternative, she insisted, was inter-personal anarchy, life run amuck, society deteriorating into chaos. “We can’t have that, now can we?”

  So I reviewed the rules I was taught as a child. I retrieved them from the depths of my mind. I rehearsed them in my thoughts. To learn more, I read biographies. I read history. I read about the behavior of characters in novels. I superimposed on my weeks and months these rules plus those learned in school, in church, from those who might today be called mentors, and were then known as leaders, whether of men or of just me—those to whom I had looked up. At last I thought I had a handle on these “rules.” I attempted to apply them in my everyday life.

  Had My Lady been with me in every one of my attempted applications of these rules, would I have fared better? Of course, such minute by minute guidance is unavailable in daily life from anyone, except oneself. Even had such 24/7 help come up on my mental monitor by means of a simple mouse click, I would have experienced no better result. Why, I agonized, was I so out of step? I retreated to review. I withdrew to be able to withstand. I went to the seashore to see the waves, observe the tide, to gaze out across a timeless horizon.

  Every seventh wave, they say, is the big one, the one from which to retreat, the one that changes the configuration of the sands, repositions the driftwood, redeposits the refuse, remakes the beach. Not much time passes between these seven waves, and as I watched, slowly, incessantly, with determination, life around me was changing, and with these changes came new interpretations of the rules, even new rules—all these unwritten and unfamiliar to me behavioral rules. While I slept the Baby Boomers had washed ashore, wav
e after wave of them, each unlucky seventh reformatting the social seashore, leaving me adrift with no harbor, so safe landing, no gunwale to hang onto in my emotional turbulence.

  Some people carry a Bible with them, shards of paper sticking out to mark certain question-answering passages. Some people attend confession to appeal for comfort. Some people visit board-certified psychologists, hoping to gleam a glimpse of insight. Some people seek answers from those gurus who claim to channel the wisdom of a long-past person in order that they might treat the dilemmas of today. All seeking answers, searching indexes of the compendiums that list these behavioral “rules.”

  Finally I realized the answers are simple, there to be codified for us all, and applied by us. All we need do is to corral a Boomer and not let him or her loose until he or she has codified these seventh-wave Boomer Rules. I have done such a thing. I caught a Boomer and locked it away in a garret. He is a behavioral sociologist by trade, as learned and as wise as any Boomer you will ever meet. Before I released him back into the stream, he wrote me as follows:

  “These are the Boomer Rules. You should know them. We all do. Why don’t you? But since you are so old, and so out of touch, and so confining of me, I shall set them forth for you. Then you can tell them to your lady, and watch her turn over in her grave.

  “You mentioned the word truth? What does that word mean? I can find it only in Webster under “obs.” For “obsolete.” If there ever was such a word it has been replaced by “spin.” The rule of spin is: how can I look the best in the eyes of my peers. Spin is fiction superimposed on non-fiction, creative story-telling by and for the benefit of the storyteller, whether it be a resume of one’s education and professional experience, a report to an employer, or a response to a customer inquiry. You would probably label such manipulation as “lies.” But that word, too, is “obs.” Try using the synonym, “cool,” instead.