"out on 101" "high times for the stiffs" VL.5

[joeallonby]

on 7/16/03 9:19 AM, Terrance at lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:

> The big trees are falling, and us lumberjacks,
> With high power saw, and with double blade axe;
> It's fast diesel cats that's a bringing her down,
> 'Cause Lumber is King in a Lumbering town.
> 
> --Woody Guthrie
> 
> WORK. ROADS. TREES.
> 
> Mason and Dixon need working men to cut trees. To cut their line.
> 
> When you cut trees you build roads. If you cut trees on government land
> and you build roads on government land, who does the WORK? Who pays the
> WORKERS? In other words, who are the loggers and road crew working for?
> 
> US 101 is perhaps the most historic highway in California. It follows
> the route the Spanish explorer Juan Gaspar de Portola followed in 1769,
> which later became El Camino Real, the King's Highway. This historic
> road connected the 21 missions of California and served as the main
> north/south road in California until the 1920s. North of San Francisco
> it is known as the "Redwood Highway," which is considered by many to be
> the most scenic road in California. At one time its route followed the
> famous Avenue of the Giants, which goes by the tallest trees in the
> world located in the Redwood
> State and National Parks.
> 
> The largest exporter of raw logs in the U.S. is Weyerhaeuser. W sells 25
> percent of its harvest overseas, with Japan as the biggest customer.
> 
> W, like other timber firms in the Northwest, has been closing sawmills,
> plywood
> mills, and veneer mills throughout the region for over twenty years. In
> Oregon alone, 90 mills were closed in the 1980's  In the Pacific
> Northwest as a whole, the number was over 200.  The export of raw logs,
> represents the export of jobs. Getting one million board feet of timber
> to the export docks employs 4 workers domestically, while Japan employs
> 60 to 80 people making finished goods with the same material. In
> Washington state, every million board feet shipped overseas takes at
> least seven direct jobs and 14 more indirect jobs with it.
> 
> So, how come the road crew, the loggers, the mill workers, didn't get
> together so that they could all keep their jobs? High times for the
> stiffs in the woods are low times for the mill workers? How's that WORK?

How's that work? It's shitty, long, and arduous. It's one step ahead of
repossession. And two steps behind the diesel donkey. The foreman is an ass.
He's somebody's brother-in-law. It's being too tired to read the New York
Times. Or Mother Jones. But Fox News is easy. It's being so tired and hungry
that you gladly wolf down the tasteless microwaved leftovers that your wife
has saved for you after the kids have gone to bed. That's why you can't
understand how the economy can be so bad to your buddy the mill worker. But
you have no say in the matter but you wonder why that Saddam guy is so evil.
Bob used to have a good job but he works at the coffee shop now and is
having a hell of a time with that damned cash register. His son is now a
dead hero. You'll give Bob a better tip at five a.m. tomorrow and hope that
he doesn't think it's charity. Then you'll get back in the race to the
bottom because there is no other way. Roll another number and listen to your
old records before you go to bed. That Gram Parsons guy was onto something.
And Emmylou sounds so pretty. That's how it works.