plasticweld
ArboristSite Member
My old logging partner passed away the past fall, I spoke at the funeral and told the story of who Paul was and how we met and came to form a life long freindship. Paul started working in the woods at 15 and stopped going to the woods every day at the age of 77, he lived to be 87 years old and lead a remarkable life. He was highly reguarded by fellow loggers and his family wanted some record who he was, this was written for his family but I though other loggers might enjoy the story..Bob
The Maestro AKA Paul Quintal corrected
I think many times we form opinions and expectations of people we meet by how they are described to us by others. Paul had been given the title the Maestro by those in the little town of Nobleboro Maine. While I am sure it was common in the arts, I am pretty sure I have never heard the term used by someone who cut wood for a living and held the title of a logger. Doing a quick Google search I found zero results linking the words Maestro and logger in the same phrase. I am sure that’s only because the internet had no idea who Paul Quintal was
and that there is no one out there like him. Maybe that is enough reason to share the story of who he was and why he had earned that title.
When I met Paul in 1977 I was 18. I was just realizing that the dream of ever becoming a dairy farmer was probably unrealistic. The farm I had been working on as a herdsman was on the decline and a victim of the changing times, and I realized the chances of ever owning a farm while working one was pretty remote. I was sharing this with two of my friends, Ray Roberts who was working as a logger in northern Maine and Sam Argetsinger who was working on a dairy farm with the idea of owning one someday. I was grumbling about my future when the subject of logging came up. It was something we had always done on the farm. Clearing land and selling wood part time in the winter was just part of the seasonal chores we did. The idea of doing it full time was not much of a stretch me. Ray had come from a logging background and worked on
the farm first clearing land, then as regular hired hand. Sam had some experience working out west and both were quick to point out logging as a good career path for me. My Dad had given some good advice when I was growing up. He said find the person who is the best at what he does in his field and go to work for him. Even if you had to work for free you would learn more from him and gain more in the long run towards becoming a success than if you worked for someone who was second best in the same field. It was in this context that the name Paul Quintal came up both. Both Ray and Sam encouraged me to find Paul and see if I could get a job working with him.
I am about the same age now as Paul was back then when we first met. This makes me appreciate even more what he ended up doing for me. What he saw back then was a skinny 18 year old kid with no real logging experience. While I had a chainsaw and some basic skills, I did not even own a hard hat. As a worker I would in reality only cost him money. I found Paul one warm spring morning cutting wood on the Baldwin farm. He was in the woods working when I pulled up on to the landing, I could hear his saw running. I had no idea what the protocol was for seeing someone in the woods: Do I just go back there and talk to him or do I wait here for him to come out? I decided to wait. I looked around to see what he had been doing. He had one pile of saw logs and another of four foot pulpwood stacked up with a well-worn pulp hook sticking out of a pile that was a straight as fence, dead level and stacked with precision and care, each piece having been rolled so it fit in just right with the ones beside it and on top of it. It said a lot about the man. After I heard the saw shut off I heard the skidder start up. I had noidea what he was really doing as I had never been on a log job before. The extent of my experience had been cutting down small hardwood trees and cutting them into four foot lengths to be sold as fire wood and stacking it up so we could haul it out on a trailer behind the tractor. I heard the banging of chains against the back of the machine and the sounds of the engine as it sped up and slowed down several times while he worked. After a few minutes I could hear the steady roar has he headed out of the woods with a hitch behind a 1969 John Deere 440 A skidder. It was the first time I had ever seen one up close. Paul eyed me as he pulled into the landing. I’m sure he was wondering what this skinny kid wanted and what was he doing on his log job. He had gray hair, but he was well built, muscular, and seemed to be in really good shape, he climbed down off of the machine and peered at me over the top of his glasses; I stuck out my hand and gave him my best firm handshake and introduced myself to him. I was greeted back with a firm handshake and a smile. I told Paul who I was what I had done and what I was hoping for and asked him for a job. He was pretty blunt. “You don’t want to be a logger” He said the work was hard, the pay was low, it was dangerous and I would do nothing but slow him down and cost him money. For the most part, Paul had worked by himself over the years. While he had hired people from time to time he had preferred to work alone and it seemed like my prospects of ever getting him to hire me were slim. I went for broke and gave him my sales pitch. I told Paul that for most professions you had to go to college, which cost lots of money and time. I told him how much money he would be saving me if he allowed me to work with him for no pay. I told him flat out how he was the best in the business and that it was him that I wanted to learn from. Did he really want me to make the same offer to someone else in the business that had less than a noble reputation? I am not sure to this day what actually got him to change his mind, but he took a deep breath and told me he would try me out. He told me to get my hard hat and my saw and come back.
My first stop was to a saw shop in town to pick up the hard hat. I remember how conscious I was of how shiny and new it looked. When I got back to the cabin on the lake where my saw was, I looked at the hard hat in the back of the car. I would love to say that I didn’t put a little dirt on it and rub it into the finish to take away the shine so I wouldn’t look as green on the first day…… but that would be a lie. I was soon to learn that no matter what I looked like I could not hide my lack of experience. I showed back up at the Baldwin Farm about mid-morning. The sun was already high in the sky and the black flies were out in force as I un-packed my saw and my artificially aged hard hat. This time I just headed towards the sound of Paul’s saw in the woods. I figured that I now belonged here and strode out to the woods. Paul greeted me and put me right to work limbing trees. He took a great deal of time explaining how important it was to cut the limbs off smooth so that they would pull easy through the woods, but more importantly he did not want any wood going to the mill that looked like it had been sloppily cut. Paul had started out using a small bulldozer to haul his wood. All of the little tricks needed to make the dozer effective he still used today even though the skidder would not know the difference. Paul took great pride in what he did, and there was a method and a purpose for everything he did. At first I did not understand why he did the things he did, but by the end of the morning I was beat and he wasn’t, so there must be something to it. I had fancied myself as being in good shape. Paul was after all an old man; 34 years my senior and in my naïve little mind I should have been able to work him into the ground. Farm work after all was nothing but long hours and hard work; logging should have been easy for me. My dreams of impressing him disappeared quickly. As I struggled to keep up with him limbing, the heat, the weight of the saw, the constant buzz of the black flies and fighting with dense brush soon took its toll.
Paul seemed to move effortlessly through the woods making it look easy and he was very fast at what he did. This was to be the first I learned about the real art of “efficiency of movement”. I would spend the rest of my life fine tuning my movements in each of the businesses I would own practicing the craft I learned from Paul. I learned right away that any mistake took 20 minutes or so to fix and lots of energy to overcome. While I was busy running trying to make an impression, Paul just kept moving, planning each step and each process as he went. By the end of the day I was whipped! I realized I was just like my new hard hat. Putting a little mud on it was no replacement for the earned scratches and dings that come from honest experience. I would have to earn my place and the right to call myself a logger; not just look like one.
The Maestro AKA Paul Quintal corrected
I think many times we form opinions and expectations of people we meet by how they are described to us by others. Paul had been given the title the Maestro by those in the little town of Nobleboro Maine. While I am sure it was common in the arts, I am pretty sure I have never heard the term used by someone who cut wood for a living and held the title of a logger. Doing a quick Google search I found zero results linking the words Maestro and logger in the same phrase. I am sure that’s only because the internet had no idea who Paul Quintal was
and that there is no one out there like him. Maybe that is enough reason to share the story of who he was and why he had earned that title.
When I met Paul in 1977 I was 18. I was just realizing that the dream of ever becoming a dairy farmer was probably unrealistic. The farm I had been working on as a herdsman was on the decline and a victim of the changing times, and I realized the chances of ever owning a farm while working one was pretty remote. I was sharing this with two of my friends, Ray Roberts who was working as a logger in northern Maine and Sam Argetsinger who was working on a dairy farm with the idea of owning one someday. I was grumbling about my future when the subject of logging came up. It was something we had always done on the farm. Clearing land and selling wood part time in the winter was just part of the seasonal chores we did. The idea of doing it full time was not much of a stretch me. Ray had come from a logging background and worked on
the farm first clearing land, then as regular hired hand. Sam had some experience working out west and both were quick to point out logging as a good career path for me. My Dad had given some good advice when I was growing up. He said find the person who is the best at what he does in his field and go to work for him. Even if you had to work for free you would learn more from him and gain more in the long run towards becoming a success than if you worked for someone who was second best in the same field. It was in this context that the name Paul Quintal came up both. Both Ray and Sam encouraged me to find Paul and see if I could get a job working with him.
I am about the same age now as Paul was back then when we first met. This makes me appreciate even more what he ended up doing for me. What he saw back then was a skinny 18 year old kid with no real logging experience. While I had a chainsaw and some basic skills, I did not even own a hard hat. As a worker I would in reality only cost him money. I found Paul one warm spring morning cutting wood on the Baldwin farm. He was in the woods working when I pulled up on to the landing, I could hear his saw running. I had no idea what the protocol was for seeing someone in the woods: Do I just go back there and talk to him or do I wait here for him to come out? I decided to wait. I looked around to see what he had been doing. He had one pile of saw logs and another of four foot pulpwood stacked up with a well-worn pulp hook sticking out of a pile that was a straight as fence, dead level and stacked with precision and care, each piece having been rolled so it fit in just right with the ones beside it and on top of it. It said a lot about the man. After I heard the saw shut off I heard the skidder start up. I had noidea what he was really doing as I had never been on a log job before. The extent of my experience had been cutting down small hardwood trees and cutting them into four foot lengths to be sold as fire wood and stacking it up so we could haul it out on a trailer behind the tractor. I heard the banging of chains against the back of the machine and the sounds of the engine as it sped up and slowed down several times while he worked. After a few minutes I could hear the steady roar has he headed out of the woods with a hitch behind a 1969 John Deere 440 A skidder. It was the first time I had ever seen one up close. Paul eyed me as he pulled into the landing. I’m sure he was wondering what this skinny kid wanted and what was he doing on his log job. He had gray hair, but he was well built, muscular, and seemed to be in really good shape, he climbed down off of the machine and peered at me over the top of his glasses; I stuck out my hand and gave him my best firm handshake and introduced myself to him. I was greeted back with a firm handshake and a smile. I told Paul who I was what I had done and what I was hoping for and asked him for a job. He was pretty blunt. “You don’t want to be a logger” He said the work was hard, the pay was low, it was dangerous and I would do nothing but slow him down and cost him money. For the most part, Paul had worked by himself over the years. While he had hired people from time to time he had preferred to work alone and it seemed like my prospects of ever getting him to hire me were slim. I went for broke and gave him my sales pitch. I told Paul that for most professions you had to go to college, which cost lots of money and time. I told him how much money he would be saving me if he allowed me to work with him for no pay. I told him flat out how he was the best in the business and that it was him that I wanted to learn from. Did he really want me to make the same offer to someone else in the business that had less than a noble reputation? I am not sure to this day what actually got him to change his mind, but he took a deep breath and told me he would try me out. He told me to get my hard hat and my saw and come back.
My first stop was to a saw shop in town to pick up the hard hat. I remember how conscious I was of how shiny and new it looked. When I got back to the cabin on the lake where my saw was, I looked at the hard hat in the back of the car. I would love to say that I didn’t put a little dirt on it and rub it into the finish to take away the shine so I wouldn’t look as green on the first day…… but that would be a lie. I was soon to learn that no matter what I looked like I could not hide my lack of experience. I showed back up at the Baldwin Farm about mid-morning. The sun was already high in the sky and the black flies were out in force as I un-packed my saw and my artificially aged hard hat. This time I just headed towards the sound of Paul’s saw in the woods. I figured that I now belonged here and strode out to the woods. Paul greeted me and put me right to work limbing trees. He took a great deal of time explaining how important it was to cut the limbs off smooth so that they would pull easy through the woods, but more importantly he did not want any wood going to the mill that looked like it had been sloppily cut. Paul had started out using a small bulldozer to haul his wood. All of the little tricks needed to make the dozer effective he still used today even though the skidder would not know the difference. Paul took great pride in what he did, and there was a method and a purpose for everything he did. At first I did not understand why he did the things he did, but by the end of the morning I was beat and he wasn’t, so there must be something to it. I had fancied myself as being in good shape. Paul was after all an old man; 34 years my senior and in my naïve little mind I should have been able to work him into the ground. Farm work after all was nothing but long hours and hard work; logging should have been easy for me. My dreams of impressing him disappeared quickly. As I struggled to keep up with him limbing, the heat, the weight of the saw, the constant buzz of the black flies and fighting with dense brush soon took its toll.
Paul seemed to move effortlessly through the woods making it look easy and he was very fast at what he did. This was to be the first I learned about the real art of “efficiency of movement”. I would spend the rest of my life fine tuning my movements in each of the businesses I would own practicing the craft I learned from Paul. I learned right away that any mistake took 20 minutes or so to fix and lots of energy to overcome. While I was busy running trying to make an impression, Paul just kept moving, planning each step and each process as he went. By the end of the day I was whipped! I realized I was just like my new hard hat. Putting a little mud on it was no replacement for the earned scratches and dings that come from honest experience. I would have to earn my place and the right to call myself a logger; not just look like one.
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