I was sorting through stuff and found a bad copy of a newspaper article from August, 1986. We had been out for two weeks on initial attack on our tour of Eastern Oregon. Our crew was the third one to go from our district, so was made up of folks from all the departments, along with one department head, who had been on the job for a week. He had just transferred here and he fit right in.
We got labeled, That Crew From Randle and it was not said in a nice way. We challenged some of the authority, and rightly so. The guy in the picture was our sawyer. He was kept busy falling snags.
I've told this story before. We had moved from a fire near Unity to one in Desolation Meadows. We worked a long shift the first couple of days--yes, one shift, got back to camp and were told we'd be on the night shift.
The fire had grown and a Type 1 overhead team was moved in and took over. They decided all the lodgpole snags in the camp were a hazard and had to come down.
Mind you, this was before the A,B,C faller certification was in place, and if you wandered in with a saw, you could sign up as a faller. We were trying to sleep, they were trying to get all the snags on the ground. I'd doze off then jerk awake to a crash. You'd see a shadow on the tarp and hear the crash. They came close to hitting tents. Everybody was doing so. We tried to go through channels with our suggestion that they stop falling and wait till shift change, when EVERYBODY would be awake. Nope, they couldn't do that. The snags must come down and we're tired of your whining. Our faller, who had a west-side old growth saw, because that was all we had, had a temper. He disappeared for a while. Soon he came back escorted by two armed, law guys. They were sending him home. He had taken the saw into the Plans Tent, (where the big shots hung out) and started it, reved it up yelling, "Could you ------sleep though this noise? Could you ----sleep!
They told him to get his things. We all ganged together and mutinied, saying we would all go home then, because we made just about the same amount of money (we really did on slash burns and patrolling on weekends) and our ranger and fire guy would back us up.
One law guy disappeared. He came back with some big shot, who proceeded to lecture us and tell us how lucky we were that they had decided to let us stay. They started falling only at shift changes, and although they took out a tent, and almost got the chow line, they got the snags down.
Our mopshot crew became a legend that season.
We called ourselves Mopshots to kind of offset the macho stuff that goes on during fires. Mopshots instead of hotshots. I still have my too small to wear now Mopshot T-shirt. I can't give it away. Our sawyer died a few years later, of an illness. He was quite a character.
Oh, they tried to keep us penned up in Pendleton. We were one of the first crews to get our 14 days in. We challenged that. One of the security guys at the gate had once worked at Randle. We told him our plan and he took his uniform shirt off and joined us. We got out by scaling the fence. After we did that, they let the other crews go out the gate and gave up on the captivity plan. Then it was back to the fire for another week.
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We got labeled, That Crew From Randle and it was not said in a nice way. We challenged some of the authority, and rightly so. The guy in the picture was our sawyer. He was kept busy falling snags.
I've told this story before. We had moved from a fire near Unity to one in Desolation Meadows. We worked a long shift the first couple of days--yes, one shift, got back to camp and were told we'd be on the night shift.
The fire had grown and a Type 1 overhead team was moved in and took over. They decided all the lodgpole snags in the camp were a hazard and had to come down.
Mind you, this was before the A,B,C faller certification was in place, and if you wandered in with a saw, you could sign up as a faller. We were trying to sleep, they were trying to get all the snags on the ground. I'd doze off then jerk awake to a crash. You'd see a shadow on the tarp and hear the crash. They came close to hitting tents. Everybody was doing so. We tried to go through channels with our suggestion that they stop falling and wait till shift change, when EVERYBODY would be awake. Nope, they couldn't do that. The snags must come down and we're tired of your whining. Our faller, who had a west-side old growth saw, because that was all we had, had a temper. He disappeared for a while. Soon he came back escorted by two armed, law guys. They were sending him home. He had taken the saw into the Plans Tent, (where the big shots hung out) and started it, reved it up yelling, "Could you ------sleep though this noise? Could you ----sleep!
They told him to get his things. We all ganged together and mutinied, saying we would all go home then, because we made just about the same amount of money (we really did on slash burns and patrolling on weekends) and our ranger and fire guy would back us up.
One law guy disappeared. He came back with some big shot, who proceeded to lecture us and tell us how lucky we were that they had decided to let us stay. They started falling only at shift changes, and although they took out a tent, and almost got the chow line, they got the snags down.
Our mopshot crew became a legend that season.
We called ourselves Mopshots to kind of offset the macho stuff that goes on during fires. Mopshots instead of hotshots. I still have my too small to wear now Mopshot T-shirt. I can't give it away. Our sawyer died a few years later, of an illness. He was quite a character.
Oh, they tried to keep us penned up in Pendleton. We were one of the first crews to get our 14 days in. We challenged that. One of the security guys at the gate had once worked at Randle. We told him our plan and he took his uniform shirt off and joined us. We got out by scaling the fence. After we did that, they let the other crews go out the gate and gave up on the captivity plan. Then it was back to the fire for another week.
View attachment 226590
