My old business partner with more than 60 years in the woods passes away, out story

[plasticweld]

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.

 

[plasticweld]

On Time And On Schedule

Paul and I shared one common trait that bonded us from the beginning. We both hated to be late. We were supposed to start work at 7 am. I thought that maybe my lack of skills could be made up by working longer hours. It was daylight early and I figured if I got an early start, maybe I could make up for some of the time Paul was spending showing me the ropes. When Paul showed up the next morning I was already in the woods working. He got the machine warmed up and drove out to where I was working. He had a wry grin on his face and asked me if I had slept there last night. I told him I had and he just smiled. Something told me while he never wanted to be late he also never wanted to be the guy who showed up last. I’m not sure why, but I made a point to go in even earlier the next day. Paul showed up at 6:45 the next morning. Again, I was already in the woods working and was greeted with the same question “Did you sleep here last night?” to which of course I had to tell him that I had. We played this game each morning until it meant that both of us were showing up well before 6 a.m. Paul decided that it was time to call a truce and set a time for us to star. He did not want to be late and he did not want to have to guess what time we were starting. We both agreed on 6:30a.m. and it was to be the beginning of a ritual that would last for years. To understand the significance of the agreed start time you had to understand Paul and his penchant for keeping a schedule. We followed the same schedule almost to the minute everyday. Start time was 6:30, work until 8:50 and then head to Moody’s Diner for tea and a muffin, stopping on the way back for fuel for the skidder. While the diner and the fuel stop changed depending on where we worked, the time frame never did. Paul would often mention that we could probably do much better if we were not “going to lunch all the time” but there was never any effort over the years to ever change it, though we did always talk about it. Once back from getting fuel and tea we worked until just before noon. Then it was home for lunch. I lived only a mile or so from Paul. While lunch time varied a little bit it always ended at the same time. Back then the radio commentator Paul Harvey had a segment on after the news called “Now you know the rest of the story”; something that Paul and I were both very fond of. Sometimes we listened while driving back and other times we would sit in the truck at the job site and wait for it to finish. Quitting time changed little but normally ended with our last hitch being cleaned up in the landing and all of the wood stacked up as neat as a fence row. We followed the same schedule just about everyday. Paul and I worked same hours and days for years. We worked a half day on Saturday and took a half day off for Thanksgiving and all of Christmas day off. With the exception of heavy rain we always went to work. Sundays for Paul was always the same; Sunday paper in the morning, cut and split wood in the afternoon. Paul was always on time and on schedule and the schedule never changed.


“If Your hands Are Cold I Have Gloves In The Truck”

I was standing in the woods one day talking to Paul about what trees we were going to cut next when he asked me if my hands where cold. It was the middle of summer. I managed to get a “Huh” out when he asked me again if my hands were cold. My hands were in my pockets as I asked him which trees we were going to get next. He wanted me to know that he had gloves in the truck if my hands were too cold. In other words, I should be doing something while I talked. I could be filling my saw with gas, filing it, or helping hook up the next hitch but at no point in time should I not be working. It was ok to talk, just not stop to working while I did it. This, along with another phrase of his “While you are resting”, I would go on to use and pass on to others over the years. He would say, stack up that wood, “while you are resting”, could you fuel up the skidder “while you are resting”. I got the idea, and the keep busy work ethic got to be deeply ingrained in me. Thirty-Five years later I still ask employees if their hands are cold and ask them to do stuff while they are resting.

What Made Him The Maestro?

Paul’s attention to detail and his ability to fell trees with precision so as not to hurt the remaining timber stand separated him from other loggers. We would make a game once in a while of placing a stake in the ground and driving it in with the tree we were dropping. This form of competition kept us both sharp. Leaving the woods neat was a top priority, something as simple as a single branch left up in the air was enough to have Paul mention it to me and have me go back and flatten it out. One reason we were able to work so close to home was because of Paul’s attention to aesthetics along with good forestry practices that were well ahead of the times. Through good forest management we were able to cut the same wood lot every ten years or so. Paul’s dedication to this discipline and his honesty to both the woods and the wood lot owner is what kept him busy in an area filled with other loggers. Paul had set the standard for me as a business owner from the beginning. He was an honest man and that his word was worth something. He would under no circumstances work with a contract. If a hand shake was not enough then we would not do business with them. Today I own a construction company along with my logging company that has over the years done millions of dollars of work. To this day I still follow Paul’s example of not using a contract. I am called a dinosaur in an age of paper trails, but people do business with me anyway. I also follow Paul’s example of honesty with the customer. In the years that we worked together I can honestly say I never saw him take advantage of a land owner. To really appreciate this you have to understand that most owners have no idea of what good forestry is and what real value a tree has. It has been common practice for years for a logger to come in and cut the best out of the wood lot leaving the junk behind. This would give the impression that there was still a stand of timber behind but it would really be worth little. Paul did just the opposite. He cut what was ready and cut the junk and left behind a better wood lot. It has become rare today to find a businessman who has enough self-discipline to do the right thing when no one is looking. I have been very fortunate that by following these same principles I have been successful in the companies I own today. It is one thing to say that these are great qualities but quite another to put them into practice and see them work first hand. Sometimes the things we know deep down to be true still have to be shown to us on a regular basis. I would like to believe that Paul’s integrity has been passed down.

Over the years Paul shared many stories with me about growing up, about work and about life. Much of what I learned from him has determined who I am today. He set the bar high for how a business should be run. He told me that you will never get rich working for a living. I have spent my life working every day to prove him wrong. While I doubt I would fall into the rich category, I have done very well. One of the things that I did not agree with when I worked with Paul was his desire to diversify. We cut logs and pulp wood but would also do anything else to make money. I was determined at the time to be a big time logger. I grumbled whenever we did something and the logging equipment was parked, but he called the shots while we were partners. On a 50-50 level he was still the boss. Years later I went to New York because of a down turn in the Maine economy; I got to put my business thoughts into practice. It took me some failures to learn the wisdom of Paul’s philosophy. I have in the past owned as many as three companies, all with the understanding that this diversity is what makes me strong. It took me years to learn what Paul taught me in the beginning; it was something I had to learn the hard way.

I doubt that if you asked someone if hard work and integrity paid off that they would ever disagree with you. I also know that today that is something there is not an overabundance of. While we might all know something it does not mean we always practice it. Paul spent his life living these principles, not just talking about them. While he has passed away the things he stood for are still here, I hope only that I can pass them on to others as he has to me.

I am proud to be an old student and old partner and more importantly an old friend of Paul Quintal. He was the Maestro.

 

[LumberjkChamp]

Thank you for posting.

 

[Steve NW WI]

Excellent story. I'm sure many of us have or had a "Paul" in our lives, we just need to pay closer attention to them than we often do.

 

[Metals406]

Excellent story!!

My dad is my "Paul".

 

[lfnh]

Right out of Paul Harvey's afternoon story a decade ago.
Great tribute to a friend.
Appreciate your sharing it.

 

[dancan]

Thanks for sharing .
Now " The Maestro AKA Paul Quintal " will be found on the internet for all to read about .

 

[Slamm]

Sounds like a good man with excellent qualities, he is a great one to learn from. You are/were fortunate to have learned from him.

My condolences,

Sam

 

[Stihl 4 life]

Thank you for sharing your story. Far too many stroll through life without a "Paul"....you are certainly blessed.

My condolences as well,

Jim