Sawyers Behaving Badly..........

[Greystoke]

It is a dark and stormy evening. Time for a tale of a fire crew that became a legend.

We were sent against our will to an Eastern Oregon conflagration. Valuable dead lodgepole was on fire. (sarcasm). This was back in the days when our fire guy would not send crews away to such places because, "If something starts up here, I need my people because we have real timber here, not that lodgepole."

Good one Patty "valuable Lodgepole"

 

[slowp]

Good one Patty "valuable Lodgepole"

Oh, I also failed to mention that the fire was large, but was in an isolated area. We threw lots of dollars at it, but as is usually the case, what got the fire (in dead lodgepole) under control was a cloudburst. Not firefighting, but nature.

 

[redprospector]

Not a fire story, but..............................................................................
There was the time that the local cop was asleep in his cruiser as a few of us were leaving town, on our way to work. Some how, the handcuff's that were on his dash wound up in one of our pickup's.
Our saw boss had been riding some of us like a farmer riding a mule, for what seemed to us as nothing. About noon some of us had finished our strips and were going to the next unit when we saw the saw boss'es pickup parked up on a spur road. Upon closer inspection, we found that he was sound asleep sitting in his truck with his left arm resting on the window. Some how those handcuffs wound up around his wrist, and around the mirror frame on the door. All the other bosses got a pretty big kick out of it, that was all they talked about for a week. Our saw boss didn't know for sure who did it (although he had a pretty good idea), and had a hard time trying to explaine how a set of handcuff's locked him to the door of his truck without his knowledge.

Andy

 

[slowp]

So, how did he get unlocked? Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[bullbuck]

i had only cut for a few months when i was around 18 or so,and a buddy of mine invited me to go cut mistletoe pondo in n.w.new mexico.well i cant go into detail as i did not witness any of this first hand,but as it was told to me the reason us greenhorns got hired on to go up north was that the previous crew had had some pretty major disagreements wich ended up with one man at the helm of a cat grappleskider,running the other two guys out of the camper in a big hurry to say the least.when we arrived all there was to greet us was an obvious"backup camper"it was a very cold two months up near mt.taylor.but rumor was those two guys didnt get much time to evacuate that camper

 

[redprospector]

So, how did he get unlocked? Inquiring minds want to know.

Hahaha.
Why, he drove to town with his right hand and returned them to the officer that had lost them. It was only an hour drive into town though.
That was one of the nicer things we did to him. The rest could have been concidered attempted murder.

Andy

 

[Rounder]

Good stories!, just got back home. Got the full story, and no, I can't repeat it here- but, many laws were broken, as was a bar. We went into town last night, but Barney Fife kept a pretty close eye on us, lol (I don't think the old boy had much better to do). We did lose one guy in town last night, but he appeared around 11 this morning, and he was a little fuzzy on the details of the night before.

Oh yeah, had some real nice sawing.

Thanks for the laughs - Sam

 

[madhatte]

We had one of our nomad forestry crew one year get a bit lippy with a local girl while "in town", prompting possible police action. The Boss stepped in and took responsibility for the situation, saving that indignity. However, once he drove the guy back out to camp and returned to town himself, Our Hero proceeded to drink himself into a blackout. Somehow he managed to fall into the campfire and pass out. He received 3rd degree burns over about 25% of his body. After some time in the fire, he roused himself enough to crawl to a nearby camp for help. After some months in a pressure suit, and some more in physical therapy, he's fine now, but a teetotaller. At least he survived. Good guy.

 

[joesawer]

In Crestline CA I worked for a company who had two brothers from Hawaii working for them.
They where big and strong and pretty free thinking. They managed to get cross ways with some of the local racists in town.
The younger one went into the Bear Claw a local watering hole and got into it with some locals. A few smashed faces and a broke jaw later he walked out. But the bar tried to say that none of the employees of that company where allowed in.
Some time later to local brothers caught the older Hawaiian out by himself while he was pretty drunk and jumped him and put the boots to him and put him in the hospital. I saw the video of this event and it was not pretty.
Some time after he recovered he was in the bowling alley and some skin heads jumped on him again. I happened to be walkin down the street in front of the bowling alley, with a beautiful local lady who had been a centerfold model, when this happened.
She was related to the two brothers who had put him in the hospital.
It turned into a tense situation that resulted in me choking some body out and hurting my elbow pretty bad when i hit the concrete!

It was some wild times.

 

[slowp]

Sometimes the locals can embarrass themselves. During the busy logging years, there was a lot of clearcutting which made for a lot of other work. A crew of exchange student types was in our little burg to plant trees. At the same time, a nearby logging outfit lost a lot of tools out of their fire truck.

So, the planting crew was staying at one of the really fine motels..sarcasm again. Some locals slashed all the tires on their vans.

About a day later the tool thieves were discovered, and they were locals.

There was a tree planting crew that did get caught in the act of stealing from the landing. The logging crew showed up for work before they got away and chased them over the edge wielding marlen spikes. They were waiting for the tree planters to reappear when I arrived, but I think the planters stayed down in the brush and waited the loggers out, or hiked out or something.

 

[wvlogger]

I have no faller stories but i do have a pretty good rounghneck story. We were working a oil location (one of few here) and had a bunch of hot headed rig hands. I never worked the rig but did run dozer. Well they all went into town one friday night to "celebrate" the finishing of the well. To make a long story short they all got into fights at the bar and were banned 2 were aressted and one put a man in the hospital. The boss was none to pleased because he like to leave a good impression on the town. Last i heard 1 went to texas, one went off shore(some how) and i have no idea about the other three. Life on the mountain can be fun but when you get dumbasses and liquor nothing good happens.

 

[Rounder]

Back we go in the morning, hopefully I don't come back with any stories.........Sam

 

[stihlhead]

While not a logging story nor a fighting story it does have benefits in the laughter department. A few of us Michigan boys went elk hunting in Colorado for a week. The last night of the hunt we packed up and went to the local bar. After drinking the bar out of Coors Light (we had to drink that since we were in the mountains) a giant of a man walked in the bar and threatened to kill us all if someone didn't teell him where his truck was. Turns out it was the bar owner and he had a few to many, so someone moved his truck for him so he didn't drive. Real nice place. Asked the bar maid for a spit cup, she says " I ain't clean up no spit cup when you leave....spit on the floor" So we did.

After way to many beers I was the only one sober enough to drive, and I had to do it with one eye closed so I was seeing only one lane. We had parked the camper in a trailer park and proceeded to go back there to sleep it off.

About an hour into our slumber on of the guys begins to get out of bed, flips his covers back, hauls his #### out and trys peeing in his bed. I yell to his son "Dude, your dad is going to piss his own bed if you don't get him"

He grabs his dad and takes him outside into this trailer park where he has to haul his dads undershorts down and pull his crank out for him to whiz. People are yelling from the other campers to hold it down, so I did what any friend would do........

I turned the yard light on for them. We are not welcome back. Although they probably forgot who we are!

 

[joesawer]

While not a logging story nor a fighting story it does have benefits in the laughter department. A few of us Michigan boys went elk hunting in Colorado for a week. The last night of the hunt we packed up and went to the local bar. After drinking the bar out of Coors Light (we had to drink that since we were in the mountains) a giant of a man walked in the bar and threatened to kill us all if someone didn't teell him where his truck was. Turns out it was the bar owner and he had a few to many, so someone moved his truck for him so he didn't drive. Real nice place. Asked the bar maid for a spit cup, she says " I ain't clean up no spit cup when you leave....spit on the floor" So we did.

After way to many beers I was the only one sober enough to drive, and I had to do it with one eye closed so I was seeing only one lane. We had parked the camper in a trailer park and proceeded to go back there to sleep it off.

About an hour into our slumber on of the guys begins to get out of bed, flips his covers back, hauls his #### out and trys peeing in his bed. I yell to his son "Dude, your dad is going to piss his own bed if you don't get him"

He grabs his dad and takes him outside into this trailer park where he has to haul his dads undershorts down and pull his crank out for him to whiz. People are yelling from the other campers to hold it down, so I did what any friend would do........

I turned the yard light on for them. We are not welcome back. Although they probably forgot who we are!

And he seems proud of it???

 

[RandyMac]

Oh the things we did in our youth, not all were good.

 

[stihlhead]

And he seems proud of it???

Hey I thought they needed a light!

 

[RandyMac]

They did indeed, I would have done the same thing.

 

[Rounder]

The boys left camp last night to poke around some prescribed burns to look for morels. On the way back, Bozo #1 says, "stop, I gotta take a leak". Bozo 1 exits the crummy and goes about his business. As he does this, bozo #2 says to bozo #3, "pull forward slow, and then when he comes running hit the brakes so he bounces off the door." Bozo 3 obliges, and bozo 1 comes running, but bozo 3 is rolling pretty good in the crummy. As bozo 1 attempts to leap into the moving crummy (he left his door open), bozo 3 hits the brakes and the ABS locks up. Bozo 1 procedes to slam nose and head first into the door frame. It wasn't pretty, but funny as hell once we knew he was ok. So yeah, "sawyers behaving badly" - Sam

 

[RandyMac]

Well I guess it's my turn. Back in my Forestry days, I drank pretty hard, did a few, well, things. We got paid once a month, so the local bars had hot business on a pay day night. I was a little boss and expected to keep order in the barracks, kinda cramped the style some. One of the other little bosses came up with another plan. We held back 20 bucks and tied one on, the night before payday. Oh boy. one such night we had been to Paul's Cannery in Klamath, did it right too. There was four of us crammed into Doc's old Mustang, when we got back to Alder camp, we proceded to race around the compound. The loop was 3/10s of a mile, it got crazy in a hurry, every time we passed the office, I chucked an empty beer bottle at the raingauge. When I ran out of bottles, Doc stopped and had me go pick them up, I got out, went to grab the first and realized that I had been drinking beer, a lot of it. It was time to unload, there was the raingauge.........the weather report the next day showed that it had rained, only at Alder.

 

[raycarr]

Hi Uncle Randy, I knew you did some stuff, but I didn't know you pissed in a rain gauge.
I wrangled a few minutes of internet time, wanted to let you know that we will be up on the 4th of July, the kid will be old enough to travel by then. See you later, old ####er.

Ray