Sometime during the Summer of '73, after the unionization strike dust had settled at Philo Lumber, and I had resettled into the routine pulling strips at The Point, Sammy Prather, leader of the Green Chain…
Posts published by “Brad Wiley”
Last week's Philo Mill story left off at the encounter between the mill Boss, Jack Davies and the sitdown strike participants gathered sheepishly on the greenchain. This week's rest of the story begins where I…
Previously, I described how a small sawmill from the Timber Boom Days after World War II operated and my first week on the job at Philo Lumber doing production work. My recollection of the first…
Gary Womack, 1940-2021, was not of our Valley; he was born and raised in a small town in southern Oregon few of us have ever heard of, Central Point in the Cascade foothills west of…
As I rambled along in my previous Floodgate stories articles, little vignettes would illuminate themselves in dusty corners of the cerebral warehouse where the larger memories were stored so many years ago. Some of them…
It's time to get down to the biography of Sam and Marguerite Avery's life in Anderson Valley, 1946-77. In preparation I went back to my archives to find a copy of the local monthly newspaper,…
As I've described previously Floodgate Store was a complex retail business operation with long daily hours. During the day Marguerite Avery was the sole attendant at the deli, convenience goods, bar and gas pumps part…