I died in April, 1979, a Saturday morning that I seem, now, to remember as being sunny and animated, as most sunny spring days on the Mendocino coast are, with that naive optimism unique to…
Posts published by “Crawdad Nelson”
The boys were flying on acid on the veneer line, that much I knew. I never worked on veneer but I saw it done. A matter of flipping big flat sheets of Doug fir off…
I was minding my own business when I heard the thump of heavy footwear on the porch. I stepped outside in time to intercept two neatly dressed young women, carrying shiny briefcases and purses. Their…
We rolled out of Lemmon Valley, just north of Reno, late on an icy night in December. My brother had insisted that a little midwinter elk hunting was just what I needed, and I couldn't…
June of 1977 there was uncertainty about the future of the mill in Fort Bragg. At that time it had been in operation for over 100 years, but only the year before, Louisiana-Pacific, which had…
I’ll admit I was down-and-out. I was borderline Fun Bunch. But these things are subjective. One man’s pith is another’s drivel. I was in the Humboldt Squeeze: watching my job dry up quicker than the…
At first, American lumbermen were mystified when Chinese laborers gathered the slime-covered gastropods from the cove where schooners moored to load Union Lumber Company products. It was a considered another odd quirk of the Oriental…