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Posts published by “Crawdad Nelson”

The Soul Searchers

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…

How To Make Elk Liver

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…

Life at the Fort Bragg Mill

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…

No Holiday at the Colony Inn

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…

Draining the Heart of Fort Bragg

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…

Fort Bragg: My Hometown

Fort Bragg -- where the streets are straight, the fish are biting and the bars stay open in all weather. When I was a mallet-headed brat, we used to drive down to the ocean and…

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