Stories from the Rickshaw Diaries

A few years ago I decided to buy a rickshaw or more commonly known as a pedicab today.  I have had quite a bit of fun pedaling people all over Grants Pass during special occasions like this weekends "Back to the Fifties" celebration.  I remember one particular event that I will never forget... 

I was invited to rickshaw employees that worked at one of our local cell phone companies to their big annual awards banquet.  The motel they were staying at was a block away from the convention center and the company thought it would be nice if I could transport the ladies over to the party rather then having them walk over. Arriving a few minutes before the gig was suppose to start, I was taken aback by the number of ladies needing to be transported and also by how they were all dressed in beautiful flowing formal attire. I felt pretty out of place in my spandex biking shorts and Hawaiian shirt, but off I pedaled like a bat out of hell, with the ladies' gowns billowing in the breeze. There was some road construction going on in the city street at that time, and it was after banking hours, so I was cutting through Evergreen Bank's parking lot between the motel and their banquet destination. Jetting through the bank's back parking lot, I had to negotiate through a drive-up teller's window or ride over a speed bump on our way to their big party. On each trip I would look over my shoulder at my guests and ask, “Speed bump or jump?” —jump because the drive-up window ramp was slightly raised.

Having made lots of trips back and forth that evening, I continued to look over my shoulder and offer, “Speed bump or jump?” On one particular run all three of the gorgeously dressed ladies said, "Speed Bump!" I will admit I probably did ride over the speed bump a bit faster then I should have.  All of a sudden I hear a bloodcurdling shriek, followed immediately by a great amount of laughter. Quickly snapping a glance back over my shoulder to see what tragedy I had bestowed upon my honored guests.  I beheld, when we hit that little old speed bump, the lady sitting in the middle had had both her ample breasts explode out the top of her tight fitting gown. The ladies sitting on either side of her were beside themselves with screaming laughter as they pried her dress top open and were trying to slug each of her bosoms back into the confines of her dress. The aghast look on the face of the exposed lady in the middle seat was unforgettable. Her two best friends cheerfully tried to reassemble her ensemble before we arrived at the convention center. Being a fairly new rickshaw operator at that time, I wasn’t sure if I should stop and personally lend a hand getting her reloaded into her dress or just keep on pedaling and pretend I didn’t see anything. Finally arriving at the convention center with my extremely perky gang, I calmly got off the rickshaw and offered each one of the fine ladies a hand out of my carriage. In as professional voice as I could muster, I reminded these new lady friends, “What happens in the Rickshaw stays in the Rickshaw.” as they went giggling off for the rest of their evening's niceties. I wondered afterwards how my insurance would have covered an accident like that.

Later I heard through the grapevine that our speed bump adventure was the highlight of conversation that evening at their banquet.

Speaking of Placentas

The rural community I volunteered in had, let’s say, a lot of people who were trying to escape the big city life and go back to nature. That included eating organic foods, the females maybe not shaving all the normally shaven body parts and of course having their babies naturally at home rather then in a hospital where there are dozens of professionals who can help them if things go awry…

Late one night, “Stations 1 and 4 respond to a woman experiencing difficulty during child birth” alerted me over my fire scanner at home. To make things even more interesting our small community only had one ambulance in it and they were already on a preceding call so the next available ambulance was thirty miles away. Luckily that evening, two of our lady volunteers and myself showed up to respond from our station to this adventure.

Arriving on scene of a dimly lit two story apartment complex and naturally the apartment where we were needed was on the second floor. The almost new dad was already waiting for us on the balcony shouting directions as we gathered our medical gear from the engine and rushed up the stairs. With me leading the charge we could hear our woman patient inside screaming in pain as I took the steps two at a time. Dad flung the front door open and I dashed inside.

Now let me set the stage a bit for you all. The lady was lying in, by now, a very messy recliner (sorry no pictures) in the front living room and naturally she was naked, facing right towards me as I come through the front door. Because she was very much in the delivery stage of giving birth she naturally had her legs spread wide apart. With her setting in this scrunched up position naturally that left the unshaven places very much exposed. I know child birth is supposed to be a wonderful time in a person’s life but I believe it is far over rated. I find nothing magical at all, in meeting a pregnant, red faced, sweating, screaming woman, with her naturally unshaven legs spread wide apart. With a new born infant beginning to show, for the first time. For the only time in my life I stumbled backwards from the gruesome sight and grabbed one of my female comrades and shoved her into the catcher’s position as I turned away from the horror. My two female firefighters immediately went to work coaching the mom, reassuring her, wiping her brow and barking out orders to me because by then I had retreated behind the safety of the front door. Periodically I would have to dive out from behind my protective door and hand the fire ladies something they needed out of the medical kit. Looking away, with one hand I would carefully lean in their direction to daintily hand them the device they had ordered. Within just a couple more minutes of extreme screaming our nurse maids were holding the new infant in their hands, as they ordered a blanket. With both of my fire lady "freak-a-zooids" crying by now at the wonder of child birth. I was left wondering what the heck they were crying about.

Now I don’t intend to be mean, but newborn babies are not cute. They are a funny red color. They have wrinkled skin, goop coming out their nose, and are crying at the top of their lungs (I’ve been told that is a good sign). But for the most part they are slimy. Now one thing most people forget about natural child birth is the placenta. If you think new born babies are ugly, one word, the placenta is… nastier. None of the movies we watch even show the placenta being delivered after a newborn child is delivered. You know why they don’t film that? Because it is too darn gross even for T.V. these days.

So since the two fire ladies were drying off, weeping, cooing and bonding with new the soul, they barked for me fetch something in which to catch the placenta in. I darted into the kitchen and found a large Tupperware bowl. Looking away, leaning in; I start to hand the bowl to the new midwives. They both yell at me in their high pitched girl voices, “we’re busy, you catch it”. Ahh… have any of you ever caught a fresh placenta in a big Tupperware bowel before? First, you have to put your hands down there. Naturally it makes you want to puke from the sound as it blurbs into the bowl. The puking sensation intensifies when you start feeling the warmth of it through the bowl. Then you are forced to stand there for a few minutes while the cord is tied off and the umbilical cord is cut. Eventually I ask, “ahhh, what do you want me to do with it?” Both new parents now pop off with “go put it in the kitchen freezer” as I ask “ahhh, why?” Naturally they tell me they are going to cut it up, fry it and eat some of it so they will both have some of the babies soul in them. Naturally you all already know what I really wanted to do next.

A few weeks later this new family stopped in one evening during one of our training classes at the fire station to show off the new baby we had helped deliver. And yes, Naturally I took credit for the whole delivery.

At least mom didn't talk about the Placenta

I'm glad you realize the sacrifices your Grandparents made to acquire the property we call the Home Place.  Which later you worked to crave out a portion of it that became known as Beaver Hollow. I think you are one of the last generations that really does appreciate keeping this as a place to go and enjoy the tranquility of this camp. I'm sure your Grandpa Buster would be proud that you, his name sake, Charles William (aka billy blaze) feels so strong about this place and made an effort to nurture this single little tree into something strong and no longer deformed. Unfortunately others didn't realize the significance this tree held for you.  And "Yes", it galls me too seeing anyone leaving camp that doesn't pickup after themselves, until it grows into the mess you and Uncle Jack had to remove.

I just happen to be thinking today about what was taking place 52 years ago today (July 28th) and possibly more then you care to hear. But on that day the Doctor had told me to take 4 oz. of Castor oil and then walk up the hill out of the Home Place.  Since you were suppose to have been born around the 4th of July.   Afterwards have someone drive me the 32 miles to Grants Pass.  It was your Grandpa Buster driving, with Grandma Mary riding "Shot Gun," on the way to town.  With both constantly asking, how I felt.  I'll skip how I felt.  I did have to make several restroom stops, on one of the hottest days we had so far that year. After a quick exam the Dr. decided to go to step #2. It was called Pit shots (short for something, I don't remember) which involved more walking around blocks of the City, until it was time for the Dr. to close his office, so I was sent to the hospital. Doctors, nurses, your Grandma Mary just couldn't figure out why you wouldn't make an appearance and I was getting pretty tired of this birthing part.  Somewhere in the middle of the next day, after the Dr. had gone home to eat his dinner and I had missed mine, you decided it was time and so I finally delivered at 7:24 pm July 29th. Four or Five days later you went home to the "Home Place", which will always be special for you.

Mom

Isn't it kind of gross to hear about your own birth?  Ahhh well, at least I turned out to be a rugged good looking kid.  I'm glad I have been able to keep that same image 52 years later.

billy blaze

I Return to the Hollow

I do not remember the sacrifices and hardships that my grandparents made to be able to afford buying the “home place” property. I know they both had to work hard and lived a frugal lifestyle to get by. I do not know about the times Uncle Jack must have thought about moving away from the “home place” but instead decided to stay to help watch after Grandma Mary after Grandpa Buster pasted away. I don’t know if many of my immediate family and the friends they invite to Beaver Hollow fully appreciate the “home place”. I don’t think they realize how lucky our family is to have a wooded retreat like this that we can call our own.

Uncle Jack and I spent a couple hours this weekend hauling away at least five yards of trash that had been strewn around camp over the last couple years that I have been away. An old refrigerator that no longer worked, blow up toys that had long been deflated and just general trash. Five huge garbage bags were filled with pop and beer cans and delivered to the grandkids for fair money. Five yards is a lot of crap if you think about it. Fifteen foot high by fifteen foot wide by fifteen foot long, cube of garbage. Afterwards I picked up a wheelbarrow load of broken beer bottle glass, cigarette butts and hundreds of those damn plastic wrappers for the straws on those Juicy Juice drinks that had been discarded throughout the campground. Though I don’t know how grandpa and grandma acquired the property camp now sets on I want to be clear why I spent the time, energy and sweat equity to build Beaver Hollow.

I built Beaver Hollow because of a drunken party.

Not so I would have a place to hold drunken parties.

For me the “home place” where Beaver Hollow is built, exudes, for a lack of better words, a healing, regenerating power for me. My fire department hobby sometimes leaves me sadden and confused. Beaver Hollow seems to be the only place where I can truly relax and contemplate about life. Twenty five years ago when I stood in the rough lower field, before the old logging slash piles were burned away to make room for lawns. Before the tall weeds, blackberries and dry grass were hacked back to the forest edge, I knew this was going to be a magical place. No, I am not any kind of visionary but like any painter starting with a blank canvas I could see Beaver Hollow unfolding in my minds eye. No, I did not have the money to make all the features come alive at once. I had to bring them to life when I could afford too or had the time too.

I clearly remember when Lauren was helping me one afternoon clear away the brush and numerous misshapen fir trees growing around where the old pavilion now stands. There was this one little fir tree about ten feet tall that had six tops trying to grow out of it. This poor skinned up tree had been ran over so many times in its young life with a old rusty Caterpillar skidding turns of logs into the field it was a miracle it was still trying to grow at all. Lauren came at it with a chainsaw to cut it down. Almost jokingly I jumped in front of it with my arms up and proclaimed “No!!! Lauren, I can save this one”. Lauren gave me one of those looks like, hummm, ok, good luck. I picked out the most predominate top and cut the others away. Through the years I nursed that little tree back to health. Over time it became known as the "Hickerson Tree". It finally grew so big one summer we had to move the fire pit farther away because the fir bows were growing so far from the stem we were starting to singe them with my story telling bon-fires. It had grown to about forty feet tall before it was removed for a “improvement”. Keep in mind, sometimes one mans improvement is another mans decline. With that said, I thoroughly enjoyed working this past weekend at Beaver Hollow turning it back into what my minds eye saw twenty five years ago, despite that the six topped little fir tree was now missing.

Note to Self

No, the reason I have not posted in a few days is not because I have been killed in some horrific rickshaw crash.  Larrieann had the bright idea to invite all her nieces and nephews, plus throw in the west coast grand kids, to come stay with us this last week.  Rather then like we normally do, spreading all their individual visits throughout the summer. 
NOTE to SELF... don't do that again.

 When you have seven kids at one time, ranging from 6 to 16, they tend to gang up on billy blaze.  I think they even begin to plot ways to get my attention. As with any daycare situation there is always that one child who didn't get spanked enough while growing up so it then becomes my responsibility to "train them up right" in the one week we have them.  And what is it with kids screaming these days?  Hell if we screamed as much as a couple of these children, my mom would have hit us with a shovel.  Screaming in my family, growing up, was only used for rattle snake encounters or the occasional cougar attack.  I finally had too ask a couple of the little girls what they would do if they needed help for real.  They informed me, scream louder, hummm.  I'd be in to much pain to help them because my ear drums would be broken from the high pitch.  Larrieann topped the week off for the kids with a camp out at Beaver Hollow. 

I got a reprieve today because I am pulling a fire shift today. 

Already had a "wicked witch of the east" call today.  Building fell on a lady.  Lucky for her she wasn't wearing those long stripped socks and pointy red shoes when I got there.  I would have had to reconsider helping her out from under it if she was wearing that get up. Tomorrow I head back down to camp to retrieve Larrieann from the hoodlums.  At least if they try and burn Beaver Hollow down today I will be the first to know about it.

Ironic in some weird sense

…on a hot afternoon I was standing in line at our local D.Q. I had ordered a ice cold fresh fruit strawberry milkshake, my absolute favorite. I could hear them blending the ingredients and could almost feel the cool creaminess melting down my throat already. Some people I knew ran through the stores door and immediately recognized me. In small rural communities everybody knows everybody else living in the surrounding area. They knowing I was a fireman, with a puzzled look on their faces, asked, Bill why aren’t you down at the big fire. Catching me off guard a bit with that statement of “Big Fire” I muttered where.

They lead me outside and pointed south down the main drag. I didn’t see any fire; I saw a huge black column of smoke billowing high into the August sky. Leaping into my van and squealing out of the parking lot I head towards where the excitement would be. Every fireman knows where there is a huge column of smoke you too will find fire to play with somewhere under it. I slid into the graveled parking lot at almost the same time the engineer activated the air brakes on the responding fire engine. Pulling my spare set of turn-outs from my van and quickly getting dressed, I wondered to myself, how did this fire, in the middle of the afternoon get so big before someone reported it? It was an old church that had been turned into a funeral home. The funeral home director’s mobile home was positioned only a few feet away from the main building. The old sanctuary was already heavily engulfed with flames. Each licking flame was launching hundreds of hot embers into the dry grass, brush, and other residences surrounding the burning structure. Pulling the chin strap on my fire helmet tight I knew we had to knock the dragon out of this one. On a cooler day we might have went into the “surround and drown” mode, but not today. It was too explosive outside on that hot afternoon to let the dragon take his time burning this landmark down. If we couldn’t take some heat out of this one, it was going to light more stuff on fire.

The engineer hands me the nozzle for the pre-connect and I start making some decisions. I didn’t want the flames to creep into the funeral home residence so I advanced with my charged hose line and positioned myself in the narrow passageway between this hot demon and the house. As with most rural volunteer fire departments across our country it sometimes takes a while for additional volunteer firefighters to muster. This was the case that day, so I was going one on one with the beast that hot afternoon. We had a luxury today that we normally don’t have at most rural fires, we had a fire hydrant to draw the “Wet Stuff” from. Knowing this, I pulled open the bale on my nozzle wide and let this unruly demon have a big drink. With the large sanctuary room on my right, it was split by a hallway of sorts.

Across the hall way was the old Sun day school rooms turned into a mortuary, ironic to me in some weird sense.  I figured I would sneak down this long hallway with my hose line spewing the way, I’d try and keep this dragon away from the already perished across the hall. Heavens knows they had already had a bad week, why let the devil have any of them early. I remember slowly advancing; the hose line was heavy, as I kept nudging the beast backwards. Gradually I fight my way to the edge of the auditorium some fifty or sixty feet inside the building, the mood inside was surreal. The high vaulted ceiling gave way to the deep blue sky today. The beast had already busted to the outside. The smoke wasn’t actually too heavy inside. Through a red hue I could clearly see the pulpit, the pews all lined up and the stained glass windows across the room. Talk about fire and brimstone. With my back pressed against the wall leading into the mortuary rooms I felt myself becoming almost spell bound. It was beautiful in there, in some thwarted way. The flames would whorl around the room and then suddenly leap out through the hole in the roof. The whole while I’m pouring hundreds of gallons of water on this amazing creature, I flash back, dang I left my strawberry shake. Looking skyward I can see the beautiful summer blue sky through the jagged burnt roof, interspersed with my now billowing white smoke. I noticed the huge wooden beams holding the sanctuary roof up seemed to almost be bouncing. I could see the accumulated dust rolling off of them and then mixing with the smoke. Under my breath I giggled to myself, boy they probably never dusted way up there before.

The next thing I remember, I was pressing hard against the skirting around the mobile home outside. With the nozzle shut down, I was holding it next to my face with my teeth gritted real tight. Every muscle in my body was tensed as I lay there in the fetal position on the ground. Just then four or five fire guys came running through the narrow passageway. Sprinting over to me they screamed, are you ok? The whole inside of the fiery sanctuary had collapsed in on itself. To this day I have no idea how I made the journey from so far inside the structure to the outside, still holding the fire hose in my hands and turning the nozzle off in the process.

Another example of “when it’s your time to go, you'll go and when it’s not, you won't”. Driving back to the D.Q. afterwards I splurged on an extra large strawberry shake that day, I had earned it.

I'd Rather be Lucky, then Safe

You never told me about about the winch line breaking under the strain either or how lucky you were to only be sore and bruised. I lost a Cousin when a cable snapped and he never got to see his son Jeff that was born shortly after you were born or watch his 2 little daughters grow up. Blaze do you remember that little boy that reach over to speared your piece of meat, when it jumped off your plate and you both were learning to use a fork? Sometimes Mom's just don't want to hear the things that have happened in their sons life's and would rather put their hands over their ears and go "La,La,La."

Mom

When I read your comment I actually chuckled out loud to myself. While I have never had any close calls because I had been out drinking crazy some night late and drove off a cliff. Like so many people we have retrieved from the brink of death while we served together in the fire department. There have been so many other times when I probably shouldn't have been able to walk away from a fire incident, they are to numerous to count...

...the night the Takilma store burnt down. I was kneeing down in the front doorway threshold while heavy flames shot out over my head. Still by myself, I had a 1 ½ hose line in my hands and was flowing water straight into the center of the old building and not even making a dent in the flame volume. Yes we had all been trained to watch for all the signs of building collapse before hand, but without warning the whole front portion of the two story building gave way and fell outwards towards my engine.

Like in a Road Runner cartoon, when the coyote is saved from sure death when the building falls on him. Wylie Coyote would always be standing right where an open window was when the building came crumbling down around him. I too was saved that night because I was standing in the door opening. The force of the wall falling down and hitting the ground jerked the nozzle from of my hands. The wall landed with such a tremendous thud and a huge shower of sparks rolled over me as I hunkered down. The flames increased significantly with the breath of fresh air that was provided to them. It got real hot, real fast as I leaped and hop-scotched over the hotter spots burning on the downed wall. The guys were coming for me just as I dove out of the wall of flames. They patted out the burning embers that were still burning on my turn-outs with their gloved hands. They were all asking at one time if I was ok. I was ok. They handed me another hose line and I went to work putting that damn wall out that had tried to kill me.

I don’t tell you this story to try and worry or scare you. I tell you mom,  and everybody else reading this story.  I have learned one thing for a “fact” while serving in the fire service and living my life… “When it is your time to go, you will go. When it’s not your time, you won’t” I have seen this scenario play out so many times in my life I have actually stopped worrying about dieing. I know when it is my time, it will be my time. I have always depended far more on being lucky, then being too afraid to do anything because I wanted to stay safe.

Working Hard Won't Kill You, most of the time

I don’t know if most kids when they are growing up get the opportunity to work for and around some of the kinds of people I have. I feel quite lucky that I had the chance to start working for Enid Birch and learn how to complete tasks by her no nonsense style. Even working for Effie Smith with all her irregularities, left me in a place where Harry could teach me how to operate different kinds of equipment and about plain hard farm work. Harold Teague taught me about ingenuity and how to survive in the woods if I ever needed to. A few other people have helped mold my working habits too…

…after I graduated from high school and going off for a short unsuccessful stint at college, moving back to grandma Gray’s “home stead” with a pregnant wife and a small little baby girl on the way. My Uncle Jack got me a good job at the local plywood mill he worked at. During that time in my life I was desperately poor. The job at the plywood mill taught me a great deal about what production was all about.

The mill bosses didn’t care if you were sick, or if you had sore muscles or if you were even tired, they just wanted you to be to work on time and be ready to work hard. I remember a young, darker skinned man there that was from another country, Laos, I think. He was here in America on some kind of work visa. He worked sixteen hour shifts, seven days a week the entire time his visa was good for. He never missed a day’s work because he didn’t feel good. He took no holidays off or any vacation days either. He didn’t speak hardly any English but sometimes I would be stationed to work next to him, feeding the veneer driers. My stinted conversations with him were very limited but I did find out a bit about him over the course of a couple years. He had relatives who lived in Glendale where the mill was located. They brought him over from Laos and provided him a small camping trailer in their back yard to live in during his stay here. He survived literally off beans and rice. All the “tax free” money he made working at the mill was mailed back to his home country to support his family still living there. Over time he explained to me that he could make enough money working in the U.S. for two years, that when he traveled back home he could build a small house for his immediate family and some older relatives living with them. He would still have some start up money left to buy a small business that would help support his growing family for the rest of their lives. Apparently the money exchange rate between the two countries was enormous. He was able to make more in one week working in America then whole families made in a year in his home land. You don’t need to wonder why people around the world are flocking to this country.

Was he miserably lonely here? Yep. Did he think his sacrifice was going to be worth his efforts? Yes he did. He left our country as suddenly as he had come. I don’t know how things turned out for him back home but after seeing all the hours he put in, I never complained about the few double shifts I pulled from time to time at the mill.

I think I got my, go to work all day long, then stay and work a few overtime hours just for spite, then come home and work into the night, from my Uncle Jack. He always worked long hours at the mill but still found time to go do some logging to earn extra money for his family and grandma Gray. A few times I would venture out to the logging job with him. I would help by setting chokers behind the cat for him, which enabled him to pull in more logs into the log landing, then if he were trying to do everything by himself.

One time I hooked a couple chokers,

bound around a couple large logs to the heavy winch line attached to the tracked Caterpillar. Uncle Jack began reeling in the turn of logs towards the rear of the cat. All I recall was seeing the steel winch cable snapping taut heading right at me. Just before the braided line cut me in half, I caught it in my gloved hands. The only thing, besides the pain afterwards, I remember was Uncle Jack grabbing me out of a pile of logging debris several feet from where I had started my flinging journey. Uncle Jack stood me up, I was still limp, and shook me, wondering if I was ok. My Uncle Jack had no emergency medical back ground at all back in those days. That’s the reason I am a paraplegic today.

No I lived through the experience but I never forgot the lesson.  That great care had to be observed at all times when working around heavy equipment of any kind. I did end up with a really cool deep blue bruise from my chest to my thigh from the force of the cable hitting me. We never did tell Grandma Gray about that one.

I was Listening and Learning

I had been involved in the fire department already for several years when one cloudy afternoon an alarm comes in. Stations #1 and #3 respond for a man trapped under a tree. Our EMS crews quickly responded to the accident scene. Stepping out of the extrication rig I headed out through the woods in the direction the neighbors were pointing and others were yelling for help. An older man (70+) was felling a big tree for firewood but after he cut through the tree trunk the tree didn’t fall. The old guy had walked around the tree to take a look at his dilemma when the tree suddenly broke free and fell down crushing and trapping him underneath all its weight. Sliding in along side the crumpled old coot I immediately recognized the man. He was my, even older by then, trail boss from my Forest Service days. Harold was hurt, he was hurt real bad. I told him “Harold we’re going to get you out of here, you hang on” but in the back of my mind I wasn’t sure we could come through on this promise. Harold mumbles back at me “well don’t take your time doing it.” I don’t think he recognized me through all the pain he was in. Our fire crew went to digging and sawing the brush away around us so we could gain better access to this old woodsman. This damn guy at seventy years old was still out chopping firewood for himself and he always had some old widow woman in the community that he would be helping get by, by giving her free firewood.

We finally were able to unscrew Harold from the early grave this darn tree had tried to pound him into. When the ambulance doors were closed and it sped away I was not sure I would ever see Harold alive again due to his serious injuries. I guess, really I should have known better, being that Harold was tough as nails even in his old age. I heard through the grapevine that he did eventually survive and heal from most of his injuries. Years later I ran across Harold downtown one day at the Junction Inn, eating lunch. He looked pretty good for almost being eighty years old and having a tree fall on him. You could hardly even notice he limped anymore because now he limped on both legs when he walked. He excitedly told me about the new adventure he was into, bus tour guide. Harold did not at all resemble the normal tour guide type person you would imagine seeing.

Though no one else knew about the local historic past more then Harold did.

Below is a real interesting site I found about Harold Teague and his life and times.

http://www.illinois-valley-news.com/archive/2008/02/27/harold_teague.html

Several years later I was chatting with some folks that had taken one of the bus tours to Vegas that Harold was chaperoning. They told me he was the highlight of their trip telling his old time stories, especially since they didn’t win any money. They said once Harold got away from the small towns dotted along the roadway, where he would remind them about the historic lore of the area. Out where the highway leading to Sin City was straight and the sage brush grew tall, Harold told this story…

…a number of years ago I was a trail boss for the Forest Service. I was in charge of a gaggle of kids one summer, a good bunch of kids, but they didn’t know anything. I had to teach them how to buck logs from the trails we were maintaining with the manpowered crosscut whip saw. I even had to train those darn youngsters how to use a fulcrum and lever to remove the big log rounds from the trail pathway after we cut through the fallen tree. There was this one whippersnapper that used to give me a particularly hard time when he was on my crew that summer. I never was sure he was going to grow up to amount to much. I was surly surprised one day many years later though. I had had a terrible accident one afternoon when I was felling this old tree. I ended up with the damn thing on top of me in fact. I figured that it was going to be the end of me for sure that day, when suddenly I felt something under that tree next to me. Looking over, it was the dang kid I had spent so much time training several summers earlier. As I lay there being crushed to death, I watched, as that damn kid went to work digging me out from under that mess. He used all the techniques I had taught him summers ago. He must have actually been listening to me after all, because if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t be here sharing today with you all.

Boonekins and Crocketteers

I haven’t posted anything in the past few days because I have been enthralled in an all weekend long “Wilderness First Aid” class. The class didn’t end up being what I had imagined it would be about when I signed up for it. With the word “Wilderness” headlining the title I had hoped it would be about learning how to use things you would find in the wilderness to help manage first aid emergencies when caught out in the forest. You know something like this… ok “Daniel Boonkins”, today we are going to learn how to carefully strip thin pieces of bark off a Tan Oak tree and weave it together and by adding two sturdy Live Oak poles make a stretcher to carry our injured patient out of the “wilderness”. Or better yet… “Crocketteers” today we are going to hunt for the elusive Myrtlewood tree and after milking the sap from within the trees cambium layer we are going to combine it with crushed moss that we had before hand gathered from the north facing side of a Douglas Fire tree. After making our powerful pulpous we will learn to apply it to a serious wound to help draw away the poisons and provide pain relief while we are carrying our patient out of the “wilderness” on our cleverly built stretcher.

What did I learn in our 24 hour long class was… dramatic pause… if you are hurt in the “Wilderness” it will take emergency personnel longer to reach you and even longer to extract you to an emergency facility, then if you were injured on 6th Street in downtown Grants Pass. Hummm... I sort of knew that before hand. Actually the class ended up being a great general first aid refresher course for me and the hours I participated will apply towards the continuing education hours I need each year to keep my E.M.T. certification current.

I did end up learning a few clever tricks from a Boy Scout leader that was taking the course with us. I have had training in so many different fields through the years, sometimes if you can come away from a class with just one or two new ideas that you can throw in your MacGyver tool chest it makes all the class hours worth it. I do hope that I will be able to find a class where I will be able to learn more about true wilderness first aid in the future though.

Nobody practices “medicine” like in the old days. Knowledge of Grandma Gray’s fantastic remedies or Harry Smiths concoctions at the ranch are no longer passed down to the younger generations. That old style way of caring for sick people served a duel purpose. If you were able to live through the cure you could use it again on the next victim. If the cure did kill you it helped cleanse the family genes of the weak individuals. When I was little, still living at Grandma Mary’s, I used to get ear infections fairly often. I can still remember being sat on by the brood of concerned family members, to hold me down, while grandma poured some hot gruel into my infected ear. Within a few days the burns would heal in my inner ear canal and the ear pain would have disappeared, completely. I couldn’t hear out of that ear anymore, but the pain was at least gone.

One summer when I was still in high school I got to work on the trail crew that maintained the trails within the Siskiyou National Forest. Our crew boss was an old guy that looked like he had just stepped off the pages of an old miner forty-niner book cover. Wooly white hair, big dangly beard, shoulders hunched over a bit, he even limped on one leg slightly when he walked along the mountainous trails. Harold would yell at us “kids” to get up in the mornings when we were out camping the nights along the trails. He would have already been up stumbling around in the morning darkness for what would seem like hours before we would finally drag ourselves from our warm sleeping bags. Groggily we would eat something, pack our gear up into our packs and then zooming down the trail, us "kids" would go. Our young gang would be kicking rocks off the trail as fast as we could go, cutting branches leaning into the pathway and occasionally digging a water bar into the trail tread with our Pulaski, to help prevent soil erosion. Harold would sometimes be a half mile behind us trudging down our freshly made trail bed. We would all be yelling back at him, “Come-on old man, is that the best you can do?” “If you were moving any slower you’d be going backwards” we would taunt him. As the day progressed the sun would always get hotter, we kids would always get tired. Stopping to rest against our heavy packs, with our tongues hanging out, in the shade of some old tree along our route.  Harold would eventually come limping along. Passing by us he would inform us that he would be waiting for us at the next campsite. “I told you. You should have paced yourself,” he would announce, once he had gotten far enough ahead on the trail that we couldn’t throw a rock at him.

Every time towards the end of a ten day stint out on a trail maintenance job our “kid” backpacks would be running low on the good food, like Taylor’s beef jerky, fruit roll ups and granola bars. We’d come dragging ourselves into the campsite Harold had chosen that afternoon not knowing really what we were going to eat for dinner. Harold would ask what we had left for food in our packs and we would throw the miserable contents out on a stump or log. Harold would rummage through the pile of crumpled cans and torn open Rice-a-roni bags as we would fall over from exhaustion. An hour or so later Harold would yell to us, “Kids, come and get it while it’s hot”. To this day I have no idea how he made some of the meals out of the crap that we piled on the log, but they were always tasty. Harold turned out to be far more then a trail boss that summer to us kids. He really ended up being more like a mentor. In his simple way he taught us how to use things found in the forest. He taught us how to identify things that were good to eat, where to find them and the other things that would make us sick. He drilled us on what the trees and plants names were till we remembered their names. I still remember many of their names to this day. I now wish I had listened closer to Harold Teague’s off the cuff lessons. Simply put, he was a man of great “wilderness” wisdom and I wish he could have been there to throw his tidbits into the room while the class was being taught this weekend

"Tastes Like Chicken"

…working for Mrs. Smith was hard work. She had a demanding demeanor about her. After mowing the lawn one time I was raking up the loose grass clippings and leaves on the lawn. Suddenly Mrs. Smith ran up to me and demanded “what was I doing”, grabbing the lawn rake from my hands. “You’re raking the grass against the grain” she implored. I didn’t really know what to say to her when she handed me back the rake and forcefully told me “now do it the right way”. As soon as she had shuffled away the old farmer showed up again. In his hand he had a fresh picked red apple from his orchard. With me still standing there sort of dumb founded by my recent rebuke, he pulled his pocket knife from his pants pocket and cut the juicy apple in half. Throwing me half the apple he slowly walks by me and says in a low voice “she sometimes gets that way” before he ambles off amongst the thick vegetation surrounding the house. That was sure a good tasting apple.

During my junior high school years I decided I had outgrown my Stingray bicycle. I had saved up some money of my own so I decided I would treat myself to a brand new ten speed bicycle. My new, sleek ten speed bike sure made the  

compute from home to the ranch and back home easy compared to riding that dumb old Stingray. By now I was actually doing far more ranch type work then actual gardening chores. Mr. Smith taught me how to weald a pretty mean brush hook, used for clearing the blackberries away from the irrigation ditches running throughout the hay fields. The brush hook was followed up by the round tipped shovel to remove the heavy wet overgrown grass growing in the bottom of the ditches. I bucked lots of hay bales through the years. Periodically you would get the stuffing scared out of you when you would roll over a bale so you could better grab the binding strings and there would be a dead snake baled in the cube of hay. Finally when I got old enough, Harry decided I should learn how to operate the old 8N Ford farm tractor they had on the ranch.

Sometimes I had to buck the hay by myself because it would be too hot for Mr. Smith to work in the fields at his age. I would put the old tractor in first gear, with a low idle and steer it out through the hay field.  Leaping off the slowly moving tractor, I would run ahead of it and lift the heavy bales of hay and throw them haphazardly on the deck of flat bed. Periodically I would gingerly jump back on the tractor to make a big turn, heading back the other way in the field for more bales or to stop for a few minutes while I restacked my messy load on the trailer. The only time I have ever drank a whole beer, at one time in my life, was when one day I had ran out of ice water in my water jug. The day was blistering hot, when Mr. Smiths son, Bob, arrived that afternoon, to help finish getting the hay in the barn before the brewing thunder storm hit that afternoon. He had a case of ice cold beer from the Siskiyou Market with him but no water with him at all. The Siskiyou Market where he had purchased the frosty brew even advertised that they had “The Coldest Beer in Town” on their sign out in front of the store. Popping open a cold one for himself, Bob offers one to me. I knew I was going to go straight to hell but I took one anyway. I slugged it down like an old beer drinking pro, without even taking a breath because I was cotton-mouthed thirsty. It tasted awful, but it was at least wet.

The grossest job I had on the ranch was in the spring time shortly after the new lambs were born. Mr. Smith would have me herd all the sheep up into one pen in the barn.

The new lambs would be intermingling with their moms. The one you had to watch out for was the darn mean old ram. You had to keep your eyes on him because he would take a big leap in the air and with his head down come running at you and try and butt you with his hard as a rock head, and it hurt. Mr. Smith would say it’s time for the “treatment” and I would know what that meant. The ewes would need to have their hooves trimmed, which stunk real bad when I had to hold them still as Harry would hack away at their overgrown hoofs with the toenail shears. All lambs are born with long tails which had to be cut off shorter; they didn’t like that too much. You really didn’t want to be a male lamb because castration didn’t look like it was any fun either. With me chasing the next victim down in the pen I would turn him over and hold the poor little bleating creature’s hind legs apart. Harry would pull his pocket knife from his pants pocket, slitting the ball sack open on the male lambs with his sharp blade. I didn’t eat too many apples cut from Harry’s knife after witnessing that ritual. Squeezing the testicles with both hands from the cut open ball sack, he would bend down and with his mouth, in some barbaric style tear the testicles from the squirming little tike with his teeth. He had some kind of “secret formula”. Fuel oil, turpentine, I don’t know, maybe even battery acid I think, mixed together, that he would glob onto the open wounds with a stick immediately after “The Treatment” and just before I released them back into the herd so they could warn the other unsuspecting male lambs. All I know is his secret formula smoked when drops of this black tar mixture hit the ground. Harry said it prevented infection and flies from bothering the open wounds. Standing back up with remnants of blood around his mouth and fresh testicles still in his teeth he would spit them in our bucket of tails and testicles. He’d always exclaim, mmm “tastes like chicken”. I never got to be enough of a farmer to practice that part of farming.

We always waited till the end to give the ornery ram his treatment. I think the reason Harry did it that way is because, if I was killed early on, trying to catch the ram, he would have the rest of the sheep to try and catch and “treat” by himself. One time I was not paying enough attention to that darn ram and wham he butted me hard. Grabbing up an old wood 2 x 4 that was leaning against the barn wall I let him have it right across the horns, as hard as I could. He fell over dead on the ground I thought. I knew my days working at the ranch were for sure over. Harry even exclaimed “God Damn, I think you killed him”. Afterwards I felt sort of bad. Harry came over and smacked me on my shoulder and said “I was wondering how long you were going to take crap off that damn ram”. About then the ram began to wake up, while still lying there on the ground. I took advantage of that ram already being down and I leaped on him, we gave him the treatment before he came all the way alert again. I don’t remember that ram ever trying to butt me again after that episode.

Holy Moly Batman, I'm going to be Rich

…$2.50 an hour, Holy Moly Batman. Quickly I began adding in my head. That would be enough money for a hamburger, fries and a soft drink at the Grants Pass Lions booth this year at the fair. Finishing my chores up at Mrs. Birch’s that afternoon I rode my bike back home fast, I didn’t even notice the up hill part today. I was excited to tell my mom how rich I was going to become.

The next day I called the telephone number that the lady had slipped to me unbeknownst to Mrs. Birch. Answering the phone a lady on the other end said “Hello, Smith residence”. I asked are you Mrs. Smith? The voice chuckled and said “oh for heavens sakes no, I’m the maid; let me get her for you.” Thinking to myself they have a maid? A commanding voice comes on the phone and says “Effie Smith, can I help you” surprising me sort of by her tone. “Ahhh… yes this is Bill Hickerson… I pull weeds for Mrs. Birch. You gave me your phone number to call about working for you”, as my voice trails off, almost questioning myself now that she really gave me her phone number. “Oh yes, I remember you, but we’ll need to make an appointment for you to come, so we can see if you’re going to be a good worker or not” Mrs. Smith resonates to me. “You be here Thursday at 9:00 in the morning, sharp” where she proceeds to give me her home address, click, and the phone hangs up. Having my mom help me look up the address on the big fire map that hung on the State Forestry office wall, mom calculated humm… about five miles to Mrs. Smith’s house on Smith Sawyer road from where we lived now. I pondered to myself; Mrs. Smith must only be half as famous as Mrs. Birch since she shares the county road name with this other Sawyer person. But I was still pretty impressed that she had a maid.

Five miles is a pretty fair distance to ride on a Stingray bike so I headed off early, remembering the tart, 9:00 sharp instructions. Come to find out Mrs. Smith was an old schoolmarm too, but I sensed a meaner one then Mrs. Birch. She lived in a two story farm house surrounded by many more flower gardens then lawn. An apple orchard on one side, a pond with huge flowering lilies floating on the water on another side, with hay fields taking up the other open spaces. Mrs. Smith had been Oregon’s Flower and Garden President for over twenty-five years in a row. Her flower gardens made Mrs. Birch’s gardens pale in comparison. Mrs. Smith’s foliage appeared more like a semi orderly jungle then any kind of flowering garden that I had seen before. Mrs. Smith too had a flower bed dilemma.

Wild blackberry bushes had over taken her almost one acre sized rose garden. Actually I had to look pretty hard to even see any rose bushes in the brambles.  Mrs. Smith pointed and explained, “We’ll see how well you do at this job, and then I’ll let you know if I want to hire you more often”, as she hands me the pruning loppers. Pulling my worn leather gloves again from my hip pocket, I wanted to make a good impression as I began tearing into those berry vines. I began cutting, lopping and trying to pull huge chunks of berry vines away from Mrs. Smiths rose bushes. With almost a shriek Mrs. Smith yells “not that way young man”. “You are pulling the thorns from the berry vines across my rose bush stems and you are going to damage them,” she hotly explains. Thinking to myself, ahhh roses have thorns too you know. She proceeds to show me just exactly how she wanted the blackberry vines cut away and then extracted carefully from the rose bushes before I wheeled them off to the big burn pile near the orchard. An elderly farmer looking man strolled along about then and Mrs. Smith ordered him to watch over me and make sure I was doing it right. He turned out to be the Mr. part of Smith. He looked like your typical farmer. He wore overalls pulled over a long sleeved plaid shirt, topped off with a straw hat. He never said a word to me he just watched as I meticulously cut the blackberries wound around those pitiful rose bushes trapped underneath all their thorny cousins weight. Chewing on a piece of straw as he ambled around watching me work for awhile but he eventually strolled off somewhere as quickly as he had arrived a few minutes earlier.

It took me almost a month cutting on those damn berry vines.  I had never cussed before I had taken on this job but my arms had been ripped to shreds from this thorny task. Sometimes you just have to say “Darn-it” when the thorns would pull across your fleshy skin. I still snuck out to Mrs. Birch’s house periodically to complete my chores there but for a dollar an hour less then I was now making at the Smith ranch.

My folks eventually moved to our, new to us house, on Caves Highway, where my mom still lives today, a whole three miles closer to the Smith ranch then before. Soon afterwards I gave my job up at Mrs. Birch’s knowing full well that I would not be having milk and cookies anytime soon at Effie Smith’s house.

My first job

…I used to pick ripe blackberries growing along the irrigation ditches in the summer time for one dollar a gallon. I needed to raise money so I could afford to go to the Josephine County Fair before school started again in the late summer. My folks would pay my entry fee into the fair but if I wanted to go on any rides or play the games I needed to pay for that frivol-ness . My first real part-time job began right after I finished the sixth-grade. My mom had heard that an old schoolmarm who lived not far from the State Forestry Guard Station where we lived was looking for a young lad to mow grass and pull weeds. It was at one of the nicest houses in the valley; the house set off the roadway a short distance and nestled in nicely along the Illinois River. It had large green rolling lawns with huge Birch trees intermixed with what seemed like acres of flower gardens. I had pedaled my Stingray bike, the kind with the raised handle bars and banana seat, many times past this beautiful house, on the way to the big swimming hole a short distance farther up the river.

This was at Enid Birch’s house and I knew she must be really famous because the county road she lived on was called Birch Drive. My mom had made me a small lunch and handed me it just before I jumped on my bike to go see if I could become the new yard hand. Pedaling to Mrs. Birch's house was easy on my bike because it was almost all down hill getting there. Pedaling up-hill back home, now that was a different story. Parking my bike next to the smooth graveled driveway and walking up to ring the door bell, which I thought was pretty cool, not many houses back then had real push button door bells. A stately looking elderly lady answered the door and said, “Yes?” Clearing my throat, I said “I’m Bill Hickerson; I heard you were looking for help doing yard work.” With her stepping out on her porch I could feel her looking me up one side and down the other. She asked do you have gloves. I pulled the leather gloves my mom had provided for me out of my back pants pocket. Mrs. Birch told me in a no nonsense manner, I only pay $1.50 an hour. Which I quickly replied, that would be fine.

Leading me out to one of her many flower garden areas she pointed out her dilemma. She being an avid gardener, she had to have some of every plant that grows. A couple years earlier she had planted some bamboo in a planter. The planter box had broken and the bamboo had escaped. Escaped into her lawn, burrowed into her pristine flower beds and was uprooting her rock walkways. Handing me a digging tool she said I want it all gone, pointing towards the bamboo. Walking back towards the house she quickly turned around and reminded me to take care to patch the lawns after I tore the bamboo roots out of them. To which I replied, yes ma’am. For the next two months I did nothing but battle with this fast growing bamboo jungle. You could chop down bamboo stalks and dig bamboo roots all day long just to find a dozen more veracious sprouts popping up across the lawn someplace else the next day. In addition to that chore, I mowed the lawns with a push mower and battled with the “normal” weeds that grows in any person’s garden, like dandelions.

One day I was on my knees carefully digging weeds in her precious rose garden located behind the house. I heard what sounded like a tapping on a window; looking towards the noise I saw nothing so I went back to the task at hand. A few minutes later I heard a louder banging on a window and looking up from my toil, this time I noticed a figure of a person waving at me from inside the house. This person was urging me to come closer. I did not recognize the man in the window motioning for me to come in the patio door leading into his room. Slowly I opened the door leading into the house and said “yes sir, in a quiet voice?” An older man with a bold tone said “young man, come in here” as I slowly entered and closed the door behind me. Propped sitting up in a big bed was a frail gentleman holding a cane. I did not know who this man was but presumed it must be Mr. Birch? With no introductions, pointing with his cane, he said young man; you see that picture hanging on the wall. Looking at it, I see a grainy black and white picture of a cowboy looking guy with a big cowboy hat on his head. With what looked like four dead guys, two propped up against an old building on each side of him. The cowboy had a big star on his chest; actually he looked more like a sheriff as I looked closer. It appeared that he was blowing pretend smoke off the barrel of one of his two revolvers in the picture. The old man blurts out, “that’s when I captured the Everly Brothers Gang”. From my prospective it didn’t look like he had captured anybody, those dudes were dead looking to me. I asked “is that you in the picture”? Proudly he says “Yep”. I ask him, “You were a Sheriff?” The old guy yells in a drawl, “HELL NO, I was a Texas Ranger son”.

About then out through the window I could see Mrs. Birch looking for me in the back rose garden, calling my name, “Billy”. Seeing me through the window in her house she bolted in the back door leading to this old mans bedroom of sorts. Scolding me, she asks “What are you doing in here?” Not knowing exactly what to say, the old man breaks in. “Enid, go get us some milk and cookies” I say “Oh no sir, I need to get back to work”. Mr. Birch again tells Enid “go get those cookies”, he motions to me and says “young man you sit down next to my bed right here”, where he begins to tell me this huge tale about the Everly Brothers and their train robbin days. Mrs. Birch leans over towards me and informs me that “your off the clock until you get back to work outside”, before she retreats for the milk and cookies.

As the weeks passed I got a fifty cent raise after more bamboo battling, more taps on the window, more milk and cookies, but best of all more stories about when Mr. Birch was a Texas Ranger, in all places, but Texas of course. In his magical cowboy bedroom he had a Texas Longhorn head mounted with his best lariat coiled over one of the huge long horns and the bridle of his favorite horse drooped over the other one. In the antlers of some unlucky deer he had killed long ago he had his old fashion looking long barreled rifle wedged. “Yep that’s the rifle I killed the varmint Paranoid Pete with. Shot him dead at five hundred feet at a full gallop” he told me. It got to a point that I knew when I saw Mrs. Birch coming my way in the yard with her feet dragging in the loose pea gravel on the pathway, her shoulders slightly hunched forward she would be frowning at me “Mr. Birch would like to see you now”. She would still remind me, “You’re off the clock”.

The funniest part was the cold milk and cookies were waiting for me now on the small table next to Mr. Birch’s bed as his stories would begin. At first I wasn’t sure if I believed all the tall tales this old lawman told me, but as time passed he convinced me. He sounded like he was one mean hombre of a Texas Ranger when he was years earlier a younger cowboy.

One afternoon I was working in the yard as several very nice looking cars began driving in the driveway and parking. Out stepped aristocratic looking ladies as Mrs. Birch met them in the yard and pointed out her beautiful, bamboo free, flowers beds to all of them. Mrs. Birch was having a ladies tea on the patio that day as she shuffled me off some ways away so I wouldn’t interrupt their pleasantries. Or maybe she didn’t want to have to get milk and cookies for Mr. Birch and me in front of her friends. As the party began to unwind one of the older ladies walked over to where I was bent over weeding. Leaning down she whispered in my ear “I’ll pay you fifty cents an hour more then whatever she is paying you” slipping me her phone number on a small slip of paper before she walked away…