Skip to main content

All About Red-Headed Logging Trucks and Tall Trees

Almost fifteen years ago, while returning  to Washington State for my first foray into High School class reunions, which, so far as I know, was the last time our class ever reunited:  it is quite possible that all of us have died and gone to . . . heaven, I suppose.  That seems to have been a curious but common supposition.  (But I am losing my way, here.)

A logging truck, piled high with Douglas fir, suddenly appeared somewhere in Oregon.  The sight of it surprised me, although once it had been as common as rain or rocky soil.  I had been years away from such logs and trucks.

This time, after flying--almost incongruously on Alaska Airlines from Tucson to Seattle; something like seeing an umiak in the desert--I was struck by what had once been a common sight:  long paved roads at the bottom of a fir canyon; almost always second- or third-growth fir trees just learning how to stand tall.  (But I am losing my way, here, getting farther and farther in to the woods.)

In Olympia, Washington--one of those State capitols that seem to be trying to hide from public view, as if the people who put the capitol there knew that it might be best not to let too many people see how legislative sausage is made--I noticed that what seemed to me to be a curiously out-of-proportion number of women who had dyed their hair red.  Very often, only a part of the hair had been dyed red, as if the Irish or Norwegian ancestry was only a partial truth.  A good number of the women had cleverly dyed their original hair gray.  Sometimes the red hair was just enough to make a pigtail or two.

Mari will tell you that I am not the most observant of coif trends.  She usually has to ask me whether I noticed that she had been to the hair dresser, and I usually say, "Oh, yes!".  (Yes, I do that.)    And then I usually add a devious comment or two about . . . about whatever I can make up on the spur of the moment.  So when I report that the number of part-time redheads in Olympia seemed to me to be just a bit high, and not particularly well-done, I am willing to concede that there may be nothing significant to my observation.  Even so, I decided to press on.

I wondered whether it was just a local phenomenon.  After all, Olympia, Washington, while a delightful south-end-of-Puget-Sound-and-capitol-of-the-State town with some nice waterside restaurants and a finely-shaped dome, was a bit local, itself.  At one of the "bayside" restaurants, I decided to ask our server about it.  She was not a redhead.  She was a true blond with just a touch of brunette, here and there, deep down toward the scalp.

"Oh, really!", she said in answer to my question.  "I had not noticed that."  No, she did not think that there was anything like an Olympia-specific character-fault resulting in a lot of redheads, nor even that there were a lot of redheads.

"I don't know," she said.  "I do know that when I dye my hair red I feel like a different person."

So there you are!  It demonstrated that I am not very observant about hair, or hair-styles, or women in general, if you must know the truth.  I decided to confine my curiosity to tall trees and logging trucks, but even they surprised me.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more