That bomb talk? All horseshit … That depression talk and that other business, that strike business? More horseshit. For twenty years, thirty years, forty years, all th’ way back to the Big War, somebody been sayin’ oh me, the trouble is such, oh my the trouble is so; the trouble is the ray-dio, the trouble is the Republicans, the trouble is the Democrats, the trouble is the Commy-ists … All horseshit.
Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
When parachuting into foreign realms, my habit is to ask locals for reading recommendations. In Boston, where I moved more than a decade ago to work in the media, it’s mandatory for rookie journalists to study the epic school integration tome Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas and The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins; in my native New York City, there are countless prerequisites, but I typically suggest that friends start with The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro, or if a novel seems appropriate, perhaps Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities for a bite of the high life.
In Oregon, Tom Roach assigned me to read Sometimes a Great Notion on our first meeting, during a walk and talk along colorful Slate Creek. “I probably should have told you before coming out here,” he said half-jokingly as we surveyed the valley walls, their every crevice sharp and glittery. “It probably would have helped explain a lot of what is going on.”
Others made similar claims; from members of online forums to retired loggers in a Grants Pass coffee shop who let me interrupt their bible circle with some questions, source after source instructed, demanded I kick back with the 1964 novel by counter-culture icon Ken Kesey. The Merry Prankster and Oregon homeboy won much in the way of fame and acclaim for his debut, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but is more cherished by Northwesterners and literati for his second novel and its nuanced portrait of the Stamper logging clan.
I fell for Notion like a severed conifer. It’s better that Tom didn’t recommend the classic sooner; had I dug in prior to my first venture into Josephine County, I would have been convinced that everyone I met was following a script, almost the way a fan of Jersey Shore from the Midwest might react upon meeting a guido in real life. But now, having mixed and drunk and shot the shit and eaten with a mess of them before cracking the book, I’m certain rural Oregonians are of notably authentic bark, and that Kesey was merely the mill through which their timber-based economy and culture has been most candidly memorialized.
The cinematic adaptation of Notion, featuring Henry Fonda and Paul Newman, was subtitled “Never Give a Inch,” a branded tagline of the Stamper patriarch, Henry, whose own pop left a feed store in Kansas for the frontier along with other fearless fortune seekers in the late 18th century. Someone might as well stitch the Stamper ode to bullheadedness into the Oregon flag. While they’re at it they can inscribe Kesey’s sublime summarization of regional politics, grumbled thusly through the sweaty bottom of a logger’s disappearing glass of bourbon, over entranceways from Grants Pass to the state house in Salem: Accuse the federal government of turning America into a nation of softies, then … condemn the same body for its hardhearted refusal to help the faltering town through the recession.
But while Kesey brilliantly illustrated the life “on the Highway of Water!” which frontiersmen were promised, all without forgetting the mountains of guilt that accumulated through clashes and commingling with Native Americans, his vision is remarkable for more than just its unpretentious excavation of the country’s least forgiving landscape. Kesey’s work stands unparalleled on account of the future he forecasted, however subtly and non-judgmentally, through the mercenary optimism of his tree-felling protagonists: One of these days, he postulated, there won’t be enough shade left to chop down.
Good old days the booger! The good old days didn’t hardly make a dent in the shade. If you want to cut you a piece you can see out in these goddamn hills you better get out there with the best thing man can make … I seen it. I cut it down an’ it’s comin’ back up. It’ll always be comin’ back up. It’ll outlast anything skin an’ bone. You need to get in there with some machines ‘an tear hell out of it! -K.K.
Over the past 150 years, they sure have torn the hell out of it. Whupped ’er something fierce, as the rusty Stamper family patriarch Henry might assess. They’re not done either; in 2013, the state produced more than 4.2 billion board feet — less than half what loggers pulled out annually during the ’70s, but still enough to construct more than a half-million mid-size houses. Some of that product came from the few remaining harvestable federal tracks, but since the first severe restrictions were put on those territories in the early ’90s, the trend has moved toward private logging, which now accounts for more than 80 percent of the state’s yield.
Unlike logging on federal land, which supports all residents by generating revenue for public services, private cutting entirely benefits the property owner. That wasn’t always the case; until the late ’90s, Oregon collected severance taxes from private timber farms that helped keep sheriffs on patrol and county roads paved, among other things. Nowadays, even with the steep decline in federal logging subsidies, those reaping the profits pay little in the way of taxes that support the public. Rather, private outfits pitch into a fund that bolsters industry interests like forest firefighting.
All of which helps explain why Josephine County is in trouble. As more people like Tom Roach and Melinda Starba are targeted, the entire county, hell the whole entire state, will see its economic base erode further. It’s a vicious cycle in which local government, through foreclosures processed by sheriff’s departments, evicts longtime tax-paying residents who lost their homes — oftentimes to shady banks, which sell to private logging investors, which in turn pay far less in property taxes than homeowners are ordinarily levied. In the overall scheme of things, counties are shortchanging their law enforcement departments to perform services — in the case of Tom and Melinda, a SWAT raid and years of legal wrangling — that boost timber and banking interests.
Fueled by huge demand from overseas, especially China, softwood exports — firs, pines, spruces, all kinds of the conifer variety — have several times since 2009 experienced annual growth of more than 50 percent in value and volume. Private timber farmers have a monopoly on lumber and logs shipped overseas too, as trees taken from federal land must legally remain in the United States. Major exporters also benefit from special assessment programs for forestland owners, while small-time timber farmers can delay paying property taxes between harvests, and in many cases subsequently have their profits taxed as a capital gain.
In other words: It’s all good news for those with trees to whup.
What, in your opinion, is the trouble? The Real Estate Man tilts back his chair and grins up at the intruder, preparing to humor him. But the old fellow beats him to the punch … he shakes his head and looks about at the citizens — You boys … Don’t you see it’s just the same plain old horseshit as always. -K.K.
I started reading up on private logging after learning about the investor who bought Melinda and Tom’s place from Citi in 2013. He’s a Grants Pass resident named John Snook who over the past decade has acquired prime acreage around Josephine County, almost all directly in the resource-rich mountainside surrounding downtown. From an aerial view, his properties circle the valley like a necklace; up close, from the Jumpoff Joe mines in Merlin to the lush farmlands by the Limpy Creek Botanical Trail, acre after mountainside acre of Snook’s land physically resembles the woods by Slate Creek, and like those elevated tracks is loaded with potentially harvestable forestry.
Tom and Melinda have been in touch with Snook, even after the eviction, but attempts at finding common ground have proven futile. In line with Kesey’s image of a people with heads harder than aluminum logging noggins, neither side appears willing to concede an inch, unless of course you consider how far Melinda and Tom have already been pushed. Contacted for this story, Snook wrote in an email that he feels “sorry [for their] hardship,” but with the caveat that he questions their integrity: “Haven’t you had a ‘light bulb’ moment where you look at the claims and allegations, the credibility of whom is making them, and the stature and importance of the people who are on the receiving end of these allegations?” he asked me. Snook went on to claim that the couple has accused lawyers, banks, and judges who are “pillars of the community,” and to recommend I weigh his credit history against that of Tom and Melinda.
Snook also challenged numerous points I’ve made in Oregon Tale, going so far as to defend the SWAT eviction, allege the couple posed a danger to police, and argue that the fraud committed by their first lender, Dennis Lloyd, is irrelevant to Melinda and Tom’s plight. I asked Snook if he feels like a victim, and he wrote back that he does, on account of having now spent five figures buying and then advocating for his right to the property. He can’t currently access the area due to a gate built by the same neighbors with whom Tom and Melinda are staying, the Havens family, since they own the private dirt extension of Slate Creek Road that leads from the public way to the contested 60 acres.
I hardly sympathize with Snook. At the same time, though his voicemail messages and letters to Melinda and Tom have ranged from aggressive to odd, he did purchase a foreclosed hot potato, and claims he’s “holding out for a peaceful resolution” instead of personally suing the couple. As for additional queries, Snook won’t discuss his other investments, or his apparent consolidation of properties for tax-saving and harvesting purposes. Says I’m far too biased. And though I understand his position, from the beginning I’ve been clear that my intended role is to balance things out and get justice for Tom and Melinda, whom even the evicting sheriff says were screwed.
As far as I’m concerned, Snook, Citi, and all the rest already had their say on these matters; the sentiments of some were even delivered by law enforcement, with military swagger. It’s the people who have been ignored that I’m concerned about. It’s their story I set out to tell.
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