CUTTING WOOD WITH A CREW

Like most kids growing up on the Oregon coast, like most people with a fireplace, I’ve spent time cutting wood.

My brother and I hauled and chopped rounds my dad sawed from the logs washed up on the causeway connecting Hwy101 to the sand dunes.

The old man was the boss.

He said we could drive the wood truck if we chopped and hauled to pay for insurance and gas.

He was a good boss man and knew how to handle a crew.

In most places I’ve worked I never met the boss.

Who was the boss of E.F. Hutton? No idea.

The boss of Georgia Pacific?

I did meet the boss of the last job, the museum.

He was a West Hills Portland institution as much as a boss.

He knew everyone there was to know.

But in writing about a boss, I’m taken back to cutting wood with the Rhino Wrestling Club under the North Bend Bridge.

 

The wrestling coaches were an ambitious group who wanted their athletes to achieve as much as they could while they had a chance, which meant going out to big tournaments after the school authorized wrestling season ended.

Fund raising was key and they coordinated with wrestling dads and fans to get logs donated and delivered under the bridge.

The kids wanted to be a part of the excitement of wrestling road trips and tried their hardest to make the team cutting wood.

Even if they weren’t good enough to travel, some enjoyed the day of work with friends and teammates, and hoped they’d eventually improve enough to get picked.

Besides, cutting and loading wood was a fair workout, like bucking bales on the farm, and young men who joined in competition in sport liked to compete with each other in most everything else.

 

The Good Boss

Cutting wood, chopping it up with an ax is a skill to learn, and a good boss teaches how it’s done.

Instead of handing someone an ax and telling them to figure it out, they give a class on heartwood, sapwood, the little rays in the center of the round telling you where to chop, and how to land the blade on the same spot and split the wood with the fewest hacks and move on.

They teach how to use wedges and mauls and how to avoid getting tools stuck in the wood.

Everyone doesn’t know how this all works, but they think they do.

This guy has it down.

You’ll know you’ve got a good boss when they want you to learn all they know.

By including you in their big picture they can tell how committed you might be, how interested you are, and if you can pass their knowledge along to new hires.

You’ll know you’ve got a bad boss when they don’t seem to know what they’re doing, when they lash out for their own incompetence, and blame everyone else for their failures, which are many.

 

My Army Boss? President Gerald Ford

President Ford said:

In this Land of the Free, it is right, and by nature it ought to be, that all men and all women are equal before the law.

Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States of America, to remind all Americans that it is fitting and just to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment adopted by the Congress of the United States of America, in order to secure legal equality for all women and men, do hereby designate and proclaim August 26, 1975, as Women’s Equality Day

 

This guy had been a football player on a national championship team for two years before going on to Yale Law School.

A sports guy, a law guy, an elected official, and the man at the top of my chain of command? That’s my guy.

He was called to serve when Nixon needed someone to replace him on his way out.

Two years later Ford lost a close election and welcomed the winner without major incident.

I was a nineteen year old joining the Army the same time Ford assumed the Presidency and nearly twenty-two when I got out without major incident.

A good boss keeps a lid on their things; a good soldier does the same.

A good president keeps themselves in check; a good citizen does the same.

You can tell a good president when they work with the other parts of the U.S. government to get their agenda passed, when they are sharp enough to hire and appoint the best people in their fields of expertise to improve the lives of average Americans like us.

You can tell someone is a good citizen when they accept the hand dealt them, or seek legal remedies if they don’t.

What makes for a bad president?

 

PS:

When a soft man used to the soft life tries to portray a hard man from a hard life, they usually overdo it with lots of scorn and sour expressions to look hard.

 

PSS:

What happens when a soft man finds himself facing the harsh realities of their poor decisions? Do they cast shame on the people responsible for upholding those realities?

Do they degrade them in public, cast aspersions on their reputations and integrity instead of doing the right thing to start with?

When you’re cutting wood with a crew you know who is who in short time.