OREGON PIONEER, GOLD MAN, GOLDEN LOGGER, THAT GUY

The Oregon Pioneer atop the Salem capitol dome is every boy who grew up in the golden era of Oregon logging when you could drop out of high school, get a job in the woods, then buy a house, a truck, and a boat.

All you had to do was show up early and do life-threatening work, and make it look easy.

Or go feed dryers in a veneer mill.

We were all golden loggers then, or came from logger stock through our parents. When a girl and a boy from logging town families meet, anything could happen.

But mostly only two things: stay, or leave.

My mom and dad met in a logging camp. Grandfathers on both sides were loggers who lived in a company town like coal miners in Kentucky.

But, neither owed their soul to the company store.

Their kids hit it off in high school, the star athlete and the new smart girl in town. From conversations, group dates were the norm. They all gathered at different places together, not one on one.

But they saw each other.

They saw each other the way Grandma and Grandpa saw each other: across a crowded room, at a USO dance in Dallas, Texas and married a week before Grandpa shipped out for the Pacific.

He returned two years later.

The kids saw each enough to keep in touch when their families packed up and left town.

One bought land nearby and diversified into ranching and farming and bootlegging booze; the other moved his family to another town in another state to cut trees down and serve as a church deacon.

Either of those two men could be models for the Oregon Pioneer.

White Collar Oregon Pioneer

My dad wrote the girl from high school. Letters from the war. She wrote back. They married when he returned from Korea.

Instead of the golden logger route, he went to college on the G.I Bill. Besides being a positive male presence in the home, he also taught his sons logging lessons.

If we wanted to be cool guys cruising the gut in a hot car, play sports, and wear Levi’s and Converse, we had to cut logs and sell firewood when we were big enough.

He had Grandpa’s big-timber cutting chainsaw tuned up and ready, along with on old blue Chevy short-bed we’d drive out on the levy where the logs washed up. The levy was dry at low tide.

Watching him work that saw like an Oregon pioneer was a golden moment.

Sometimes we joined another crew to cut logs and chop wood under the North Bend Bridge. The high school wrestling team sold and stacked firewood for wrestling trip money. If you were on the wood crew, the coach thought you were good enough to travel.

Or your golden logger old man had a kick-ass chainsaw and a wood-hauling-machine kid.

Today’s Golden Logger

The topic of the Gold Man came up during a walk to the neighborhood petting farm.

Some where between Frosty the white stallion showing amazing footwork in the mud, and a goat named Tommy learning its name through repetition, “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy can you hear me, Tommy,” Old Goldie snuck in the backdoor during an educational moment.

Me: Willamette is the oldest school in the west. Oldest college, older than the state of Oregon. I didn’t know that.

Them: I didn’t know that.

Me: And it’s private. A college or university?

Them: University.

Me: You’ve been there.

Them: I have.

Me: What gets me is having a school so close to a state capitol. That golden statue is right there all the time looking down on you. Like the Eiffel Tower, you can’t get away from it.

Them: From the school side of the street, he looks away from Willamette.

Me: Why is he looking away?

Them: He’s looking west.

Me: So there’s no secret, or myth, about why he’s looking away from Willamette?

Them: I’m not sure.

I read up and found this:

Much of downtown Salem, including the Capitol, is on land once owned by the university.

Why is the Oregon Pioneer looking away from Willamette University?

Leave an answer in comments.