Hookin' Chains & Loadin' Planes

You know, a man's "best friend" is his dog, if he's got nothin' else, and while I didn't really have a need for a dog, (nor the necessary time to spend with it), it eventually became a necessity.

My first year with the BLM proved to be very busy. There were fires breaking out all over the country in 1988, including that massive one in Yellowstone. We went to two shifts, and I was put on Swingshift. 12-hour shifts during a fire bust (the bank account could certainly handle THAT!), but the hours were a bit longer than I'd been used to in the service, due to the hour-each-way commute to Boise.

I'd work 2 in the afternoon to 2 in the morning, getting home around 3, get a little supper and "unwind" a bit....then usually in the sack by 4 or so.....get up at noon and get ready to head back to work shortly thereafter.

Sleep became "SACRED", especially in the daytime, when things are just natuarally a bit noisier. I lived in a neighborhood that just seemed to ATTRACT door-to-door peddlers, from kids wanting to mow the yard-----to Jehovah's Witnesses.........and everybody else in-between.

I quickly hung a sign on my front door that I painted up myself that SPECIFICALLY said........"DAYTIME SLEEPER---DO NOT DISTURB!"

I'm in the middle of a sound sleep after a long night of cargo loading, and the doorbell rings. Now, once I'm up, I'm UP, and at 10 in the morning, it's not even worth the effort to TRY to go back to sleep when I HAVE to get back up at noon anyway!

I get to the front door, and here's some jerk with a short-sleeve shirt and a tie, combing the neighborhood, trying to sell ENCYCLOPEDIAS!..................now..........I've gotta figure, that anybody selling ENCYCLOPEDIA sets, should CERTAINLY be able to READ!!------I mean, wouldn't you think?

I asked him (as I was wiping the cobwebs from my eyes), if he could NOT see that "DO NOT DISTURB" sign hanging on the door right in front of him? "Oh sure" he says, then he winks at me and says....."but you know, a LOT of people do that to discouraged salesmen, but YOU'RE gonna be glad I stopped by this morning when you find out the great deal I have for you."

That was it. I yelled and cursed him out while backing him up all the way out to his car and I further told him that if he EVER came back, he'd better be selling first aid kits, 'cause he was gonna NEED one! FUMING now, I went back into the bedroom, THREW my robe across the room, and tried to settle back to sleep. I was really mad.....even a big bold sign doesn't stop some of them.

Well, I thought about it over the next couple of days. Then, during a slight slowdown one week, they gave us each a day off at different intervals. When MINE came around, I drove back up to Boise, to the big Animal Shelter out by the airport. I walked around the kennel corridors until I found what I was looking for. A huge, 130-lb cream-colored Artic Wolf/Malemute. His name was Nick, and he had a "bad report card" that among other things, read "Not good with people." His "time" would be up in a couple of days and he'd be "put down."

The kennel attendant I talked to, happened to be the same guy who took him in, and he said that the previous owners were moving and couldn't take the dog with them. He said the dog was ok at home, but was overly-protective when any guests-----even friends of the family-----came by. basically, the dog had NO "social skills" outside of the immediate family.

Perfect.

A little paperwork, and $42.00 later, "Nick" was in the back of the truck, on his way back to Mountain Home with ME! I was familiar with malemutes, having owned one prior to Nick, they are big, incredibly strong and family loyal. They were originally created by Alaskan dog owners leaving their Huskies thethered outside at night, to be bred by wolves. The one I had before, was about half & half------but Nick was CLEARLY "more wolf than husky."

At home, I had a chain heavy enough to pull a car with, and while I'd let him roam the fenced-in backyard at night while I was working---------during the DAYTIME while I was sleeping, I chained him to the tow hitch of my pickup, with enough length to reach the front door if need be.......made sure he had food & water........and slept the rest of the fire season without any interuptions! That doorbell never rang again. Ya do what ya gotta do.

That first fire season was a long one. Airplanes coming in all the time, picking up food, equipment, smokejumpers. I was getting an education too, ground-handling, loading and servicing so many different types. I was also delivering fire retardant to the Tanker Base next door. The main warehouse was on the other side of us.

My favorite airplane were the old DC-3's. The Forest Service operated several of the old piston-engined planes, and the military used the cargo-version C-47's for decades, including the gunship "Puff" conversions in Vietnam. There were three of the Forest Service birds stationed in Idaho, and I LOVED it when one of them would come into Boise to pick up cargo or smokejumpers. Whenever possible, I always tried to be one of the guys who serviced it, loaded it or marshalled it. I've always had a "thing" for classic airplanes, just like I do for classic cars. To ME, the sound of an old piston-engine airplane is pure MUSIC, as it pops, "snorts" and rumbles, swinging those huge propellers.

It's like being at a carshow when some guy cranks up his '32 Ford hotrod, with that old flathead V-8, twin Strombergs, 3/4 cam and lakepipes.............unforgettable.

And all but GONE, from THIS generation.

For the first time, a flightline had become a pleasant place to work. I was ENJOYING what I was doing. getting well-paid for it, liked all the people I was working for (and with), and was living through some nostalgia as well.

The Tanker Base next door, was ALSO a "flying museum." They were servicing those old 4-engined DC-6's and 7's-----once commericial airliners, but now converted to carrying and dropping fire retardant. Twin-engined ex-Navy P2V's as well.

Just two years before that, I was kicking F-111's out of their chocks, then heading back into the hangar.

But NOW, after a DC-3 or one of the tankers had taxied out, I found myself standing out on the edge of the tar mat, watching them take off, and I would strain to keep them in eyesight until the last glimmer of sunlight disappeared from their wingtips.

It was fun again. And I was being PAID for it! And I was getting some sleep as well..........(Good boy, Nick!)

One thing I'd like to clear up before I close off this particular post----------not that it makes any difference now, 23 years later...........

The BLM took a lot of flak, for not committing everything it had on that "Yellowstone fire." The media of course, did what they do best-------promote their own interests to whatever sells newspapers.

Yellowstone WAS big-----------it's a National Park (which has--SINCE--that fire, regrown into an even MORE beautiful wilderness).

But what most people do NOT know, is that '88 was a bad fire season EVERYWHERE. There were fires all over the southwest, Texas, Oklahome, several states back east and even in Alaska-----------where people were losing their HOMES and in some cases their lives.

There are only so many retardant tankers and fire crews to go around. If you were a journalist back in New York City, sitting back in your easy chair with your notebook, smoking a pipe, you might be thinking about what a "travesty" it is to allow a National Park to burn.........a park where you were planning to take your kids to next year. How DARE they NOT use everything available! How DARE they just "allow" parts of it to BURN!

But if you and your family were living in one of the 20+ OTHER firebust areas, and you were about to lose everything you had in life, YOU'D be saying..........."Screw that Park......SAVE OUR HOME!"

That's the way the Forest Service saw it as well............."Hey......we'll do what we can for Yellowstone, but we've also people out there about to lose everything!

See......but the media didn't carry THAT...........they put so much hype on Yellowstone, a LOT of people in this country never even KNEW there were huge fires in a bunch of OTHER places going on at the same time.

The Forset Service took a LOT of un-warranted flak over that for YEARS afterward. But they made the right call. They put the "Smith, Jones and Johnson" families......ahead of the spotted owls.

Comes down to perspectives sometimes. Most people who buy these beautiful calendars with the wolves on them, just "ooh" and "aah" with the slendors of nature and these "magnificent creatures." They picket and rally and form protection groups to re-introduce them everywhere.

Go up to Pine & Featherville and talk to the local ranchers, about these "magnificent creatures" that kill just for the sport of killing, and they're running in packs up there now------(have you seen your dog or cat lately?) I'd be willing to venture that most people who take up a lot of these "humanitarian causes" have never actually been OUT there to see some of the destruction.

It's easy to "armchair quarterback" when somebody ELSE is out on that field being pummeled and knocked into the ground.