Month: December 2017

It appears that President Trump will be signing a tax reform measure before Christmas.  It will be billed by Trump supporters as the biggest triumph of his Presidency.

In actuality, it will be akin to ex-President George W. Bush’s premature “Mission Accomplished” celebration on the aircraft carrier in 2003. That was supposed to be the end of our military troop involvement in Iraq. It’s now 2017, and we’re still over there. What he really accomplished was immersing America in a tar pit, to the absolute glee of the Defense industry.

The tax package that the GOP has put together throws a proverbial bone to the folks who cast ballots for President Trump, but, at the same time, opens the bank vault for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans who fund Republican politics.

The rationale for this giveaway is the hackneyed “Trickle Down” economic philosophy which has never worked in the past, despite numerous efforts by the GOP at the state and Federal level.

Let’s all hope it works… for the first time.

What will happen for sure is that the Federal government will have less money with which to fund its operations. According to economists, this tax plan will increase the National Debt by $1.5 trillion over ten years. Since the Federal budget must first address it’s debt obligations, and, politically, Defense and Social Security are not going to take a hit, something’s going to have to give. Most likely it will be “safety net” programs for the Nation’s  most needy citizens.

You may not currently be one of those unlucky people, but you will soon begin to know more of them, or see them on the streets. Hopefully, you won’t be joining them.

Since cost trimming will be required under this tax plan, when the bogus revenue projections come up short, it will give President Trump and his industry cheerleaders more excuse to call for reduced expenses in Federal oversight agencies.

Despite all the populist rhetoric on the campaign trail, about helping out blue collar America, de-fanging the regulatory agencies is what this election was all about. It is no accident that President Trump has already put industry folks in charge of these watchdog agencies…to make sure that staff is looking the other way. Oil industry guys are now running the Energy Department, investment bankers are now running the Treasury Department and the SEC, anti-environmentalists are in charge of the Department of the Interior, an ex-Verizon attorney is now FCC Chairman (and is dismantling “net neutrality” on the Internet), etc. The list goes on, and “the fix” is in.

This will be Trump’s real legacy…the dismantling of the Federal government in an effort to allow business to do whatever it damn well wants to do. As if that’s a good thing.

Folks, we’ve been down that path before, and it’s why government had to get bigger…because of abominable abuses by greedy men.

By the turn of the 19th Century, most of the wealth of this Nation was held by a tight circle of men, and these fellows, known by the public as the Robber Barons, ran roughshod over the lands and people of this country in pursuit of fantastic wealth.

Forests were stripped, mining gouged the earth and created hazardous waste lakes, farmers used pesticides that poisoned future generations, sweatshops were introduced, labor was exploited, unsafe working conditions were rampant, etc. These wealthy tycoons owned the government and they got insanely rich.

It took Progressive government in the early 1900’s by leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt to rein in industry excesses.

Does anyone remember the stock market crash in 2007 that led to the Great Recession…that we barely survived. It cost our nation $15 trillion, and was caused by the banking industry, Wall Street, the ratings agencies, and specialty insurance corporations playing footsie with the Nation’s savings.

The American public paid the tab for that fiasco: lost retirement savings, lost jobs, lost homes; and, more tax money to pay for the “bailout” of the banks who had been so frivolous with the public’s money.

It wasn’t the first time that Americans had experienced the rug being pulled out from under them: there were the turn of the 19th century bank panics; the Stock Market Crash of 1929; the savings and loan crisis of 1989; and, others. Each time, regulatory measures were put in place to discourage risky speculation and foolhardy, self-serving actions by greedy banks and Wall Street con men.

Who benefited from these regulations? Ordinary people, the one’s who grow the food, build things, teach our children, and try to save money for retirement; i.e the blue-collar Americans who trust our government to protect them from unscrupulous, greedy bastards.

Attention! While you were looking one way, the Trump Administration and the GOP has been dismantling governmental oversight of the banking industry and Wall Street. It’s “Open Season” again for subterfuge and chicanery.

It’s becoming obvious that the Trump/GOP vision is that “No government is better than big government”, and that “Greed is good”, particularly if you are lucky enough to belong to the Club (i.e. the wealthiest 1 percent). In other words, we’ve moved from a democracy to a plutocracy…in just one year.

The hell of this is that the blue-collar folks who fell for Trump’s flim-flam have no idea that they’ve been conned and will reap none of the bounty as America is “made great again”.

That’s Donald Trump’s inside joke: “again” refers to the Gilded Age, when guys like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Clark, Vanderbilt, Huntington, Gould, Mellon, Morgan, etc. had their way with America…the public be damned.

Billionaire Donald Trump, the guy who hasn’t paid taxes in years and won’t let anyone look at his tax return, aspires to be one of those selfish titans, and, by God, it appears that the doofus American electorate is greasing the skids for the Trump family and its Wall Street buddies.

Nicely played, Mr. Trump.

It’s Saturday, we don’t load trees for another few days, so Randy decided to treat us to another “road trip” day. It was probably to get his mind off of the Christmas tree business…a stress-free, fun day. He deserves a few.

Anyway, after we watched the end of “Inglourious Basterds” (the crazy Tarantino WWII flick), the whole crew piled into the Ford Expedition and headed up to Portland. The goal was the (according to Randy) “largest flea market in the United States”. It took us about an hour to get there, slogging through a steady rain. No surprise there: the Native Indian word for “rain” is Oregon, I believe.

Have I already told you that Randy lies a lot? Well, not like President Trump tells whoppers, but Mr.  Wood has been known to stretch the truth when provoked. To be honest, the Carlsbad Street Fair is five times the size of this Portland wannabe, but, at least, we were able to enjoy it while being rained upon.

I think everyone bought something, although our total $$ purchase was pretty paltry. Kyle bought his girlfriend something, Joe ate some food, Randy and Don bought some apparel for their wives, and I bought Charlie a gift for the RV and also a replacement Kershaw “assist blade” knife (so I can more quickly slice one of my fingers, by accident).

Mr. Wood has spent considerable time up here in Oregon scouting trees and doing business along with his wife, Denise, so he knows a few interesting places. He decided that we were going to trek all the  way out to Astoria to see the Maritime Museum and have lunch at the Bowpicker. I’ve been to both, and like them, but it would be the first time for the others. So, off we went, into the rain…for two hours!

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that it RAINS a lot in Oregon, but it sure does…big, green trees everywhere, moss and ferns, wild berry bushes along every roadway, and lot of water running down swollen rivers. It’s a beautiful place…when you can see it. Unfortunately, we were not privileged to do so today, as it was either raining, foggy, or the skies were just plain gray: typical Oregon in the Winter.

We finally got to Astoria at around noon. This city sits at the mouth of the great Columbia River, which drains most of the northwest United States. It is a major shipping port, and very large cargo ships pass through Astoria, headed up-river with imports, or down-river with grain, lumber, ore, and other products produced in the Northwest states.

(Trust me, I didn’t take that photo. Did I mention that it rained today?)

Whether coming into port, or leaving, these large ships must brave the “Columbia Bar”, which is the nasty hunk of ocean where the incoming sea surge meets the outgoing current of the mighty Columbia. It is considered by sailors to be one of the most dangerous stretches of ocean in the world.

Not a great day for fishing.

The Maritime Museum sits near the mouth of the Columbia, and is a testament to the brave fishermen and cargo sailors who have plied these waters for the past 250 years. It also has quite a number of exhibits relating to the U.S. Coast Guard, which trains its “rough water” rescue crews here.

I think Joe, Kyle and Don enjoyed the museum. Randy and I noticed that there were quite a few more exhibits supplemented by video and narration. A real neat exhibit was a large (10’x10′?) monitor which displayed all sorts of data from the scores of NOAA satellites which circle the earth. The display featured sea temps, ocean salinity, surface winds, carbon dioxide, land temps, and such. Very cool, although President Trump would claim that all of that NOAA data coming from our geosynchronous satellites is “fake”.

Of course, he should know, because, as President, he is in charge of NOAA.

We also watched a 3-D movie about hurricanes, focusing on the birth, life, and death of Hurricane Lucy. Horrible things they are, those hurricanes, and there will be more of them in the future, according to the scientists at NOAA (who will shortly be fired by the Prez for claiming such nonsense.)

After absorbing that hurricane propaganda, we adjourned to the Bowpicker, just up the street, for their famous Fish and Chips. Randy and I knew what to expect, but were curious to see how the other three would react…because this “dive” is an ex-fishing boat, parked on a sidewalk, where there is only one thing on the menu, and customers often have to stand in a lengthy line to get served.

The Summer line looks like this:

Today, the scene looked like this, except that the sky was gray.

Yes, believe it or not, it had stopped raining, there was no line, and the guys really liked their lunch. Score one for Wood Mountain!

The fish that is used at the Bowpicker is albacore tuna (not the usual cod), and the breading, which is quite thin, appears to be made with Ritz crackers. At least that’s what Don, our resident chef, believes. Anyway, as usual,  the fish was great. I recently had fish and chips at a restaurant just up the road from our farmhouse, and I would estimate that the fish-to-breading ratio was less than 50-50. At the Bowpicker, the ratio is more like 90 percent fish, 10 percent breading. So, there you go: if you like fish and chips, you can’t beat the Bowpicker. If you want breading, go to Long John Silver’s.

It was a long ride home from Astoria to Hubbard, Oregon. It pretty much rained all the way, in fits and stops, with nary a patch of blue sky to be had. We altered our route a bit to provide some variety in the scenery, but one can only tolerate so much green vegetation in a day, obscured by falling water.

At least I feel that way, but…I’m a Southern Californian; we worship brown.

Unfortunately for Randy, the road trip was not as stress-free as he had hoped. Right before we got back to home base, the Boss received news that there had been some major screw-ups down south by several truckers, and his staff down in Temecula was in near-panic mode, tempers rising, tears, etc.

As I’ve mentioned before, those independent truckers seem to derive great pleasure finding ways to torment the Wood Mountain operation. No Ramen noodles this year, but, according to Randy, our last load driver (#10, I believe) did a couple of his drops, and then quit the route, driving his truck (with two drops of Christmas trees still in it) to his home in San Diego.

Hay que la chingada!

“This is our last trip up here”, Randy said, tersely, as we got to the farmhouse.

Amen to that, Brother.

 

 

 

Our Wood Mountain boss, Randy, decided to have mercy on us today (Friday), and treated the crew to a road trip in the Willamette Valley. No one declined the offer.

First, we visited the Evergreen Aviation Museum complex in McMinnville. Some ex-billionaire, ex-fighter pilot local guy built the museum campus, which is comprised of several buildings: a huge one, featuring the history of aviation; a second one, focused on aerospace; and, a third one, containing an IMAX theatre. There’s even a waterpark there, with a Boeing 747 perched on the roof. Unfortunately, we didn’t bring our swim trunks.

As I said, the first building is very large because it houses, among many other aircraft, Howard Hughes’ famous “Spruce Goose” prototype seaplane. (I guess it wore out its welcome in Long Beach, where it used to sit next to the Queen Mary. Hmmmm…)

 

This enormous troop carrier (as envisioned during its construction), with a wingspan of 320′,  is wider than the biggest passenger aircraft ever constructed.

 

It was powered by eight huge 28-cylinder engines, each producing over 3,000 horsepower.

Because WWII was going on when Hughes took on the task of building the plane, strategic materials were in short supply; he couldn’t use aluminum, for example. So, he devised his own light, super-strong material: Durowood.  It was plywood, using very thin layers of spruce wood, glued together, that could be bent to shape. The outside wooden “skin” of the fuselage is only about the width of my pinkie finger.

The plane flew once, in Long Beach Harbor, in 1947, for ten seconds, putting the lie to the skeptics and government officials who had badmouthed the “crook”.

There were all sorts of cool things in this aviation museum.

I liked the photo of “Marilyn Monroe”, when she was Norma Jean Dougherty, aged 19 in 1945, working in an aircraft factory in Southern California. Her job: spray-painting airplane parts with fire retardant and inspecting parachutes.

There were all sorts of early airplanes in the museum, including Wright Brothers replica, a Spirit of St. Louis replica, a real Sopwith Camel from WWI, and many others.

Most of the museum featured warplanes from WWII onward, including some parked outside on the grass.

This is a Navy Tomcat, made famous in the movie “Top Gun”.

We watched an excellent 45-minute IMAX movie on Red Flag fighter pilot training (similar to Top Gun exercises) at Nellis AFB in Nevada.

After that, we trekked over to the Aerospace Museum (a few hundred yards). Within that large building, the story of man’s exploration of outer space was excellently presented with all sorts of objects like rocket engines, space capsules, lunar rovers, multi-stage rockets, etc. It was quite impressive.

They also had an SR-71 “Blackbird” on display. It is the world’s fastest and highest flying air-breathing production aircraft, capable of flying 2,200 miles per hour and able to reach an altitude of 85,000 feet. It is an aerial photography “spy plane”, which was used before satellite photography came into vogue.

The museum also had a nice electric shuttle cart, which Randy and the guys checked out.

After the Evergreen Aviation Museum foray, Randy took us to lunch at Golden Valley Brewery in Beaverton. Very nice, with good food. I had the Cubano sandwich. Yummy.

Some of the guys sampled the craft beers.

Randy’s brother, Joe, a Realtor, spent his lunch trying to close a deal in Payson, Arizona.

After that, we finished off the day by doing some wine tasting at Stoller Vineyards in Dayton. We sampled some Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Reisling wines which (and, I’m not a wine junkie) were tasty, and enjoyed the property, which was located in some nice rolling hills, reminding me of the Napa Valley.

We had a nice Hungarian hostess who kept the glasses full. Don seemed to know some of the wine lingo.

I think Randy and Don purchased a bottle or two to take back to our frat house in the hazelnut orchard.

This road trip was just what we needed after a few hectic days at the Christmas tree assembly lot.

Thank you, Randy Wood…you Da Man!!

 

 

I’m up in Oregon now, on a 12-day trip with some buddies to help our friend, Randy Wood, ship tens of thousands of Christmas trees, wreaths, swags, etc. to customers in California and Arizona. It’s my fifth year doing this. Why I do it I don’t know, because it isn’t “fun”. I guess I’m just stupid.

Oregon at this time of the year is wet and cool. It rains about every other day, and the temps are about 50 high and 36 low, although it can snow. We supervise loading activities at an outdoor lot, so it is common to work all day in the rain, mud, and cold. On big shipping days, we might start work at 6 a.m. and finish at 11 p.m. If we’re real lucky, maybe it didn’t rain that day. If there’s a steady, all-day rain, it’s miserable.

We’re staying at a rented farmhouse in a hazel nut orchard. It’s a very rustic setting: lots of trees and moss, wet mud, fog. Just the way we like it.

I flew up here with a mutual golfing friend of Randy and I, named Don McAuliffe. He’s never done this before; Randy probably talked him into it during a round at Redhawk GC, where they are men’s club members. Don used to be a reporter for the Riverside Press-Enterprise, way back when I was a mucky-muck with Riverside County government. He’s a few years younger than me…and I turn 70 next week.

Here’s Don, trying to choose among 3,000 beer brands at a Fred Meyer store:

On our trip up here, I gave Don the lowdown on the Christmas tree operation, the grower that we work with (Angel Guerrero), and the slick way that we’ve developed to load a couple of dozen 18-wheelers with Yule products. “We’ve got it down to a science”, I lied to him.

The Wood Mountain team  arrived yesterday to find that Angel had not set the assembly lot up properly; he designed it for one loading bay, instead of two. This will basically cut our loading efficiency way down, and, on big shipping day, will create a potential nightmare for all concerned. Randy is fit to be tied.

But, he has refrained from using the F-word, and has warned us to keep a lid on that kind of language, as it offends his Christian sensibilities. (Sure, that’ll happen!)

One thing that was cool is the helicopter that Angel is using (he pays $850 per hour for it) to bring certain trees over to the assembly lot. The grove of those trees (Douglas Firs) is about 1,000 feet away, where crews have cut the trees and bundled them. The helicopter pilot, by himself (i.e. no one else in the copter), picks up a load of maybe twenty trees, flies it to the assembly lot, expertly drops it in the right place, and returns to pick up the next load…within 30 seconds. It is a beautiful thing to watch; the pilot is a maestro. On Monday, he flew for hours, and didn’t miss a beat.

Don’t know if it will work, but try activating the movie below by clicking IMG 0020:

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Randy’s business (Wood Mountain) is centered around fundraising. Non-profit organizations raise money selling Wood Mountain products, and we deliver the pre-sold items to the school, church, or other organization where their volunteers disperse the trees, etc. So, for example, a high school  booster club pre-sells a $100 tree to a parent; the grower gets $20, Wood Mountain gets $30, and the club gets $50 to be used for uniforms,  etc. The bonus is that Wood Mountain trees are the very highest quality, and arrive at the customers home within two- to three-days of being harvested.

One of Wood Mountain’s featured programs is “Trees for Troops”, whereby someone makes a donation to “Support the Troops”, Wood Mountain arranges with a grower for the trees (usually 6-7 ft. Douglas Firs), and FREE Christmas trees are distributed to families of servicemen at scores of military bases throughout the United States. Wood Mountain is doing 3,600 trees this year. The thing that makes the program work really well is that FedEx ships the trees for free, as many as Randy can arrange for. It’s a nice way to say, “Thank you for your service!”

Yesterday and today, we shipped 9 semi-loads of Trees for Troops on Fed Ex trucks. It’s a quick and easy process, because there’s only one type  of tree per load, and the entire load is going to one military base.

Wednesday (tomorrow) promises to be a cluster fuck. This is because we have scheduled 9 truck loads, and, due to the fact that Angel only set the lot up for one loading bay, it will  take his crew (of Hispanic laborers) probably 18 hours to load the trucks. If we had two loading bays, like last year, we would be home having a warm meal by 6 p.m. Instead, we (and the laborers) will  have to eat on our feet and be lucky to be home by midnight.

A couple of things have happened to the Christmas tree industry since last year. First, larger growers are squeezing out the small operators (like Angel Guerrero), and they prefer to deal with the “big boys”, like Home Depot, WalMart, Lowe’s, etc. It’s not economical for them to do what Wood Mountain does, which is ship a variety of tree types in a variety of sizes…and fresh cut, to boot. The trees that are showing up at the big retailers right now (end of November) were probably cut three weeks ago. They will be dry by Christmas.

Angel is still  working with Randy’s boutique business (i.e. 14,000 trees shipped), still loading trucks with a variety of product, complicated by the fact that the truck load might have multiple “drops”, e.g. locations where the truck driver needs to offload a part of the shipment. So, it’s complicated to load and, also, complicated for the truckers (because of multiple drop locations). Further exacerbating this situation is the impact of Donald Trump, in that most Christmas tree laborers are Hispanic day-workers who hail from Central America. Trump’s policies have made it difficult for these hard working guys to get up to Oregon…there’s a labor shortage. So, Angel (like all the growers) is struggling to keep enough labor on hand to get the job done.

The guy carrying the heavy Christmas tree is the 4’11’ Guatemalan guy. The strapping Caucasian guys in the foreground (Joe and James, backs to the camera) are doing their jobs…watching the hard-working guys.

(This Latino labor situation is going to become a BIG problem in America, as I mentioned in this blog awhile back. Something like 80 percent of agricultural workers in the U.S. are Hispanic, and a good portion of them are illegal. If Trump continues to crack down on these hard-workers via immigration and other Federal program changes, agriculture is going to suffer and prices are going to go up, etc. The same problem is going to impact the health care, building, restaurant, landscape, and housecleaning industries, to name a few. Fewer available workers, higher costs. Get ready for it.)

Interesting story: Yesterday a young Caucasian guy (who looked to us like a meth tweaker) showed up on the assembly lot looking for laborer’s work. Angel’s foreman, who was a bit short of a crew, allowed the fellow to join in. The young man worked his ass ragged, in cold and rainy weather, trying to keep up with the small, wiry Hispanics. At the end of the evening he was wet, cold, and dragging, complaining of a sore back; I felt sorry for him. This morning our guys showed up to the assembly lot to find that a storage shed had been burglarized, and that the Caucasian guy was a “no show”. Angel’s conclusion (which we concurred with) was that the fellow spent the day figuring out how to burglarize the operation to pay for a “fix”. Anyway, Angel has passed the word to his men that he will  only employ Hispanics, because they can handle the hard work and he trusts them. It’s racist, but I can’t blame him: those white guys just can’t cut the mustard.

The Achille’s Heel of the Wood Mountain operation has, in the past, been the trucking component…i.e. getting the goods south to the customers. “Unreliability” would be a common complaint about long-haul truckers; even when contracted to perform x-task for y-money, they sometimes don’t show up, arrive hours late at the loading site, get lost heading south into California, and, often, don’t get to their delivery points on time. Sometimes they extort Wood Mountain for more money, threatening a “no show”. And, they make mistakes. Last year, one driver arrived late in Southern California, backed up to offload Christmas trees, and, when the trailer doors were opened…surprise!…the trailer was loaded, stem to stern, with Ramen noodles. Oh, so sorry!

Since we have a very difficult schedule on Wednesday (nine truck loads, using one loading bay only), it will be imperative for the long-haul truckers to arrive at the assembly lot on time…otherwise we will be doomed. Personally, I am a great believer in Murphy’s Law (“if something can go wrong, it will”); therefore, I’m dreading tomorrow. Hopefully, my friend Randy will not have a heart attack or stroke.

Wednesday update:

Well, it was a clusterfuck for sure, but we miraculously made it through the long day.

The trucking (or, is it fucking?) industry tried its best to sabotage us. Word got out that Wood Mountain had a bunch of freshly cut Christmas trees which had to get to market in two days, so many of the 9 contracted drivers decided to extort poor Randy for more money. Our boss spent most of the day on the phone, begging the bandits to show up, and having to offer some of them up to $600 more per load to honor their contract.

It’s shameless what these long-haul guys do, but this is the peak season (i.e. goal is to get trees to So Cal by Dec 1st) and the redneck vampires are well aware of it.

Come next week, however, we should have scores of truckers calling us, pleading for work, and Randy will be able to pick and choose at his rates…take it or leave it. We’ll be the ones bending someone over a log…

Since we had only one loading bay (“Thank you, Angel Guerrero!”), it took us from 7 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. to complete nine loads. Thankfully, it didn’t rain one drop, but the temperature dropped down to the high 30’s after 10 p.m. We old, white guys were freezing out there, pushing pencils, while the tiny Guatemalans were running all over the lot, toting 50 to 100 pounds on their shoulders ‘and joking around. (A couple of them had a wrestling match in the back of a 51’ trailer, amid stacked Christmas trees, when it was 39 degrees outside, and they had already worked 15 hours straight.)  If I were to do their kind of labor for one day, Charlie would have to bury me the next morning. It’s incredible how hard they work, for very low wages, with smiles on their faces. (Of course, their forefathers built pyramids out of stone…for fun.)

Naturally, we had some low points in the exhausting day. The battery on Randy’s truck died, so he tried to jump-start the engine, and proceeded to get a 100K volt shock in his thumb.

Randy also fried the 175 amp fuse in the process. He had to pay about $200 in parts to atone for his sins, and has a very sore thumb to show for it.

Later in the day, some asshole trucker who had arrived early for his load decided to pursue other options, without telling us, and drove off with all of our one-of-a-kind paperwork. This blew Randy’s Plan X to hell, but, “Thank you, Jesus!”, another trucker wandered onto the lot looking for work, and we were able to fill Mr. Asshole’s slot with Jose-on-the-spot. Bless him!

Poor Don, our rookie Wood Mtn staffer. He’s been unable to sleep for a couple of days, due to the fact that Randy absentmindedly secured a rental farmhouse with 5 beds for 6 big guys. Don, who is 6’4″ short,  had to try to sleep on an air mattress (then, two!), both of which leaked.

(Artist’s rendition of Don, unable to sleep, but trying to dream that he looks this young, with hair.)

Randy mercifully sent poor Don back to the farmhouse on Wednesday during our 16-hour load so that the poor bastard could catch a few winks. When we rolled into the shack at around midnight, Don looked much improved.

We later found out that the sonofabitch sat around all afternoon and evening, watching TV, cooking, fluffing pillows, and who knows what else…but, didn’t sleep a wink. I think Randy got conned.

After about 5 hours in the sack (of which I slept about three!), I arose on Thursday for another loading day, this time forecast to be endured in the driving, cold Oregon rain. Only three loads today, God willing and the creek don’t rise. Boo-Yah!

Thursday update:

Hay que la chingada! What a messed up day this was… lots of F-bombs were tossed, a few by St. Randy himself.

We were short some materials when our crew arrived at the lot around 7:30. No trucks were there to load, so the Boss Man sent me 25 miles south toward Salem to pick up some stuff at Home Depot. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a trucker pulls in and Randy tells Angel’s boys to begin loading shipment #10. About 45 minutes later, I arrive back to the lot with the supplies to find another clusterfuck in the making…Randy had put load #10 on the truck which was contracted for the #11 run into So Cal.

(Normally, as Site Manager, I handle all of the truckers, confirm their load assignments, provide them with their paperwork, and keep them informed while on the lot. Of course, in this case, I was off the lot when this particular trucker showed up, and Randy “handled” him.”)

Anyway, ,the driver wouldn’t change load assignments, wouldn’t accept more money, and insisted on doing the #11 run into So Cal. So, Angel’s crew had to unload the three drops from this guy’s rig…basically setting everything back at least an hour.

Angel Guerrero, the Christmas tree farmer and boss of the laborers, was mightily pissed off. He and Randy had some tense words, and all of Angel’s workers were annoyed, as well. (In fact, Randy’s own guys were ready to mutiny, truth be told.)  Angel’s crew unloaded the truck and then…disappeared on us. I think it was Mr. Guerrero’s way of showing us who was Boss, and that we were screwing up his operation. And, so , we sat in our vehicles, for a couple of hours, while Angel used his laborers to load one of his own trucks, and then gave them an extra long lunch break. When the laborers finally came back to help us, we started over again, loading our first truck at about 1:30 p.m., approximately six hours behind schedule.

To his credit, Randy accepted the blame and moved on. However, he spent about an hour in his truck with Angel after this incident, talking about the Christmas tree business.

Later in the day, it was my turn to be the villain.

Actually, we realized today that I had made a typo error the night before, when Randy and I hastily cobbled together a list of product (number and type of trees that we would need on Thursday) required from Angel. We did this at approximately 11 p.m., when we were dead tired, so I understood how it could have happened. Nevertheless, we were short about one hundred 5-6′ Douglas Firs that we would need for loads 9 and 10 on Thursday. Oops!

Randy just about burst a vein when he realized the error, and Angel’s supervisor, Martin, was similarly enraged. F-bombs were flying, in English and Spanish. I tried to become invisible, as Randy ran around, trying to brainstorm a work-around, for 15 minutes, to no avail. Finally, Martin (Bless him!) got on the phone with some hump back on the tree farm, and…Ouila!…a truckload of 5-6′ Douglas Firs materialized on the lot, just in the nick of time.

(I’m sure that Randy attributed it to divine intervention, but I believe that St. Martin worked a miracle, on his own. Muchas Gracias, senor Martin…a nice bottle of Tequila or case of smokes is coming your way. I love you, Man!)

So, Thursday was a messy day, but it was also a good day. That’s because Randy finally came to the conclusion that this particular business model for Wood Mountain Christmas Trees is ready for the scrap heap. (Actually, I think he and Angel, cooperatively, came to that conclusion earlier today.)

 

This year’s endeavor, with the usual drama up here in Oregon, was the real-time “intervention” that he needed to make the decision that his wife, Denise, has wanted him to make for several years. The Woods are making good money doing this, but Randy is working harder than a 72 year-old guy should, and he could probably make half the money (still a nice sum) with one-tenth the effort, so…why not? He and Denise are not getting any younger, and there’s lots of fun and adventure out there for them to enjoy.

It was nice to see Randy smiling this afternoon, after the shitstorm had pushed him into making the decision to ratchet back the operation. I’m happy for my friend.

We now have five days to kill up here in Oregon, until our big finale on Wednesday, December 6, when we will load 7 trucks.