The so-called Big Freeze of ‘23 continues to occupy most of our time these days when we are not performing our camp hosting duties. After removing the downed limbs and trees to the side of the road we uncovered a seemingly unending discovery stream of what we here call ‘hangers”. Hangers are dangerous limbs that are literally hanging from the trees above campground, ready to fall on an unsuspecting camper. These are the remnants of the ice storm that bore the added weight of the ice and didn’t completely shear off during the storm. Sometimes folks call these “widow makers”. If we don’t find ways to remove them they could pose really dangerous hazards.
The Big Chief here toured the campgrounds and found it wise to close nearly half the camp sites due to this dangerous situation. Of course, this created a great urgency for us to get all the danger removed since so many folks had planned on visiting the Park, some planning to be here as much as 6 months in advance. Spring Break, a huge event for Texans, was looming in the near term as well. The schools in Texas take off different weeks for Spring Break so the flood of families heading to the great outdoors is overwhelming for a good three weeks or more.
To further compound the issue, our sister campgrounds, Jim Hogg and Russell Parks on the north shore of Georgetown Lake are closed due to scheduled water line replacement work being done at both Parks. We were already nearly sold out all weeks long before all this happened. Now, to be clear, we are all volunteers around here. In fact, almost to a person we are all getting up in years to boot. We would not be front-runners to hire for tree-cutting and removal on such a massive scale. Such is the challenge facing not only us as volunteers, but the Manager and the Ranger here as well. Making matters ever the more pressing, only three individuals in our Campground have been certified to use chain saws. Though I have used chainsaws most of my adult life, I cannot legally heft one while on duty here.
Now, since we are volunteers in a US Government owned and run facility we have specific job descriptions. They do not include tree cutting and removal, even on an emergency basis. The Manager here cannot ask us to help out in this situation. In fact, we would not even be insured in the event of an injury without the signing of a special addendum that the Ranger had to research and find among the voluminous paperwork of the US Government.
Why not hire outside help...professional tree removal firms to do the work? Well, by now all the tree cutters worth their chain oil are already up to their ears in work all across the state. Plus, there is no existing budget for this event. All expenditures are earmarked to the penny at the Corps of Engineers, the Dam and the water it saves being the high priority. To top it off, as we enter Springtime in the area, the Government has banned all tree cutting here from March through September as the Golden Cheeked Warbler, an endangered species, makes its return to the general area of the Park to nest and raise younguns. These gold-cheeked beauties use the shredded bark of the Ashe-Junipers for their nests exclusively. Already I found one fastidious female had tried to make a nest in the cockpit of Diane’s kayak behind the seat. At the outset, as you might assess the situation and offer an opinion of the odds of getting the Park cleaned up soon, you might proffer, “It ain’t gonna happen.”
What has happened is everyone on the volunteer staff rolled up their sleeves, put on their work clothes, and got to work. Phil, our volunteer maintenance guy, became the de facto Chief on the work plan. El Jefe, I call him...The Boss. Phil, without once acting arrogant or pushy or self-proclaiming to be in charge, directed us on a strategic approach to the immense job. Basically, it fell upon us all to pick up limbs, move them to the sides of the roads, and load them on Phil’s personal trailer which he donated for use along with his Kobota side by side. Load upon massive load would be hefted onto the long trailer and driven to an open field in the Day Use area where we would then unload that trailer onto a ginormous, growing pile of thatchy, scratchy logs, limbs, and brambles. Easily 20 feet high, its girth expanded, becoming like a monument of sorts, wider and wider with each delivery of the storm’s detritus. It’s a thing to behold, as it continues even today as I write, to consume acres of open field.
Beginning with the shuttered camp sites, we planned our daily battle plan along with Phil. Most often Phil, who was himself battling a bad knee swollen like a melon, was atop the campground Skid-steer. This monstrous tractor is equipped with a Grappler mechanism that can be visualized as some kind of jaws of death as it were. Phil can reach a good 20 or so feet into the trees to grapple the hangers down that we otherwise would never reach. A few of the trees were so badly damaged that they needed to be pulled down en masse. The Skid-steer mowed over these behemoths admirably. It seemed to me to be a real-world King Kong pushing aside trees in its way. Phil can navigate that machine into and around the camp sites with the deftness of a surgeon’s hand. It’s been an amazing sight to see him at work.
Meanwhile, whoever was available and not on duty for managing the campground on that particular day, scurried around hefting the logs and branches onto the trailer...time after time. Ladies, men, most of us in our 60’s or 70’s, have been pitching in like true team players and it’s been more than gratifying to see everyone going above and beyond to get the job done. We hear that our sister Parks, Russell and Jim Hogg are tree-devastated disaster zones, too. While they each have their own crews of volunteers just like we here at Cedar Breaks, it remains to be seen how much or if our crew will need to go there and work once we’re done here in the coming days and weeks.
Summer Job, 1968
All of this tree removal work inevitably brought back memories from my late teen years when I had a summer job working for Captain Miles back in Webster Groves, MO. My mom knew the Captain and got me the job. Captain Miles, like so many firemen of that time, built a side business in tree removal. I forget now the name of his company but he was plenty busy with it. My job was simple. Pick up the limbs and “coins” (a coin is section of a tree trunk that has been cut into manageable pieces resembling monstrous coins) and throw them onto the trailer or onto the truck bed. It was, to this day, the hardest work I ever did. I was barely standing at the end of each day and my body ached. I was too tired at the end of most days to go out at night and raise Cain with my Hellion buddies. Maybe that was my mom’s intention.
The Captain gave me the nickname, “Hip”...short for Hippie. I had crazy long hair in those days and sideboards to boot. I still hear him calling me from across the foggy decades and I can see him standing in front of me, chain saw in hand, wood chips scattered all across his flat-top haircut, a Camel cigarette hanging loosely from his lips as he speaks.
“Hey Hip, you too tired to work any more? You’re draggin’. Hip, load those coins and sweep up we’re runnin’ late.”
Captain Miles was a virtual monkey when it came to climbing trees and cutting limbs. He was always bouncing all over those big trees with his spiked boots. Has was a regular circus act he was. I marveled at his skills. The things he did with trees and the feats he accomplished I’m for sure dead certain are no longer allowed, probably not even legal, but he was born for it. The other cutters and the drivers were a motley crew, mostly ex-cons who always seemed to have a black eye or some other gift on their faces from a fight or a tussle the night before. A bottle or two with any number of names of bitter distillations seemed to always be in the cabs of the trucks. Rosie O’Grady flashes before my eyes now as I try to recall the favored brands. Guys seemed to take breaks in the trucks often. I didn’t mess with these guys. I just put my head down, took their occasional hippie insults, and tried my best to work, keep up, and collect my $3.00 an hour pay...cash, at the end of each work day.
Think what you may about these prison-hardened characters, but they worked hard, and, I know they played hard, too. But, they did not dare cross Captain Miles. You just did not do that. On the job it was all business for these guys. I was just Hip the teenager to them, but when I got the rare side compliment at the end of the day for working hard it meant a lot to me that Summer. I drank it down and savored it along with the shot of hooch they passed along to me.
My mom, Desiree, got me the job as she knew the Captain and cajoled him into giving me a try for the Summer. Captain Miles owned a tar paper shack behind our house that was the home of a Japanese woman we all called Miss Shirley. The shack barely stood upright as the gray and mottled asphalt shingles that covered the sides leaned precariously towards the railroad tracks just beyond. I remember a couple of chickens ran around the yard most times. They would spend their nights in a wooden shed, equally old and decrepit, where they laid their eggs. She had two little boys with her that she carried around on her less than ample hips. I don’t believe I ever saw their tiny feet touch the ground. She always seemed to be carrying them.
Miss Shirley had an old, beat up Nash Rambler that for some reason she parked in front of our house and I would play in that old Nash as if I were driving it. I’d yank the wheel left and right and stretch down to reach the brake pedal. My younger brother Joe would stand in front of the tail lights so I could see him turn red when I mashed down the pedal. One day I woke up and Miss Shirley and the two little boys were gone...Poof. After that it wasn’t long before the old shack leaned way over and fell to the ground during a March wind. Years later, a bulldozer came through and scraped the heap of rotting wood and asphalt and tar paper away. A new highway, I-44, had replaced all the homes along that old decrepit, pot-hole ridden street that ran parallel to the Frisco Railroad tracks behind our house.
The memories of all those folks whose lives and stories crossed mine remains, though. They haven’t been scraped away by the bulldozer. Now and again I think about that time and wonder where they all ended up. When we visit St Louis and I inevitably drive down that broad and busy highway at 70 miles per hour, right through and down where Swon Avenue used to lay, where all those families were displaced, I gaze up at the back of our old house on Ridge Avenue as I fly by and a memory or two from those days always floods my mind.
Today, Miss Shirley and Captain Miles are there in my mind’s eye. I don’t know what the relationship was, if any, between Miss Shirley and Captain Miles...or how my mom knew the Captain, but even today I ponder that.
Winter’s Grip Weakens
One unfortunate bi-product of this ice event has been that Diane and I have not had time to go out and explore much as we like to do when we’re camp hosting. We haven’t even gone fishing and the hot fishing season is upon us. Bass boats are beginning to show up more and more each day as the water temperature slowly rises towards the Bass’ high feeding and spawning zone.
The Texas wildflowers are blooming now with amazing abandon. There are massive, deep cobalt fields of Bluebonnets all over the area. Mixed in are tiny little yellow flowers with long, thin green stems. Some areas and fields are alive with black-eyed Susans. Now and then you find the sublime Texas Indian Paintbrush flowers, their subdued scarlet petals stealing your eye’s attention. Mexican Hat flowers are out there, too. All this talk and braggadocio we hear from Texans about their wildflowers turns out to be more than true. That old song, Bluebonnet Lady, that Brand Koberman and Bob Breidenbach and I used to sing all the time drifts across my mind these days. I had no idea back when we sang it how gorgeous the Bluebonnet fields in Texas really were.
Lizards and snakes are waking from their hibernation now, too. I found the first Rattler of the season this week, a victim of a car tire in the Day Use/Picnic area. There he lay on the road run over and lifeless. He was a big fat boy, maybe 4 feet long. It looked to me as if he just ate a rodent as there was still a bulge in him about halfway down his length.
On the other hand, we have had good quality time with our grandkids, Ella and Jack. Sometimes they will come out together for the weekend and hang out with us in the motor home. Sometimes just one will come out by themselves for some vacation time away from the family so to speak. We’ve created kind of a summer camp set-up here for their visits. We paint pictures and create little masterpieces, go for hikes in the woods or across the Dam, cook hot dogs and marshmallows over an open fire while we tell each other elaborate stories, and generally have a great couple of days when they come over.
Ella is developing into a wonderful story spinner. She tells us she wants to be an author and indeed, she reads voraciously. Sometimes I’ll find her alone in a hammock that I’ve placed out in the woods behind our site reading aloud to herself, injecting emotion and drama into her stories just as an audio book performer might.
Jack is becoming an ardent and accomplished tree climber.
“Grandpa, look at me. I can go all the way out on this limb. I can see way past what you can ‘cause I’m so much higher than you are. Do you know any other good climbing trees?”
It just warms our hearts so to see the grandkids enjoying nature so much and we literally treasure these days with them. They seem so happy.
So, as it turns out, what we thought was going to be a camp host job with lots of free time has morphed into a near full-time position. But, that’s OK. It’s all good. The challenge of clearing the campground along with the other volunteers has its own rewards and benefits.
During this time here in Cedar Breaks my creative side has been stirring strongly. New songs have been coming to me begging to be created and written down. When we left St Louis I brought my old 16 track recorder along. I stored my bass guitar and a couple of other 6-string guitars here at Suni’s house and so I’ve been putting them to use recording these new songs. It does me so much good emotionally to “finish” a song by arranging and recording it. I suppose it might be like a painter/artist who feels so compelled to put their vision on to canvas. I feel as though a few of these new songs are among my best I’ve yet written. I have no delusions about these songs and my music, though. I know I have little commercial appeal to my music. I don’t write to fit the commercial standards, but I do not care. It’s enough for me to record them and perhaps entertain a few friends with them via facebook. Maybe, if I’m lucky, a descendant, a grandkid or someone born down the road, will get a kick out of one or two of them.
I’ve also found time to play out as a solo again. I found a local club that has an open mic night and I join in with the other singer/songwriters there on Wednesday nights to perform a bit. It keeps me in practice for the times I might perform again with my friends back in old St Louis, or, perhaps in another club. The difference between playing by yourself around a campfire and getting up on stage to perform is as night and day is different. Recording a song and playing live are also, similarly, two separate skills. The act of presenting a song live for the public is a thing unto itself and unless you do it often you lose your sensitivity towards being dynamic in your presentation. Without performing in front of people on a stage often you tend to focus more of your attention on simply getting through a song without a mistake instead of really communicating the heart and soul of the music to your audience. At least, I have found that to be true for me. An open mic night is good practice, even at 71 years of age.
So, as I finish typing, it is very early one Wednesday morning and the deep gray clouded sky, heavy with Gulf moisture, hides the now rising Sun. Before long we will head out with Phil once again to move limbs and tree parts off the campground and over to the dump site. It should be a happy work team once again. A few may need an extra cup of Joe so to speak to get moving today. The fire from last night’s impromptu Happy Hour gathering in our back yard is still there, now a bed of embers rightly symbolizing the resonant warmth we took with us after such a pleasant evening. Come evening we’ll head over to old Georgetown Square where I will once again perform a few songs for the assembled Open Mic crowd. Thursday morning will find Diane and I on duty running the campground for the day. We’ll check folks in and out of the campground, welcome visitors and answer their questions with a big ol’ smile.
...And so it goes here in Georgetown, Texas, Spring of 2023.