VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, July 9, 2022
East Oregonian
A5
NORM
CIMON
OTHER VIEWS
A signal
we should
all pay
attention to
T
hanks to the East Oregonian for
publishing a range of views about
forest management. Those articles
have focused on how trees store carbon
and the perceived value of forest collab-
oratives. There’s a bigger picture that
needs to be understood, one that touches
on both.
It’s well known that a changing
climate can take us down a path we can’t
quickly return from. That’s the evidence
from core samples drilled deep into
ancient ice. Regular cycles have warmed
and cooled our Earth during the last
400,000 years. Very rapid transitions to
a much warmer Earth are followed by a
slower return to cooler periods that can
last thousands of years.
Now that we humans are pulling
the climate strings, there’s no knowing
where this might lead. The wild gyra-
tions we’ve been seeing, from blistering
hot for days on end to a spring that only
recently arrived, are a message we need
to heed. That may signal even bigger
changes.
That variability also reworks ecosys-
tems. Climate records show that forests
develop, expand and contract under
specific conditions of precipitation and
temperature. Once established they can
persist and thrive even through climate
swings.
In the Wasatch Range, which domi-
nates the skyline in northern Utah, thick
groves of Gambel oak are everywhere at
higher elevation. But when the ground
finally warms, it’s too dry for trees to
reproduce from seeds — though they
easily germinate in a lab setting. The
oaks we see are, instead, part of one
large organism, a root mass that cork-
screws its way up mountainsides. It
sends up a thick growth of leafy stems
above ground, visible to us as small
trees. The clones, as they’re called, can
be tens of thousands of years old. In
all likelihood, they migrate with the
climate, seeding out successfully when
conditions allow, hoarding resources
underground when they don’t.
A similar story plays out here in the
interior Northwest. Stringers of trees
work their way down from the slopes,
forming a thick carpet in north-south
running canyons, such as the Lostine.
Direct sun only visits that realm for a
few hours every day. The deep dark
spruce-fir forest that results harbors a
very different plant community from
the one just a few miles north, where the
Lostine River spills out onto the open
prairie.
Such deeply shaded old-growth
forests can sustain an ecosystem through
hotter and drier periods, even over
centuries, till cooler temperatures and
plentiful rainfall return again. They
do so as David Mildrexler has written
about, also in the East Oregonian: by
creating their own ecosystem reality.
They tap water underground, and move
it closer to the surface, which hosts plant
communities dependent on that mois-
ture. Water also is pumped to the very
top of those big trees that transpire it into
the canopy above the forest stand, main-
taining the microclimate they’ve created.
That’s something anyone who’s found
cool refuge in such a forest on a hot
summer day understands instinctively.
Because mature trees can be quite
old — those that grow in the Northwest
are some of the longest-lived of their
kind — they can hold on until favorable
climate conditions return again, taking
advantage of the changes to expand their
range. Seen this way, the ecosystem is
a sort of super-organism, growing and
changing over time.
Older trees also store very large
amounts of carbon. In wetter forests
those trees can be covered with lichens
and mosses that add even more to the
storehouse. Log the big trees from those
stands and there is no guaranteed return
path to that wetter ecosystem. The water
isn’t going to be as available to younger
growth, the new vegetation will be hotter
and drier, and the forest openings will no
longer support the same plant commu-
nity. It could be a very long time before
conditions allow for reemergence of
that ecosystem. The microclimate has
vanished.
That brings focus back to Lostine
Canyon, a very wet place. That cool
refuge offers us a humble lesson we
should take to heart. We live on the
margin of wet and dry. Over thousands
of years, our forests have adapted to that
reality. We need to do the same by keep-
ing them intact.
That’s a signal we all need to heed.
———
Norm Cimon, of La Grande, is a
member of Oregon Rural Action, a
nonprofit, but his column represents his
opinion only.
The best thing before sliced bread?
J.D.
SMITH
FROM THE HEADWATERS
OF DRY CREEK
T
he question rattled around inside my
baseball cap last Saturday afternoon
while I stood behind the glass cases of
the only grocery store within 15 miles of my
trapper’s shack, watching the essential worker
as she pushed the sliding table on her whirl-
ing stainless steel Hobart machinery, feeding
a chub of peppercorn salami into one end and
plucking quarter-inch meat frisbees from the
other. Watch your fingers.
Yummy. None of your dry, artisan, artsy
fartsy, goes-great-with-Cabernet, Italian
salami here. No siree, this was workers’ food,
good solid proletarian lunchmeat all dressed
up for the dance. Sliced salami could, indeed,
be the best thing since sliced bread. But wait
a second, how did sliced bread come about
anyway? And what was the best thing before
sliced bread? Time for another lesson from
“History without Underpants.”
Factory-sliced bread has only been around
for a hundred years or so. The inventor of the
bread slicer was Otto Frederick Rohwedder,
born July 6, 1880, in Des Moines, Iowa. He
grew up in Davenport, Iowa, and entered the
Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmol-
ogy and Otology in Chicago, from where he
received a degree in optics in 1900.
In the early 20th century the optometrist’s
trade was just being developed and a person
needing eyeglasses purchased them from a
jeweler. Rohwedder operated three jewelry
stores of his own in St. Joseph, Missouri, until
1916. That year he sold his stores and moved
back to his hometown because he had been
visited by a brilliant idea.
His idea, which he had begun working on
since 1912, was to create a bread slicer that
would automatically cut loaves of bread into
slices for consumers. He worked on several
prototypes, including one that held a sliced
loaf together with metal pins. This model did
not prove to be very tooth-friendly and was
unsuccessful. His biggest challenge came
in late 1917 when a fire destroyed his design
blueprints at a Monmouth, Illinois, factory
that had agreed to build his better slicing
devices.
It would take several years for him to get
it all back together, but Rohwedder contin-
ued to make refinements to his design. In the
course of his research he realized from talking
with bakers that he would need to find a way
to prevent a loaf of sliced bread from going
stale. By 1927, he had devised a solution to this
problem: a machine that would slice the bread
and also wrap it.
Meanwhile, a man named Charles Strife
invented the spring-loaded, automatic, pop-up
toaster, but ran into a series of insurance
claims from hand-sliced bread jamming the
toaster mechanism and burning down a few
houses. Chuck’s toasters desperately needed
uniformly shaped pieces of bread, and he
urged Otto to go ahead, please, with his slicing
machinery ideas.
The toaster safety issue gave Rohwed-
der the marketing wrinkle he needed to get
his latest version of the bread slicer off the
ground. Sliced bread was safer than whole loaf
bread. He filed for patents on his new slic-
ing-and-wrapping devices and sold his first
machine to the Chillicothe Baking Co., in
Chillicothe, Missouri, in 1928.
On July 7 of that year, the company sold its
first loaf of sliced bread, which they marketed
as Kleen Maid Sliced Bread. Demand climbed
swiftly. Within a year, Rohwedder found
himself scrambling to keep up with the pace
of requests he was getting from bakeries to
supply his slicing machines and Mr. Strife’s
toasters were all the rage.
In 1929, just as he was getting his Daven-
port-based Mac-Roh Sales and Manufactur-
ing Co. up and running, the Great Depression
hit and his company took it in the shorts. In
order to put bread on his own table, Rohwed-
der was forced to sell rights to his invention to
the owners of Micro-Westco Co. of Betten-
dorf, Iowa, who purchased the machines and
hired Rohwedder to serve as a vice president
and sales manager within its newly formed
Rohwedder Bakery Machine Division.
Even while the United States slipped into
economic gloom, sliced bread became more
and more popular. Sales skyrocketed nation-
ally beginning in 1930 when big city folks got
wind of sliced bread. Wonder Bread, packaged
with the balloon-type dots on the wrapper just
like today, began producing the product on its
own specially designed equipment.
By 1933, bakeries were selling more
sliced bread than unsliced bread. The only
time sliced bread experienced a downturn
was during the middle of World War II,
when Agriculture Secretary Claude Wickard
banned its sale in an effort to hold down prices
during the time of rationing.
Rohwedder, meanwhile, become known
as the “father of sliced bread,” and spent the
last 10 years of his life traveling and speak-
ing to groups around the country. He died in
Concord, Michigan, on Nov. 8, 1960. One of
the first models of his original slicing machine
is now housed at the Smithsonian Institution
in Washington, D.C.
OK, that’s sliced bread. What was the best
thing before sliced bread? I have no idea, but
if I were able to travel through time and meet
the 2.7 billion folks alive on this planet when
Wonder Bread made its debut, I’d ask them
what was the greatest thing on earth before
that, and I bet you 50 pesos that the answer
would be bread, hot from the oven, unsliced,
was the best thing before sliced bread.
———
J.D. Smith is an accomplished writer and
jack-of-all-trades. He lives in Athena.
Faithful companion still part of the story
LINDSAY
MURDOCK
FROM SUNUP TO SUNDOWN
he floor was cool as I slid down the
cupboard door to the concrete, wait-
ing for our vet to finish up outside on
another patient. It was Sunday, and thankfully,
Carrie was on call.
I watched with wide eyes as Deets gulped
the water from the small bowl placed on the
floor in front of him. His body shook a bit and
his heartbeat seemed to accelerate with each
lapping of the liquid. How much could I let
him drink? Would he be able to tolerate it after
so many days without? I guess we’d find out.
I closed my eyes, trying to remember exactly
where Ian had told me he’d been found.
I had already searched in the same place for
the second time two days earlier, seeing and
hearing nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, I
had parked the mower right next to the giant
pile of tires that his body had been stuck in for
the past nine days. How was it even possible
that he was still alive and standing in front of
me after nine long days?
I had been in the produce aisle when Ian
had called that afternoon asking if I had seen
his text. Irritated that he was calling after I had
already asked at least three times what was
needed from the store, reading through text
messages was not a priority at the moment.
“No, I haven’t seen the text. I am shopping
now, so just tell me what you need,” I replied.
“Just look at the text, Linds. Please just look
at the text. He’s alive! Deets is alive,” Ian said.
I gasped and stood in the middle of the aisle
in complete shock. My hands trembled and
tears welled up in my eyes as I stared at the
photo on my phone. Our dog, who had been
missing for nine days, was indeed alive, stand-
T
ing in our front yard looking skinny and a bit
sad. Making my way through the checkout
line and then bagging my groceries as quickly
as possible, I couldn’t help but wonder how
this was even happening. Where had he been
found? Was he really OK?
So many questions were unanswered, but
did those questions really matter when the dog
that half the county had been searching for
with us had been found alive?
Twelve miles had never seemed so far away
as they did that warm afternoon. I kept my
speed steady on the freeway and then accel-
erated down the mile of dusty gravel toward
home. Ian was standing in the driveway with
friends who had come to look at the tractor
we were selling as I turned toward the orchard
trees.
Pulling the car into the shade, I jumped
out, running toward him, praying he was as
alive as he looked. When I reached the apple
tree, his head moved ever so slowly as his eyes
focused on mine, his tail wagging back and
forth with a steady beat that seemed to reas-
sure me that everything was going to be OK.
He stunk so very badly, but the stench didn’t
keep my hands from rubbing his sides and
nuzzling into his neck. He was alive.
The next two hours were a bit of a blur. Ian
was able to tell me the complete story of how
he was found, and after a call to our veteri-
narian, I loaded Deets into the car so he could
be examined properly. I was certain that nine
days without any food or water was nothing
short of a miracle, and I wasn’t taking any
chances of losing him now.
After arriving at the vet clinic, I carried
him in through the back door, laughing to
myself that I had actually put the leash around
his neck. There was no way he was going to
be able to run off in this kind of condition, but
habits play tricks on the mind, especially in
stressful conditions.
Carrie came in through the back door and
let out a heavy sigh when she found Deets and
I both on the cool cement floor. Apologizing
for keeping us waiting, I laughed out loud. I
had been waiting for nine days, and the past
half hour had been a wonderful opportunity
for me to sit in the stillness and soak up the
miracle that was lying next to me.
Together, we worked at getting two bags
of liquid down him through an IV and then
attempted to wash the stench away. He wrig-
gled and squirmed all 50 pounds of himself
around, avoiding the water with every ounce
of energy he could muster up. The rinsing off
would have to wait for another day. Getting
the liquids into his tired body was much more
important.
I left for home with Deets curled on the
floorboard of the car about an hour later. His
eyes were closed, but he had a steady heart-
beat. The other dogs greeted us at the car when
we got home, hoping and praying as much as I
had that their best pal was doing well.
It’s been just over a month now, and our
sweet Deets is as good as new. He walks miles
of gravel roads with me daily, lies next to me
on the back porch as I read and is soaking up
summer like the best of them. I’m not sure
he’ll ever chase another cat or rabbit into a pile
of tires ever again, but he’ll definitely have a
story to tell for the rest of his days.
Sometimes I catch myself looking at him
while he walks with me, wondering what kind
of lesson God was trying to teach me during
those nine days when I had searched for miles
on foot and in my car knowing deep down
he had to be alive. Was it perseverance or
patience? Hope? Determination?
Whatever it was, you can be sure that I
continue to whisper thanks with each wag
of Deets’ tail. The happiest and most faithful
walking partner I could have ever hoped for in
a dog still gets to be a part of my story.
———
Lindsay Murdock lives and teaches in Echo.