A4
Opinion
wallowa.com
September 13, 2017
Wallowa County Chieftain
Welcome rescue
no matter what
I attended the Caldwell Night Rodeo a couple of weeks ago
and thought about the first time I was there. The trip about 20
years ago started at 3:30 a.m. in Oakdale, Calif., loading horses
and hitching up the trailer. By 3:45, Jim and I were on our way
to pick up Jerold and Leo to head for Caldwell. As we pulled
into Jerold’s yard, we could see the light in the barn and two
horses tied to the hitching rail in the yard.
The plan was
to drop our trailer
and hook up to
Leo’s
bigger
trailer to accom-
Barrie Qualle
modate the four
horses. Naturally
since it was dark,
it wasn’t that simple. The plug that was wired for Jim’s trailer
didn’t match Leo’s.
While I held the flashlight, Jerold rewired the plug. Why is
it that this job is almost always done in the dark?
It was nearly 5:30 p.m. when we pulled into Caldwell, and
the evening performance didn’t start until 7:30. This gave us
time to put up the horses and get a room.
My traveling companions all placed in the go rounds, and
Jerold and Leo made it to the short round the following day.
The Camarillo’s were flying out to rodeos in Colorado so that
left Jim and me free to leave for home the next morning. We
fueled up the pickup and met Jim Underwood from Montana to
pick up a horse he was sending with us to California.
We made Winnemucca around noon and had lunch in one of
its great Basque restaurants. Rodeo cowboys know all the good
places in the Western states, and they are not all restaurants.
Since I had driven from Caldwell and felt a nap attack com-
ing on, Jim was driving as we headed west. I woke up around
two hours later and noticed the fuel gauge was sitting on red.
“You better get fuel in Lovelock,” I commented.
“We went past Lovelock about 20 miles ago,” Jim replied.
I then asked how long the gauge had been on red, and he
thought about 40 miles. About then, we passed a sign that said
“Fernley 35 miles.” We looked at each other and knew we were
sunk. When the Dodge coughed and quit, we were on a flat
stretch east of Fernley about 31 miles. The Nevada landscape
never looked worse. Jim’s approach to this kind of predica-
ment was to sull up and have someone save him, so I got out
and stuck out my thumb.
After 10 minutes or so, a van slowed and pulled over. I trot-
ted down the side of the road and opened the passenger side
door. “Can you give me a ride to Fernley?” I asked the driver.
“Sure, hop in, and we’ll be there in no time,” the driver said.
I settled in and looked around the van. There was a wheel chair
behind the driver, and I noticed that he was using a hand throt-
tle and hand brake. We visited about where we had been and
where we were going, and in no time we were pulling into a
truck stop on the edge of Fernley.
As I was getting out, I thanked the man for the ride.
“We have to help each other out now and then, even in this
tough old world,” he replied.
“Well for starters, I won’t park in handicapped parking any-
more,” I said.
“That would be a start,” he laughed as he pulled out.
I walked to the truck stop and bought a five-gallon plastic
gas can and filled it with diesel. I was wondering how I was
going to get back to the rig alongside the road.
It was then I spotted a familiar face. Carly, a truck driver
we had loaded many times was walking toward a loaded cat-
tle truck. I caught up with her, and determined she was heading
east on I-80 for Colorado.
I begged a ride and 31 miles to the east we pulled over.
Carly said she would wait till we got going before she pulled
out in case she needed to radio for help. I crossed the sagebrush
median and woke up Jim who had been reading the “Ropers
Sport News” instead of the Ram manual on how to restart.
We found the instructions and were told to find the primer
pump on the fuel line and pump it 20 times, then crank the
engine. After we figured out how to open the hood, we started
tracing fuel lines to find the primer. No luck.
By now it had been 20 minutes, and Carly crossed the
median to see how we were doing. She disclosed that the lines
we were searching for the primer were actually air condition-
ing lines and not fuel lines. In about 30 seconds, she located the
primer and dutifully pumped it and had us successfully on our
way. Being rescued by a cripple and a woman could be hum-
bling for some, but we were OK with it and also damn grateful.
OPEN RANGE
Barrie Quallie is a Wallowa County-based columnist for
the Chieftain.
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Contents copyright © 2017. All rights reserved.
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Volume 134
1 Year
$40.00
$57.00
Get tough with fire bugs
All of my life, I have heard things
described as a “breath of fresh air.” At no
point in my life was that saying more real
than Saturday morning sitting on a bench
at Enterprise Library and feeling the cool
breeze wash over me.
After an inordinately hot summer and
a highly smoky on, the coolness was
beyond description. For the first time in a
long time, I inhaled deeply, my lungs not
knowing exactly what to do with newly
cleaned air.
The fact that things cooled off and
the smoke went away as the Hells Can-
yon Mule Days parade was about to move
through Enterprise may or may not have
been a coincidence.
The latest round of smoke seemed to
peak on Thursday afternoon when the
mountains surrounding Wallowa County
completely disappeared. The smoke was
fed by wildfires across the region, includ-
ing the Eagle Creek fire in the Columbia
Gorge.
That fire was approaching the 40,000-
acre level over the weekend. Sporting
events in the area were canceled and out-
door events curtailed for many others.
People with breathing conditions stayed
inside as much as possible. The rest of us
choked and hacked our way through.
The fires sparked even more debate
about how forests are being managed in
the western United States. Has the ces-
sation of logging meant an unhealthy
build-up of fire-prone trees?
It’s not an easy question to answer with
exactness, but it bears looking into.
The Eagle Creek fire was apparently
started by a child playing with fireworks.
Investigators are still on the case, but if
this juvenile’s activities are eventually
deemed to be the cause, serious punish-
ment must be forthcoming.
Fireworks in the middle of one of the
driest summers on record? Really. Hope-
‘Geography of Music’ a
winner in writer’s eyes
The year-long efforts of Fishtrap, Jose-
phy Center and Wallowa Valley Music
Alliance came to fruition Aug. 24-26 as
“The Geography of Music.”
The Friday night concert featured
amazingly talented musicians from Seat-
tle, Boise, Walla Walla and our own Mark
Eubanks and Lauren Guthridge. Sam Col-
lett and Rod Ambroson shared outstand-
ing talent as painters, and Ellen Bishop’s
words touched our souls as she described
this awesome place we call home.
It was one of the most beautiful awe-in-
spiring concerts I have ever been privi-
leged to attend.
I am sure that even if you thought
you didn’t like classical music, you
would have been mesmerized by classi-
cal music beautifully presented in con-
cert with breath-taking pictures of the
Snake River.
You would have been captivated to
watch Collett and Ambroson create fas-
cinating paintings in front of your eyes
as you heard the music of Mozart or
Stravinsky.
Eubank’s arrange of Bach’s “Little
Fugue in G Minor” would have had you
feeling ever-so thankful to live in Wallowa
County.
I understand the dedicated creative vol-
unteers who spent many hours on “Geog-
raphy of Music” events are already hard at
work on the program they plan to present
L
Paul Wahl/Chieftain
This was the scene in downtown Enterprise Thursday afternoon when smoke from
widlfires blotted out the view of the surrounding mountains.
WAHL TO WALL
Paul Wahl
fully, charges will be pressed against the
parents as well for allowing such stupidity.
There has been a burn ban in Wal-
lowa County most of the summer, yet
nearly every set of public safety logs that
are faxed to us weekly has an incident in
which an open fire has to be extinguished
by one of our fire departments.
I know there have been incidents in
Joseph and Wallowa. I don’t remember
seeing one for Enterprise.
I checked in with city administrator
LETTERS to the EDITOR
next August.
Please, do yourself a favor, and don’t
miss it.
Gail Swart
Enterprise
Letter-writer’s claims
dismissed as flap-doodle
Jim Akenson’s claim that wolves can
be forever “habituated” to eating cows is
flap-doodle.
What wolves are habituated to is eat-
ing meat, big ambulant packages of meat
like deer and elk, and in olden days buf-
falo. Cows fit the bill. But judging from
the tiny numbers of cattle killed in, for
example, Wallowa County, which has
around 40,000 head, wolves decidedly
choose wild ungulates over cattle even
when cows outnumber natural prey.
Last year’s savage winter killed and
weakened ungulate populations, mean-
ing fewer offspring. The summer drought
added to the dearth of prey.
In these fraught conditions, thousands
of unattended cows and calves are turned
out in the midst of a wolf pack, many
calves looking not much bigger than a
wolf. So the wolves eat some.
Ranchers scream for the death of entire
packs, using Akenson’s fancy that once
wolves “flick that switch,” they’re forever
Michele Young to see find out what was in
store for those who violated the law.
“If our fire department were to be
called to put a fire out during a burn ban,
we would bill them for the fire depart-
ment’s call, they would get fined and we
would turn it over to ODF,” Young said.
Enterprise is going to look at even
more strict rules at a future date, Young
told me.
Good for them. I hope the other two
cities have equally strong ordinances in
place and that scofflaws are dealt with
accordingly.
Can you imagine the damage that
could be done if one of those fires were to
get out of hand?
A bit of rain fell over much of the
county Friday night but not nearly enough
for the fire ban to be lifted.
addicted to cow-eating. But wolves aren’t
flashlights, switched on and off.
They’re opportunistic hunters with a
clearly demonstrated preference for elk.
Where there are more elk, they’ll kill
fewer cows; and if cows are better pro-
tected, they’ll eat fewer. But ranchers,
always candid about their desire to kill
wolves, now smell blood.
Wallowa County, where I live, has
one, sometimes two, publicly-funded
range-riders to cover an area 40 miles
long, mostly rugged timbered public
lands. This deterrent can be no more than
superficially effective except on open
grasslands, mostly private.
Ranchers, especially those grazing
public lands, need to make fundamen-
tal changes to their business plan. They
need to run cows able to defend them-
selves – cows with horns and the agility to
use them; not overweight, hornless critters
with stumpy legs.
They need to arrange smaller U.S. For-
est Service allotments easier to patrol and
move cattle more often between them.
They need more butts in the saddle –– at
their own expense.
They receive from the taxpayer full
compensation for loss, free nonlethal
tools, heavily subsidized grazing leases,
numerous tax breaks and cash subsidies.
Most Oregonians want wolves in the
state and are willing to pay for it. Must we
also put up with flap-doodle?
Wally Sykes
Joseph
etters to the Editor are subject to editing and should be limited to 275 words. Writers should also include a phone number
with their signature so we can call to verify identity. The Chieftain does not run anonymous letters.
In terms of content, writers should refrain from personal attacks. It’s acceptable, however, to attack (or support) another par-
ty’s ideas. We do not routinely run thank-you letters, a policy we’ll consider waiving only in unusual situations where reason
compels the exception.
You can submit a letter to the Wallowa County Chieftain in person; by mail to P.O. Box 338, Enterprise, OR 97828; by
email to editor@wallowa.com; or via the submission form at the newspaper’s website, located at wallowa.com. (Drop down
the “Opinion” menu on the navigation bar to see the relevant link).