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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (June 21, 1959)
14 MAIL TRIBUNE, MedforJ, Or. siiin)s Mutton Determined To Improve Ability Br RON ABELL , Mail Tribune Staff Writer There's a gentleman in Gold Hill who takes hii work homecjvith him to study. Does that sound reasonable? It would, except that Ward Hutton is a tree faller whose work involves Douglas firs weighing up to 15 tons and more: He doesn't take the trees home, of course. What he takes home is a notebook that he fills during the day with notes and sketches of trees that didn't fall the way he thought they would. Onlr Part of Determination This "homework" is only a part of his overall determina tion to increase nis ability as a taller - an aDimy mat u already won him the respect and admiration of his co-workers and supervisors. "Wafd is one of the best fallers in the country," says his employer, Elmer Milton. Milton has been a logging contractor in Rogue River since 1925 and is currently cutting trees in the Butte Falls area, where. Hutton heads up a three-man crew of fallers. v , "Ward is constantly on the look for improvement: He has ' extraordinary control of the fall of trees to avoid breakage," says Howard Mitchell, forester for Timber Products company, Medford. The company currently "is buying the trees felled by Hutton. "One of the jobs oi a ior- ester is to watch out for ex cess breakage," Mitchell con tinued. "Many falters do just a passable job and they waste a lot of timber. Often they don't take enough interest in ' their work, or they're anxious to chop down as many trees as they can in a day. But the work of Ward and his crew is excellent." What's Ward's attitude to wards his work? "I love it," he says. !'I can't learn enough, about trees." .Takes Pride in work " And that's the explanation behind a man who has won -respect at a job not noted for respectability. He takes pride in his work. Ward Hutton has blue eyes and a ready grin and he looks a decade younger than his 43 years. As an aircraft worker in, San Diego some 13 years - aeo. he heard about and yearned for the Oregon woods. After the war he came here and he has remained." ' "I was green when I got year I only made $1,700, working wiflb. a hand saw. "But pretty soon I saw that I could apply production tech- i J I. 4ttA air. fn1iicTv trt hflrfc me. I ' ucuk ijumuj tr try to categorize trees, just ttiAir Ar with finiTer- .prints." book from his shirt pocket and looked at a sketch, i "Here's a tree that didn't fall ii. T ilu4 i in " Tie . xne w a j x wo - - said, "So I drew a cross sec ' tion of the butt and noted the " way the tree was leaning and where the brancnes . were. Next time I see a simHar tree I'll remember -this one and make it fall where I want it to. t "That is, if I do my home work tonight." he added. Ward is married and has three sons and a daughter. He introduced the other . two members of his crew, both from Gold Hill: Bruce Wil liams, 25, and Gene Holder ness, 28. Hand-Picked Men "I hand-Dicked both these w mvsplf" he said. "If I could have found better work ers. I would have done it." j. Bruce has been with him for five years, and Gene for about two. They're botft mar ried. . "Most fallers work by i themselves," Ward said, "or ? thev sometimes use a two-man crew. We're the only three- man crew I've heard of. He explained that with three men they can apply more efficiency to their work. "Our main object is con servation and saving timber, with safety always in mind," he said. Avoiding Breakage Mitchell explained that avoiding breakage is to the best interests of the workers, as well as to the contractors and the lumber companies. Whenever a tree breaks, the broken parts have to be cut away and thre is that much timber lost. "But it's hard to get log gers to understand that," he said. ' " If a tree is allowed to fall across a boulder or a break in the terrain, if it hits a "windfall" or another fallen tree, or if it hits a tree still CORN REMOVER Grvo Srutont relief from pain aarJ pool Valy imww bard esnuk of am botw ot. callewM, wart papilloma. dwa aorta. It oral oWaraar orb mat lohiaj and oam oat tout ma iiiilariaa a da strong acid mistuta. Wka a amort Itavw taad try mis arm. Try our lunioa IrGaf. which rlias pain, Mtrwwss. swelling first or stcand pplicarian lath remedial sard ea . Sumhy. Jum 21, 1939 standing, the chances are that it will break. Often it will splinter and shatter to the ex tent that little of it is usable. Another danger is that in falling it might scrape against a younger tree, tearing bark from the younger tree and causing it to die. That's one of the problems Mitchell is concerned with. His job as a forester is to protect the in terests of the land's owner. The young trees on the land have latent value which a careless faller can destroy. Makes Work Easier "If all the men were like these three my work would be a lot easier," Mitchell said. They can lay a tree down almost anywhere they want to. Their work is extraordi nary- As if to .prove Mitchell's point, the three men began work on a big Douglas fir. It was in an awkward position near the bottom of a ravine, leaning slightly downhill. "The easy way to lay this one would be just to drop it downhill," Ward said, as Gene yanked on a cord to start the five-foot chain saw. "But see where it would break?" he pointed. "There and there and there. There wouldn't be anything left of it. Points to 'Channel' "And if we dropped it par allel to the ravine we'd have the same problem. So there's where we're going to lay it." He pointed uphill to a narrow channel" between a number of trees. , Was he sure he could hit the channel? "We put 99 out of 100 right where we want to," he said. "And if we miss; well, I put it in my notebook and study it to find out why." ' Ward and Gene used the chain saw to take out a wedge? shaped "undercut" from the butt of the tree. "We make our undercut from the bottom," Ward said. "It's a little "more work but it saves timber." They made a quick backcut through the other side of the tree and Bruce began driving metal wedges into the cut. Ward explained that the wedges help tip the tree up hill. Then they took a more intricate series of cuts and when the fir started to fall it twisted slightly away from the direction .in which it had been leaning. Inspects Tree When the dust settled the tree was lying straight up the hill and not a break was vis ible. Mitchell scampered up the fallen tree and made a quick inspection. "Well, you missed your mark by a foot and a half." he said when he came back down. The top of the tree was about 200 feet distant.. Mitchell said that there was about a 1 per cent break age on the tree. "That means a loss of about 40 board feet," he said. "The average crew, considering the position and lean of this tree, would have lost at least 300 feet." Mitchell estimated that Ward and his crew, with the care they take and the knowl edge they've acquired, save over a half-million board feet of timber a year. "That's the difference between them and an average crew," Mitchell said. Another Difference Another difference is that while to many loggers their job- is just work, to Ward it's a special form of enjoyment. In the logging off-season Ward, Bruce and Gene travel around studying the logging techniques used by other op erators, y "We pick up a little information,"- Ward said, "but mostly I'm surprised by the timber I see being wasted. I tell other fallers what we ac- f 1Tir MuDDug Biromigs .. . i i iiiiii ii i im i mm " i i i il ir ii Tf .TAKING A BREAK - Grouped around the stump of a tree they just felled are (left to right) Ward Hutton, Bruce Williams . and Gene Holderness. At far right is Howard Mitchell, forester for Timber Products Company.: This tree was "laid down" with such accuracy it suffered no breakage at all. The metal helmets the men are wearing are for protection from falling limbs. Strap West Coast Seeks Flight to Reno Seattle - West Coast Air lines has asked the Civil Aer onautics Board for permis sion to operate a new route between Klamath Falls and Reno. A similar request was recently denied the company. West Coast also asked the board to reconsider a denial of the company's request to operate a new route between Boise and San Francisco-Oakland, via Winnemucca, Nev., Reno and Sacramento.' In connection with the Klamath Falls-Reno proposal, the airline said it felt that if the board had used the CAB examiner's own traffic esti mates it would have deter mined the route profitable. complish here and they don't believe me." Also during the off-season, the three of them indulge in work-outs which, as you might expect, have an ele ment of the rough-and-ready about them. "We work out at boxing, judo .and weight lift ing,". Ward said. "It's partly to keep us in shape but most ly because we just enjoy it." Makes Science of Work Ward explained ' that he tries, to make a science out of falling trees. A tree will twist when it is being cut and the science comes in anticipating and controlling the twist. ' "You have to figure the geometry," Ward said. "It's almost like" a game of bil liards. We can get trees Eng lishin' off each other and if we have to, bring down two and three at once. We've brought down as many as six at one time, each one knock ing another down as it falls," They prepared two trees for such a "double lay." One was about 60 feet uphill from the other. Using the chain saw, they quickly cleared away a stump and a small hemlock that were in the way. Then they undercut and back cut the tree farther up the hill so that it would come down when i struck by the lower tree. ; , . . Ward explained that in this situation it wasn't necessary to take them both at once.'but he wanted to show how it was done. He took a plumb bob out of his shirt pocket and sighted the lean of the lower tree. "He's the only faller I've ever seen who uses a plumb bob," Mitchell said. "Most fallers just take a calculated guess at to which way a tree is leaning." They brought the tree down right where they wanted to and sure enough, it hit the second tree and started it fall ing. From the time they had started to cut and the time the double crash boomed across the-hill, about 10 minutes had elapsed. ' . "We try to compute every thing," he said.- "The lean, the wind, the slope, the terrain, ana we have to consider where it will be easiest for the tractors to drag the trees out when they're on the ground. "We make mistakes some times, but I guess it can't be helped. The gentleman who put the trees here in the first place wasn't thinking about us.- ' . "We can only do the best we can, and keep trying to get better:" And that just about sums up the philosophy of Ward Hutton, a tree faller with finesse. . ped around the necks of the three fallers are plastic goggles. Mitchell said these three fallers are the only ones he's known who wear them. "Maybe we seem like sissies," Hutton said, "but Bruce's goggles prob ably saved one of his eyes last week when a piece of metal flew off a wedge and hit him." Seasons -T BirdtWatcher LATE SPRING Summer is here. My calendars differ. One says it arrives the 21st, one the 22nd. But the birds say it is here now. Young birds are out of the nest. So far on the home place I have seen one pheasant chick and .young jays, meadowlarks, robins, white-breasted nuthatches and house finches. On a trip we saw a half-grown quail, so I think the tiny chicks have been keeping hidden on the home place. The last spring migrant to arrive is usually the mghthawk. I saw the first one- this year on May 30th, just about a normal arrival date. In the late spring we like see what's new up there. On to a favorite spot over the top look at a certain dead tree-top years we had seen a calliope all our birds, with a gleaming reddish or violet neckpiece. There it was for the third year sitting in the very same tree top darting out after insects or going down to feed on the larkspur that blooms there. While we were watching it a green-tailed towhee came and sang in the very same tree. We took my wife back there the next week and saw both birds again in ihe same tree. This is the only place where I per sonally have seen a calliope hummingbird. We have a custom of getting the local bird watchers to gether and trying to see how many species we can find in the county on Memorial Day. Since it came on Saturday this year, I didn't think that was take off, so we suggested that Mon., or all three if they had However, we didn t have a meeting to divide up terri tories and some of our good observers couldn't take part, so we didn't do as well as we might. With the benefit of. 'three days, though, our combined list came to 95." I vow that next year we will organize it better and break the hundred mark. The birds re here if we can just get around to the right places and find them.' Bob Hubbard saw black terns and what he took to be common terns at one of the ponds in the Camp White area. I saw terns that looked more like Forster's at Hoover lakes. Later we enlisted J. H. to arbitrate this dispute and he said they were Forster's (which are actually much commoner than the so-called "common"). However, a couple of weeks later we went back to Hoover lakes and this time we both agreed that what we saw were "common". So now we feel sure that both of these graceful birds are in our area. I put in a long day on Monday of the Memorial Day week end from 3:30 aon. to after 9 p.m. My personal week end list came to 81. We particularly enjoyed the trip across from Dead Indian rd. to the Green Springs rd. past Howard Prairie reservoir and Hiatt lake. We found the purple martins again nesting at Hiatt lake, the only place in our county that we know of where they do. - -' The last bird I added to the week end list was a black phoebe found at the Forest Creek bridge on the River rd. along the Applegate. We had seen a black phoebe at this spot twice earlier. Being in that area on other business again this week I stopped once more and this time I found the nest "glued" to the concrete underneath the bridge. I believe there are young in it. I think both Carl Richardson and Dr. Elmo Stevenson have seen black phoebes in this area before, but they are not listed in the books as being found in Oregon, so I was particularly interested in finding this nest. Incidentally, this particular road along the Applegate and the spot by this bridge is one of the most favorable places in the county to observe birds." I saw green herons there on earlier visits. This time I saw a pair of gorgeous western tanagers, a, large assembly of doves and several other varieties. There are many fine places to observe birds, however. One of the best is often your own yard and garden. They are building houses all around-us where we live, but I seem to be seeing more birds than ever on the home place. We record ed 29 in a single week last week. One was a lazuli bunting which my wife found singing in the willows. A couple of weeks before we found a burrowing owl perched on a mail box on the far side of our church property. The mountains are wonderful at this season, too. I'm anxious to get up into the high timber in the early morning and hear the hermit thrushes sing.-TM. DISCONTINUE MEETINGS Central Point - Meyers-Holland American Legion post here will discontinue' meet ings through the summer, Commander Bert Smith an nounced following an execu tive committee meeting last week. The post will not hold a regular meeting again until the second Thursday in Sep tember, he reported. Iced ea is believed to be Jof American origin, to get to the higher ground and May 25 J. H. and I made a trip of the Dead Indian grade to where on the two previous hummingbird, the smallest of a good day for a preacher to people go out bat., sun. or time. . - UTILITY SAWDUST 0 SPECIAL o 300 Cu. Ft. $4.00 (Covers 3600 Sq. Ft. one inch) Quantity Prices en 10 or More Leads CALL SP 2-8086 . Timber Products Co. Prices Are F.O.B. Medford Delivery C.O.D. ILLINOIS VALLEY Recreation Program Set Cave Junction - The annual summer recreational program, which will begin June 22, will include a variety of sports and games for youngsters and ad ults. There will be both softball and hardball leagues, golf, archery, tennis and of course swimming will again be a ma jor part of the program. The PeeWee baseball will be for ages 9 through 12 and for 13-year-olds whose birth day is after June 15. The play will be on the high school athletic field where each boy will receive instruc tion to play any position. Aft er the preliminaries, a league is to be formed to start a reg ular schedule the first part of July. The Cub baseball will be for 13-15 years old with 16-year-olds whose birthdays are after June 15. The play will be at Spitz field, and a league will be formed following an instruction period when the boys will be taught the fun damentals of the game. The Cubs are also to have a team ready for inter-city games with Ashland, Grants Pass and Central Point. Swimming will start on July 6 for a run of five weeks, with Mrs. Louis Aiier in charge, assisted by Coach El don Burham and some high school students, Mrs. Aller will handle the instruction and classes will be held at the Lucky Clover mo tel swimming pool. There will be two divisions in tennis. On Tuesday and Thursday there will be in struction classes for boys and girls between the ages of 9 and 15. Fundamentals will be taught and matches will be played as the pupils advance. The second division will in clude adults and will meet at 7 p.m. either at the high school or at Dr. Versteeg's home. It is hoped to have an elimination tournament for both the advanced players and the beginners. There are nine teams lined up. to take part in the adult softball play. Play began Mon day, June 15, which is ahead of the regular summer pro gram, but this was necessary in order to play all the games scheduled within the time lim its of the program. : Sponsors ' of the softball teams are Explorer Scouts, Medoland dairy, Cabax mill, Forest Green lumber co., Li ons club, Selma, Smokejump- ers, American Legion and Moore Timber. Games will be at the high school field with double headers on Monday and Thursday evenings. The games will start at 7 pan. Archery, with suitable in structors, will also be held under the lights on the high school field on Tuesdays nd Fridays at 7 p.m. Golf is being tentatively scheduled for Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Sportsmen's Ranch Areo lmks on Caves highway, with instruction available for all ages. A tournament is be ing planned with details to be announced later. The basketball program will be played at the Versteeg courts and will include main ly high school boys. The play will be from 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Fridays. The teen age dances will be every Friday from 9 to 11:30 p.m. . The county school board, at an executive session Wednes day night, named Wes Peters as the new Illinois Valley High school principal. Peters, who has been teaching in the county school system for the past 11 years, has been serv ing as vice-principal for the past four years. Principal Wes Peters, hold er of a masters degree from the University of Oregon, be gan his teaching career in the Valley at the Kerby Grade school, then was transferred to the high school where he has taught general mathemat ics, science, world geography, the driver's training course, boy's physical education and has served as coach in basket ball and track. Sandra, Gloria and Lynden, The Hare Trio, have been en gaged to appear all summer with the Barnstormers in the Little Theater performances at Grants Pass city park as one of the specialty - Oleo IHesped: numbers between acts. The newest of the water storage reservoir projects be ing constructed in the Illinois Valley under the supervision of the Soil Conservation serv ice has just been completed on the Don Rosenberg, ranch. The dam, which is 45 feet long, 10 feet high at the crest and 8 feet wide , across the top, creates a pond covering approximately four acres. The water, almost all surface wa ter which drains from a small watershed back of the dam and collects during the rain season, will be used for sup plemental irrigation. - The 450 foot core trench for the dam was dug by the owner and B. F. Randolph did the earth fill work. . Mr. and Mrs. Frank Walk er of Grants Pass are moving to the Valley and will estab lish a goat cheese business in Kerby on the former Dan Bliss property, recently pur chased by the Walkers. About 50 goats have already been moved on the ranch. Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Hatha way were honored at a dinner at the Todelope cafe, marking his retirement after 17 years with the forest service. H. C. Obe, forest supervi sor, as principal speaker, higmignted the events in Hathaway's career with the forest service in his address to the assembled group. Fol lowing his talk, Obe present ed the Hathaways with a re tirement gift, an automatic electric coffee maker. The city council met with the city budget committee last Tuesday evening to complete the proposed budget needed for the fiscal year 1959-1960. A formal notice has been posted informing the legal voters of the city of a budget meeting- which will be held in the city offices at 8 p.m. Mon day, June 22, for the purpose of discussing the budget. Mr. and Mrs. Elwood Hus sey left recently by plane for Anchorage, Alaska, where they will be guests of son's family, Mr. and Mrs. Elwood Hussey Jr., and four children. Elwood, Jr." is a master ser geant in finance in the U. S. Army. Otis Hussey and family of Ashland are staying at his parent's home during their ab sence. An estimated 140 guests were served at the Lion's club out-door breakfast Sunday morning, one of the Centen nial events in the valley. Mr. and Mrs. Otto Tryon are home from Albany where they were attending the state convention of the Veterans of World War I. The- Bob Martins made a trip to Portland Tuesday to bring their daughter, Norma, home from Multnomah Bible school. MrsRaymond Heidenreich and Mrs. Harry Smith attend ed the Rose Show in Medford Tuesday of last week. Mr.- and Mrs. Harry Smith also visited the Grants Pass Rose Show on Sunday. A reunion was effected last week, after a 34 year separa- July 1st. Is Our Goal For Completion OfHillcrest Chapel Wallpaper Is On Carpet Is Down J Church Pews Due in 2 Weeks Air Conditioning Is Working to Eliminate Summer Heat. ( ImSSSa Bill Driscoll, manager North Phoenix Road Phone SP 3-6162 or SP 2-7111 Barker Named to KMED Position i The appointment of Harry Barker as commercial man ager for radio station KMED was announced yesterday by Ray Johnson, KMED general manager. Barker, of 1524 Le nora St., Medford, had been acting commercial manager since April 20. Barker's background in re tailing in Medford, as well as in other areas of the country, is proving an asset to himself and his advertisers, Johnson said. . Barker has been employed by KMED since October, 1958. He is a graduate of the University of Kansas with a bachelor of science degree. He has had executive training with the R. H. Macy Corpor ation and has served as a de partment manager in stores in Kansas City, San Francisco and Medford. He is on the board of direc tors of the Medford Kiwanis club and was twice nominated for the junior chamber's "young man of the year" award. He is married and has three children. tion, when George W. Mart in's only sister and her hus band, Mr. and Mrs. Edmond Johnson of Cambridge City, Ind., arrived for a week's stay at the Martin home. Week end guests at the Les Henry home were Henry's son and family, Mr. and Mrs. Les Henry Jr., and son, Guy. While in the Valley, Les Jr. renewed old friendships with his school chums who gradu ated with him from the old Kerby High school. Mrs. Les Henry accompa nied her son, Jack Green, to the Milo academy last week, where Jack will be employed all summer and will enroll in classes next fall. Dick Tubman, fire control officer for the Siskiyou dis trict, is conducting the annual fire guard training school this week at the Siskiyou Aerial Project for some 80 forest service employees.! 1 Next week the intensive specialized training will begin for the 18 new smokejumpers, as well as the refresher course for the 12 returnees, experi encd men who have been at the project for from two to four years. A change in pilots brings Dick Foy, formerly with the Medford Flying Service, to the project, while Ed Scholz who has been the project pi lot since 1949 will leave to take his new position as Re gion Zone pilot for Oregon. In a normal year Great Britain exports thoroughbred horses, the value sometimes reaching $14 million. Card of Thantxo Mrs. Herman J. Gier and family wish toQ express their deepest gratitude for all symparhie and personal kindnesses extended by their friends during their recent bereavement. Bill Dnscoll your host today, 1 to 5 p.m. New Car Stickers Available in Area A new car window sticker promoting the area has been received from the printers by the Jackson County Centen nial association, according to -Ernie Hod, coordinator. The stickers are orange with a black stage coach drawn by four horses silhou etted on it, Hod explained. In the top right corner are th words, "Oregon Centennial," in black with the white let-' ters, "Rogue Valley," across, the stage coach. The stickers, which sell for .10 cents each, are available at the Centennial headquarters south of Medford and at the welcome stockade at the Sis kiyou summit - during the ' week end. Hood said that the Centen nial guide book to the wond ers of Rogue River Valley are now available locally. He said that the guide boks are free and contain information on scenic drives, historic sites, Centennial events in the coun ty, major tourist attractions, map tours, and recreation. Art work in the book was done by Hood and Paul Par son and compiled by him and the Jackson County Chamber of Commerce with the assist ance of Ron Gandee. Veterans Awarded For Writing Work An even dozen domiciliary veterans were named in awards o fthe Hospitalized Veterans Writers project, Manager Henry C. Herzog, who presented checks aggre gating $82 to six of the win ners, has announced. The awards included eight books, a correspondence school course and two sub scriptions to the , Atlantic Monthly magazine. Sir Hollingsworth, corre spondent at Camp White for the Medford Mail Tribune,' rooc nomArl net "nfwriAcnnTtr. ent of the year" in the Hospi tal Newspaper Award, which went to the publication Dom inews. top honors by winning $4 prize money with Walter L. Townsend runner up with $25 in two divisions. Other winners wer Pat rick E. Powers, Walter V. McLean, John A. Cress, Ed ward L. Robinson, George A. Eick, Claude Wood n James Jillan. iji-nu xiuxiiics, unci, uuir- ian, who sponsored the un dertaking through th Writ ers club, said the record this year was outstanding fjrith t5 places in 14 categories, yn third place amon fU co$ testants throughout the coun try. - More than 82 per cent of -all 1957-model cars in the Un ited States had eight cylind ers. - - .. - many
