YESTERDAY’S HERO

I was 12 years old when I got my first ax.
Fifteen when I got my first chain saw.
I was young, and strong, and proud.
My father took me into the woods with him
and showed me how
we could tumble those giant trees,
lash them to ropes and load them into trucks
driven by men who, like us, were pioneers
in the remaining wilderness
of the pacific northwest.

Axes would swing and chips would fly
and chain saws would buzz loud and long
under the tall canopy of leaves
a hundred and fifty feet overhead.
The noise was interrupted now and then
by the shout of “TIMBER”,
the cracking of the trunk
at the base of the giant,
the whistling of the fall,
and the massive thump as it hit the ground,
the reward of long hours of hard work.
This was followed by a hollow silence
throughout the forest
before the resumption of intense activity.

We were men then. Real men!
I was strong as an ox.
My skin was tight and red as all outdoors
and no one asked me my age
when I ordered a beer.
I was part of the crew, a woodsman,
a lumberjack right out of the movies of the 50s
respected, admired, a hero of sorts.

Then someone went into the forest
and counted the remaining trees
and everything changed.
What was good became bad.
The hero became a villain
and everything turned upside down.
I never grew to understand it, and if I did,
I couldn’t deal with it.
My life had leaned too far in one direction
to be felled in another.

I am much older now and I drive a logging truck.
I no longer stick my head out of the cab
and smile proudly at my cargo.
I try to protect myself behind rolled up windows
from the curses of people
who curse under their breath
as they see me drive by with, they say,
a litter of dead trees on the back.
What I was made to be proud of
I am now made to be ashamed of.
And the medal I won
for bravery in action during the war
remains in its box at the bottom of the drawer.
It is no longer the measure of my worth as a man
and I feel as though my life is for naught.
I have been used.
And now, toward the end of it,
no one is there to acknowledge
the houses that have been built
with the lumber from those trees I felled
when I was young, strong, and a hero.

Jay Frankston
wlp@mcn.org