Yes, Register Guard, Yes!

What this town needs is more paeans to the Lane County working-class life of the '50s and '60s written by multi-millionaires.

I remember when Eugene was known as the timber capital of the world; it seemed as though log trucks were on Sixth and Seventh avenues all the time. How things change.

In my youth, not many kids went to college after high school. They would get a job working at a sawmill, in the woods or at a plywood plant starting at maybe 15 to 20 cents per hour less than a journeyman’s wages — just like their dads, brothers, granddads or neighbors. They could support a family, own their own home, buy a camper and help send their kids to college.

Starting out at the mills meant working swing shift from 4 p.m. to midnight, or the graveyard shift from midnight until 8 a.m. A millworker’s wife might work in the summers at a cannery in Eugene or Junction City, and maybe she’d pick crops for the local farmers.

Life was good.

Oh, life was good, Avon. A man could give up whatever hope he had of living a comfortable life by dedicating himself to forty years of back-breaking labor. He could look forward to becoming a journeyman after some years and get raises of maybe 15 to 20 cents more than he earned when he started. He could look forward to years of not sleeping with his wife in bed at night. If he was real lucky, maybe his mill would be purchased by another outfit and he could go out on strike to fend of cuts to his pay. If he prayed real hard, maybe his kids could see their names on the tree at the mall at Christmas time.

Oh, and the ladies! What luxury they had spending their summers working in a cannery or maybe picking crops for a local farmer. I don't have to tell you, Avon, that there is nothing a woman loves more than performing physical labor in the hot sun. And you forgot the kids! The halcyon days picking blueberries for 10 cents a flat out in Leaburg. The hours spent at the string bean vines instead of the ol' swimming hole.

Yes, it was nothing but non-stop upward mobility for Lane County's working classes. Too bad the relentless consumption of our forests, the very consumption that kept those jobs plentiful and low-wage, lead to the day when trees were too small to be run though your mills. Too bad mill owners spent decades taking profits and giving them to the Republican party, instead of investing in new equipment. Too bad free trade meant that our raw logs went to China to be processed, while cheaper Canadian timber drove you out of the lumber markets here. all those damned hippies ruined it with the socialism and environmentalism.

Good times, indeed.