Brook's Summer With the Forest Service

Like his 2d cousin Jon Sampson, his father Bob Martin, and his uncle Mark Sampson before him, Brook spent summers between sessions of school working for the USDA Forest Service out of the Ranger Station at Mapleton, OR. Jon was on fire watch; Bob was on a survey crew; and Mark and Brook fought forest fires and monitored controlled burns. Brook spent the summer living with Milly and Vake in Florence and commuting the 15 miles to Mapleton on a daily basis. You might say it was the summer when Brook grew up, literally.

There were old hands on the crew to deal with when they wanted to break him in. As they were getting ready to leave the site on day, they spotted a tiny wisp of smoke. “Get it, Brook, get it!” the old hands urged.  Brook strolled nonchalantly over to the fire and peed on it. “Okay, okay,” they said.

But dealing with crewmen was harder on others. Some sort of federal employment program placed two African-American girls from Los Angeles at Mapleton. Because Mapleton, Florence and environs were nearly 100% white, the girls had to feel like they were trapped in a scene from “Deliverance.”  The others on the crew laughed at them when they would scramble out of the crew rig at the end of the day, run to their car, jump in and lock the doors.

Getting to work was frustrating. When their neighbor Donny Riedal lost so much of his vision that he could no longer drive, Vake and Milly insisted that Brook drive Donny’s old clunker of a car to work.  The car had been sitting outdoors under a fir tree and was filled with needles inside the cab and under the hood.  It failed him one morning when he was on his way to Mapleton, so he ditched the car beside the road and hitched a ride to Mapleton. That morning the crew was sent to fight fires out of State, and in that pre-cell phone era, it was several days after they found the car that Vake and Milly found out that Brook  was on Mt. Rainier fighting fires.  His call was put through by a crew of ham radio operators who set up to assist all the crews that had been called in.

But the literal growing up part: Back at Florence, like Jon in the sawmill, Brook found himself eating more and more food every day.  When Vake fixed breakfast, it was bacon, eggs, toast, butter, loganberry jelly, juice and coffee. “Eggs put hair on your chest,” Vake claimed (to the horror of his daughters). “Eat your bacon. It lubricates the bowels.”  When Brook came home tired and covered with soot, Milly loaded the dinner table with salad with dressing, fried chicken or pork or roasted beef, potatoes and gravy, green beans with a pat of butter, home-made bread and butter, and apple pie ala mode for dessert.

Brook had started the summer at a lean 165 pounds, but with all the running up and down hills dragging a fire hose, he expected he would lose some weight. But when he stepped on the scale, it said 185 pound. He jumped off the scale, horrified,  but realized that it was a mechanical balance scale and couldn’t be wrong. He had the fleeting thought that he must have some kind of tumor! But he always has had a good imagination. Of course, he hasn’t seen 165 pounds since.

And an afterword on driving that old car. Later, Brook had a cute little (used) truck that I bought him. It threw a rod or blew a piston when he was on a Frisbee trip in California, and the tow truck operator offered to take it off his hands rather than charge him for towing it off the freeway.  Then there was Mark’s powerful ‘70s era Dodge Charger that Mark inherited from Milly, and after he used it for his medical school years, he gave it to Brook. It had an intermittent electrical failure that convinced Brook forever that having a used car is just buying somebody else’s problem. He got a new little Ford station wagon in Florence.  Vake helped him buy it and surprisingly insisted on the one with manual transmission.  Brook drove it as long as he could possibly keep it running, then bought a Volvo that he is determined to operate for 10 years. I warned him that the first month your car is paid off, you have a repair bill that’s as big as your car payment.  He did, but the Volvo should hit the 10-year-mark within the year—and it’s been paid off for a long time.