It was located smack in the

middle of a maze of tracks which were part of a thriving transportation

hub, at least it was back in the 1930s. And there was that big ol' forklift

machine that Tony used to load the pine onto the rail cars. When he fired

that thing up, it made your grits taste like ....

It had big long loops of cables

which surrounded a half load of a pulpwood truck's burden at one time,

and placed it on the rail cars. They were always getting hung up, so one

of the employees had to get up on top of the pile to try to get them unstuck

with this big bat with a steel hook on it.

Tony had been the CEO of the

Tyrone Wood Yard for as long as I've been in these parts. You could always

see him going to the Shamrock for his chili dogs at noon every day in

his old red Dodge pickup. At least we all agree red was the original color.

But all that is no more. We

should have expected this would happen. A huge grinding machine was quietly

brought into town a few weeks back. All the remaining logs were ground

up. There were only huge piles of wood chips remaining. And those piles

are now gone too. Swarms of pickups swooped down on them and men armed

with shovels took every chip and vanished to their own private shrubbery

beds.

Then came 9/11! A monster machine

was eased into town on a flat bed trailer. There stood the police directing

traffic at the local elementary school. It passed right by them. No alarms

went off. (We evidently don't have any alarms for wood yard demolition.)

Wham! Hope Tony's cleaned out

his desk. Blam! Homeless roach bugs are on cell phones calling their real

estate agents. It was awful. Ka-fluey! Now the wood yard shack was a pile

of kindling itself. Somebody should have listened to the FBI.

On the morning of 9/12, cars,

vans, and pickups drove slowly by that which used to be a thriving wood

yard. There wasn't even any kindling pile left.

No more pulpwood will be shipped

out of Tyrone. No more of those quaint one-door pulpwood trucks with the

drivers in full chest-length beards and overalls. No more of their familiar

back-firings and smoke belchings as they strained to make it just a few

more blocks with their overload. They were uniquely customized machines

with chain saws and axes tied on the side.

Man! Come to think of it, it

just might have been the EPA that shut Tony down, and not Osama. Should

somebody call the Shamrock and cancel that standing order for two chili

dogs?

Gene Breed

Tyrone