Oregon loggers sound off on popular TV show
Sunday, March 29, 2009 12:12 AM PDT
John Foyston
The Portland Oregonian
VERNONIA — A logger’s day — even for a retired logger such as Bill Sword — begins dark and early, and in Vernonia, it often begins at Mariolino’s, where loggers past and present gather at a communal table for breakfast and many cups of serve-yourself coffee.
The runaway success of the History Channel’s “Ax Men” cuts both ways with Oregon loggers: They’re glad of national interest in their oft-neglected industry, but the reality-TV version of work in the woods is a long way from what they know.
“It’s a crock,” Archie Dass said as he joined his buddies at 5 a.m. Tuesday for breakfast at the communal table at Mariolino’s in Vernonia. “Did you see the way they were screwing around in that first episode? They wouldn’t last 15 minutes in the woods with me.”
Nor with Bill Sword, 77, a retired logger who owns AF Sword Logging in Vernonia. “Those producers drum up a bunch of baloney to make it dramatic,” he said. “And the cursing — I don’t remember that, except maybe for the truckers on their radios.” Sword started in the woods in 1950 with the Oregon-American Lumber Co., setting chokers for $1.65 an hour, good money at the time. At logging’s peak in the mid-1980s, an Oregon State University estimate said Oregon forest workers earned 25 to 30 percent above the state average, but neither the wage nor the big operations have survived. Most companies now are small and independent, surviving from job to job. Most loggers cringe at the punched-up drama and the beeped-out obscenities of the series, now in its second season. In the heavily edited scenes — the crews have no say about editing —logs plunge down hills like unguided missiles through the underbrush, tempers flare, a man stalks off the job, machinery catches fire, snarling chainsaws kick back, and a father-and-son team tries to winch in a log with line so patched and spliced you wouldn’t hang clothes on it to dry. Some of what’s depicted has turned into real-life problems, too: “Jimmy Smith is a colorful man with big dreams, big ideals and very little attention to detail,” says an “Ax Men” press release. To that, they could add “big legal problems.” Tipped off by television footage, the Washington State Department of Natural Resources charged that Jimmy Smith salvaged logs illegally, and in mid-March the state seized two dozen logs from his company, S&S Aqua Logging.
Sword deconstructed several unlikely scenes, including the one where timber cutter Dwayne Dethlefs quit. “Did you see what he was wearing when he told them to take that job and shove it? Tennis shoes (instead of caulks, a logger’s spiked boots). Another thing: He tosses his hard hat into the bush as he leaves —well, a tin hat costs a guy 65 bucks. You’d have to go back and get that.”
‘More of a drama’
“You just can’t believe some of the stuff they show,” said Don Normand, a mechanic with Holce Logging and a 25-year veteran in the woods. “It’s more of a drama show than the way it really is. We laugh at it, but we wish they showed more of what we really do — the replanting, taking care of the land. We wish it showed the big-city people that we’re not just out there clear-cutting and wiping out the trees.”
Despite some complaints, “Ax Men” is undeniably popular. After it debuted last year, it became the History Channel’s highest-rated series with more than 2 million weekly viewers. The new season began airing March 2 and features two timber crews from Washington, one from Montana and two from Oregon, including Vernonia’s Mike Pihl Logging. Pihl, whose crew has been on both seasons of “Ax Men,” is well-known and respected in Vernonia. Everybody in town seems to know and like Mike Pihl — which doesn’t keep the old-timers at Mariolino’s from engaging in some good-natured ribbing when he drops by.
“It’s been an interesting experience,” Pihl said in a phone interview from Seaside, where he took his family for spring break. “I still log every day, but a lot of people recognize me now from the show, even here in Seaside, and I make sure that I take the time to stop and talk to everyone.
“Yes, the show is edited, but it has to be: They spend four months with us and we’re onscreen for a couple of hours in the season, so naturally they’re going to catch the guys throwing rigging fits or acting out. But people find it exciting. And I don’t think it’s been a negative — it’s brought a lot of people out to Vernonia to have a look.”
T-shirts and Web sites
Viewers across the country can watch “Ax Men” videos, view the series schedule, read the history of Pihl Logging, and shop for Pihl Logging t-shirts, hoodies, hats and suspenders at the company’s Web site, www.mikepihllogging.com. That’s a pretty sophisticated — and commercial — site for a logging company, but it’s not much different than the other “Ax Men” companies’ sites. Rikki Wellman, who manages the annual Oregon Logging Conference in Eugene, says “Ax Men” has been good for the industry. “The bottom line is that our industry has received more national exposure than ever from the show,” she said. Oregon loggers seem willing to at least cut Pihl some slack, too: Wellman asked him to speak at the 2009 Oregon Logging Conference in February, and the 500-seat hall was standing-room-only.
“The interest in ‘Ax Men’ shows that logging isn’t dead in Oregon,” said Jim Geisinger of the Association of Oregon Loggers. “In the first season of the show, a lot of our members were concerned about the safety issues and the profanity — I know many loggers who can put a sentence together without using the f-word three times. But along the way, people realized that this is reality TV and entertainment, not a documentary.
“We sat down with the producers last summer and asked them why they didn’t show loggers planting trees or protecting streams, instead of all the danger and drama.
“They just looked at us and said, ‘Because we want people to watch the show.’”
