Wage/Working

We all have to help each other out. If somebody didn’t do their job, it makes it harder for somebody else to do theirs. There are only like a few people that actually have specific jobs. I’m kind of like a floater. I do a little bit of everything. There’s a few of us like that. We all have to do it or it doesn’t get done. We work with the same people everyday. You do not have to necessarily get along, but we all get along. We’ll make jokes or poke fun at each other to get through the day.

I call my life an accretion of accidents. I went to the University of Chicago Law School. I don’t know why . . . . I was not made out to be a lawyer. I was there—you know, contracts, real property and—it was driving me crazy. So, the Depression came along. My folks had this hotel. We didn’t lose the hotel, but vacancies more and more. And in the lobby of the hotel were all these guys. That hotel was my college; the lobby was. I romanticize it, but it’s true. There was a Wobbly. There was a fink. There was a scissor-bill. "Scissor-bill" is an old IWW word for someone who’s got—a capitalist with a hole in his pockets. It’s called a scissor-bill, one who loves his boss . . . . And so we had all these guys debating and hollering and arguing.

I ask myself just about everyday why I continue to try and do this. A lot of times I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall – trying to convince people that we do need to practice good forestry, yet economic realities don’t allow people to do that. If someone is trying to pay their property taxes and they need to come up with money, or heaven forbid they have some kind of emergency that they need cash, they are often times pushed into the wrong decision out of necessity. I could go out in the woods and be a commissioned forester and mark things and get a percentage of the sale and make a lot more money than I’m making right now. But my ethical responsibility is to do things the right way. I grew up in the Catskills and I've always enjoyed being out in the woods. I’ve had good influences and people that are very supportive of me. I have to try and make this my life’s mission rather than just a way to make money, because I’m certainly not in this for the money.