Wednesday, November 20, 2002

Well, we were all expecting it. The FBI and CIA had us on the orange alert. That was the highest alert status since the attack. And sure enough, it hit!

It was a well-used building. It had no air conditioning, was dimly lit and was small as buildings go. There were no elevators. The last paint it had seen was made by the original DuPont as an experiment in his chemical lab. The two wooden steps were so worn by logger's boots that they could have easily been used as a yoke for oxen. It was heated in the winter by a wood stove. And it was right in the middle of Tyrone, Ga. Now it's gone.

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