Buster and two Jacks. Portraits from Logging and the Oil-Field: Buster Worley, Jack Presley, and Jack Groves.
With DHYANI DHARMA MAS on Acoustic Guitar and with ('Jack Groves' #2) the RIVERS ANSWER MOONS band.
Dec. 1. 2024
I was very lucky to know in the middle 1970s profiled in poems-with-music here. JACK PRESLEY and BUSTER WORLEY were Hook-Tenders “in the woods”, bosses of rigging-crews (Rigging-Slinger + Choker-Setters) and whole Sides’ operations (add the Yarder-Engineer. the Scissors-Operator, and the Chaser on the Side’s Landing for logs “yarded” to be loaded onto diesel-powered 16-wheeler Kenworth and Mack and Peterborough trucks.
Jack Presley bossed the Van de Grift Company’s “gypo-outfit” on steep and tricky mountainsides—the kind of “Sides” a gypo-outfit was likely to “win” when bidding beside Corporations such as Weyerhauser—in the Cascades of northwest Washingon.
Buster “tended Hook” for one of more than a dozen Crews deployed in “crummie trucks” out of Ketchikan Pulp’s Thorne Bay Camp, nearby Ketchikan, in southeast Alaska. Ketchikan Pulp was bought by Louisiana Pacific during my three stints as a “Bunkie” there, 1976 and 1977, and three times we loggers in the Camp went on Strike with our International Woodworkers of the World Union
JACK GROVES I met while first a Roustabout for Diamond M Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, late January 1977. Jack heard that I’d been a logger and made me a Roughneck on his Crew. He brother-in-law logged in Shasta County of northern Californa. “He sent me down the hill with my choker in the snow and one day of that was enough. So I guess if you’ve been a Logger you can be a Roughneck.”
The 1970s were near twilight for highly skilled workers such as Buster and the two Jacks. Buster was eldest of the three—age 58 when still rigging “tail-hold lift-trees”, over 100 feet up the Fir-Trees’ trunks, with block and strap. Jack Presley was 48 in 1973 and Jack Grove (‘a young Paratrooper in the Second World War) presumably in his middle 50s during 1977-1978. Do I need to say that each of these three men revealed me to me more than I can ever repay. Very lucky, again!
Regarding the music. DHYANI DHARMA MAS suggested in 2004 and he and I record an Album of poems from my 2002 book Flares. Sho’ Nuf! was my response. Dhyani and I had collaborated since 1989 and his key part in the Suspect Many and then on several Albums of the middle 1990s, including Journey To The Beloved by him, USTAD SALAMAT ALI KHAN and USTAD SHAFQAT ALI KHAN and GLENN SPEARMAN. (Together these four made up the Group URNA, the Urdu word for Flight). “I want my guitar to be like it’s growing out of you,” Dhyani said. I couldn’t have been more flattered and touched.
The Track of ‘Jack Groves’ with the RIVERS ANSWER MOONS band this year is part of our upcoming LOUISIANA STORIES Album. DON VAPPIE wrote the Arrangement and his Banjo leads through the story and facets of Jack and his solo is to me like Dhyani’s playing: Intricate, sensitive, … sublime.
You know by now that I’m numbers-oriented and so we’ll go by the Chronology of my getting to know Jack Presley, Buster Worley, and Jack Groves.
‘One Jack’
with Dhyani Dharma Mas
Jack Presley Was a Tarheel hook-tender Who moved out from North Carolina For the Pacific Northwest's big timber. On Saturday mornings Jack used to have his wife Drive through Sedro Wooley In their big red Cadillac While he sat in the back seat, Jerry Umdall, my fellow choker-setter, said. One Saturday night In a fight over 4-5-6 At the Hamilton Tavern Jack bit off another man's ear, We on the Van de Grift Logging Rigging-crew also heard. His jaw and hair Thick like a wolf's, At age 48 Jack resembled The young truck-driving Elvis, Jerry Umdall's idol. Jerry asked Jack Presley If he and Elvis were related. "He's my nephew," Jack said, Walking out a log, making his exit, Into the misty brush. The last week I worked on Van de Grift's Slack-line show above Granite Falls, January's fugitive fogs and soaring eagles Blown over the Doug Fir logs Criss-crossed and bucked Down our clear-cut mountainside, Our crummie-ride from Skagit County 90 minutes in the Winter's dark each way, Each work-day thus 14 hours total, Monday through Saturday, Two hair-raising incidents occurred. Wednesday I dropped 15 feet from hay-wire Into the storms-swollen creek, Popping up from icy water like an otter, And the next day a 30-foot-long log came loose-- Whirled with a scarcely seen "Whoosh" Over fresh snow as the rigging-slinger Norvel Rogers shouted, "Look out!"-- Caught and pinched my left leg at the calf, Crushing flesh and nerves flat as a Waffle-Iron might-- Stopped only by a stob that stuck in the hillside From rolling onward and breaking my back And/or "killing me dead." With both "accidents," Jerry Umdall said, "Jack turned white as a sheet." Jack Presley's blue eyes Would search with boy's Clear innocence The rare times A tail-hold or other problem Perplexed him.
‘Buster Worley’
with Dhyani Dharma Mas
Dhyani and I nearby his apartment at 16th and Folsom, the Mission District, Summer 2004. Photo likely by Dhyani’s partner, the astonishing painter, JULIG.
Buster Worley, a hook-tender At Ketchikan Pulp's Thorne Bay Camp In Southeast Alaska, Rigged lift-trees 90 feet up Trunks of Douglas Fir and Sitka Spruce, Sawing off branches and hanging His block-and-coil Like a cowboy steeplejack In his belt, spurs and hickory-shirt, His Boss of the Road pants suspendered, His age then 58. Of the right "runty" size to ride bulls, Buster got caught in a derrick-fire Back in Oklahoma. "Fa-Wha-Ah-Oosh!--that right Went up faster 'n a bird-dog's dick," he said. The fire made serrate buttons Out of Buster's outer ears. Buster also told us of his crew About working on the rigging With one son from his wife-before-last Before that son went off To the Naval Academy. "I was the boil on that boy's ass, And he was on mine the same way, But shee-yoot we gave this Company Some production." One afternoon Buster bet a quart of whiskey That I'd win the race in from the brush-- Across roads of earth gouged By our high-lead logging-- To the log-pile on our landing When the yarder-engineer Blew that day's Final whistle. Mike Worthington, Our rigging-slinger, a vet of 'Nam, won. That Saturday we walked up from our bunkhouses To the hook's house-trailer for our party. Buster brought out the Jack Daniels. We talked about the strike that loomed For bunkies (us) and home-guards (him) Against Ketchikan Pulp. Buster talked about Woodworkers of the World Coming up against "the owners" down south, Oregon way. "They were some hard asses, But we were pretty dee-termined, too, And damned if we didn't beat 'em!" That night Buster dandled His and his young wife's baby boy Between pouring us goblets. We met the next Spring. Buster Worley had quit drinking-- "I just bucked her right off!"-- And shifted from the brush to yarder-engineer And Louisiana-Pacific Had bought Ketchikan Pulp.
‘Jack Groves’
with Dhyani Dharma Mas
April 1978, Sunset from Global Marine’s Glomar One tender-ship, the Gulf of Mexico.
Jack Groves, my first Driller, From Lake Charles, Louisiana, Started in the oil-field Depression times, when hands slept out On the ground by their rig or pipeline. A lot of folks around Lake Charles played guitar. Jack met his wife while walking after supper. "She was just a girl, 15 years old, on a porch there." Her voice lilted through the honeysuckled air. Jack Groves asked her: "Would you like To go to the movies with me?" They were married the next year. A Paratrooper in the Second World War, Jack afterward got to where He knew something on the Floor, Made Driller, and worked offshore Of Johannesburg, Iran and Singapore. Strong like a bull, His neck like Siva’s or Hu’s, Jack talked about his best friend Back on the pipeline, a Cherokee. "That old boy would get drunk and want To fight a circular-saw." Jack made roughnecks who sassed him Repeat jobs. “You just have to remember I'm older, uglier 'nd meaner than any of Each night in our Houston motel-room Jack talked on the phone with his wife In Broussard, Louisiana About the weather, their health, Her garden, and TV stars. Offshore, in the Galley Of platform-rigs or tender-ships, Drillers and Toolpushers “Drink coffee and tell lies." One day the subject got onto, Jack said to me: "Would you let your son marry a Black-- They said another word for Black--woman? I told them I'd married the wife I wanted, So I guessed my son could marry The wife that he wanted." After that, Jack said: "Men I thought were my friends Acted like I was Black, too." Jack Groves liked Jimmie Rodgers, Wayne Newton, And Bukka White's blues.
‘Jack Groves’
with the Rivers Answer Moons band
