The Time of His Life

Lee is a man with time on his hands.

It hasn't always been this way. In fact, until the last two years, it has never been this way.

Lee was born in the decade of the second war to end all wars, near the little town of Camp Hill in Tallapoosa County, Alabama. Like most country boys of his era, he learned to work early in life. There was always something to be done on his family's small farm; and if not, there was always a little "pulp wooding" to do on the side to make some extra money.

When Lee was a teenager, the paper mills were still fairly new in the state, and most of their timber supply came from small railroad yards scattered throughout the Alabama countryside. There were several of these in the Camp Hill area, and Lee learned early that a man with a strong back, a saw, and an old truck with a short pulpwood rack on back could make a little honest hard cash from the Tallapoosa County hills. And thus began a nearly uninterrupted forty year tenure in what is commonly called the "wood business" in east Alabama.

After graduating from Camp Hill High School, Lee landed a job working at one of the paper mill's satellite rail yards. He would spend the next fourteen years loading short pulpwood onto railroad cars. It was a job that paid a decent wage and even had some employee benefits, like reduced rate life insurance and medical coverage. But when his marriage failed, Lee decided he needed a change of scenery. He quit this job and headed West. He spent two years working in a factory in Kansas. But Kansas isn't anything like Alabama, and eventually the homesickness got to be too much. Besides, Lee had sawdust in his blood.

Lee came back to Tallapoosa County and bought a chainsaw and a pulpwood truck. He worked hard for a couple of years, but the timber business began to change. The paper mills decided that it was more efficient to buy pulpwood directly at the mill. The rail yards began to close. Loggers converted their operations to tree length harvesting, a system which was highly mechanized and required large amounts of capital for machines and trucks. Lee found a job on one of these logging crews. Due to his nearly life-long experience in the woods, he soon was promoted to foreman of a crew.

Several years went by. Lee's employer owned several of these logging crews. Lee remembers the day in 1989 when his boss asked him if he would like to own the crew he supervised. He thought about it for a few minutes, and said "I reckon so."

For the next 15 years, Lee had his own logging business. Times were pretty good for loggers in Alabama, as paper mills expanded and demand for timber was high. The work was still hard--daylight until dark five or six days a week. But a man didn't have to be a really sharp business man to make a pretty good living--he just had to show up and work. Lee remarried and bought a little piece of land of his own near his boyhood home in Tallapoosa County. He built a nice cabin overlooking a pretty hardwood cove, and had enough open land to have a garden. He wasn't getting rich, but he made a nice living.

But the timber business began to change again as the twenty-first century arrived. Paper companies consolidated across Alabama and the entire South, leading to decreased demand and lower prices. Logging costs increased, however: fuel, insurance, machine costs, labor--everything went up. Accounting, business analysis, and tax advice became crucial for survival. Suddenly just working hard was no longer enough. A life of working in the woods, of doing good, skillful, work became secondary to being a good business man. Lee never saw it coming until it was too late.

After he lost his business, Lee went back to work as a foreman on another logger's operation. He had lost most of what he'd worked for all those years, but at least he still had a paycheck and a home to call his own.

That all changed two years ago in an instant. While hooking up a line between a log trailer and a tractor truck, Lee was run over. The truck backed over his right leg, crushed his foot, dislocated his knee, and pulled his leg out of his hip socket. He was airlifted to a regional hospital. He survived this horrible accident, but he is now permanently disabled. He is unable to walk without a cane. He cannot sit, stand, or remain in any position for a long period without considerable pain.

For the first time in his life, Lee was unable to work. To add insult to injury, his former employer's insurance company went to great lengths to avoid compensating him for his injuries. It took two year's of legal wrangling for him to receive a modest settlement. A settlement on any future medical bills resulting from the accident is still ongoing. The amount offered to date would not cover a one day hospital stay.

I stopped by to visit Lee today. In spite of all the adversity he has faced, he remains relatively positive in his outlook. His biggest problem is figuring out what to do with the one thing he has never had: time.

We sat in lawn chairs in his yard as he pointed out his activities on his estate. He has become, by his own admission, a "putterer." He has a small garden which he works at intervals (he weeds by hoeing down a row for a few minutes, then laying on the ground until the pain in his leg subsides). He has built a number of bird houses and feeders, which he constantly monitors for new customers and defends from invading squirrels. He tinkers with an old tractor and a pickup truck. He is building a tool shed, sometimes only able to stand long enough to nail on one board before having to sit down. He works, as he says, "in sputs and spurts."

He does not take pain medication. I believe he would rather die than to lie around in a drug-induced stupor.

A lesser man might give up under such circumstances. But I think Lee will be puttering around for a while to come. It takes a lot to keep a good man down.