1/25/5 - Longview to St Helens

Before getting’ started, here's a big shout-out for the Mt. St Helens Cam on this here sthelensupdate site. I sure like takin’ a gander at it once or twice a day when I’m online. Old-man McMillin down the street says the mountain is gonna blow within the next two weeks. Thing is, he’s usually dead-right. We’ll see.
So, when I got to work in Longview on Tuesday mornin’, I found out from the yard-boys that the loadin’-dock foreman had been real busy the past coupla days. He was lobbyin’ and doing his level-best to get my good-buddy Darrell thrown off a nice little run between Longview Fibre, the Newark Converting Plant and ShinHo in Tukwila. Without going into a bunch of details, Darrell knows (and lives) the ins-and-outs of this particular run, and helps connect a lot of the incidental info between these companies. The loadin’-dock forman just wanted to give the (lucrative) run to his nephew—who we all also can’t stand—in return for some kind of big debt or favor he owed. One yard-guy says he owed his nephew from a drunken night of Texas-Hold’em-poker this past weekend. Man, I just hate that guy sometimes.
And wouldn’t ya know it, when I stopped into the St Helens Café for some coffee and eggs an hour later, I heard about Margaret Magruder getting the shaft as well. (Ya might remember my post about her a while back.)
Boy, that pissed me off; this news on top of Darrell & the loadin'-dock foreman's nephew.
As I understand it: Joe Corsiglia and the Clatsop County Commissioners voted for Margaret, while Rita Bernhard & the Multnomah County Commissioners voted for Brad Witt. This left it up to Tony Hyde to cast the deciding vote, (for Witt) saying something to the effect of "promising Witt his support before Margaret entered the race". I guess Mr. Hyde has a lot of “integrity and loyalty”, sorta like the loadin’dock forman’s integrity and loyalty to his damn nephew. But, in sportsmanship, I’ll give congratulations to Brad Witt, who apparently went on the record about the problematic “Japanese Knot Wood”. Witt might want to bone up a bit on the very environmental concerns that Magruder intuitively knows and understands. He probably meant to say Japanese knot-weed and not, “knot-wood”. (sigh)
Like my friend Darrell compared to a nephew, I still believe Margaret would have been more intuitively informed and responsive to local issues, people and problems than Witt, but what do I know?
Anyhow, it sure was nice to be back in St Helens and catchin’ up with things. I’ll be sure to keep my eye out in this nice little town y’all got here.
-Tom