February 10, 2003
Monday - 12:15 pm

It must have been 1972 or so, when we were working the high lead logging side for Joe Pentilla on Kuiu Island, at Saginaw Bay. I remember it was a Sunday after breakfast when Joe asked if we could go out to the yarder and up-end the haul-back. To accomplish that task the whole three thousand feet of line had to pulled off the drum, then re-installed the other way around, to try for even wear on the line. So we headed that way in the company
crummy.

Just a little way out of camp we encountered a fair sized black bear that obviously wanted to race. We took the hint from the way it ran out of the bushes, then sprinted down the road right in front of the crummy, seeming to say, "Try and catch me! So, not one to back off on a dare I stomped on the gas, which did not do much on that old rattler of a rig, but we did begin to gain on the bear.

Looking over its shoulder the bear saw us gaining and really started to stretch out and run. The crummy coughed and choked, recovered, and still crept up on the bear, which seemed to be going about 36 or 37 miles per hour, if you could believe the speedometer. So there we were, pedal to the metal, with the bear running at a hysterical speed just a few feet from the bumper of the crummy. I was impressed with speed of bear, remembering how I once though I might outrun one in a pinch, and knowing now that I would never run that fast.

The next part of this story is not embellished or stretched for dramatic impact, but totally true. About a mile from camp, on the left of the road, was the powder shack. For those who don't know, they are small building where high explosives are kept, well away from camp, so as to avoid a disaster if they went off, and for security reasons. On that Sunday morning, it was being used as a place for Joe Pentilla's daughter and a certain young man named Dewey, to get a bit of privacy and do some smooching and such. A nice place, a bit of sunshine that day, a nice setup.

So, here we came at the end of the bear's speed limit, the crummy possibly nudging the bear's tail as we approached 39 miles per hour, and the whole serendipitous event was consummated. The bear took a hard left and ran behind the powder shack, having no time to slow down when it saw Dewey and the girl, blew through them like a cannon ball through nine-pens, and was gone in the bushes. Dewey and the girl were knocked every direction, and upside down, screaming mortal horror, though they suffered no permanent physical damage.

The whole camp was dying of laughter within the next 15 minutes, though I,ll never admit to speeding back to camp to tell the tale to all the right gossips. Twenty-five years later I actually ran into Dewey in Ketchikan. He married that girl, and they have lived happily ever after. There never was any knowledge of the bear's later years.

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