HomeMy Public PortalAboutParks, CarmelR are 5'a7/xm 'lV
McCafi man `retires'
to life of woodcutting
By JOHN ACCOLA
The Idaho Statesman
MCCALL—Each morning just be-
fore 8, a 74-_year-old woodsman and
back -country philosopher steers his
battered white 1964 Ford pickup 20
miles up a winding mountain high-
way through the Payette National
Forest. He returns home 3 or 4 hours
later with a freshly cut and split cord
of lodgepole pine.
With the help of his 13-year-old
grandson, Shon, that's all the time
. Carmel Parks needs to fell three
dead 80-foot trees, load them into his
truck bed and fulfill a daily addiction
for work that has made him a legend
in the mile -high central Idaho region.
"It's a one-horse operation ... and
I tell you, you can work at it like an
alcoholic," Parks said last week
after cutting his 71st cord this year.
"That's what they call me; a worka-
holic."
At $40 a cord — a woodpile 8. feet
long, 4 feet high and 4 feet wide —
Parks supplies prime firewood for al-
most 100 clients, some from as far
away as Las Vegas, Nev., and Seat-
tle.
"It's real clean wood," he said.
"You can lay it on the carpet, and it
won't dirty it. But it's getting so
scarce there isn't any place to find it
unless you build your own roads."
Parks calls his trade "a-woodin,"
something he says he's been doing
regularly since 1912, when he came to
the McCall area from North Carolina
with his homesteading father.
For 35 years Parks worked for the
Brown Tie & Lumber Co. In the early
'60s he became caretaker, wood sup-,
plier and all-around handyman for
the owners of 205 summer homes
clustered around Payette Lake's
west shoreline. But repairing leaky
pipes, hauling garbage, repairing
water pumps, guarding and shovel-
ing snow off sagging cabin roofs in
the winter took too much time from
Parks' favorite line of work.
So 6 years ago — at age 68 — he
"retired" and went into the wood -
chopping business for h;mself, cut-
ting an average of between 100 and
2110 cords a year.
Parks' work ethic: "If you're oper-
ating in low gear, you've got to.shift
into second, then into high."
Otherwise, he said, "at the end of 2
years you're no good for nothin'."
"I tell you, it ought to be against
the law for anyone to quit working at
65, 'cause once you're in the rockin'
chair, it's all downhill," he said.
Parks can talk for hours about the
physical and mental rewards of
400dcutting.
Statesman photo by John Accola
74-year-old woodcutter Carmel Parks at work
"People are doing better for them-
selves nowadays with all this jogging
but when you come right down to
it, you should be doing something
that uses all parts of your body. And
that's one thing about a-woodin'. You
use every part of your body."
But the life of a woodsman has its
risks, and even a veteran like Parks
has accidents.
"I've been hurt three or four
times," he said. "I broke my foot in
three places, I've lost a finger and
flattened the other ... and then I
sawed myself on the leg — it took 1
stiches 'cause it was so deep they
had to start at the bottom and go u.
to pull it together. And last year a
limb crashed down on my head."
Parks pointed to a 2-inch scar
above his forehead.
"It broke my skull and cut my
scalp. ... Now there's a groove on
ink head, so if it rains the water just
drains off."
Parks' knack of finding some of
the best firewood on this side of the
mountains has not gone unnoticed by
his competitors. In the past he has
been followed through the forest by
unscrupulous woodcutters who hoped
to find his most productive timbe
areas.
Today, Parks takes precautions
such as covering his trail with brusl
and trek limbs.
II
"That usually keeps them fron.
coming in," he said, "but you have tc
watch out for the deer hunters. I1
they don't get any deer and eg
they'll load up and take your wood
Last year I last four cord in one
night.'•
It wasn't that way before, and it
Parks didn't know any better, he
might blame such devious acts en
tirely on "the Californians." As one
of McCall's few remaining old-tim
ers, Parks doesn't take kindly to out
of -staters, who he said had overbuilt
his city with condominiums (pra
flounced condomin'ums) and prefab.
ricated housing.
"They're ruinin' the whole coun-
try," Parks said. "The Californians,)
guess there are some good ones, but
1 don't know where they buried'em."
When Parks was still a young man
he already was beginning to under-
stand Idaho's appeal to outsiders.
"I went back and worked in a bank
in Winston-Salem, North Carolina,
when I was in high school," he said.
"It was the most awful life I ever put
in.
"No, there isn't any place that
compares with Idaho at all.... In a
place like this we never worry about
making a livin'. Why, if things ever
got really bad, I could go prospect-
ing. I could go pan gold ... like we
did in the Depression."
k&k /v i - /far. 45, / - .y 3
McCall's Carmel Parks =
'tis more blessed to give
MCCALL — McCall was a town of 200
when Carmel Parks arrived from North
Carolina. The year was 1912. Carmel,
who was named after Mount Carmel in
the Bible, was 7 years old. His family
settled at a place called Lick Creek,
where he became famous for supplying
half the county with fresh trout.
In high school his nickname was
"Fish," and he was as avid as any fisher-
man that ever wet a hook. He was also
capable. His parents used to lecture him
for catching too many fish.
"It was nothing in those days — of
course I knew all the tricks and all the
good spots — to catch 150 to 250 trout a
day," he said. "We always had more
than we needed, and I'd give a big mess
of trout to anybody that came over. I
was always on the lookout for people to
give fish to."
There were no game limits in those
days. In the McCall of the early part of
the century, it was difficult to believe
that there would ever be anything but
plenty. It was routine, he said, to hike to
the top of a hill and see 400 deer and elk
grazing on the other side.
When he was young, he hunted. If
asked, he would share the meat with
anyone who needed it. Now he says he
couldn't kill a deer or an elk for any rea-
son.
"It would be like shooting someone I
know," he said.
He remembers the original McCalls,
for whom the town is named. In the win-
ter, when the town was snowed -in and
people shipped their cars to Boise for
winter storage, "Grandmother McCall"
was his family's "doctor." She shared
her medical knowledge with him; he
shared his fish with her.
The boy who supplied fish to anyone
who wanted them grew up learning just
about every kind of work it was possible
to do in McCall. In the '60s, he retired
from working in the woods and the
mines and the local lumber yards, and
Over the years, the Parks' home be-
came a haven for other children as well.
They came from all over to share a com-
mon weakness. Carmel's name is appro-
priate for more than biblical reasons.
His sweet tooth is legendary.
"Here, have some cookies," he said.
"It's too bad I don't have some of my
wife's homemade cream puffs for you.
They were delicious."
In addition to cream puffs and cook-
ies, he keeps boxes of candy bars in case
some of the local children drop by, from
New Meadows or Cascade or East Mol-
davia. He used to take fruit and candy to
his church, where his pickup truck be-
came a Sunday morning mecca, but
some of the mothers objected.
"I got bawled out real good," he said.
"I guess I still don't understand this
sugar business. In my day if you loved a
child, you gave him candy. I love chil-
dren. I love pups and kittens, too. Any-
thing that's small."
As we sat in the kitchen — drinking
Tim
Woodward
took an "easy" job as the caretaker of
105 vacation homes. He retired from
that the winter McCall had 6 feet of
snow in three nights. If you've shoveled
snow from roofs, you know why.
"The doctor told me not to shovel any
more snow," he said, "but I sort of hated
to give it up. Some of the people still call
me when it snows. They say they don't
know anyone else who'll shovel their
roofs, so I go over and take care of it for
them ... I used to baby-sit their kids,
too. They said they didn't know who else
to call."
the coffee Carmel insisted on making —
he mentioned that he had been offered
$100 to reveal the location of an unusual
mineral spring he had discovered. He re-
fused. This news had scarcely left his
lips when he offered to take me there for
free.
When he retired from the caretaker
business, he started a firewood business.
This year he cut and split only 100 cords
of wood, down from his usual average of
150 to 170 cords. He cuts wood for people
who live as far away as Boise. They
drive to his house and pick it up, four
and five cords at a time.
I asked him how much he charged for
it.
"Oh, it depends," he said. "If I know
they're having a hard time, I don't
charge them very much."
Later I learned, from someone else,
how much he does charge them.
Nothing. No one who knows him is sur-
prised.