 My name is Karen Davis. I'm from Duke Falls. I was born and raised here. I was raised here in Duke Falls. My father was a triple logger. My great-grandfather was a timber-fowler for Medco. And my grandfather drove the four-spot shea for Medco. So logging has always been a part of our life. My dad and my mom both worked in the woods. My mother rode and drove the cat. My dad fell the timber and he drove the logging truck. And us kids spend a lot of time working in the woods. We always worked in the woods. So that's how I grew up. And that's what I did. I went working in the woods. How old were you when you first went into the woods? 17. That's pretty young. Yeah. Were you nervous? No, I ran it. Well, I used to, I learned to buck. And then when I got married, I married Alvin Thompson. And he and I worked in the woods. And he would fall and then I would buck behind him. And then he would, you know, he would keep going and I would work with him. And so it just kind of developed. We got divorced and I ended up with two kids. And so I worked for all the Jipple Loggers around here, Arlen Ragsdale and Ron Helica and run equipment and power saw. And eventually I had my own business. And I had 17 men that was on my career. In the 80s, 1980s is when I had my own business. And from the time I graduated in 73, I was married and working. I went to work. I helped start the ambulance here in the early 70s. Was an EMT too. And so I was transfixed because of the logging and stuff you never knew, you know, when somebody would get hurt. So they brought an ambulance. I think it came from Ohio or somewhere. They drove it out here. But I just have always worked in the woods. I always had wood heat. I needed to have a way to get heat. I didn't have the money to buy the wood. So I would cut it. And it just developed into doing roadside brushing. And I ran backhoe, cat. You name it, I did it. A grater, a backhoe. It was nothing. I mean, I didn't have to do it by hand with a shovel. So I would get on the equipment. And we would go to the mills when the old mill was in the valley. I remember going to Medco and then I remember going to White City. And I remember the log scaling station here below town because they had to keep track of all the logs. Yeah, I had one gentleman who was working on his power saw. We were all sitting around for lunch and we always would eat lunch and then gas up and sharpen our chains. And he decided that, you know, his chain had come off and that was okay. We're going to have lunch. So when he went to Fix City, put it on backwards, had the chain on the power saw backwards. Well, I proceeded to tell him, you know, your chain's on backwards. And he didn't like a woman telling him that his chain was on backwards. I said, well, you know, I just thought I'd mention it. So he, he pretty soon I looked over when we went back to work and he was sweating pretty hard. And I went over and asked him, hey Ed, I said, how you doing? There was no wood chips or nothing. I said, how you doing? He goes, well, he says, I don't think I got it done. I says, well, you might have to take your rakers down a little further because you're not doing too good of a job. And he worked half a day that way before the other guys finally go to him and told him you better listen to her because your chain's on backwards. So kind of listened to me after that. That's a very kind story. Did you ever get in a situation where you had to be angry with someone in order to get them to straighten up because there was a dangerous situation? Yes, yes. I mean, you were the manager. You were in control. You were running that site, that job. I think everybody, everybody that was around here that worked with me, I was lucky enough to know everybody, you know? And it was a good place to work. I treated everybody well. I never had anybody do anything that, you know, I wouldn't do myself. And there was a couple of tests, you know? But pretty general, I wore cork boots. I did the same thing that all the men did. And if something needed done, it hadn't been done. I didn't want to, one of my, one of my daily things that I told them when they started was, I'm not going to go back and do the work twice. If it's not done right, the first time I'm going to tell you, the second time you need to listen to me in the third time, you'll be gone. You know, if I'm going to do the work and I have to bring my kids out here, because I had lived that with my dad, we, you know, we would go to school, but we would spend weekends. Dad was always working. And I wasn't going to do that. I had figured out by that time, with enough hours in the woods to know that when you did a job, you did it right. You didn't go back and you moved on, because it was your reputation. And as a woman, it was hard. I did, after I got married to my husband now, Rick, we were blessed enough in 94, 95. We went back to school. We were actually for Rogue Community College. And we were ecosystem management specialists. So we went to college together. And we worked in the woods. We went full-time to school. And then we worked. That's what we did. We had a con, we did contracts, but it was through the college. And so when we finished, we had a degree, but we worked for BLM, we worked for Forest Service. And I was the only woman on the crew. And Tell me about your proudest moment. And this will be the ending of the Timber. I want her to tell one more story. It's real fast. About the guy moving the line, stealing the Timber. Oh, well, I don't know if I should. I don't want to hurt you. I have to use his name. I just think it's sort of a typical story of trying to get one over on a woman. Yeah, I won't say the year, because I don't want people looking at it. You know, there's family members out there. But one of the jobs that I had was doing brush piling in the woods for loggers. And a particular year that I worked, this gentleman hired me who had a business and his timber followers were from here in Butte Falls. So they knew me. And I got the brush piling job. I would finish the job and it would be acres and acres. And I would go back on Monday to get, I had to get it checked before I could get paid. I would go back and I'd have all this, this brush and tree limbs laying on the ground. And I had already finished. And he'd say, oh no, no, you missed it. You didn't do it. The line's over there. So get the piling as soon as it's piled all, you know, we'll get the Forest Service out here and they'll check it. So I would, I piled for a couple of weeks and I thought, man, this is strange. And so I got to look and well, and notes to me with my crew working, they had been working on weekends, fallen timber and timber theft. It was, they were stealing lumber. And I was brush piling behind them, but it was all on tape. And so he actually, he spent time and it was a big deal. There was a big court case and it wasn't really hard. I really don't know who brought it out, but they had the US Forest Service, the sheriff and police and their law enforcement and they had put up cameras and was filming it. The most important thing that I think I've achieved is the fact that I worked with, like Mr. Ragsdale who worked with my grandparents. It's really an emotional thing to have respect from people when you work as hard as I did. And I still have them today saying what good work I did.