My first “job” was going to work with my dad. Dave worked at a lumber yard in Southern California whose main customers were local contractors, the Church of Scientology, and the major movie studios. For me, the perks started quickly. A day off school meant going with dad to the yard, watching Dragon Tales on the little TV inside the janitor's room, grandpa wiping sawdust off a Squirt from the vending machine, eating a burrito at the Roach Coach,1 and counting all the different movie placards they’d gotten from movie studios they’d delivered to.2 My dad was a rank and file teamster turned lumber salesman, his dad3 was in management and convinced him to work less on the trucks and to come “inside” for less pay and benefits, with the carrot of one day being a manager. While my dad’s promotion never came to be,4 I eventually was thrust into one. Less a promotion and more of a: you’re too old to be watching Dragon Tales, maybe you should start helping stock the shelves and cleaning the yard for $25 cash.
The burrito and Squirt became a core part of my benefits package.
For a lumber business sunny Inglewood, CA was an ideal location. Storing treated lumber was made cheaper not having to worry about a full indoor warehouse like in climates with real weather. Inglewood is far enough inland that there is no worry about humidity and sea salt decay of the Santa Ana Winds, nearly perfectly preserved amidst the Central Los Angeles desert of concrete. However one major hurdle remains for an open air lumber warehouse—shit. Bird shit.
To some in the timber business birds were the enemy. At the very least a pecking roadblock in the process of profit. Before being formed into the backdrops and sets of the next Hollywood blockbuster through the process we in the industry call “Movie Magic,” lumber begun in the dense rain-forests of the Pacific Northwest5 as trees.6 It’s then cut into wood, treated into lumber in mills up north, before making its way down the freight train corridor and landing in Los Angeles. Those in Oregon and Washington will remember the battle between the Spotted Owl and the Timber Industry of the 1980s and 1990s. The life cycle started by people destroying the place birds make their nests. And one may think that the war ended there. The final destination of Los Angeles was free of useful trees,7 it should follow that it was also free from any form of fowlinsurgency. But birds were not merely a perfect victim to humanity’s dominance over nature.
Enter the humble pigeon, whose urban perseverance and large cloaca makes it the ideal candidate to enact vengeance through a campaign of economically damaging poop. Pigeons had the adaptive skills to make their homes any high place they can gather enough brush and garbage to form a nest. Our mostly open air lumber yard had a covered work area in the center that held a two story tall roof to cover where workers cut, modified, and packaged wood into bundles for an order. This structure didn’t have any walls, so a forklift could seamlessly move product in and out from any side. The rafters became a perfect building pad for a Pigeon’s version of row homes. What was a direct threat to management’s most important resource, saleable lumber free of shit eating away at its outer layer, was also a threat to workers who might get shit on and made fun of by their comrades.
When I turned 16 I wanted to prove I could be more useful around the yard, and make enough to pay for my new expenses.8 New responsibilities came accompanying a raise to $50 a day, but more importantly some semblance of pride at not being the PBS kid anymore. I helped load and tie down lumber onto trucks, and even went on deliveries with the drivers on occasion (I always wanted to be a Teamster). Pretty soon, my dad decided it was time to pass on pigeon watch duty to me. The defense the lumber yard developed was rudimentary, some may say inhumane.9 Essentially my dad had a pump action BB gun his father gave him when he was a kid, and whenever some pigeons started to nest he pumped the gun a few times and shot close by to scare them off. Around this same time I started going to Food Not Bombs in Downtown LA every Sunday. Getting inundated with revolutionary politics by cool 20-somethings talking about Occupy like it was Nam while making delicious vegan stew from dumpster-ed groceries. Needless to say this job role challenged my newfound skepticism10 and recently adopted vegetarianism.
“Four pumps is best to start,” Dave instructed between bites of Del Taco. “Four should give ‘em a good enough scare that they don’t come back.”
“Do they ever come back?” I asked.
“They do.”
“And what then?”
“Well you give it an extra pump. If you end up hitting one it still shouldn’t kill it. But if it takes a third time you best not waste your time missing. They get the message and know not to stick around.”
“Do you ever pump more than 5 times? What happens then?”
“You get the job done how you can.”
It was a few weeks before my dad actually handed me his gun. A pigeon took root in the rafters high above the buzzsaw, real estate most others would balk at as “too loud” or “too close to a shredder.” Whether a concerted act of vengeance or just a bird looking for a secluded plot of land high up where they wouldn’t be bothered, it only came to my attention because one of the workers in the yard wound up with a fresh white-green blob on top of his dusty Dodgers cap. He walked over and threw the old sweat and now shit stained hat at my feet while I sat by the vending machine.
“Where’s Dave?” he said before spitting, as if potential residue may have splashed in his mouth. “Your dad’s got to take care of that fucking bird.”
My first impulse was to seek my dad out immediately. Though he wasn’t anyone’s boss, he was still the resident child labor wrangler which held a slight air of management to me. That and, that he held the disciplinary power to ground11 me in his role as parent.
“It’s my job now, I'll take care of it,” I said, confidently repressing a voice crack. “Lemme get the gun.”
“Don’t care who does it, just get that thing out of there.”
My co-worker stood picking at a new gray coming into his long brown ponytail. He put 75 cents into the vending machine and got a Diet Coke before picking up his hat and inspecting it again. He’d be on break till the job was finished. I went inside, ready to take up arms for the company, for family, for my co-workers, for feeling useful. The yard was a dirty place.
“Are you sure you want to?” my dad said, handing me the pump action BB-gun. “I really don’t mind. Vegan really isn’t any sort of religious exemption but it’s no big deal for me.”
“Vegetarian,” I scoffed, grabbing the box of metal balls and loading the chamber. “I already told them it’s my turn. If someone’s going to do it either way I don’t see why my doing it would be unethical.”
“Alright, go ahead then.”
I never shot a gun before. Never went airsofting, but remembered when the cop’s son and his friends from school took the orange “toy” indicators off their airsoft guns and walked around the suburban neighborhood in ski masks playing Cops and Robbers. When the actual cops arrived the kids had moved onto Call of Duty inside their garage turned boy cave. Over a bull horn an officer called out, “This is the police. Come out slowly, with your hands in the air.”
The kids panicked, unsure of what was happening, where they were, how they’d transformed into criminals from playing a game. Something told them to listen, that this was serious. They put the controllers down, pressed the button to start the garage door, and held their arms to the sky as the door slowly rose before them. Outside were three squad cars and several officers with their service arms pointed directly at four teenagers. The cops were just as surprised as they were to not even find a band of “robbers,” drugs, let alone a real gun. All that was there was an old TV paused on a game of Nazi Zombies, a bikini calendar for the year 1989, a smoke stained brown couch, and a few mostly empty Coors-Light cans they had been using as spitters. The cops lowered their weapons, but demanded an explanation. The cop’s son let them know what had happened, how a neighbor must have gotten spooked at their game. The police even let them keep their ski masks and airsoft guns. The cop’s son gleefully bragged how the officers didn’t ticket them or even check the fridge for more beers. I asked if he thought there was a chance they might have killed him by accident.
“No, we’re good kids, not terrorists,” he said. “I don’t even get why that bitch called them in the first place. Wasted the officers’ time.”
I pumped the BB gun once walking down the hazy yellow hallway past the bathroom into the bright light and blue sky above the yard. My dad followed closely, watching as if it were my first pitch on the mound for varsity baseball. The co-worker didn’t pay my arrival any notice, sipping on his DC and lighting a menthol in the outdoor break area. I pumped again. The buzzsaw became ambient noise. I pumped again. A forklift sat idling, another beeping as it lifted a bundle of 2x4s out from under the awning. Where was this bird? Did it have a full on nest? Eggs? Chicks?? I pumped again. My dad stared, wearing his Dead Kennedy t-shirt and cargo pants combo. Even if he was in sales he worked the yard when needed. He was handy, I was still soft. I pumped again. How many was that? My dad nodded, perhaps sensing my anxiety. Dave could see in my eyes that I thought the whole yard was moving, and yet I was confident everyone watched for what I would do, looking at how my first test would turn out. But I really didn’t know what Dave was thinking. I hardly ever did.
I pumped again—now looking down the sights of my rifle into the rafters blocking the light of the sun, finding the target was easy. No wind. Dry air. About 50 yards away. A loner with a meager nest of wood scraps I hadn’t cleaned up. I took aim above and to the right of the bird. I could imagine the steel BB colliding with tin roofing would make a loud ping noise before the pigeon flapped away. But, I would never hear that sound. When I squeezed the trigger tight it wasn’t even a second before I saw the body start to sink. No sound. A weak attempt at a flutter hardly softened the pigeon’s free fall and eventual thud on the asphalt. I lowered my gun. Left it on the table. Stared off into the yard. While I stood there nothing had stopped moving except the bird and me. My co-worker chortled with laughter after a final sip from his DC, then put his cigarette out in the can, “Nice shot Little Dave.”
I didn’t turn to look at him. Somehow I managed a wave. Looking back at Big Dave’s blank blue stare, I thought I might not blink again until feeling my eyes start to well. Tears of fatigue they must have been. I couldn’t cry. Not there. Not for a bird. Even as a killer. I managed to force my eyes closed and when I opened Dave had already walked into the yard towards the carcass. My eyes turned red and swollen from rubbing them as I followed. About half way over Dave turned around. I stopped. I don’t know why, but I could only ask questions I already knew the answer to.
“Is it dead?” I croaked, my voice certainly cracking as I barely managed to finish a sentence.
“No. I think it flew off actually, don’t worry about it,” he said giving his 5 o’clock shadow a scratch. “Good job son.”
Big Dave patted my back and led me back off the yard. We walked to the break area and I put three quarters into the vending machine for another Squirt. He returned with my dust pan while everyone went back to work. I sat with a soft drink.
I didn’t know what a “food truck” was till I moved to Portland.
Yes, everyone from LA is in the “industry.”
My grandpa, for those keeping score at home.
The company went out of business, my grandpa retired, and my dad bumped around a few other lumber yard jobs before getting permanent disability and moving to Ohio.
It is exceedingly unpopular in the movie film picture industry to buy “blood lumber” from clear cutting rainforests in the Amazon, which may seem altruistic and eco friendly but also US/Canadian Timber industries are heavily subsidized and cheaping out on labor/environmental regulations in Peru/Brazil still requires much more expensive and difficult transportation to make its way to Hollywood.
Famously the homes of birds.
Los Angeles is famous for having the useless imported tropical Palm Trees that don’t provide shade, drink up tons of water, and are not the ideal real estate for birds to make a home.
Mostly gas, alcohol, and tacos for my summer off days skating to the beach.
But to be fair this was not humans we were dealing with, it was birds.
When father goes from The Man! (good) to The Man (bad).
This power was debatable seeing as my parents were divorced, I lived mostly with my mom, he got the classic “cool dad” moniker since we only spent every other weekend with him this “potential power” was never truly challenged nor wielded.