Robert Leo Heilman
Robert Leo Heilman is the author of three books of essays including overstory: Zero, Real Life in Timber Country. Robert recommends UCAN Food Bank and the Douglas County Library Foundation.
I remember my foreman at the mill coming around and handing out postcards for us to sign against the owl. They were all filled out ahead of time—you just signed ‘em. The yellow ribbons too. That was a big thing.
I ran into Jimmy Grant after he got out of prison, about a week before he went over the bank into the river. He seemed kind of shy, you know, ashamed to see me again or something.
Twice I got as far as the selection stuff with it but both times one of the lawyers booted me off jury. Neither of them ever said why but, I don’t know, maybe they could tell somehow that I don’t have what you might call a high opinion of lawyers—or anybody else who wears a suit to work for that matter.
The Hoedads were real hippies. They weren’t television and movie hippies—all flowers and headbands and incense—but actual funky, fiercely independent and often downright ornery Freaks, who were also idealistic and compassionate almost to a fault.
And what difference does it make if a man gets drunk and takes his pet goat for a walk anyway? This is America, the Land of the Free, and you would think a man should be able to drink a little and fall in a ditch without some busybody calling the cops on him.
