Chuck Neisess

I am the youngest at the table by about three decades at least. Age doesn’t come up right away; first there’s the obvious questions like, “What kind of stories are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for the kind of story you want to tell…” Somewhat vague and really not an answer at all, I continue trying to put words to it. “Well, when I was a kid I always wanted to hear stories from my parents: ‘Tell me a story,’ I’d say. I want the kind of story you would want to tell in that moment, in the sitting on the porch with the grandparents kind of moment.”

Chuck Neisess is the storyteller of the day.

“Well, pull up a chair; I got lots a stories,” he says. “I got logging stories, hunting stories, and we won’t get into the bar stories just yet!”

“He can tell stories alllll day,” his wife chimes in. “And we’ve been married thirty years, so I’ve heard them all at least twice!”

He starts telling about logging up on Meadow Creek.

One day driving up from town with my sawyer, Tom, we noticed it was a little chilly in the morning. Even down in town close to the river where it doesn’t get so cold, the truck was a bit hard starting. Then, all the way up the Yaak Highway, the old, narrow, slow one, we never saw another truck—not even one load of logs coming down. Even when it got full light out, not a single person.

Once we got to the landing, Tom jumped out and got a fire going real quick, and I started unrolling the jumper cables. I was running an old Cat then, and it always needed a little warming to get started! I kept the truck running with the heater going and we climbed back in to warm our fingers while the skidder took the warmth of the fire and the charge of the jumpers. Pretty quick Tom rolled out and threw his saw over his shoulder. His boots squeaking on the hard packed snow where it had been plowed, he kicked his way over the berm and disappeared down the hill. I smacked my hands together over the heater vent and thought maybe I’d give it a few minutes before I even tried to get that big Cat diesel turned over. About that time, the first truck we’d seen all day came pulling up to the landing. It was the land owner for the piece we were working.

“What in the hell are you guys doing up here today!” He hollered out the window as he rolled to a stop.

“Well,” I called back, starting to get on out of the truck, “we got some logging to do!”

“Not today you don’t—it’s 26 below down at the house! No way you’re getting anything running today.”

Before we could go back and forth much about the weather or the tenacity of a logger with work that needs to get done, Tom came lumbering back up the hill shouldering the saw and kind of shaking his head a little.

“Won’t start. No way.”

We didn’t get any logging done that day, but there were other days.

The stories kind of loop into one another. A tough day logging turns into a hunting opportunity at the logging job, when a nice buck jumps off the side of the road and stops to look back at the rig on the way out.

I jumped out of the truck saying, “yeah, that’s a pretty nice buck. I think I’d like to take him!” I fired a single shot, and the buck dropped right there. So I handed Tom the rifle and headed off the road with my cleaning knife. Well, could have been my shot hit right at the base of the horns, right at that thickest boniest part, and the deer only lost consciousness for a bit, for about as long as it took me to get through the ditch and put my left hand onto his antler. That’s when that buck started waking up. With one hand on the antler and one hand on my cleaning knife just reaching to open the artery in the neck, I realized that this deer was going to get up and fight! I also, just the quickest flash after that, remembered handing my rifle to Tom and coming down here with just a knife. I was yelling up at him, “shoot him Tom! Shoot him again! He’s getting up! Shoot him damn it!”

Of course, Tom couldn’t get a shot off with me there right on top of the deer, and I couldn’t let go of the deer because, well, I was right there on top of him and that grip on the antler was the only way I could control what I thought might happen next. It was a pretty quick tussle, the buck tossing his antlers up and back and me just ending up straddling him completely, but eventually the buck bled out, and it was done.

The table is laughing, reliving some of their own youthful exuberance; sighs and smiles go around the table, nods and knowing looks. “Chuck can tell stories allll day,” they remind me again. “I mean all day.” There’s stories of walking the boom up at Libby dam, there’s a box of records in the old cabin, thousand dollars for an acre with a livable house, one acre turning into 4 acres, fishing. And always there is the open ended invitation, “but that’s a whole other story!”