After we organized the Co-op, old Bill Black continued to come to Refuge, open up his house, and fish for a couple of weeks. One spring, his fibreglass cruiser headed out each day for the bite at the slack. One evening, the boat stayed at Production Point for some time. Not so unusual in the days when fishing was good. After a while it became clear that the boat was going around in tight circles, so Paul Emmons headed out to investigate. He found Bill laid back in his chair with a big spring salmon in his lap. Neither showed any sign of life. Paul towed the boat to the docks, but what to do with the body? It was now dark. No plane would come until morning. There was, of course, the freezer, which was being stockpiled with blocks of ice for the tourist season. Bill and the salmon were laid on the ice and the door shut. Tight. At dawn the radiophone was fired up, the plane called and relatives notified. Occupied with the phone in the back of the store, no one noticed a man and a woman come up from their boat and open the freezer looking for ice. Until the scream. A stiff drink had to be applied to the woman, ruffled nerves soothed, and enough explanation given to avert complaints. The plane came just in time, and Bill and the fish were sent on their way. It was, all agreed, a very fine fish. It’s the way I want to go. (p.22-23)
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The glitch in MacPherson’s system was that the logs coming out of the flume would take a nose-dive at the bend and bury themselves under the logs chained like guides lengthwise along the side of the creek. If the subsequent timber hit a inconvenient boulder or wedged itself under the first log, observers on the catwalk witnessed a logjam of alarming complexity. The person at the dam had to be stopped from sending along more logs and someone had to descend onto the logs in caulk boots and clear the jam. It was exciting to watch but far too dangerous to be tolerated. If you couldn’t unjam the embarrass you had to wait until the tide was low and blow it apart with dyna-mite. Finally MacPherson had had enough of the pileups, and he decided to kill two birds with one stone: remove some enemy boulders and take Paul on to Dynamite 202. Pat decided to watch. The tide went down, the creek dwindled to a trickle, and the culprits were charged. MacPherson said, “Run!” Paul said, “How far?” MacPherson said, “How should I know!” So they ran along the catwalk, around the bluff and along the rickety boardwalk to Ken’s generator shed and got behind that. Now MacPherson had held to The Third Law of Dynamite: Never use 1 stick where 2 will do. The boulders and the noise, confined by the cliffs on either side of the creek, exploded straight out across the boom, missed the ocean completely, and ended up on Dorothy Thomas’ beach. The small stuff flew over the generator shed and landed behind Ken’s house. (p.24)