June 13, 1968
Long ago I came to the conclusion that the favorite past-time of man in general was to skin the socks off of his fellow man. To get the best of a fellow human, stranger or friend, brazenly or subtly, especially in a material way, was the approved method of demonstrating his superiority over his trusting or gullible associates. To outwit someone, even in a sneaky way, taking advantage of others for one’s own personal gain, was a sure-fire way to bolster one’s ego (so my theory went), besides being one way of making both ends meet without being compelled to work too hard at it.
A pessimistic evaluation of my fellow man’s morals, no doubt; but past events had seemed to justify such an attitude. Having been rooked so many times by ones I trusted, I had made up my mind that the old skin game was an accepted part of a diseased or over-indulgent society, and henceforth (with apologies to Poe’s raven) I would trust my fellows never more.
But now all that has changed. I know that not everyone is a chiseler, and for the first time in many years I have a feeling that there’s some hope for humanity after all: I have found an honorable, conscientious man and that heartening discovery came to me in a most dramatic way.
As in the case of the great man in history who found he could do his weightiest thinking on top of a mountain, it was up in the mountains that I made my happy discovery that not all of humanity is corrupt. And in finding that one honest man my pessimism has been tempered with the suspicion there are probably other men waiting discovery by their disenchanted brethren.
At the beginning of our day we never know what experiences will befall us before night comes again. On this particular day, when I went up in the mountains to satisfy my curiosity as to the extent of the snowdrifts remaining on the Bolan Lake road, I had no idea that I’d be picnicking with friends at Bolan Lake – especially after I’d found the high ridge road still closed by drifts, and no tell-tale tracks in the snow.
I’d left my jeep at Low Gap, near the Happy Camp Road, and hiked on in to Bolan Lake, 5½ miles away, much of the road now free of snow but still impassable to cars because of the occasional still deep but fast-melting drifts. When I neared the lake, to my surprise I saw a pickup-camper parked in a meadow nearby, and could see where others had driven in to the Forest Service campground beside the lake. Only 2 days before, a logging road up French Hill way, from the Sucker Creek side, had been opened, and eager on-the-job fishermen had lost no time in getting up to the lake.
Just before I reached the lakeside campground I was overtaken by a pickup containing a pair of fishermen and their wives. One of the men was a friend of mine of long standing with whom I used to work in local sawmills, he always worked as the sawyer and I as the edgerman. One thing I learned about him in those days was his extreme caution in running the mill, and his careful regard for the safety of his men. At the slightest hint of trouble he would shut the mill down in the twinkling of an eye. But I was to learn something else about him, something even more remarkable, up at Bolan Lake that day. While I was helpfully doing my bit toward disposing of the picnic lunch (inwardly patting myself on the back at having blundered into this delicious windfall) my friend casually pulled out his wallet, extracted a pair of twenty-dollar bills and handed them to me without a word. When I wanted to know what it was all about he said only that it was some money he owed me.
Not very often I forget about money owed to me, but in this instance I was completely mystified. Without too much protest I accepted the money, having to take his word, without benefit of explanation that he really owed it to me.
Later, wracking my brain for a clue, at last I began to see a tiny glimmer of light, a faint recollection of having lent my friend this money, an incident that he had never forgotten and fully intended to do something about when the unpredictable voice of fortune said Now.
The amount of the debt isn’t important, nor was the fact that the money was never before available due to more pressing needs for it. The remarkable thing is that my friend would remember when I had long forgotten, and his unwavering resolve to repay that debt.
By the faint glow of that memory-light so nearly extinguished, at last I hazily recalled the time I made that small loan – on a day more than 17 years ago.
