The next year was a busy one for Steve Augsberg as he got settled into his job as Assistant Production Manager at Clark Plywood. The plywood line remained a sticking point, and Steve’s first real project was to do something about it. He took some time analyzing the whole line, not just the production, and came up with a radical solution: quit making plywood.
Clark Plywood had been founded to make plywood, but from World War II years on had moved slowly away from plywood, making more and more waferboard and composition board, cheaper alternatives if not as usable for finish. Now Steve took a careful look at the profitability of the product, and the cost to produce it. After some study and delving into figures, he came up with a surprising realization: if it weren’t for the fact that the machinery used was old and fully amortized, the plant was losing money on the product.
The problem was the fact that plywood was made of thin sheets milled spirally off of large tree trunks. When Wayne Clark had first started making plywood in Spearfish Lake, there were still good harvestable trees around that could be used, but they were getting rare now, and for the last several years the plant had brought tree trunks in from Canada on rail cars to process. The extra shipping cost cut profitability to the bone if they were going to sell at a competitive price on the market.
Though Spearfish Lake was in forest country, the forest had changed a lot. During the great clearcut of the 1880s and 1890s, a lot of the big trees had been removed, and in the 1930s there had been efforts to replant a lot of the openings that still remained. But these were not the same type of trees that produced the big white pine logs that had made the lumbering era memorable – these were red pine and hemlock and other trees that grew quickly, but only reached moderate size. Steve could drive out into the woods and wonder where the next century’s 2x4s were coming from – they certainly weren’t going to come from the woods around Spearfish Lake.
The remaining trees had their uses, of course – they could be used for paper pulp, wood chips, and the like, and that meant they could use more of the tree and not waste so much. To Steve, the answer was simple – get out of the profitless plywood production and more into composition board and waferboard, which was cheaper and more profitable to produce, even if it sold more cheaply.
It was not an easy sell, even though everyone concerned at Clark Plywood quickly conceded his point on the profitability. Wayne Clark had been one of the pioneers of plywood, and it wasn’t easy to abandon that heritage. Steve looked for every corner he could find to cut on the process to keep it going for a while, but the handwriting was clearly on the wall.
But while Steve was busy on his job, it was a notable year for him in other areas – the biggest thing being that he finally moved out of his parents’ house, and bought a place of his own, a small but comfortable lakeshore spot in Hannegan’s Cove, north of town. The house was a fixer-upper and needed quite a bit of work, but it was work he enjoyed. Most of the work he could handle, but there were a few things he wasn’t very clear on, or where he needed extra hands. Mark Gravengood was just finishing up a multiple-year fixer-upper project of his own, was a whole lot better at tools and some of the technical stuff, and was glad to come over and pitch in for a while when Steve was stumped about what to do or how to do it.
The sun was just setting on a nice early summer day in June 1978. Steve and Mark had finished up the wiring project and were sitting on the back steps, drinking a beer, when Harold Hekkinan drove up. “Bad news, guys,” he said. “Glenn’s dead.”
Glenn Mackey, who had walked through hell for months on end at Con Thien and Khe Sanh without a scratch, had been mowing his lawn when a drunk driver ran off the road and killed him. Glenn hadn’t even been near the road; he was halfway across his yard.
He left behind him his wife, Janet, and two kids, ages five and seven. Glenn had done as well as anyone and better than most at putting the war behind him, and had a solid job and a good future. It was all wiped out because one of the guys from the Post, on the honors firing squad at that, had spent too long out at the Post hall knocking back beers with his buddies.
It was totally unexpected, of course, and Janet was devastated, literally unable to cope with the funeral arrangements, so she let the local funeral director manage them. Since Glenn was a veteran, he called on the Post to provide the honors firing squad for the burial.
Needless to say, that didn’t go over well with Glenn’s friends, and Gil Evachevski was as livid as anyone had ever seen him. “How could you be so fucking stupid?” he raged to the funeral director. “It was one of their guys who killed him, for Christ’s sakes. You want him in the firing squad, too, if they can sober him up enough?”
“But Gil,” the funeral director temporized, “They’ve always done all the military rites around here.”
“No they fucking haven’t, and they’d better goddamn not do it this time,” Gil raged.
Going directly to the horse’s mouth, Gil called the Post commander, who Gil hadn’t had much need to talk to since Henry Toivo’s memorial service. Gil was direct and to the point: “I will personally beat the fucking crap out of any Post firing squad member I see at Glenn’s burial. That’s not a threat. That’s a fucking promise.”
To give the Post commander credit where credit was due, he remembered Gil Evachevski had been the guy who had caused the kid who was now the town police chief to limp for the last thirty years, and he wasn’t a man he wanted to tangle with. He figured he’d better make peace, fast, but Gil wasn’t listening to reason.
But, he did have one thing he could do. Garth Matson, Gil’s father-in-law, had been the commander of the local National Guard battery at the beginning of the real war and had commanded the battalion through much of it. Maybe he could talk some sense into Gil.
Matson wasn’t buying it. “Back off,” he told the Post commander. “You’re not going to make any friends, and if you show up there’s just going to be a scene. It’ll get into the Record-Herald, along with the reason why these guys are pissed at you. You don’t want that.”
“But, Colonel,” the Post commander said, using the name all the WWII veterans called Matson, “We’ve always done the honors for veterans around here.”
“No you haven’t,” Matson said. “Where the hell were you at the Toivo kid’s memorial service?”
“That was just a memorial service, not a burial,” the Post commander said. “Besides, we had a convention that weekend.”
“So you were sitting around drinking beer and talking about the old days when the only service was held for the only kid from this town who died in Vietnam. You didn’t just show disrespect for the Toivo kid and his family and his friends, you also crapped on all the Vietnam veterans in this town in the process. On top of that, it was one of your guys who killed Mackey. You’re just going to piss off a lot of people even more than they’re already pissed off if you show up. Like I said, back the hell off.”
“But who will do the honors?”
“The same people who did it for Henry Toivo,” Matson told him firmly. “They were his friends. They know you’re not.”
“We could get the Post from Albany River to come up and do it,” the Post commander suggested.
“Wouldn’t solve anything,” Matson told him. “Look, back off, and I’ll try to settle Gil down and maybe you can keep the worst of it out of the Record-Herald.”
“All right,” the Post commander said. “Look, I heard about the time with the Toivo kid, when they were out there with AK-47s and hunting rifles. At least tell them they’re welcome to use our M-1s if they want to.”
“I will,” Matson said. “Don’t expect them to take you up on it, though.”
Thus it was that the little group of Vietnam vets, saddened at being one fewer, climbed into uniforms one more time. By now, the uniforms didn’t fit well at all, and both Bud Ellsberg and Harold Hekkinan had to borrow tunics from Gil Evachevski because they couldn’t fit into their own any more. With tears in their eyes they fired a military salute to their friend in the Oak Shade Cemetery.
The handful of Vietnam veterans even spurned the M-1s the Post offered, and Garth Matson used a little pull to get D Battery to loan the group M-16s like Glenn had carried through the jungled hills up near the DMZ. The flat crack of the ’16s didn’t have the authority of the boom of the old Garands, but everyone agreed they were more appropriate under the circumstances.
A few days after it was over with and tempers had a while to cool, Harold Hekkinan called the remaining guys together around the grill in Ellsberg’s back yard. While burgers were sizzling and beers were popped, Hekkinan told them flatly, “We can’t let a cluster fuck like that happen again.”
“Right,” Ellsberg agreed. “I mean, you never know when something is going to happen, and I don’t want any of those Post pukes around when they plant me.”
“Me either,” Gravengood agreed. “Harold, you’ve got something in mind. What is it?”
“We need to form a veteran’s organization of our own,” Hekkinan told them. “Vietnam veterans. I’m not much on veteran’s groups, and those dickheads at the Post just make it worse. Maybe we wouldn’t do anything but honors squad, but we could let people know we’re available if needed.”
“I’m not much on vets groups either,” Ellsberg agreed. “I mean, I’ve been in the Amvets since I got back from ’Nam, but that was more a business thing than a veterans thing, and I never go to meetings, anyway.”
“How about working with the Amvets?” Gravengood suggested.
“They don’t have a firing squad,” Evachevski said, “Never have had. They’re all rotten with Post members, anyway. I’m a member there, too, but I don’t go to meetings. Dad still goes to meetings most of the time, but he tells me they’re basically kissing the Post’s ass any more. But, Harold, I think you’ve got a good idea, and I’ll go along with it.”
“We probably ought to tie in with some outfit with a national charter,” Augsberg suggested, “Just to give a little more weight to it.”
Hekkinan agreed. “I’ve heard there are two or three groups trying to get a national Vietnam veterans group going, all tied in with this effort to build a memorial down in DC. I could look into that.”
“Good idea, Coach,” Augsberg agreed. “Let us know what you find out. Those burgers getting done?”