Call Me Joe by Steven J Patrick Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Steven J Patrick
check up on her further. Whether I suspected something or just wanted to see more pictures, I couldn't say.
More interesting was the managing director of P.P.V., a glib, earnest native Northwesterner named Roderick Hooks. Hooks was a former executive vice president of Meinhardt Paper Products, a major Northwest producer of newsprint, art papers, photographic stock, and fiber media for scientific applications. Meinhardt was originally headquartered in Portland and was, at one time, the largest single owner of non-public forest land in the U.S. Their badge-shaped "M.P" logo was as instantly recognizable as Weyerhaeuser's little pine trees for nearly 75 years before a combination of E.P.A. rules, rising gas prices, sinking economy, and the Sierra Club combined to shove them to the brink of bankruptcy. To stay afloat, the Meinhardts were forced to sell off about 40% of their land holdings, close three plants, and call in markers all over the globe. Meinhardt, the previous president, had resigned from the stress, and the company was now under the direction of his oldest son, my pal Jerry Meinhardt, Jr.
Jerry, unlike his forebears (all born in San Francisco and devout practitioners of absentee ownership) was a born-raised Northwesterner and, as such, an environmentalist down to his chromosomes. Under him, the bloated bureaucracy of Meinhardt was whittled down to a lean, mean, fighting trim. Reforestation became—instead of a joke at board meetings—company job #1, and he instituted a benefits package for the hourly-wage loggers and mill-workers that his forebears had dismissed out of hand for over 140 years.
The company was rallying. Their new executive offices relocated to Seattle, represented an attempt to open new trade partnerships in Australia and Asia, places his elders had written off.
We were both on the board of Seattle Actors' Theatre and had become occasional beer 'n' pool pals after shows and board meetings.
I called his house on Mercer Island and got his machine. I left a message and then sat back, groaning and rubbing my eyes.
It was going on 2:15. The lunchtime hoards had thinned, so I strolled four blocks to my favorite little restaurant, Mae Phim Thai. It was almost literally a hole in the wall. It was carved precariously out of the slope of a steep hill along the side of the Exchange Building, an old maritime-trade center, relic of a time when Seattle's downtown docks were host to a slightly less genteel kind of sea vessels than today's ferries and cruise lines.
The owner was a small, bright-eyed Thai woman who married a Polish G.I. to wind p with the unforgettable handle of Orowan Butkiewicz.
Her son, Po, greeted me warmly. He's a handsome, whip-smart kid of eighteen who worked every hour he wasn't in high school, saving up to go to Duke, where he had already been accepted, so he could become a doctor. It was all he had ever wanted to do.
I sometimes left him outrageous tips--$50's and $100's weren't unheard of—and he always protested but I told him I'd take it out in surgeries later in life.
The funny part is that he thinks I'm kidding.
After the usual amazing lunch, I stopped at Mario's and got ice cream. I sat in the square, under the newly-restored pergola, and thought about Art's mess out in Colville.
P.P.V. was in there, at least in part, to cut down trees. Around this corner of the world, doing that will always call down a shitstorm, from a bunch like the Sierra Club or the state legislature. Why and how was this thing so invisible? I don't claim to be omniscient but I keep my ear to the ground. Nothing.
Weird and fishy as the state salmon hatchery.
A paper company and a couple million trees. Didn't take a genius to figure it out. Good thing, as I had no genius close at hand.
Computers have slicked up my methodology a bit, but the basic technique had never changed from my years in naval intelligence—bother people until
More interesting was the managing director of P.P.V., a glib, earnest native Northwesterner named Roderick Hooks. Hooks was a former executive vice president of Meinhardt Paper Products, a major Northwest producer of newsprint, art papers, photographic stock, and fiber media for scientific applications. Meinhardt was originally headquartered in Portland and was, at one time, the largest single owner of non-public forest land in the U.S. Their badge-shaped "M.P" logo was as instantly recognizable as Weyerhaeuser's little pine trees for nearly 75 years before a combination of E.P.A. rules, rising gas prices, sinking economy, and the Sierra Club combined to shove them to the brink of bankruptcy. To stay afloat, the Meinhardts were forced to sell off about 40% of their land holdings, close three plants, and call in markers all over the globe. Meinhardt, the previous president, had resigned from the stress, and the company was now under the direction of his oldest son, my pal Jerry Meinhardt, Jr.
Jerry, unlike his forebears (all born in San Francisco and devout practitioners of absentee ownership) was a born-raised Northwesterner and, as such, an environmentalist down to his chromosomes. Under him, the bloated bureaucracy of Meinhardt was whittled down to a lean, mean, fighting trim. Reforestation became—instead of a joke at board meetings—company job #1, and he instituted a benefits package for the hourly-wage loggers and mill-workers that his forebears had dismissed out of hand for over 140 years.
The company was rallying. Their new executive offices relocated to Seattle, represented an attempt to open new trade partnerships in Australia and Asia, places his elders had written off.
We were both on the board of Seattle Actors' Theatre and had become occasional beer 'n' pool pals after shows and board meetings.
I called his house on Mercer Island and got his machine. I left a message and then sat back, groaning and rubbing my eyes.
It was going on 2:15. The lunchtime hoards had thinned, so I strolled four blocks to my favorite little restaurant, Mae Phim Thai. It was almost literally a hole in the wall. It was carved precariously out of the slope of a steep hill along the side of the Exchange Building, an old maritime-trade center, relic of a time when Seattle's downtown docks were host to a slightly less genteel kind of sea vessels than today's ferries and cruise lines.
The owner was a small, bright-eyed Thai woman who married a Polish G.I. to wind p with the unforgettable handle of Orowan Butkiewicz.
Her son, Po, greeted me warmly. He's a handsome, whip-smart kid of eighteen who worked every hour he wasn't in high school, saving up to go to Duke, where he had already been accepted, so he could become a doctor. It was all he had ever wanted to do.
I sometimes left him outrageous tips--$50's and $100's weren't unheard of—and he always protested but I told him I'd take it out in surgeries later in life.
The funny part is that he thinks I'm kidding.
After the usual amazing lunch, I stopped at Mario's and got ice cream. I sat in the square, under the newly-restored pergola, and thought about Art's mess out in Colville.
P.P.V. was in there, at least in part, to cut down trees. Around this corner of the world, doing that will always call down a shitstorm, from a bunch like the Sierra Club or the state legislature. Why and how was this thing so invisible? I don't claim to be omniscient but I keep my ear to the ground. Nothing.
Weird and fishy as the state salmon hatchery.
A paper company and a couple million trees. Didn't take a genius to figure it out. Good thing, as I had no genius close at hand.
Computers have slicked up my methodology a bit, but the basic technique had never changed from my years in naval intelligence—bother people until
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