“‘Finestkind’ is…an all-purpose term for pretty much anything anyone has to say. It’s ‘an expression of the trade.’ It can mean anything from ‘that’s cool’ to ‘f--- you.’ It is ‘the Swiss army knife of words.’” —Roger Ebert
I have been Finestkind for over fifty years. When I went into business for myself, that was what I chose to call my new logging company. I had read the book, M*A*S*H, written by Richard Hooker, which was a somewhat darkly humorous novel about three army doctors who served in the Korean War at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. They operated out of tents, and close to the front lines, on wounded soldiers. That book was published in 1968, and, most notably, inspired a popular television series of the same name. Hooker would write a sequel, published in 1971 (about the same time as I was starting as an independent logging contractor), called M*A*S*H Goes to Maine. One of the army doctors was called Hawkeye Pierce, and after the war he returned home to “Crabapple Cove, Maine,” where he and cronies established “The Finestkind Fish Market and Clinic.” That name spoke to me, I guess.
So, Finestkind Logging I would be throughout the 1970s and most of the eighties, and, as the name implies, I set a high bar for my business endeavors. I had worked for quite a few logging companies in the almost six years since high school, and had observed, mostly quietly, the widely differing approaches and methods for harvesting timber. While the tools and machinery were pretty much similar back then, the employment of that equipment did not always go smoothly or achieve, in my opinion, the best result, post harvest, for a working forest. An inexperienced or uninvested operator can do a lot of damage with a chainsaw or skidder.
The woods became, and continued to be, my laboratory, and I, an OJT (no formal academic study) forestry lab tech/logger. I apprenticed to “The School of Hard Knocks,” as well as any woods-wise or book-wise individual I interacted with along the way. I conducted many series of experiments/timber harvests over my career in the woods, some, admittedly, and early on, less of the finestkind standard than others. That stands to reason, because if one doesn't continually refine their skill set at a chosen endeavor, they’re not paying full attention!
The first dozen years of my logging business, while I was learning how to be my own boss, were fraught with the occasional intrusion of my personal life, and that was far from the finestkind with my worsening drinking problem. As much as I tried to keep my professional life on the straight and narrow, and separate from the craziness that I created outside my work environment, that overlap (probably more than I realized at the time) was an increasingly serious hindrance to the success of my business. There was the lost time at work from a weekend that lasted too long, or started too soon; the less productive time in the aftermath of those episodes; the bleeding of cash as a result of making poor choices; and, if I’m honest with myself, the hit to my reputation. Looking back, I cannot blame those folks who would not have wanted my services based on what they had seen or heard of me in our small town!
“Some people can’t drink,” I was told in late October, 1982, a simple statement of fact I was, at last, ready to believe and act on. Thanks to a radical, immediate, and vital course correction at that time, the last 40 years of conducting my logging business were free of influence from drinking related problems; but, while that is something I am both grateful for and proud of, there were other bumps in the road on the way to the authentic version/refinement of Finestkind. The 1980s would contain many elements of that refinement, with significant changes to the status quo as I figured things out with a clearer head and more experience.
As that decade dawned, it would find me nearing the nadir of my “drinking career.” Everyone who is similarly afflicted, but likewise conflicted, finds their own bottoming out point to stop their descent, or, in the parlance of A.A., becomes “sick and tired of being sick and tired!” Twenty years of drinking, mostly beer (and, yes, you can get drunk on beer, if you choose swilling over savoring), had brought me to that hard landing and life-saving decision to quit drinking, one day at a time. The light overhead beckoned, and, after a while, I started climbing.
Nice…Looking forward to part 2.
Finestkind