The family that works together, stays together? Though that’s often not the case for many families who fall out with one another over business matters, it is fairly common to see logging jobs that involve several family members in one capacity or another. Not quite so common is a situation like Holmes Bros. Logging, wherein almost everyone on the crew is related.

Iconic British rocker and “Iron Man” singer Ozzy Osbourne, 63, started his career in the late ’60s, earning fame in the ’70s and increased notoriety (what with the bat-head-biting incidents and all) in the ’80s. After the success of his 1991 song “No More Tears,” Osbourne embarked on what was to be his farewell tour, dubbed “No More Tours.” Three years later, he returned with the “Retirement Sucks” tour. Now, more than 15 years later, he is still performing.

What began as an employee Christmas luncheon at Wilson Brothers Lumber Co. many years ago—no one seems to know exactly how many—has developed into a community-wide event for friends, family, employees, business associates, fellow woodsmen, suppliers and many local and state dignitaries. This year’s attendance rounded out at about 800 folks all chowing down on some delicious home-cooked barbeque with all the fixin’s. No caterers here! Take out plates were also sent to the nursing home staff as well as others in the community who were unable to attend.

After supper paw and I usually rode over to Ball’s store, sat a spell, and got the news from the others who congregated there. This time when we pulled up in paw’s Chevy pickup there was a dogfight. Ball’s bulldog had tangled with Little Rube’s shepherd, and they were laying it on. Everyone was turning over drink crates and nail kegs, keeping out of the dogs’ way, but not wanting to miss a stroke of the action.

Junior sat alone in the ICU waiting room. His father, Bud, was just down the hall, through a pair of double doors, clinging to life, hooked up to a variety of monitors and IV drips. It was 3 a.m., but he didn’t feel tired.

While attending the American Loggers Council’s spring board meeting in 2004 and after a long day of congressional visits and long walks to the Russell Senate Building, ALC leaders recognized that help from the nation’s capitol might be slow in coming to the rescue of a challenged timber harvesting industry.

Back in the day, as they say, Southern loggers mounted tree shears on various types of carriers, including crawlers, skidders, excavators and front-end loaders. Thirty years ago North Carolina logger Glenn Coleman, a believer in the Caterpillar brand, took ’em down with a 28-inch Roanoke mated to a Caterpillar 920 front-end loader. Coleman also owned a 24-inch Roanoke mounted on a Cat D3 crawler.

In the world of “clean,” particle size is defined in microns, an ideal measurement used for measuring things smaller than the naked eye can see. A micron (µ), short for micrometer, is a metric unit of measurement equal to one millionth of a meter or about 4 hundred thousandths of an inch (0.00004”). To help put this in perspective, the period used to end this sentence is about 397 microns in diameter. The eye of a needle used to stitch a child’s pants would be around 749 microns wide, a human hair 40 to 120 microns in diameter, and a stamp more than 25,000 microns on a side.