Male Chauvinism Dies Hard in Eastern Oregon

Published in The Christian Science Monitor

            In this range and timber country, women ride, rope, and brand alongside their men, then climb down from their horses, cook, serve the meals, wash the dishes, and take care of the house, while the men drink beer and watch television. Loggers put in an eight hour day and come home and take it easy while their wives finish a sixteen hour day. Sometimes, a little education while they're young can make a difference.

            Two men worked for me cutting firewood a few years ago. They stayed in a cabin across the road and ate with us. When winter shut the operation down and the men took off for a warmer place, Laura said she wouldn't cook for a crew again.

            In a house with a pitcher pump for water and a wood-fired stove for cooking and for heating water, the additional work of cooking for a crew took time from her primary responsibilities of taking care of the family and teaching Amanda and Juniper.

            She didn't like it that the men wouldn't help with cooking or with washing dishes, even when we weren't cutting wood. She said, "I know how those guys are at home. Even if they're out of work, with nothing to do but go fishing, their wives do all the housework, all the cooking, all the dishes, and they take care of the children until they're old enough to go fishing with Dad."

            But when I took Jim on as a partner, she said he could eat with us. She said, "He's never been out on his own. He's never had to cook for himself. The cabin he's using doesn't have water or a sink or a cookstove. He's almost family anyway.

            "Jim always lets Juniper and Amanda join in the conversations. They love having him here, because he treats them like real people. John and Jerry never even recognized the girls were people."

            Jim and I cut firewood, and Laura cooked, packed our lunches, washed the dishes, and took care of and taught Juniper and Amanda.

            We saved the straightest dead lodgepole pines, with the least taper, for house logs. Michael didn't get there when he had said he would, in October.

            In mid-December, when he finally came to get the logs, the meadow, under two feet of snow, was too soft to drive a loaded log truck across it. The only way to get the logs out was to drag them two miles across the meadow.

            Michael brought an old, sick bulldozer and a helper to try to keep the dozer running. Michael and Richard moved in with Jim, and we all worked to get the logs out. Jim and I cut more standing dead lodgepole, to add to what we already had decked along the edge of the meadow.

            Laura was more than a good sport. We figured the log truck would come up and we'd load the logs and send them down the road in two or three days, and Laura could get back to her orderly routine, so she said, sure, she'd cook for the whole crew so we could concentrate on getting the logs out before the weather got worse.

            The weather immediately got worse. We spent a lot of time getting the dozer running and keeping it running and keeping our road across the meadow open. The dozer wouldn't pull very many logs. Each trip across the meadow took hours and put us home long after dark.

            Everybody got hit by colds and flu. Laura got hit hardest. She was off her feet and asleep a lot of the time. More than once, I came in out of a snowstorm after dark and had to wash dishes so we could eat dinner, but Laura always had food ready for us, and she milked the goat morning and evening, and she made sure Juniper and Amanda had everything they needed.

            Jim and I shoveled snow away from trees, dropped them, limbed them, and cut them to length. We took a lot of breaks, sweating or shivering with fever, fighting to keep enough energy flowing to get the logs out. We managed to get one turn of logs yarded to the corral every day. The two or three days we'd figured for the project turned into two or three weeks.

            We all worked our way clear of flu and colds. We brought the last logs across the meadow and loaded them in the corral, and the truck hauled them over the icy mountain to Halfway, and that was all the work we could do. By then, more snow had fallen from the mountain sky than we could fight for firewood.

            After a day or two of doing nothing much, I said, "Jim, Laura agreed to cook and do all the dishes when we were working, but now we aren't working. We can't expect her to take care of all the dishes and all the cooking just because she's a woman.

            "We're providing an example for Juniper and Amanda, too. I don't want them to grow up thinking women do all the housework and cooking even if the men have nothing to do but sit around and watch the women work."

            After Jim washed the dishes, we walked over to his cabin and played a game of chess close to the roaring stove. Cold wind leaked in around the windows and the door. I said, "You didn't like the way washing dishes came out, did you?"

            He said, "No, I don't like the idea of washing dishes, but I could see the truth of what you said, so I'll wash dishes. What I figured out right there at the sink, you don't have to think dishes. You can wash dishes and think anything you want."

            Somehow, he came to think all the dinner dishes were his responsibility, and he pitched into them, if not with enthusiasm, as least with energy.

            I didn't try to clear up his misunderstanding. When Laura and Juniper and Amanda visited in California, late summer, I did more than my share of cooking and washing dishes to keep Jim and me both going. It bothered me, but mentioning it more than twice bothered me more, so I did it and figured it would eventually come to balance.

            It began to come to balance. I kept the kitchen firewood box full and overflowing lest he see a need and remember an earlier time when I said a man could wash dishes, cook, or split and carry firewood, as long as it came out so we all shared the work all of us, eating together, created.

            In January, Jim decided he'd better go someplace where he could earn some money. He took off for Montana and cut timber, buckarooed, worked with a packing and guiding outfit, and washed some dishes.

            More than a year later, he drove into northeastern Oregon and visited and ate dinner with us. He said, "It's a good thing I learned to wash dishes before I did any guiding. You don't ask them city dudes, as much money as they're paying out, to do any of the chores. I was low man on the string, so I did all the dishes, but I learned how to do dishes here and still have a good time, so I was okay."

            He thought about it. "You know, I learned some things here. I learned how to fall trees. I learned some things about family I didn't know before. I learned how to wash dishes without getting hurt by it. Now, a lot of guys I know wouldn't wash a dish if it meant they could save their lives. I learned the work you do doesn't say you're a man or not, but how you do the work and how you live your life."

            He thought about it a little more. Then he got up and checked the water heating on the stove. "Boy, that is hot. Well, if you girls will get them over here, I sure will wash those dishes."