small town

The speaker grew up in a small lumber mill town in Northern California where most of the population worked in the timber industry. Their father was a millwright and they had many different job roles related to the industry. The town was known as the gateway to the Redwoods. The speaker enjoyed going to the local pool with their cousins when they were younger. As a boy, I grew up in the small lumber mill town of Willets in Northern California. It was like any other typical small timber town. In those days, well over half the population living in town were either working in the mills or employed in some other aspect of the timber industry. We had five lumber mills operating, all within a 25-mile radius of each other. My father worked in one of these lumber mills as a millwright. It was his job to see that nothing broke down and that the mill continued to smoothly operate. We had truckers, fallers, cat drivers, skidders, loader operators, saw sharpeners, bucklers, landing men, and big timber all around. It has been said that Willets was the gateway to the Redwoods. I was like any other child in those days, no different. I couldn't wait for summer to come so my cousins and I could go to the local community pool and spend the day jumping and splashing all around. I was eleven then, and it seemed like a lifetime ago, or another life altogether.