Irons in the Fire

by John McPhee

published

April 30th 1998 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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binding

Paperback, 224 pages

isbn

0374525455 (isbn13: 9780374525453)

description

Master essayist John McPhee heard about vehicles in Nevada that resemble police cars, but the cop inside was actually a "brand inspector," a...more

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Eric rated it:

11/17/08

Read in January, 2000

Al Lehman In a land where a common saying is that no one eats his own beef, the Nevada brand inspector becomes crucial to civilization. Without one, There'd be a lot of dead bodies." Rustling in the 1990's is still an occupational hazard where ranches are measured in tens of thousands of acres. John McPhee, a favorite writer of mine, has recently published a new collection of essays entitled, Irons in the Fire. The title essay is his investigation of brands and their history. The brand in...more Al Lehman In a land where a common saying is that no one eats his own beef, the Nevada brand inspector becomes crucial to civilization. Without one, There'd be a lot of dead bodies." Rustling in the 1990's is still an occupational hazard where ranches are measured in tens of thousands of acres. John McPhee, a favorite writer of mine, has recently published a new collection of essays entitled, Irons in the Fire. The title essay is his investigation of brands and their history. The brand inspector's job is to keep everyone honest and the ranchers accept this and approve. The inspector also has to be part cop, part private investigator, part, Indian tracker, and have a whole lot of knowledge and instinct for the people and the country in order to recognize hundreds of brands and how they might be changed.

In another essay, McPhee writes about the virgin forest, particularly a spot near Brunswick New Jersey where the suburbs grow so fast that animals are often trapped between motels. The land had originally belonged to the Van Liew family who had acquired it in 1701 and farmed all but sixty-five acres they set aside. In the 1950s they consulted a sawyer and discovered that the value of some of the white oaks that dated to the 17th century was "expressible in ducats." Making their desire to sell public, all sorts of organizations came out of the woodwork :-)) to prevent the felling of these trees. Not enough money was raised until the Carpenters' Union bought the land and gave it to Rutgers University in 1955. The restriction on Rutgers were that only a small path could be maintained along one edge. They could not enter or change anything else on the sixty-five acres – just study it from a distance. There are only a few other areas of virgin forest left in the United States – one in Illinois along the Wabash. The Hutcheson Memorial Forest owned by Rutgers is perhaps the most famous. It has supported the research for hundreds of advanced degrees including thirty-six Ph.D.s. "So many articles, papers, theses, and other research publications have come out of Hutcheson Forest that – as the old saw goes – countless trees have been cleared elsewhere just in order to print them."...less

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