DAM AND TIMBER

 

Notes for an Adventure Story

COMMENTS: This project was probably intended to be a short story aimed at the men’s adventure magazines of the 1950s. The men’s adventure genre was one of the last gasps of the once dominant pulp magazine market, and the various magazines, like Argosy, Saga, Real Men, and many others, were cheekily referred to as the “sweats” or “armpit slicks” (some were published on slick paper like the more upscale magazines). They focused on “true” stories of crime, war, and often quite bizarre man-against-nature encounters. I have always suspected that they were an expression of a rather odd postwar/cold war–era psychology that I have never completely understood. In general the subject matter was fairly graphic and the art pretty kinky.

I’ve always considered the “sweats” to be a macho version of our supermarket tabloids, with their lurid half-fact, half-fantasy feel and their somewhat voyeuristic tales. Louis was never completely comfortable with the operatic cartoony-ness of the genre, but in the years prior to his breaking into the paperback market, he was forced to give it a try.

Regardless, Dad’s notes for the following story channeled some recognizable aspects of the men’s adventure genre: blue-collar manly men doing manly things in a challenging natural setting.

The location of “Dam and Timber” seems to be Arizona or Nevada, someplace very hot and remote from civilization. A dam is under construction, and the protagonist of the story is the winner of the contract to clear what is about to become the bottom of a large lake of brush, trees, and other debris. The corporation or local government must have the job done by a certain date, so there is a lot of pressure to finish quickly, and not too much concern for worker safety. From hearing Dad talk about it, I believe he was planning to incorporate a conflict in which a group wanted to stop the hero from finishing the job, or from finishing on time—but from these notes it’s not completely clear why. The equipment being used to clear the brush and trees includes heavy chains stretched between bulldozers and a huge steel ball that is dragged over areas to crush the vegetation flat.

Don’t be thrown as you read through—Louis experiments with a couple of different names for the female characters…

The first set of notes:

Open: Hero arrives from freight train.

He is surprised at ease of getting sub-contract.

Heavy sends thugs after him

He begins looking for help, there is none.

He begins taking bums, drunks, etc.

The fight with thugs

More grief—perhaps the dealer calls back his equipment

So Hero goes to a really tough character and gets equipment from him.

Make this good -

Perhaps use cloud-seeding stunt. [Cloud seeding is a process that uses chemicals spread by aircraft or fired into the atmosphere from the ground to create rain.]

Second set of notes:

Opening scene: he arrives and there is tough talk, then he bids for contract—gets it-

Heavy sends two thugs after him. Heroine sees it [the fight] and afterward her friends tell her he is not a man a nice girl would be interested in—she answers that even a nice girl likes a little red blood in her men. Gleason overhears this and comments—then the tramp [Louis is talking about a “trampy” woman] joins him [the Hero], and takes his arm possessively.

One of workers is knocked down in front of steel ball and Hero goes to rescue -

At climax logs fail to burn as rain, increased by cloud-seeding, stops fire. [This may refer to the debris piled up by the crew clearing what will become the lake bottom behind the dam, or it might be something completely different.]

Then Hero has pay-off fight with Heavy—terrific.

Fight between girls: Heroine knows judo—she takes off her stole and coolly beats the hell out of tramp.

Build for 8 high points and in about 30 pages.

Humor—Gleason & others [Gleason seems a bit like a comic-relief, sidekick sort of character.]

Strong character—different

Make girl unusual—simply wants her man—Gleason advises—“She’s [the trampy woman] got no brand on him. Move in if you’ve got the guts.”

So battle is joined

The job is man-killing and brutal—it goes on through rain and sun in the roughest kind of country -

Man falls before steel ball -

Perhaps a fight between two men with bulldozers to deflect tumbling ball, or to push logs in its way

Sub-contract from a guy who wants him [our hero] whipped, broken, dead. This man broke him on [the] last job—wants to finish it. Gives him sub-contract where he can’t win—but he takes his misfit crew and does win—two women—one a lady, the other a tramp, but the lady beats hell out of the tramp

Strictly a fight for a man. Cathy remarks—older man tells her she must fight with all her weapons. She does and wins.

The third set of notes:

Part cliff, part swamp, all hell –

Use fire scene, steel ball, fight scene—make this a honey—two really tough mugs—scene where 2 are sent out to beat up Hero—He whips them both, takes them to boss and throws them across his desk at him—

  1. Jim Tyler.

  2. Tom Bassett, of Bassett Demolition & Construction Co.

  3. “Larry” Lorraine, a sexy babe with Tyler on her mind and Bassett on her trail.

  4. Ruth Sheridan, visiting in vicinity of project, who falls for Jim. Wealthy but unspoiled, quiet, but determined. Her father had been a contract mine boss and she had spent her early years in mining camps.

  5. “Doc” Cassidy, stew-bum but old friend of Tyler. The first of his new crew. [This might be the same as the Gleason character.]

  6. Jack Helms, Bassett’s straw-boss and muscle man.

  7. Swede, the ex-con; Milligan, ex-Seabee; John, the half-breed; Lee, the coward; Laramie, ex-contest rider (all bums picked up by Tyler for his misfit crew.)

  8. Louise Butler and Dave: Friends of Ruth, who entertain Tom Bassett and later, Jim Tyler.

Some of the inspiration for this story may have come from accounts Louis heard in the 1920s from a girlfriend’s father, a man who was working on a dam project near Klamath Falls, Oregon. I also suspect that this concept later evolved into the Western novel Guns of the Timberlands, but I have only my sense of my father’s career and methodology to suggest that.