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Landis Brown has worked for the
division of Forestry for nearly 33 years.
Landis Brown, at 59 years old, has spent nearly 33 years in
the woods of Carroll County. He was just 26 and looking for a
job when a friend put him in contact with County Ranger
Spurgeon Nolen.
"I've always been an outdoors person," he says. "I had heard
what the job was like, working outside and putting out fires.
I was really interested in it."
Landis signed on as an equipment operator and now fills
Nolen's role in the updated title of forestry technician,
working at the fire tower in Leach in a program he says has
changed greatly over the years in which he has served.
Working with Brown are two full-time and one part-time worker.
In the job of "forestry aid II" are Michael Martin and Shannon
Sloan. Enola Hurley helps out in the office part-time. The
four make their workday home at the station where the
obsolete, 86-foot fire tower is nestled alongside a garage
that includes an office and the house in which Landis and wife
Mary made their home for the first six years of his
employment. Changing state policies have dictated that the now
unoccupied home will soon be renovated into office space for
the workers.
That's just one of many changes Landis notes in the evolution
of forestry in Tennessee since he began on November 16, 1972.
"When I first came to work, I was up and down that fire tower
three, four, sometimes five times a day," he says. Physical
fitness is still a prime requirement for the job in which he
says fighting fires makes up about 25 percent of the job.
"It's not just fighting fires anymore," he says. Now personnel
work with landowners in forestry management plans, assisting
them in locating vendors from which to purchase and plant
trees and overseeing the projects that transform from 600 to
700 acres per year. Landowners frequently take advantage of
the costshare program in which 50 percent of the costs are
covered.
Forestry division workers also participate in "Smokey Bear"
education programs for elementary school children, keep track
of burning permits, and undergo lots of training, as well as
maintaining equipment and facilities.
"It's an interesting job," says Landis, who cites one of the
best reasons to require burning permits is that, "if the fire
escapes their control, we pretty much know what it is before
we get there."
And he's all for training: "The state wants more and more
training for safety and for us to be physically able to do our
jobs and know how to do them."
What's in the enclosure at the top of the fire tower that
stands 13 landings above ground level? It's a question that
puts Landis in a teaching mode.
"In the center there's an azimuth table," he begins.
In earlier days rangers manned the Leach tower as well as
others located in various locations such as Huntingdon, Rowden,
Benton County near Camden, Big Sandy, Gleason, Hyndsver,
Natchez Trace, and Birdsong.
"You can see smoke all over the county from the Leach tower,"
Landis says. From the Huntingdon tower, too, rangers could see
across the county as well as part of Henry County, the edge of
Weakley County and part of Benton County.
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The 86-ft. tall Leach fire tower. |
In the event of a fire, rangers would shoot an azimuth, a
process Landis describes as similar to looking through a
riflescope, then plot the azimuth from their tower to the
direction of the fire using a string attached to a wall map.
Wall maps in each tower featured strings that hung from each
tower location. When the azimuth was mapped from one tower, a
call to another tower revealed the azimuth from that location,
and the string from that tower was pulled across the map
according to the reading.
"Where the strings crossed is where the fire was," Landis
explains.
But that was then. Nowadays, the state contracts with local
airports to fly on watch over the whole of West Tennessee when
conditions are especially ripe for forest fires. Two pilots
divide West Tennessee into north and south divisions using
I-40 as a landmark, flying river to river as they keep watch
over the forests.
Another change Landis cites is in manpower and equipment.
Where manpower at the Leach tower has been cut from five
full-time and two part-time employees to its current level,
equipment has greatly improved, he said, evidenced by a recent
development in which the state began the distribution of 112
bulldozer and transport units to 74 counties to replace aging
equipment. Carroll County is expected to receive two new
dozers and two trucks.
"When I first came, we had an old International dozer; it was
a gas burner, with no blade, and tricky to get through the
woods," he says.
Landis and his crew cover all of Carroll County and a fourth
of Gibson County.
"Gibson County doesn't have any forestry person anymore," he
explains. "Weakley and Dyer counties do the rest of Gibson."
Says Landis, who has served under six governors including
Winfield Dunn, Ray Blanton, Lamar Alexander, Ned Ray McWherter,
Don Sundquist, and Phil Bredesen, "you'd be surprised in 33
years what all I've seen."
Of 25 to 30 fires locally each year, the average fire burns
ten acres, he says. "Some may be 100 acres and some may be
two-thirds of a tenth of an acre... but two fires come to mind
when I got worried."
In that situation, he says, the first order of business is to
look out for his men and himself; to make sure there is an
escape route. When arriving at a fire, he takes into
consideration how big the fire is and what is fueling it,
whether timber or grass.
"You size it up," he continues. "Then you know whether to
request back-up. We very seldom have to call back-up but in a
field with broomsage, a lot of grass, and wind at 10 to 15 mph
and humidity at 25 to 30 percent, you'd better be calling; you
might want to get you some back-up on the way."
One of the fires that had him concerned, located off Highway
424, burned 140 acres of hardwood forest.
He describes efforts to contain the fire by plowing a "firelane"
of bare earth around it.
"It was one of those days when it was dry and windy and when
we unloaded it was traveling so fast; the wind was pushing it
so fast, all we could do is run along beside of it," he says.
"Later, after the wind laid by, we were finally able to go
around it."
The fire burned so hot it was "topping out" above the trees.
"It's not unusual to have fire topping out in pines," he says,
"but if it's topping out in hardwoods, it's hot, it's
dangerous--it's easy to get hurt and get men burned up."
When he's not at work, Landis enjoys fishing.
"That's my hobby--fishing and more fishing," he says, "and
hunting, and singing in the church choir at Ephesus Missionary
Baptist Church, right down the road from my house."
He grew up on a 140 acre farm past Hollow Rock in Vale, near
where he lives now on Ephesus Church Road, the youngest of 11
children: Sue Swindell, Margery Evans, Marilyn Ward, Brenda
Meyers, Frances Dalton, Thomas Brown, James Brown, Dallas
Brown, and his late sisters, Marie Edwards and Lucille
Bennett. Two other siblings died as babies.
"I came from a big family and my wife did, too, she had 11 in
her family," he says.
His brother Thomas, known as TR Brown, retired as police chief
in Huntingdon. Landis, himself, spent three years as a member
of the police force.
"I've done a little bit of everything," he says. He worked at
a lumber shed, as a trucker for Gaines Furniture Company,
milked cows for H.L. Lyle dairy farm, and Brown Shoe Company.
He and Mary Katherine Pinson were just 17 when they met "right
in the middle of Mixie," Landis grins concerning the tiny
community. She lived across the road from the also tiny store
that once marked the district.
"We married at 18; that's why I've got five grandkids at 59,
and they're grown, nearly, I've got a granddaughter and
grandson that's 15," he says.
The couple's children are Terry Brown, Jerry Brown, and Landis
Brown, Jr. "When I named him, I said, 'I ain't having no more,
that's it," he jokes.
He laughs that he and Mary only dated five or six times--"She
had a car and I didn't"--though both had full-time jobs: she
worked at H.I.S. in Bruceton and he for the dairy farm,
milking cows for 40 cents an hour.
"I left there and went to Brown Shoe Company, he says,
recalling the company was new when he started at $1.25 per
hour, which was minimum wage.
"I had moved up to be a big boy then, and we got married July
3, 1964," he continues. The pair moved to Bruceton, Vale, and
then Huntingdon before settling in at the state house when he
began working at the fire tower for $350 per month and free
house rent, including water.
"Then we bought the place where we now live and, of course,
you know how it is, when you own a place you want to live in
it," he quips.
His future plans include working and fishing.
"I don't have time to do all the fishing I want to do," he
smiles, "and my wife loves to fish, too. I've got an old pair
of black tennis shoes, and, when I put them tennis shoes on,
my wife gets her pocket book and goes to throwing knick-knacks
in a lunch box and gets her tennis shoes on, too, 'cause she
knows I'm going to the river."
For more information about forestry management programs see
www.state.tn.us/agriculture/forestry.
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