Qeoallzottnat. Ol A[ PBIVTTT

We dropped in for a call on Al Privett the other day, down at E. K. Wood's big Los Angeles yard. It's always a pleasure, because the gang in that offrce is one of tlle most friendly we find anywhere. Al Privett is really J. A. Privett, Manager, but he is "Al" to most of the lumber folks of the whole Western territory.

He is an old-time lumberman with a keen memory, who loves to travel back through the years, and cherry the fat about things that were in the lumber yesterdays around Los Angeles. So he said to us: "You folks are still in the Central Building aren't you?" We admitted that we were. "Do you know what was on that corner when I first saw it, away back in the nineties, when I was a kid? It was a retail lumber yard. Yes sir, that's what was there. It be' longed to D. J. Nofziger. At that time there was a lot of competition and price cutting going on in the retail lumber business in this town, showing that things have always been somewhat the same unless there's a war to change them temporarily. And that lumber yard was in the thick of the fight. I shall never forget the big sign that Nofziger had up in front of his yard. It read: 'We skin them all.' It referred to the price war, and warned folks that lumber prices were rock bottom at that yard.."

So we asked Al how far back his lumber service in Lob Angeles went, and learned that he went to work in a lumber yard in 1897. So next year he will round out his fiftieth year in the lumber business. We asked him if there are any other lumbermen living today who started here as early as he did, and he racked his memory and couldn't think of any, with one exception. He started his lumber career with the San Pedro Lumber Company, and O. C. Abbott, mill superintendent today for San Pedro, started with that firm at the same time, and has been with them ever since. But Al couldn't remember any other lumbermen living today, who were in it then. He said that George Lounsberry came along just a few years after he did, and also E. C. Parker, but he preceded both of them. Both these gentle-' men are still going strong in the Los Angeles lumber business.

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Al Privett has worked for three generations of the Wood family,rfirst with the original E. K. Wood, and then with two later generations. He celebrated his 67th birthday just the other day, but is a young man'for his years, filled with optimism, good cheer, friendliness, helpfulness, and human understanding that has made him one of the most popular individuals in the lumber industry of California. To know him is to like him, to trust him, and to admire him. And if you too have reached that tide in life where the shadows are slanting from the West, he is a great man to walk around a lumber yard with, and ramble backward through the years, to other days, and other men. There should bemore Al Privetts in the industry.