This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

And you can listen to the show on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast.

Up next, a story from Carl Merlantis.

Carl is a Marine who received the Navy Cross for his service in Vietnam and the author of Matterhorn

and what it is like to go to war.

Today he shares with us the story of his time growing up in the Pacific Northwest

and working with his grandfather in one of America's most dangerous professions.

Take it away, Carl.

Thank you. and one of America's most dangerous professions. Take it away, Carl. I was born in Astoria, Oregon.

My dad was actually in the Battle of the Bulge at the time I was born.

And I grew up in the town about 15 miles away. My mother went up there to have me at the hospital there.

Seaside, Oregon, which was a logging town, a little town of about 2,500 people. The two major professions where I grew up were fishing and logging.

And I actually looked it up. They are the two most dangerous occupations that we have.

About every year somebody's father would die in the woods or somebody would drown.

And I remember five of my friends lost their fathers during the time I was going to school with them.

So dying death was, it wasn't morbid. We just didn't think much about it.

It was like, oh, yeah,

Alan's dad just got rolled over while long and he died and, you know, and you're eight or nine,

you know, it's just plug along. And most of the kids in the summer try to get jobs in the woods

because they paid really well. That was back in the day when, you know, labor was making good money. I mean, you know,

...