Museumlike saw shop changes to suit the times.

Byline: BOB KEEFER The Register-Guard

WALK INTO HORNER'S saw shop on Highway 99 north of Cottage Grove and you enter an alternative rural universe. Deer and elk heads line the walls, not to mention moose and caribou. Old license plates - one from Oregon actually says 1915 on it - are nailed up in a row next to the wood stove.

And old chain saws - the kind from those post-war days when men were men and loggers ruled the woods - fill a high shelf above the sales floor.

Twenty-eight years ago, Larry Joe Horner, a slow-talking mountain of a man whose father raised him without television but always with a welding rig near at hand, started selling chain saws from a new shop in Dorena Lake. He'd already worked in a saw shop as a high school student, been in the Air Force and worked for a paving outfit up in Canada.

Despite its rural charms, Dorena Lake wasn't exactly the center of the retail universe, so Horner drove a log truck at the same time, carrying new saws in the cab to demonstrate their virtues to possible customers he encountered on his runs.

In 1975, he decided he had to move "to town" - that's Cottage Grove - and Horner's took off. Those were still good years in the timber industry, and Horner did well for himself, moving again in 1988 to his current location on Highway 99 just north of town.

Expanded offerings

That's about the time the bottom fell out of logging, as environmental restrictions choked off the already dwindling supply of available public timber.

"The worst time is after I moved here in '88," says Horner, 51. "The spotted owl thing. Nobody knows what direction we're going. How do I survive it? Lot of them didn't. I guess the reason why is they didn't know what else to do. A lot of them did fold. There was quite a number of shops quit. That just give me more need. I'm the only one in Cottage Grove at this moment."

Horner has kept his business going through the downturn in logging and the recent overall recession by expanding his offerings from strictly logging-related equipment to home and garden tools.

You can still buy chain saws at Horner's but you can buy lawn mowers, too, and edgers and weed trimmers and a whole line of household products. That's the key to surviving, Horner says.

"Soon it'll be lawn mower season and we'll be stacked in here," he says. "About March I'll start dragging them in. Or so it has been in the past."

Home and hearth 

Expanding his business to cater to homeowners has helped Horner become a little more recession-proof.

Basically, when times get hard, he says, people hunker down, concentrating more on home and hearth.

"Sometimes during these depression eras or whatever you want to call it, people tend to do more around their home," he says. "So they use their equipment more. People tend to cut firewood more. I think they get back to the basics."

The store also carries a few items of clothing - nothing fancy, no designer labels, but just plain functional gear.

"We got into the outdoor wear, boots and clothing like that," Horner says. "Probably not into the style so much. I'm not into western-type wear. Just outdoor rugged wear. That's what our people want."

Like a museum

The museum-style look inside the shop just kind of happened. Although Horner hunts, the menagerie of wall-mounted animal heads all came from elsewhere. "These are all somebody else's," he says. "Most people didn't have room to put them in their homes or they got throwed out of their homes."

The saws arrived in much the same haphazard manner.

"A guy brought me an old saw and they have the fair over here every year and a cutting contest, I thought it would be nice to take this old saw over there and show them the difference what a new saw and old saw was," Horner explains.

"We just went on over and it started happening. People would bring me saws and I would put them up for them to see and keep, you know. Some of them run, some of them (were) made run. And people bring me things and I would find things at garage sales."

One of the best old saws is older than its owner.

"I have a PM - a Power Machinery - saw. I can't say for sure, but I've been told ones like it date to '39. I'm not saying this one's a '39 but it's definitely not a '49."

Sawing out a work ethic 

Nostalgia aside, the old saws don't cut any better than the new ones and in fact usually cut worse, Horner says.

"They didn't know what a chain saw was supposed to look like at that time," he says. The carburetors on old saws had to be rotated before a cutter could turn the saw to use it for falling a standing tree, Horner notes with scorn. "And the chain didn't cut very well even at best. It was cantankerous and loud. But they run."

Horner's children have worked alongside their father off and on for years. Two sons, Dan and Steve, work in the shop when they're not otherwise occupied with high school or racing sprint cars.

A daughter, now 23 and in college, used to help out as well.

"At least they get an idea what's going on," the father says. "So when they drop in on somebody else down the line at least they'll have some work ethic."

HORNER'S INC.

Address: 79132 Highway 99, Cottage Grove

Owner: Larry Joe Horner

Years in business: 28

Number of employees: Four full time, including himself.

Family members involved in the business: Sons Steve and Dan occasionally help out.

- The Register-Guard

CAPTION(S):

CHRIS PIETSCH / The Register-Guard With the feel of a museum, Horner's Saw Shop sports a huge collection of old-time logging equipment and other memorabilia. CHRIS PIETSCH / The Register-Guard When he can, Danny Horner helps his dad, Larry, at Horner's Saw Shop in Cottage Grove.