An attack on an oasis of civility

The pair of fatal shootings at Bohnhoff Lumber Co. in Vernon, just south of downtown, on May 21 was in its way unremarkable.

At about 9:30 in the morning, police say, Saul Moreno, a yard tallyman, entered the cramped office where Alan Bohnhoff, who ran the business, worked alongside his father, Charlie (whose cat slept in his desk drawer), Walt Maas and other family members. Moreno reportedly was angry about an order Alan had asked him to fill. There were words, witnesses told police, then Moreno drew a .40-caliber Beretta, leaned over the desk and fired five shots directly into Alan’s head, neck and chest.

“I ran over there and held my boy in my arms when he died. I gave him a kiss goodbye,” Charlie Bohnhoff told a local newspaper.

Next, police say, Moreno put the gun point-blank to the face of Alan’s son, Mike, but it misfired. Then he headed into the yard, where he allegedly sneaked up behind Jaime Sanchez and shot him through the back of the head.

These acts were a private tragedy for the families involved. Yet the killings also shattered something larger. Bohnhoff Lumber, a century-old family-run business in the heart of industrial Los Angeles County, is the preferred source of wood for woodworkers across the Southland, an unlikely and scruffy temple to the raw material of expressiveness. I know this firsthand, having trekked innumerable times to 3411 E. 26th St., fighting the stream of truckers who use the street as a thoroughfare to cross Soto and Alameda.

It’s not that Bohnhoff is an especially cordial place -- it isn’t. I have spent a lot of time wandering the yard’s huge steel shed or idling outside, shifting from one foot to the other, growing impatient at the slow “service” as forklifts crisscrossed the yard, picking up and setting down stacks of timbers. But then it would be my turn to have the forklifts do my bidding, moving towering piles of wood so I could comb hundreds of board feet to find the one stick of Red Balau or figured maple that answered my prayers.

To woodworkers, there is no greater gift than the license to select the perfect rough-hewn board. If you are in the least way interested in working with wood, you’re eventually going to find your way to Bohnhoff, and once you do, you’re invariably going to discover that graciousness and hospitality don’t always require an exchange of pleasantries or a mask of etiquette. At Bohnhoff, the essential decency of the place is never on parade. Indeed, what makes it so thoroughly civilized is the fact that employees never flaunt the kindness, and generosity, they invariably extend.

You came to understand the essential grace of Bohnhoff when out in the yard with Jaime Sanchez, who was 31 when he was killed last month. Jaime, a Marine Corps veteran, was almost always dressed in a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and he drove his enormous forklift masterfully. In the main apse of the shed, dozens of species of wood are stacked 30 feet high and higher, but Jaime knew where every pile was, and once he was ready to set some bundles down for you, he went to work with savvy and swiftness. His forklift was as tall as the cab of a diesel big-rig, but he maneuvered it as if it were a Tonka toy. Still, when he started to wheel it about, you instinctively got out of the way. Suddenly, thousands of pounds of dense, long hardwoods were in motion, and then, in one single, continuous movement, as graceful as Baryshnikov, Jaime placed a pile at your feet.

This isn’t Home Depot, and the two men killed won’t be easily replaced. Their deep affection for their work and unflagging respect for their customers were bedrock virtues that made, and I hope will continue to make, Bohnhoff Lumber an oasis of civility in a too often indifferent city.