Sauconian wrote:Cool heirlooms Dale.
I know what all those logging terms are except the misery whip. I'd guess at maybe a 2 man saw ?
Fran
You guessed it Fran!
Another term I heard old time loggers use is "
riding the saw." This was when the guy on one end of the saw would not pull & push equal to his partner, but let his partner do more than half the work. This usually led to a fight.
The old timers are gone now. There weren’t many of them even when I was a kid.
Loggin’ was, and still is, one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The old timers were tough, and then they were usually broken up. There were lots of loggin’ widows back in the day. One of the causes was so common that it received the name “
widow maker.” That is where a tree hangs up in another tree and doesn’t fall all the way to the ground. It is also used of a large limb that is broken off and hangs up in another tree. Some of the limbs can be 1-2 feet in diameter.
My granddad had his back beat to pieces, and had it fused in the 1930s. Dad said it was from driving the old log trucks with hard rubber tires.
My dad used to fall timber, but his first job in the lumber industry was at a mill (he was in high school), as a “
pond rat” Those were the guys who pushed the logs across the pond to the chain that took them up into the mill.
There was an enormous amount of waste in the old methods of logging and milling. Most every town in Oregon had at least one mill, and every mill had a “
Wigwam Burner” where the scraps & sawdust was burned. I saw a whole mill burn down, caused by sparks from the wigwam burner. Sometimes it would burn up the whole town.
When I grew up most every small town had a huge metal wigwam burner that dominated the skyline. There are very few left any more.
Even the preachers were tough. There was a preacher who used to make a circuit of loggin’ camps here in Oregon & Washington. His name was Teddy Leavitt. The loggers looked forward to the entertainment as they were way far out in the woods & didn’t get to town very often.
The ritual went something like this:
Teddy would drive his team into the loggin’ camp and set up his tent. He would be inside getting ready to preach and one of the loggers would cut one of the ropes that held up the tent.
The tent would hall down on Teddy.
Teddy would crawl out and ask who did it.
No one would answer.
Teddy would say. “Alright, I want the biggest baddest guy in camp. I am gonna’ whip him. And when I do you all are gonna’ come hear me preach. If he whips me I will pack my tent and leave.”
Those who knew Teddy say he never lost a fight. But he did preach many a sermon with one eye swollen shut, with a split lip, or some other evidence that the other fellow wasn’t pullin’ his punches for the preacher.
Them old boys were tough as “
cork boots.”
Dale
I just LOVE sharp stuff !! Talk later, Mikek
