Don't stand on the rope!

My dad thought it was time that my 19 year old butt needed some good education, in the woods, learning to be a man instead of a teenage drunk. I had spend the past year going to Forestry School at the University of Montana in Missoula and had managed to be on academic probation (0.4 on a 5 point system) as I had flunked everything except bowling 1 and 2. I was also on social probation because of drinking.That 1st day on the job on the sawmill woods crew would be a real lesson in life for me. The day before I had been at the McCullough Chain Saw store and bought a brand new, full brim, yellow, metal hard hat and I put 2 MSU stickers on the sides. The foreman picked me up the next morning at 4:30 AM because we had a one hour drive to the timber sale. Our chariot was an old International 4x4 with a crew cab. It was Air Force blue because my Dad had bought if at an auction from the Air Force. When he bought the truck it had 135,000 miles on it and our foreman Burt said they had just put another 100,000 miles on it since they had it. Other passengers were Bob who had worked in the woods for years and was our chief road builder meaning he operated the old (1942) Cat D-8 cable dozer or a logging truck. Bob had previously been a fireman at the Air Force base where he drove their Redox crash truck. Before that Bob had been in the Army in Korea. Interesting guy. Our other passenger was Tom and he was the Jammer operator. Tom had moved here from Oregon where he had spent most of his life in the woods and his son and I graduated from High School together the year before.He was some type of offbeat religion that didn't tolerate swearing and he evangelized once in the while. Tom also didn't change his trousers very often. His trousers were all wool and were very traditional lumberjack and they were full of pitch and grease. The crew joke was that when he took them off at night they just stood up by themselves. Tom wore a pair of corks which were high topped logging boots with steel pins on the bottom so he could walk on logs without falling off. Burt, the foreman, was another that had spent his life in the woods. Like Bob, Burt operated anything that needed to be operated or fixed. Burts daughter and I graduated from High School together. Burts face told a lot of painful stories as it was wrinkled and full of crags and pock marks and a whole bunch of small scars. Burts hands were the most powerful I had ever shook. Burt was the antithesis of a German woodsman. Burt, Mel and Bob (not the one I was riding with this day but Bob the mill foreman) had all been with my father since the first sawmill back in Galena. When Dad started that sawmill he offered all three of them equal partnerships in the mill. They all refused and wanted only to work for wages. They had all been togther in the CCC's (Civilian Conservation Corps). My father was as tough and rugged as these three were because when he and my Mom got married they moved to the Southern Black Hills for work. He built their first house out of logs. My mothers Brother-in-laws were in the logging and saw milling business in that area. He worked as a contractor for one of them cutting railroad ties. You did that with a double bitted axe to cut the trees down and a Broad axe with which you made the sides straight. They had to weigh 190# when wet. Tough life and I was now right in the middle of it. The expectations were high for me by my Father.

We pulled off the road on to one of our logging roads for a ways and then Burt stopped the truck and got out crawling into the back bed of the truck. There was an old brown and rusted job type box and he lifted up the cover and took something out. When he went by the truck I saw the words DANGER EXPLOSIVES on a large wooden box. My heart stopped but then I noticed that the box was all beat up and oil stained. I figured it was tools or something. Burt went up the road about 30 feet and turned a corner. Shortly Burt came back without the box and climbed back in. He lit a cigarette and took a small book out of his pocket and started to write. Suddenly the forest exploded and I think it was the loudest noise I had ever heard. Tom said, under his breath, "Fire in the hole". Burt hollard "everyone out and look for sticks". I shouted "what sticks" because I was all frazzled knowing I had been sitting about 6" from that dynamite and Burt explained that he had just blown up a box of last years dynamite that had sat in the tool box all winter and when it freezes and thaws out all winter it crystallizes and becomes a little touchy, a little bit unstable. So, you get rid of it and were looking for loose sticks that might have blown out and didn't explode. Didn't need any damn kids finding them now did we? After looking for 15 minutes or so we got back in the truck and head for the sale we were working. When we drove up we parked in front of a large log truck which was backed up to what looked like the ugliest crane I had ever seen. The driver was sitting on a pile of logs, reading the morning paper and had a cup of coffee in his hand. Burt introduced us and the driver got up as Burt extended his hand to help him up. His name was Paul and he was crippled and it looked to me like he had polio or something. I had seen a lot of that when I was a kid. Tom was in the cab trying to coax the old crane truck into some more life. Bob soon came by with the pickup battery and a set of battery cables and he and Tom finally got the Jammer started for one more day. The Jammer, was an old logging truck that had been retired from my fathers log hauling fleet and converted to a log loader or jammer. It had been an old GMC cab-over and now didn't have any doors or fenders and had been given the name Smokey. There was no room for a passenger as the seat and floor boards had been converted over to carrying spare parts and lots of tools. All were perched as if they wanted to fall out with any type of bump. On the back of the truck, just behind the cab, was mounted and old truck frame with pins so it could go up and down. On top of that was mounted a big spool of cable and this spool had a chain and sprocket on one end which was somehow hooked up to the power take off which was now running and singing as Tom oiled it. The frame had a couple of I beams welded to the end which was now up in the air reaching out over the top of the logging truck. The cable, from the spool below, ran through a chive or pulley on the end of the extended frame and terminated into some fittings that allowed for two other cables, each about 15 feet, to run through and each of these cables held a large metal hook assembly with a rope hooked up on the end. Up where the end of the frame was, a platform had been built complete with 2 long levers (a clutch and brake) and what appeared to be an accelerator pedal. As Tom climbed up to his perch Burt picked up a hook and hollarded at Steve (crippled truck driver) "grab your hook Steve looks like were ready". Burt started explaining to me the fine points of being a "Hooker" and how the system worked. 10 trucks a day were needed, in the mill every day, to keep it operating and that means that each of the 5 trucks would do one turn around and that would be 10 loads. If trucks broke down we would put our company trucks on the job until any backlogs were cleared up. What it meant for me was I was loading 10 trucks a day and I really needed to hustle. Burt loaded a couple of logs for me and I watched as he held the hook at the end of the log, as did the driver on the other end. Tom would release the brake, release the clutch and accelerate.Picture is of Ivans truck being pushed out of mud by Bob with our D-6 dozer As the cable went taught, the hooks were set in the log ends and Tom accelerated and the logs flew up over the stakes and onto the load where needed, guided by the hookers with their ropes. As the log reached its destination and the cable went slack, the hookers jerked on the hooks and took them over the stakes when Tom pushed the clutch in and the drum freewheeled allowing the men to guide their hooks to the next log. "Piece of cake" I said to Burt as he handed me the rope. "Don't stand on the rope" he answered and I silently said "Duh." The engine roared and my first log slipped effortlessly over the stakes. I tried to pull the rope out to fast and managed to turn the log on the truck bed. Tom jumped down onto the load, from his perch with a cant hook in hand and rolled the log into position. The next log went better and soon the truck was loaded. You really had to be quick because those logs flew over the stakes. They had to or we wouldn't ever get all of the trucks loaded. I quickly learned that when the driver hollars "CHAINS" you duck and get the Hell out of the way because about 30# of chains are actually following his voice and he came around and showed me how to help him get the chains so he could get the logs locked in (boomered) and get away as two more trucks were waiting in the background and time was money. It was an interesting job, slightly dangerous, and I liked all of the drivers even it they busted me because I was the bosses son. I was holding my own. The logs, which were in 10' to 16' lengths were decked along side the logging roads by skidders and thier teams of horses. We were always walking on top of those log decks and you always had to be aware of shifting logs and rattlesnakes as this was good rattlesnake country. Sometimes a log would come out of one of its hooks on the way up and you always needed to be ready to jump out of the way. Burt came back as we were loading our 5th truck and it would be time for lunch and I was starved. Mom had my lunch ready when I got up this morning and it contained 2 fried pork chops,two pieces of buttered bread, a tub of apple sauce and a nice sized piece of homemade apple pie for desert. I could hardly keep my mind off of my lunch, I was so hungry. We were loading the last few logs out of the deck and I was grateful to be walking on solid ground. I could feel Burts steely gaze as he watched me perform. Our last log was going up and Tom was accelerating very quickly to clear the stakes and I could feel myself lifting off of the ground, I lost my hold on the rope and was propelled backwards about 20' and upwards at a high rate of speed. I wound up at the rear of the, now removed, log deck smack dab in a small grove of aspin trees. My hard hat was gone and it felt like I lost all of my teeth. When I got my bearings I saw Burt leaning over the top of me with his hands on his knees. I didn't know what happened until I heard Burt say "I told you not to stand on the rope!"

Jobs at the Sawmill - Part II

As I aged I got more and more different jobs. I graduated from rock picker and sticker boy to jobs that changed daily. My first serious construction job came when I was assigned to the concrete crew of the construction company building homes. My first job was to feed the cement mixer. Three gravel, two sand and one cement. We had a large mixer that someone else operated as my job was just to feed the mixer. I would fill it up and then watch it mix, while adding water, as the "barrow operators" stood in line with their beat up wheelbarrows waiting for another load. Once it was properly mixed, the operator would dispense a "to the top" load of concrete to each operator and they would head off to the foundation while maneuvering around on 2x10 wooden planks. At the foundation they would dump their loads and hustle back to the mixer. Our foreman Mel was on he knees at the foundation directing where to dump each barrow while leveling the concrete and smoothing it out. Two other men were helping place the concrete with flat shovels and other jobs, at the direction of Mel, such as cutting keys in the foundation or shoveling excess concrete away from the foundation boards so the wooden forms would not be locked into place. These two men had the best jobs as they got to stand and talk a lot. They smoked while they worked and joked a lot with Mel. I envied them and aspired to their jobs but I couldn't figure out how to get on that part of the crew. I had to settle on being the "Mixer Loader" until I could figure that out.

Shortly the foundation was done and we merely switched to another foundation that was just like that one only on the other side of the mixer. It seemed that our crew was being decimated by the flu which was exactly how I ended up as "Mixer Loader". As we switched sides, we took a short break, where I heard that 2 barrow operators were moving up to work with Mel as his 2 men went home sick. Another man was coming down from the Sawmill to work with us but that left us still one man short. So this is how you move up, I said to myself. Striking while the iron was hot I went up to Mel, as he drank his coffee. "Mel" I intoned with my best deep voice and my thumbs stuck into my belt, "I can handle that wheelbarrow, I mean barrow, you know and I would like to take a crack at it." Mel looked me up and down and just said "sure". When we were back up and running and the new guy was learning how to load the mixer, I stood on the plank, behind my barrow waiting for my 1st load of concrete. The guy ahead of me told me the in and outs to "Barrow Operation" this amounted to whatever you do, don't let the load get away as Mel doesn't like that to well. Keep your feet the same distance apart as your shoulders. "Plow, plop" and the first load of concrete hit my wheelbarrow and I almost lost it but for the guy behind me grabbing the side. As I headed for the foundation I could hardly keep the barrow full of shifting concrete stable but I plodded on. The concrete ran over the edges as it sloshed from side to side. Got my load dumped and headed back for more. I brought over three more loads and we were at the corner and shifting directions and that is when it happened. As I came back with the next load I was feeling about as cocky as a 15 year old could feel because after all this was my 5th load and there was nothing to it. As I lifted up on the handles to dump, I hit a rock on the plank and lost control. I tried to over react to catch the load but all I did was steer the entire load of wet concrete into Mel's lap. I looked down at Mel and his entire lap was covered and I couldn't even see his legs. He was holding his float in one hand and just looked at me shaking his head slowly. "I think a better place for you Dickson is back loading the mixer" he said as he stood up and cleaned himself as best as he could with his hands. I looked back, as I got to the mixer, and there was Mel standing while one of the guys rinsed him off with the full force of the hose. Every day Mel wore clean, starched, Khaki pants and shirt, a holdover from his days working as foreman on the CCC's and in the Army. Mel was as tough as they come and he just stood there, still staring at me and slowly shook his head as the ice cold water ran over him. Good thing it was hot out. The next day I was returned to the Sawmill crew and my job as being a tailer.

Working at my Dad's Sawmill

My father had a sawmill in the Black Hills of SD when I was growing up. The main mill was located in Sturgis and was by far the largest. When I left the mill in 1972, because he had sold it, we were sawing about 100,000 board feet per day plus a railroad car full of chips for making paper. What I first remember is the mill was fairly small probably sawing about 10 to 15,000 feet per day. I was about 12 when I got my first job at the sawmill. I wanted money and my two older brothers worked there so I could ride with them at 7. I could only work until noon but that was OK because by then I was bored to death and it was time to go swimming anyway. My first job was called stick and rock picker upper. I was impressed with the title and told everyone how important I was. All of our roads were dirt and gravel and I was responsible to make sure all of the rocks were picked up and also all of the sticks. The sticks were about 3' long and 3/4" X 1 1/2" and were placed between the layers of green lumber in the piles as the left the "green chain" which was where all of the rough boards (green and wet) came out of the sawmill. The fork lift picked them up and hauled them to the yard to stay (1 to 2 months) while they dried. As my Dad explained to me, the forks would drive over the roads and hit the rocks and the resulting lurching would cause some of the sticks to come out of the piles. As these sticks laid in the road, other vehicles such as cars, dump trucks and logging trucks would drive over these sticks and they would fly up and hit the break lines and break them. Without breaks a logging truck could crash and kill the driver. So you can see that I had a very important job and I worked very hard at it to keep the drivers from being killed. I think I made $1.50 per 1/2 day and that was good money being the minimum wage was only 75 cents [in 1955 you could still type out a cent sign (¢) on the typewriter without it being a big deal]. Before long I was wallowing in dough and the envy of all my friends. I made more money than my friends that were paperboys. Eventually I ran out of roads and to get sticks I just followed the fork lift around so I asked my Dad for a different job, for a while, so the sticks and rocks could build back up. I got in Dad's car [a 1955 green Ford with dual air horns on the right fender and a spotlight on the other fender] and we headed for a remote part of the sawmill yard. It was the area where they dumped the slabs from the sawmill. Slabs are the outer part of the log, containing the bark, which was waste. They were put in an old, yellow, State, snowplow type, Dump truck that Dad had purchased at auction and it had no brakes [ too many sticks] and the truck went up to this remote area and dumped the slabs. They had to be piled as they were running out of room. My new job. Not very important though as there were no lives in danger. Well I piled slabs for days and then one day it was very hot and there was no shade. My 12 year old mind figured it out and I took some of the slabs from the pile I was making and slid them about 1/2 way off. The sun was on the opposite side so it made an excellent shade break. I crawled underneath for my break and promptly went to sleep. I was awoke by my Dad kicking the bottom of my foot because it was lunch time. Boy was he mad and I couldn't come back to work for a couple of weeks which was OK by me. I had enough money in my pocket to get by and this allowed me to go to the pool in the mornings also. 12 years old, swimming in the morning and afternoon with enough money to spend at the snack bar. Life didn't get much better than that in 1955.