The Men all gathered early for breakfast at the Mess Hall, sitting down in front of great stacks of flap jacks and many a big serving plate of scrambled eggs, potatoes and sausage or ham. The smell of Hot coffee and good food filled the air in the big room the Loggers took their meals in. what a fine site to see. The cooks took pride in their ability to satisfy the men with good food. some of the best camps had three big meals a day and two break lunches in-between, so the men could do the tasks before them each day with lots of energy. each logger was skilled at his particular job, and did his duty to make the work in the woods pay off for the lumber company and their timber boss! The well feed workers headed out to the forest at dawn. the ax men... the feller... the teamster... the hook-tender and the choker setters... along with the timber boss and the log scaler with a watchful eye on every mans efforts! many other jobs took place too in the old logging camps, like the stable man the blacksmith and the saw filer! some of the hardest and most dangerous work of anykind for a man to do was to be a logger! and the job of climber and tree topper was the most risky. working the tall timber of the once virgin forests was for very strong and daring men; men that could stand up to the cold... the heat... the back breaking swinging of the ax the pushing and pulling of the big cross cut saws and the rolling of big heavy logs. bucking of the felled trees too was no easy chore; and the peril that hung high over head in the limbs above made a bucker uneasy... at anytime time a limb could break free snag and fall through the air to the ground smashing him to pulp or killing him outright! these dangers made a many a logger a bit skittish after a while working in the woods... however the best woodsmen braved all the risks and had little fear! seeing the death of another logger or being crippled was part of the lore of being a logger! every good timber man accepted his possible fate like a man should; However, the logging must go on and by God loggers live and die to cut wood! those cold winter days of log skidding from deep in the forests to the landing to sort and load the cut logs, the horses or oxen pulling large sleds of cut logs to the rivers edge in wait for the spring break up. then came time for the river drive to the sawmills down stream and the end of a season of logging. so many a task it takes to make the lumber we use to make our homes, our furniture and all the other wood products that have made America the wonderful country it is today. we owe thanks to those loggers and sawmillers of old, and to the modern timber man too! for without wood products this world wouldn't be the same. We Live... We Love, and we log.
Life After Death Of A Tree
I got a hold of them Old Hemlock Planks and pulled each one free from their pegs that held them fast to the big hand hewn sleeper logs under them, It was as good as diging for gold to me, and the hard work was doing good to my soul. Never had much time in my life for play, was alway's working away at some thing or another... Got going hard at the wood business back in the early 1970's around bout 1975 worked full time in My Pap's steam power saw mill and the love wood grew stong in me. As the years past by my part in the lumber industry grew here in Pennsylvania and as a young man in a business surounded by old log and lumber men, I made my way up the tree trunk so to speak... Early in the 1980's My hard work payed off big and was selling Veneer logs to the Danzer Company In Germany, exporting logs to them. As the time past, I felt the hunger for more saw dust and bought an old frick saw mill complete and in runing condition near Benton, PA. Well I ran that for a while and found out that trying to do to many things at once didn't work out well, however it was an adventure to say the least! Between cutting wood and hunting and fishing I had little time left to do much else. Then as the years flew by and the up's and downs came and went; it was clear to me that some of the ideas about old barn wood and big dead trees gave way to me trying to work with those products and I've never been the same since! Got the Old Wood sickness... Love the stuff to death, so I formed Dead Wood Lumber Company and been making a go at it now for some years, and seem to have come up with some more inovative way's to doctor up the old wood and make it look real fancy. Hope you give me a call, so as I can talk a spell with you about wood and how you was fixing to use it around your place?
