To Be a Logger

by Lois Lenski

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  To Be a Logger

  Lois Lenski

  For my

  beloved

  Forest Children

  Contents

  I The Boy

  II The House

  III The Rattler

  IV The Woods

  V The Prize

  VI The Runaway

  VII The Ride

  VIII The Fire

  IX The Blow

  X The Treasure

  XI The Choice

  A Biography of Lois Lenski

  Foreword

  In the winter of 1957–1958, I had letters from five different locations in Oregon, inviting me to come to Oregon to write a logging story. Teachers and children there wanted to be represented in my Regional Series. Several of the locations sounded promising, and I exchanged letters with the children for a time. But unfortunately, due to illness in my family, I was unable to follow up by traveling to Oregon. So all my contacts were lost.

  Other projects for other books intervened, but the idea for an Oregon logging story was never forgotten. I collected what material I could find and I read books on Oregon, but found little or no information on how a logger’s family really lives. Not until 1966 was I free to entertain the thought of a trip to Oregon. I knew, from the past experience of writing all the other books in the Regional Series, that the only way to get the material was to go to the region and get it firsthand from the people living there, and to get my own impressions through my own eyes, ears, mind, and feelings.

  One of my previous correspondents had been Mrs. Portia Shiltz, editor of the Myrtle Creek Mail, a small weekly newspaper. I wrote to her to renew our acquaintance, and with the help of a small news item in the Mail, I began to receive more Oregon letters. One of the first came from Viola Rogers of Drew Rural Station, Tiller, Oregon. Mrs. Rogers wrote:

  “I run a country store and my husband has a gas station. All our friends are loggers …”

  That was enough. Instinctively I felt this was the place I wanted to go. When Mrs. Rogers offered the hospitality of her home as a base for my stay while doing my field work, I felt more certain than ever that the choice was the right one. I never regretted the choice.

  In June of 1966 I flew to San Francisco, where I was met by Celeste Frank, the former Iowa teacher who had helped me get material for Corn-Farm Boy. She offered to go with me, drive a car for me, and help in every way possible. We flew from San Francisco to Medford, Oregon, where the Rogerses met us. They drove us fifty miles, over our first Oregon mountain, to Drew and to their home.

  Then began many happy adventures. My time was short, I had hard work to do and I had to work fast. My days were crowded, filled with new experiences, new people, and a completely new way of life. As always in other regions, everyone was eager and anxious to help.

  With Mrs. Frank as a congenial companion, I attended the Rooster Crow contest at Rogue River, visited Skeeters’ Logging Camp at Prospect, toured the Oregon Veneer Mill at White City, interviewed Mrs. Al Cooper, the grandmother logging-truck driver at Shady Cove, and rode on a logging truck myself with Bob Bonney from the logging location in the forest 3500 feet high for 135 miles round trip to the mill at White City. Besides interviewing logging families, I made sketches, took photographs and helped Mrs. Frank collect specimens of Oregon trees, flowers, and shrubs.

  The families who contributed generously were: Glann Rogers, foe Zimmerman, Ralph Stauch, Joe Crumpton, Richard (Bob) Bonney, John Niemela, Al Cooper, Ray Norris, Jim L. Jenks, Clair Henry, and Cliff Hughes. To them all and their children go my sincere thanks for making this book possible.

  In many ways, it has been one of the most difficult of my Regional books to write. The technical information regarding the several methods of logging has been difficult to absorb and to simplify to a degree whereby it would not overload the story interest. Yet this concrete information telling just how the logging is done must be a vital part of the story especially for boy readers. So it could not be omitted.

  I had anticipated that it might be difficult to tie up the men’s occupation to family life and the children’s interests, but here I was agreeably surprised. In perhaps no other Regional that I have written is the father’s occupation more fully shared by wife and children. They all literally live logging. They eat and sleep logging all the year round just as I have been doing while writing and illustrating this book.

  There is an appeal about logging, about the whole story of the big woods and what has happened to it over the years, the drama of its disappearance at the hands of man’s greed, and the long slow course of his coming to a realization of his folly, and a determination to rectify his mistaken policies and do what he can to bring the forests back to Oregon. I hope it is not too late—although scenes of desolation on logged-off mountainsides have left a scar on my memory never to be erased. By way of contrast with the majesty and grandeur of those portions of the forests still left intact, surely one of the most magnificent of God’s creations, one cannot help but wish that man had come to his senses sooner, that the lust for money had not so dominated the lumber companies’ objectives to the exclusion of all other values.

  One must remember that logging is a way of life to the people who live it and depend upon it for their well-being. To them the cutting of trees is not a tragedy, but an occupation, a means of earning money to pay for food and consumer goods. It is the only way of life they have ever known and being in it and of it, it is hard for them to see it as objectively as the outsider can.

  All the logging that I witnessed and heard about was being done on National Forest land. I heard many conflicting opinions regarding Forest Service policies and practices, expressed by honest men who know the woods and have worked in it all their lives as their ancestors did, and whose way of life is bound up in the forest. I heard more antagonism than approval of Forest Service practices. The loggers are better able to judge these matters than I, an outsider and casual but keenly interested observer. I have expressed no opinion of my own, but have merely acted as a reporter, setting down what I heard.

  Incidentally, the Forest Service men are not called “rangers” in this area. In fact, I was told that if you called one of their men a “ranger,” he would be sure you were from back east or would “drop dead with shock.”

  To be a logger or not to be, is a question every boy in the logging areas will have to decide for himself. There is no doubt there is a pull and a fascination about the occupation which can get into the bloodstream of some, while others will turn away from it.

  Logging is in a period of transition.

  Besides the actual cutting and harvesting done by man, other forces—fire, disease, and insects are also working for the destruction of the forests. This means that logging as done in the past is nearing an end, and that man’s work in the woods will in the future take on a different character. The answer, therefore, for the true forest lover, can be only the one chosen by my hero—a constructive approach. Lumbering, too, has changed, has lately become so diversified and has created so many new jobs, it is certain they will attract the boys of the area in the years to come. That, of course, is a different story.

  As in my other Regionals, learning to know and trying to understand a new way of life has been a rich and rewarding experience, and I thank my many Oregon friends for making it possible.

  Lois Lenski

  August 14, 1966

  SONG OF THE FOREST CHILDREN

  We walk in the forest

  when the wind is still;

  Not a branch moves,

  not a sound until

  A squirrel jumps up—r />
  a flash of brown,

  And a flood of pine cones

  goes tumbling down.

  We run from the forest

  when the wind blows wild;

  Down fall dead branches

  o’er rotten logs piled.

  Snake, squirrel, and rabbit

  show no fear,

  The forest their refuge

  when danger is near.

  We sleep in the forest

  beneath giant trees;

  Ghostly the moonlight,

  chilly the breeze.

  The screech owl hoots

  and the chipmunks play

  Over our heads

  as night turns to day.

  Chapter One

  THE BOY

  “Cork boots! I want cork boots!” cried Little Joe.

  Dad sat on the wood-box, greasing his boots. Calk boots, called “cork boots” were twelve inches high and had sharp spikes all over their soles. Little Joe wanted to wear them and go stumping through the house like Dad.

  “Makin’ splinters on the floor!” scolded Mom.

  Everybody laughed at Little Joe and teased him.

  “Your feet are too little, they’d fall off!” said Dad.

  “You’re plumb cuckoo!” jeered Jinx.

  “A fine logger you’ll be, ’fraidy cat!” teased big sister Sandy.

  But Little Joe kept on coaxing.

  “Cork boots! The very idea!” said Mom, her lips pressed tight. “You’ll never get a pair—I’ll see to that. I’m not raisin’ my son to be a logger, that’s for sure.”

  Dad just laughed.

  “Loggin’s in his blood, Nellie, don’t forget that. You’re not gonna make him a sissy-pants, if I have my way about it.”

  Little Joe did not get the boots, but he kept on wanting them.

  Little Joe’s father was a logger. He was called Big Joe Bartlett because he was so big and strong and husky.

  Little Joe, whose real name was Joel, lived with Mom and Dad and his two sisters in a log house built by Granddad. It stood on a rise of ground above a small creek in southwestern Oregon. A bumpy dirt road ran along by the creek out to the highway. All around were mountains covered with a dense forest of trees.

  Little Joe loved to climb trees. He climbed his first tree when he was only two. He ran out of the house and climbed a tree to get away from Mom. She came after him with a switch, but he only climbed higher.

  “You little monkey!” she scolded. “Come right down here.”

  But he did not come.

  She threw away her switch and still he did not come. Then she saw that he was scared. And he did not know how to get down. She had to lift him down.

  When he was five, Dad gave him an axe. So he began to chop trees down. He took a small saw of Dad’s and bucked (sawed) the trees into logs. He rolled the logs down the hill and watched. He laughed when they splashed into the creek.

  “He’s a little logger, for sure!” bragged Dad.

  Billy Weber was Little Joe’s best friend. Little Joe looked up to Billy because Billy was two years older than he. Billy had long shaggy hair and freckles on his nose. He was always barefoot in summer and his clothes were ragged. He lived over on the other side of the ridge, but he took a shortcut to Little Joe’s house. He came any time and was never in a hurry to go home.

  Billy liked chopping trees down just as Little Joe did. His father was a logger, too, and he knew little else.

  One day Billy and Little Joe went off up the hill, carrying their axes. They walked a while looking at trees on the way. Then they chose one and stopped.

  “I’ll make a bet with you,” said Billy. “You chop it down …”

  Little Joe listened.

  “I bet you can’t chop it down by the time I climb up to the top and back down again,” said Billy.

  “O.K.,” said Little Joe. “Go ahead. I’m a fast chopper. You’d better watch out.”

  Billy started climbing and Little Joe began chopping the tree. He chopped faster and faster and the chips went flying. Soon the tree began to lean. It cracked loudly. Little Joe jumped out of the way just in time. It fell with a loud galump and a noisy rustle of the branches.

  Little Joe won the bet. But where was Billy? He had climbed to the top, but hadn’t got back down again. Little Joe dropped his axe and stared.

  “Where are you, Billy?” he called in a weak voice.

  He could not see him anywhere and there was no answer. A squirrel jumped out of the tree and ran away.

  “Billy!” called Little Joe, panic-stricken. Was he mashed underneath?

  Then Dad was suddenly standing there beside him. He hadn’t heard Dad come up at all.

  “Billy is …” Little Joe began. “He’s underneath.”

  Dad pushed the branches aside. There was Billy underneath, laughing. He wasn’t hurt at all. He was only pretending.

  “Let’s do it again!” cried Billy.

  But Dad said no, he might get hurt.

  Little Joe learned a lot from Billy. Billy took him for hikes in the woods, the dogs at their heels. There was big, old lazy Ringo, the cow-dog, part Collie; mean little Corky, half bulldog, half-terrier; and Rex, just plain cur. All the loggers had plenty of dogs and most of them were mean. Oregon was a country of big trees, big logs, and big dogs.

  One day Little Joe and Billy came to a clearing of wild grass. They heard some yapping, but it was not the dogs. The boys stood still and listened.

  “Gray diggers!” said Billy. “Let’s go up quiet.”

  There they were, the digger squirrels. They were eating seeds off the wild grass. They were standing up, the tall grass between their legs. They filled the pockets in their cheeks with seeds.

  “Cute little fellas, ain’t they?” said Little Joe. “Sometimes I see them at the barn getting oats, or under the big oak tree, munching acorns.”

  “They got tunnels in the grass,” said Billy. “They make long runs and fill ’em up with acorns and seeds and stuff to eat in winter. Wish I’d brought my gun along.”

  “What do you want to shoot ’em for?” asked Little Joe.

  “Oh, just for the heck of it.”

  Suddenly out from the brush jumped the dog Corky. Before either of the boys could say a word, he grabbed the biggest digger squirrel by the neck, as the others disappeared in the burrows.

  Little Joe yelled and Billy grabbed at the dog. The dog dropped his prey. The squirrel lay on the ground, not moving. Little Joe brought it home on a stick, dropping it twice.

  “It’s just knocked out,” he kept saying.

  But it wasn’t.

  “It’s plumb dead,” said Dad, when he met them on the path.

  They made a hole and buried it.

  “Corky’s worse’n a hawk!” cried Little Joe, furious. “I’ll beat the living tar out of him!”

  He found a stick and chased after the dog. The dog ran to the house, yelping as if he had been killed. What a coward he was, after all. His yelps brought the girls out of the house, screaming. Jinx, long legs and long hair flying, and back of her Sandy, red hair in curlers, waving one of Mom’s aprons.

  “You’re cruel!” yelled Jinx. “Let my dog alone!”

  “Don’t you touch Corky again or I’ll clobber you!” shouted Sandy.

  Billy stood and watched, mouth wide open. He had no sisters, so did not know what to expect next.

  Suddenly the rumpus was all over. The girls dropped Corky and went indoors. Little Joe went off with Dad to feed the hogs, so there was nothing for Billy to do but go home.

  One day Little Joe and Jinx were loading house wood. Dad had falled a madrone tree, sawed off the limbs, bucked them in chunks, and split them. The children had to pile the wood in the pick-up. Madrone wood was good for firewood. It held the heat a long time and left few ashes.

  Jinx was younger than Little Joe. Her hair was long and always in the way. She often wore shorts and a T-shirt. She was a tomboy and liked doing all the things Little Joe did. />
  “What we need is a donkey to load this wood,” said Jinx. She threw a piece of wood into the truck angrily.

  “A donkey?” asked Little Joe.

  “Yes,” said Jinx, “like the loggers have, to load logs.”

  Little Joe stared at her. “Donkeys don’t load logs!” he said.

  “Yes, they do, and so do cats!”

  Little Joe said, “I don’t believe you.”

  Jinx told everybody at the supper table.

  “Little Joe says donkeys don’t load logs! And cats don’t either!”

  They laughed, Dad most of all.

  “I’m glad he don’t know,” said Mom. “There’s plenty of things he’s better off without knowing.”

  Dad looked at his son, disappointed and a little sad.

  “Son,” he said, “there’s two kinds of donkeys, and only one has four legs. Jinx meant the other kind. A donkey, to a logger, is a machine. So is a cat.”

  Little Joe looked at the floor, ashamed.

  “It’s time you went to the woods with me,” Dad said. “A good logger knows how to do anything in the woods. He can fall and buck trees, he can operate the donkey, the cat, or the shovel. He can top a tree and put up rigging. It’s time you learned about some of these things.”

  Mom shook her head.

  “I’ve lived all my life without seeing a logging operation,” she said, “and I hope I never will.”

  But she did not say the boy could not go. She knew it would be a waste of breath. Big Joe was determined to make a logger out of Little Joe, no matter what.

  Dad planned the trip the night before. He sent Little Joe to bed early.

  “Wake up, Little Joe! You goin’ with me?” he called next morning.

  It was still dark and Dad was calling. Little Joe opened his eyes and jumped into his clothes. Mom, half awake, was pouring coffee. The girls were still in bed. Dad was at the table, eating bacon and eggs. Little Joe stuffed food into his mouth quickly. He watched Dad put on his calk boots and his tin hat. Mom held out the lunch bucket, then went back to bed.

  Next thing Little Joe knew, they were in the old rickety Ford bumping down the highway. A long ride down the twisty canyon road, with high rocky cliffs on one side and a steep drop down to Elk Creek on the other. At the corner by River Bend store and garage, Dad and Little Joe left the car and piled into the crummy. It was just getting light.