Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Taming the Lumberjack

1945; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2085640

1939-8271

Norman S. Hayner,

Forest Management and Policy

A BOUT ioo years ago when the whitepine timber of Maine was approaching exhaustion New England loggers began moving to Michigan, then later to Wisconsin and Minnesota. By 50 years ago, as the timber resources of the Lake States in turn threatened depletion, a migration to the Pacific Northwest was well under way. Because the heavy forests of Douglas fir grew close to the water, the shores of Puget Sound and of the lower Columbia River had been ideal for ox-team logging. By i895, however, when this second big migration was gaining momentum, the steam engine was in general use throughout the densely timbered coastal strip west of the Cascade Range. The old time logger, whether a bullwhacker or a puncher, seldom married. A lumberjack who had labored in the woods of Vermont, Wisconsin and Washington for 25 years before he was snared by matrimony confesses: don't believe I ever really regretted it, but there have been times when I had a terrible hankerin' to throw a roll of dirty blankets on my back and hit the trail for an old-fashioned bunk house, where single blessedness was the order of the day. That was a great and glorious freedom and he-men could talk to he-men in he-man language.' In logging communities, both past and present, growing boys often rehearse in their play activities roles they will later enact in actual logging shows. An experienced logger wrote me as follows about his boyhood 40 years ago: In my day, every ambitious boy wanted to become either a hook-tender or a donkey puncher. We would make donkey engines from old wheels and other discarded junk. They were pretty good too! And with these, using cords for cables and shoe eyelets for blocks we would build miniature skidroads. Each operation was carried out strictly according to appoved logging methods. . . . Bill, my younger brother, who had spent a summer as whistle punk in Thurston's camp, was hook-tender by virtue of his experience. He'd stand on a stump and give orders. When things went haywire, he poured forth expletives in true logger style.