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HIGHLIGHTS FOR CHILDREN MAGAZINE PAGE: 28 ISSUE: AUGUST 2003 HIGHLIGHTS FOR CHILDREN MAGAZINE PAGE: 29 ISSUE: AUGUST 2003

Maine’s is filled with logs. was a pole with a spike and a hook and you couldn’t get them on the When the log jam finally let loose, on the end for prying and rolling next mornin’.” men scrambled for shore. Some L logs. It was often called a peavey, The river crew’s most grueling didn’t make it. R E after Joseph Peavey, the Maine chore was “sackin’ the rear,” their The most daring drivers rode I blacksmith who invented it. To term for retrieving logs stuck on logs down through the rapids. F prod logs along, 16-foot-long pike rocks and riverbanks when the They came to be known as Bangor G T poles were used. A was main drive passed. They had to Tigers. H longer than a peavey, with a tip shove all those logs back into the If all else failed to break a log and a small pick on the end. flowing water. jam, the drive boss blasted it with T P Once logs were headed dynamite. Logs went flying into A downstream, rivermen were the air, and water spurted up to P stationed along the shore, the treetops. Oh, Listen to me, River boys, G poking and pushing any logs Death on the river was quick. A “Bringin’ in the Drive” Oh, Listen while I sing that got caught on boulders or Some rivermen were caught E By Mary Morton Cowan About the drive of ’95, G sandbars. between logs or swept downriver And of that fateful spring. now is melting. White water all those logs were driven down- All day they worked in by the current. Others drowned E S The wind was wailing up a gale, swells rivers into raging torrents. river by a few hundred daring, numbing cold, icy water up over when bateaux capsized in rough The clouds hung blue and low, The log drive is on! skillful men. their boot tops. If they slacked rapids. They were buried onshore, When we blew the jam at For more than one hundred Log driving was one of the most off for even a moment, the drive or their boots were hung on a Grand Pitch. years along Maine’s navigable dangerous jobs in America at that boss would yell, “Keep those at the river’s edge. Boys, how those logs did blow! rivers, spring meant one thing— time. Rushing water forced huge sticks movin’!” Logs had to Finally, by late summer, logs —a song about a log jam the river drive. Men herded logs, 16 feet and longer, to twist reach the while there reached the sorting booms. The A river driver holds a peavey. millions of long logs downriver on and bob violently in the river. Men was enough water, or the drive drive was in. the spring runoff—racing toward drove those long logs from dawn to would be “hung” until the next Long-log drives began to give sawmills. America wanted , dark, seven days a week. Local All winter, woodsmen cut spring. Log jams were the most dan- way to drives of 4-foot and Maine had it. farmers, Irish immigrants, French and stacked huge piles of logs Once the logs reached the main gerous. Sometimes jams blocked logs in the early twentieth century. In the mid-1800s, Bangor, Canadians, and Penobscot Indians along the banks of streams. Since river, drivers were transported the entire river for half a mile. By 1950, long-log drives had all Maine, was one of the world’s worked together to force those logs from many tributaries would downriver in French-style boats, Men had to walk out onto the but disappeared. Maine’s white- busiest shipping ports for . stubborn “sticks” over rapids and be mixed together on the main called bateaux (baa-TOES). Expert tangled mass and pick at logs for water men had played an Almost two million logs came falls, through narrow channels, river, loggers “branded” their logs boatmen maneuvered these long days, sometimes weeks, to free a important part in the history of down the Penobscot River in and around bends. Some rivers by notching them with identifying riverboats among logs and around jam. The drive boss warned, our country. They “drove” the 1872—more than ever before! And were more than 150 miles long. symbols or letters. At the end of boulders. They put men ashore “When she goes, she’ll go tearin’.” lumber that helped build America. the drive, just upriver from saw- wherever logs needed prodding. mills, logs would be separated by A few bateaux carried the those marks at places called “wangan” (food, tents, and other sorting booms. supplies). The crew camped along It took a lot of water to move the riverbank, moving downriver logs. Men built dams to trap the every few days. The cook and his melted snow that rushed down helper, the cookee, prepared huge mountain streams every spring. amounts of food—biscuits, ham, At the right moment, the men potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and opened the gates to flush logs always baked beans. River drivers down over miles of rocky and ate breakfast at 4 A.M., a “first” shallow riverbeds. and “second” lunch, and supper When the drive boss hollered when the day’s work was done. “Roll ’em!” river drivers donned After supper, the men flopped their “calked” boots, grabbed their onto beds of spruce boughs, which cant dogs, and started rolling kept them off the frozen ground. those logs into the water. One riverman remembered, Steel spikes, or calks, in the “Many times I slept with my soles of their boots kept drivers drivin’ boots on, because if you A crew of Maine rivermen break up a log jam with peaveys and pike poles. from slipping on logs. A cant dog took them off, they would freeze A bateau waits for the crew at a log jam.

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HFC August ‘03 LOG DRIVE SD5 04/16/03 HFC August ‘03