Forest History Oral History Project Minnesota Historical Society

Buzz Ryan Narrator

John Esse Interviewer

March 23, 1976 Duluth, Minnesota

Buzz Ryan -BR John Esse -JE

JE: Okay, today is March 23, 1976. I’m down here in Duluth at the HistoricalProject Society of St. Louis County. And I’m interviewing the man who has written many articles, who has traveled many, many miles by foot through the woods. A man who has a great respect of his people and has not only in his own area, but throughout the state of Minnesota. And that is Buzz Ryan. And Buzz, the first thing I have to clear up is where did you get the nicknameSociety Buzz from? What is really your full, complete Christian name? History BR: Well, my name is James, course, James C., they’re both initials, J.C. And very few people know me by that name, James. But how I got that name Buzz, of course, I’ve been asked hundreds a times on that, but now that’s, hadOral since I was a child. I had a brother that was two years older than I was, and course, I was his little brother, and he couldn’t say brother, he called me his little buzzer. Because my mother would say, go get Buzzer, what’s Buzzer doing, and he would go out with Buzzer, and then it finally developedHistorical down to Buzz. And through my school days in Turtle River, there, they… Buzz, and for a little while, there when I come over in this country there was, kind a left me for awhile, wouldn’t say it come back again. History JE: Now, when we get into the early part of your life, you were born in the Bemidji area, is that correct?

BR: No, I was born in Wilmar. And my folks at, were people. My dad was, course, was born in Hudson, Wisconsin, my mother was born in Mathwater, Minnesota. But my dad and mother were marriedForest out at Hancock,Minnesota Minnesota, where my dad was a young fellow was working on building elevators for some company and my mother was working in a hotel, and they got acquainted out there, and they were married I think in Hancock, but at that time my mother was working out of Morris. And soon after were married, my dad and mother took the job of looking after one them big gentlemen farms up at the Taliman Farm at Wilmar, right where the state institution is now. And they run that for couple years. My dad was kind of a boss, and they had two, three men working there and my mother would, had a couple hired girls. Used to have those, man and wife running farms. And my dad was getting kind of tired of it, and my mother’s brother and her father had gone north up to Bemidji and taken homestead. So, they were talking

about it before I was born, and right after I was born that fall, my mother had had a crew of thrashers there. And I guess she was quite tired, and she said she was unable to go, we’re gonna go up and take a homestead. That’s how we come to Bemidji, and that was the end of the railroad.

JE: Did they have any idea, from your recollections, from what your mother and father said, did you ever have any idea of that Bemidji territory was like? Did they kind a...

BR: No, no, only on what my grandfather would write back. They’d taken homestead, and my mother’s brother had taken a homestead, and when we come like to Bemidji, we arrived in Bemidji about six o’clock at night or five-thirty and then ray dad went out to look over the town, and that was the end of the railroad, and was kind of a wild and wooly town. And that’s first time I ever; my dad ever really got acquainted with lumberjacks.

JE: What were their first impressions when they came up in that territory? Were they quite amazed? Did they think that this was a farming territory? Project

BR: Well, no, everybody was going north to homestead. Though, they, then a course, next morning they got up and took the stagecoach up to Turtle River. And my grandfather’s homestead was right on the Red Lake-Leech Lake Indian Trail. And thatSociety was a terrible lot of traffic between Red Lake and Leech Lake, Indian traffic at that time, and going daily right past the house. That was one of the main roads traveled inHistory the country in… The railroad comes through last fall and my dad’s first work was working cutting down right away for the railroad that winter, and of course, the rails come into Turtle River in the spring, and right following the rails coming in, a town settled right on myOral grandfather’s property, there. And the town of Turtle River had been plotted out on the south arm of Turtle River Lake by the Silver brothers, but the Silver brothers then when they found out that the railroad was going around the north end the lake, they moved up the north end the lake and Historicalthey established this town and part of it fell on my grandfather’s property, part the plotted on my grandfather’s property, part was on the forty they had. And a sawmill come in and started to, town started to build up, and by 1903, why the town there was about three,History four hundred population.

JE: What year did your parents come up?

BR: Think it was the fall of 1900.

JE: 1900.Forest And so thenMinnesota you were about...

BR: I was just formed then, I was...

JE: Just a little...

BR: Oh ya, and I was born in 1900.

JE: Did it ever, looking back, did it ever amaze you of the chances that these young people took

when your mother and father, with the little young ones an all they packed up and took off?

BR: Well of course. A lot of people were doing that at that time, and it was, ya quite a change. But they, it was a pretty hard winter that first winter, I guess. They lived with… My grandfather, fortunately had two houses. He built his homestead shanty, and then he built another house. And then that first winter they lived with my grandfather pretty much, and in the spring they moved into his other house. And, matter fact, we lived in that house, we built addition on it. We lived in that house all the time we lived in Turtle River. One that my mother got from grand and my dad never did homestead.

JE: Never did.

BR: He never took the homestead. Town started then, my dad started up at the sawmill, and he got to be a, he never worked in the mill. He worked around the mill. He started in odd jobs driving horses around the mill and then he got to be a, oh, he shipped lumber, and so he learned to scale lumber, and he got to be kind of a foreman outside, he was givenProject outside foreman and then when they started logging in the winter he got foreman in the woods. And t hat’s how he started up in the woods work. And he never did take a homestead. But is only one winter that my mother went to camp. One winter, winter of 1906 and seven. My dad had taken a job with a company and he had a little camp of about fifteen or sixteen men. AndSociety we moved out three, four miles out… History JE: Here we go. It was a... Ya, it was. Ya, it was just, I noticed it had stopped there a little bit. Okay now, you said that your mother and father went out to the camp. Now did your mother cook in that camp or... Oral

BR: Ya, we cooked, that one winter, winter of 1906 and seven. My dad took a job in a company, and he had about fourteen, fifteen men.Historical And (unclear) an old homestead, and they had the homestead house, it was what the, lived in that and that’s what it was the cook shack in there, and they had the quarters the camp building built for the men. And we was there that winter, that was the only Historywinter my mother ever was in the, worked in the woods.

JE: That was always a, that was quite of a small camp.

BR: Small camp jobber, ya. This job was at, had some stuff for the company on a contract, and other than that he worked for the company. ForestMinnesota JE: Now, when you were, when you were born, well, not born in that territory, but you were raised there. Was this the peak of the cutting of the white pine and Norway pine in that Turtle River region?

BR: Oh ya. It was, ya. They were just logging that, n Turtle River Lake, there, that was a big, the Burlington Lumber Company owned an awful pile of timber, besides the sawmill that was on the lake, owned by the Kelser Lumber Company and the, or Turtle River Lumber Company. They kind a reorganized, put another name. The Burlington Lumber Company and the J. Neals

Lumber Company, Greatly and Farley took their big contract with them. They put in ninety million one winter. And that logs would go down the, drove the Turtle River, through Turtle River Lake with the town is right on the shore. And down the Turtle River to Cass Lake to the mills at Cass Lake. And also, down the Mississippi.

JE: Now where were those mills located on Cass Lake?

BR: Right next to J. Neals when I was there at Cass Lake. There was two mills at Cass Lake. The J. Neals was the big mill there, and then there was other logging went down further, and went down to Minneapolis. Somewhere them logs, the Burlington Lumber Company logs went clear down to Minneapolis and Mississippi, and down the Mississippi.

JE: So they sluiced, they would have to sluice then through Big Winnie then wouldn’t they?

BR: No, they, ya. Went through Big Winnie. Project JE: Ya.

BR: Went through Big Winnie. Yup. Society JE: Then they come down past White Oak. History BR: Ya, they went down, through down...

JE: Grand Rapids... Oral

BR: Yup. Historical JE: And all the way down.

BR: But, see, all those riversHistory were being driven at that time, but awful lot a logging. Right west a town, now this story that, the hospital ticket, I don’t know if you ever read that story or not. But it was 1914. This clerk had been into the camps there, wrote a story, about the lumber camps around Bemidji, owned a hospital ticket. Was in the Kelliher Weekly in 1914, I think December 19, issue, I think. And that made that Bemidji area quite well known throughout the United States, because that was the national weekly that Kelliher, there. And they used a lot at those charactersForest around there,Minnesota around Bemidji, like old Spider, that had Spider Sherman, and Bone Bushes, and one of the foreman’s of the Bemidji Lumber Company and, a lot of those older preventions for the, in the stories you know.

JE: Uh, huh.

BR: But this camp that Bone Bush had was just about a mile and a half west of Turtle River at that time. That was running all; there was camps all over there.

JE: Now these camps were made out of Norway or white pine.

BR: Ya. Ya. Camps all, they’re all, practically all the camps up to 1910 were made a logs, it was only after the railroad logging started when transportation got much better when they would haul the lumber into the woods that they started building out lumber camps.

JE: That lumber would be brought number four scale...

BR: Well, it wasn’t so much, you had poor lumber. But it wouldn’t be so much that, but they could use it two or three times. Camps would be tore down and the lumber reused, sometimes the lumber used in three, four camps. And it was much, they’d lumber that much faster. They were colder; they put in an extra stove. Didn’t make much difference, but they, and they were built much faster.

JE: How long did you stay in the Bemidji area, yourself? Project BR: Well, we lived in Turtle River until 1915. 1915, we moved up to Northome. In the meantime, you see, my dad, the Turtle River Lumber Company, their sawmill quit about 1909 and they dismantled the mill. And my dad, with A. C. Johnson, and was the superintendent of the company, took over the holdings of that company. And they had a lotSociety a cedar on their land. And they started putting cedar in ties. And my dad was a cedar and tie man, pretty much. And they formed an A. C. Johnson Lumber Company and they Historyhad little camps all up and down the M & I. And because my dad’s work was further north up along the M & I, we decided to move up to Northome. Because Turtle River was getting pretty well hung down then, wasn’t much left, you know. Oral

JE: Okay, now for the purpose of the tape here, what do you call the M & I? Historical BR: The M & I?

JE: Yes. History

BR: Minnesota International. That’s the railroad from Bemidji to International Falls.

JE: Right. Okay.

BR: Ya. Forest Minnesota

JE: Now that railroad was by who?

BR: Well that Minnesota International, that’s part of the M.P. system. In fact, Minnesota International only went to Big Falls. And Big Falls to International Falls, called the Big Fork International. That’s what commonly known as the, the whole distance but actually it’s from Big Falls up, because the Backus interest owned part of that from there up. And, see that railroad went to Northome in 1900 and went to Blackduck in 1902, and Northome, stayed in Northome

until 1905. Then it went to Big Falls, and they didn’t cross the river at Big Fall about 1905. Then went on to International Falls.

JE: Now, Buzz, was this strictly a logging railroad, or did it become a common carrier?

BR: Always, it was a common carrier all the time.

JE: All the time, okay. Because it ran, several times we run into where the logging operations of railroads were put in and the common carrier probably be for one mile, if it would be that It would be basically, strictly a logging railroad. And northwestern...

BR: It was very few of them like that. Even these railroads around Duluth, like the, what we called Alder Line, and the Gut and Liver line out a Deer River, they were all common carriers. Big part of them, it’s just the spurs that weren’t. But, like the Duluth Northeastern, that was a common carrier, but then the General Logging Company supplied it with the spurs. The General Logging Company happened to have a spur twice as long as the commonProject carrier. But that was unusual. The Alder Line, and even the Brook Scanlon Line, that was a common carrier.

JE: Now who were the big operators you mentioned, Burlington and... Society BR: Well, the Burlington Lumber Company was a big holder then, and all the Bemidji Lumber Company, Crookston Lumber Company, course, becameHistory the big operator. Bemidji, they had the big mills there in Bemidji after about 1907 or eight, I think that they built their mills in there. The Bemidji Lumber Company, then the Crookston Lumber Company come in there. Course, you know, all of the early logging, CrookstonOral started their mills out at Crookston. And there was a lot a that stuff up out a Red Lake, driven down the Thief River and across the prairie. And then a course, you know, there was a Walker and Akeley mills at Akeley. And that area in south, west of Itasca Park, that was all Mickel and ChisolmHistorical area in there. Course it’s a lot at that area in south of Leech Lake, Northland Pine, that was one a the big logging companies. Then the Pine Tree at Little Falls that was a Weyerhaeuser outfit. Then the big Brainerd Lumber Company there was many, many companiesHistory in there.

JE: Now Weyerhaeuser was something then like Burlington, In other words they were basically timber holders.

BR: No, the Weyerhaeuser wasn’t. The Burlington it was, they were mostly timber holders. They neverForest had any mills.Minnesota They were just mostly timber holders. They, there was many big holders of timber. The Burlington interest owned a lot a timber right in that area around Turtle River Lake and Three Island Lake. Then the Ruggles, the Ruggles had an awful lot of it now way around Three Island Lake country. Ruggles owned the big timber, lumbers around that count ry.

JE: Now when these timber operations were going on, did they have company camps, or were most of these logs taken out by jobbers or set up a camp and...

BR: Well, they had jobbers in camps and logged themself. But all the companies had jobbers. Many jobbers. Jobbers and subjobbers.

JE: Now, when you, in 1915 you moved up to Northome. When do you start becoming involved? When do you start leaving home? Did you...

BR: Well, when we moved to Northome, actually I graduated from high school or eighth grade in Northome that spring. And then my dad was a head woodsman, head guy for the A. C. Johnson Company. And Allenson Mill there at Northome, right south of Northome, and all the kids around town used to go out and work in that mill, though. And I think 1916 and ‘17 both, I went out there and worked in the mill in the summer. I was still going to school and high school. But then in 1917 the fall I went to work in the woods with my dad in the camps and clerked, and I one compass, and my dad would give me those and run lines. We run lines, and check peacemakers, and done everything that a kid of, son of a logger would do, you know.

JE: By the way, was your dad a big man like you? Project

BR: My dad was taller than I am, but he wasn’t quite as heavy.

JE: Now in 1917, you’re out in the woods with your dad then? Society

BR: Oh, ya. History

JE: Now, when do you start getting into the forestry part of it? Oral BR: Well, the Forestry Department, during 1917 and 1918 the war come along there and like when the war come along the markets of all timber products was froze up and they were logging heavy. And this company of my dad’s was operatingHistorical quite a few camps. And there was lot money being made in popple logs and they’d bought up quite a few homesteads from the settlers. I think we had probably fifteen or twenty quarter sections of timber they owned it, about l918 and they started making lotHistory money on this popple with that inflated price. And 1920 had my own camp. It was camp ten up north of Northome. I was out; built the camp in the spring, and I had charge a that camp all summer. I had not too big a crew, men were hard to get and the wages started going up but we got popple, balsam, and spruce, and maul pine logs. But we had the, in the spring of 1920, we had, oh, fifteen or eighteen million of maul logs. We had to operate the sawmill at Mizpah and one up there in spur at Northome, and one at Grand Falls. Well then the next springForest we went intoMinnesota it heavier yet. And by 1921, the market just went to hell. And when the market went to hell, you could see that they out on a limb and they were having financial difficulties and at that time they had some connections with the Cloquet companies is what they had. And my dad decided to come to Cloquet. He had an offer to come to Cloquet and work. And he come to Cloquet, worked and he’s worked there, went to work at -- including the crew -- fire claims, big 1918 fire claims. Worked on that that summer.

I stayed around Northome that, I think we had some contracts to trade some land with the state. Market was getting tough and everything, everyone was getting out of work. It was long in the

September I had a chance to come to Cloquet to go to work. And I went to work after the big 1922 fire that went from Cotton and burned all that area in north of White Face. And that’s the first job I had and went up there to ask if I could see the timber that remained. And see how many camps. So I went in there and we, within a month they was checking the burnt timbers throughout the camps they had to put in. And then I went from there out and helped put together the map on the Aitken County fire map. But then that winter I had the job of checking logs in all the Weyerhaeuser camps a-ok. I made about seventy camps that winter they had camps all over.

JE: Before we go on any further there, I want to back up just a little bit. Why were you logging in the spring, and summer, and fall, on this popple? We think of always, you know, the logging camps opera ting, Buzz, basically beginning in...

BR: No, we were sawing this stuff.

JE: You were sawing it. Project BR: We had these sawmills then.

JE: Okay. Society BR: We were sawing up that stuff, in these mills and getting rid of the lumber we had. History JE: Now when you went, you came down here to Cloquet, you said you wandered through the territory where the fire had gone through and you set up camps. Is that correct? Oral BR: No. We looked over the burnt timber to see where they hadn’t logged that winter to salvage the timber. Historical JE: Okay.

BR: We made a quick runHistory through all their big holdings. They had an awful lot of timber, the Weyerhaeuser, mine, the Cloquet Lumber Company, and, The Northern Lumber Company, (unclear) Lumber Company, had lots of timber uncut up in that area, and the fire’d ran through that. And we had to make a big run through that to see what was burnt, to see which had to be logged that winter to be salvaged.

JE: So inForest other words,Minnesota these big pine trees oft times probably were not that badly damaged by the fire, but they had to be taken out.

BR: Ya, well they were badly, ya, they weren’t, they were a few that were killed, but we had to take, had to be logged that winter to, so the worms wouldn’t get them. So we, when they set up, as a result of that, they set up camp 115 and J.C. Campbell’s camp, Jim O’Neal. There was about four, five contractors went in that block, they had to log that block took about forty million out of there that winter.

JE: Now J.C. Campbell was quite a well known person. Where was that outfit from?

BR: Well, you’d have to know him, J.C. Campbell. Old man J.C. Campbell was the superintendent of logging from, for the pine Weyerhaeuser interest from about 1908 until 1928. But when you talk about the J.C. Campbell that you are thinking about, you’re talking about this J.C. Campbell that’s about my age. And he had just started up that winter with Campbell and Shiels. The original Campbell boys, there was Bob, Ross, Harry and Jack. Original ones of old J.C.’s. And this one we’re talking about is young Jack, J.C. And this was in the winter of 1922. And Mort Shiels would’ve been one of the walking bosses for the other, his dad was getting old and so young Jack took the contract from his dad with Mort Shiels, and they were putting in this. And that was the real start of the J.C. Campbell Company. It was Campbell and Shiels for about three years and then J.C. Then J.C. bought out Mort Shiels and it become the J.C. Campbell Company.

JE: Okay. Project

BR: But that, a lot a people don’t go back as far as the original J.C.’s.

JE: Original J.C., ya. Society

BR: And the original J.C. Campbell was the old, wasHistory the one that built the first railroad that cone down from Island Lake in the ‘98. They don’t go back that far as a rule.

JE: Island Lake, that’s up Northome country.Oral

BR: No, this Island Lake up here. Historical JE: Oh, Island Lake here. I’m thinking of Pine Island. Excuse me. Now, when you went through this burned over territory, Buzz, what did it really look like? I mean, was it devastated? Were the green, all the green needlesHistory gone, or...

BR: Well, you know, how to where pine is, the pine crown through there, and you know there was a little story of balsam that was crowned in many places through there and a lot of it was dead. A lot of places it went through slower. But we, they cut everything that was, that the fire mutilated. Course, it just took a few years before we cut all that in there. And three, four years afterwardsForest it had everythingMinnesota along the White Face River there. It was the spring of 1922, we had between the White Face reservoir is now and 62 and 6515 and the White Face (unclear) it was about forty million of logs lying in that river spring. Was that one winter, there was many jobbers, pea bodies in there too.

JE: Where does that river flow into?

BR: Flows into the St. Louis.

JE: Into St. Louis. So that would come down...

BR: Cloquet.

JE: Cloquet area.

BR: Ya. And, as I say, after I left that, after we did that we come back and it was about the first year I went to work for, it was a long story there. It’s, right at that time Bill Kennedy was put in as vice president of the mine Weyerhaeuser interest and it was a little bit of a change over everything. And one of the reasons that I was given the job of inspecting logs was that there was a big percentage of lumber in their yards that was poor grade lumber. And of course in order to cut the logs proper, to get the proper lumber in your yard you had to cut the logs the proper lengths. And a course you know, white pine was cut sixteen feet as much as possible, and Norway was cut for the stuff. And there was a lot of times in the camp that the camp foreman was careless and they’d cut a lot of Norway into sixteen foot, or twelveProject foot logs and stuff and we had to work out the percentage that was cut in the camps. So we had to check them out pretty heavy. But they had seventy camps, that is their own camps and jobbers that winter, winter of 1922 and 23. That was one of the biggest logging years. Society JE: 1922 and 23. History BR: Ya. The later years.

JE: Was that around here? Oral

BR: Ya, that’s right in north here. And, a course those two other side lines and between there, in the meantime I worked in Pine Island one month.Historical I went up in the spring, that spring, I went up three weeks, went up to Pine Island. The Weyerhaeuser put money into Pine Island you know. We took the timber off a Pine Island and Williams, out at Pine Island. And I went up with their man and looked at the PineHistory Island. We spend three weeks in there, before Williams went in there with the railroad. And Weyerhaeuser’s put their money in there. And I went up with that cruising gang and looked it over. It was four of us went in there. That was just in about April, just about this time a the year in 1923.

JE: Then you went from there, you worked up in that territory for about three weeks? ForestMinnesota BR: Ya. Well, I was up there for about three weeks. Then I was back oh, then I come back and then it was another long story there. First, you know the Weyerhaeuser’s were sued for several million dollars in the fire claims. And, had charge of the fire claims then. Was given the assignment of looking after some, a lot of their jobbers. And another assignment he had was to set up fire protection organization for some of their operations. Well the Whales Forest Protective Association has been up east of Iron Range tracks, where several companies contributed there on the breaker basis. And, so the Weyerhaeuser’s thought that they had to improve their fire protection, so my dad set up a fire protect ion organization for them. And, I

was put in charge, under my dad, of the, actually the running of the Cloquet Fire Patrol Association. That was headquartered right at the Cloquet Valley Ranger Station. And, that operated from spring of 1923, until 1929.

JE: Do you know off hand, Buzz, if the law was still on the books that you had to burn your slashings?

BR: Oh, yes.

JE: So, in other words, there were great possibilities of fire, like the Chisholm fire, and the Virginia fire and the Chisholm fire again and there were all kinds of fires around. Now, when you get into that fire that came through Cloquet area, why did they blame the Weyerhaeuser’s? Was that actually blamed on one of their trains that were hauling?

BR: Well, that was in 1918 fire. You see when they come sue somebody, they had to sue somebody that had money, and they couldn’t sue somebody that didn’tProject have any money. So they was sued, the Weyerhaeuser’s were sued. And that fire of the Aitken County that was a result of some slash burnings that had been done by the Pine Tree Lumber Company over around north of McGregor. And, then there was another big suit of, supposed to have started from one at their camp six up here west of Taft. It burnt this area north of Duluth. AndSociety that’s one their big suits. They had several big suits. And finally they, those things were finally settled. They hooked everything on the government. See the government finallyHistory could, the government would operate the railroads and they claimed that there were many, many fires, and a course they all run together. But they finally decided that most of the fires come from the railroads so the government was the one that got hooked onOral that. Finally, must have cost the Weyerhaeuser’s millions of dollars to protect them. And as a result of that, these had more of a, when they improved their fire protection, then not only for the, to stop the fires, but to protect themselves from suits. And that was one of the reasons we Historicalset up the Fire Patrol Association. As I say, we had, when we set up the Fire Patrol Association, we had in charge of all the fire protection of all the lumberjacks, in 1923 until 1929. History JE: So you were actually working for Weyerhaeuser at that time?

BR: I was working in a way that is hard to explain the whole thing, because it was a, the money was paid into the state.

JE: So thenForest you wereMinnesota a state man?

BR: Well, I was a state man and, most at that time, ya. Now, there was a combination of funds there that you couldn’t, no use to talk about that on that, because they’d never understand it anyhow. But, you had to have your authority from the state, see?

JE: Uh, huh.

BR: In order to have your, but we had up to thirty men working. Wherever they had the locomotive working, wherever there was a crew working, we put men in. We had the authority to, if we thought there was a fire danger, we ordered a foreman, put men on fire patrol. Or we ordered men with railroad motor cars that go and watch the locomotives for sparks and all that stuff.

JE: Now did they cut fire trails?

BR: no, they didn’t cut any fire trails. We just watched where they were operating to see that there were no fires started. And we fought fires when they did start. And a course there was a lot a fires that wasn’t started by the operation. Some of them were started by fishermen and everything else. We had a lot of bad fires. We had bad fires in ‘23; right the spring of ’23, we had one fire that burned over a whole five townships. And there were all kinds of fires every year. But, we give it a very close protection between the Whales Forest Protection Association and then there was several more. There was the - Galvin Forest Protective Association started up on the Galvin Line and that was financed by the Backus interest. And thereProject was wherever there was company’s operating, they started up these fire protect ion organizations. And besides the fire protection organizations, we also had charge of their slash disposal. And we, in the spring of the year sometimes we had as high as four, five hundred men burning brush. That comes out of our organization. (Unclear) operate a spur, like a spur going into TwinSociety Lakes. Going all the way to Twin Lakes that summer and there’d be locomotives pulling out of there with loaded logs. And went in along that spur, burned all the slashing withinHistory two, three hundred feet of that railroad in the spring of the year. Had big crews so they get fire protection strip there. They had all kinds of things like that. Well then the, about 1929, the Weyerhaeuser’s completed their logging operations in that Cloquet Valley areaOral and they pulled out. And when they pulled out they gave you lump sum to the state again, so that the state would have money to keep somewhere near the protection that the company had been giving the area. And a course, I remained with the state from that time on. Historical

JE: Now, Buzz that would be about the same year then that the operations up in Virginia ended also, 1929. History

BR: Ya, they ended in 1929, too.

JE: So it was 1929 then, one could say would probably be the end.

BR: Ya, Forestthat was the Minnesotaend.

JE: Of the big operations.

BR: Ya, that was the big mill in Cloquet quit in ‘29 and the Virginia Rainy Lake Mill quit in ‘29.

JE: So that was the end of the big logging operations in the state of Minnesota.

BR: Ya, that’s right.

JE: Of what one could call virgin pine.

BR: Ya. The big virgin pine stand. Course, see, General Logging Company built that spur from the end of Hornby north clear up to Lake, and they started that logging operation up there. And they logged two years up there. But it wasn’t successful. The timber was such poor quality that they quit and in 1940 they pulled that steel up there.

JE: About 1904, 1905, 1906, was probably the biggest years for the city of Duluth in as far as...

BR: Ya, that’s what we figure, ya.

JE: Logs coming in.

BR: Either one of them years. Project

JE: Now were you involved in any way, basically, down here at all?

BR: No, no, I wasn’t in Duluth much before 1920. 1920, I started comingSociety to Duluth.

JE: Now, when you come down the Cloquet River, whereHistory did they have their boom? Where did all these big sawmills have their boon? Was there a large area of water there where they could put their boom into? Oral BR: Well, right above the mills at Cloquet. The big Northern Mill, and Johnson Mill was there and the Cloquet Mill were all right along just where Cloquet is now but the booms were up river from there. Historical

JE: Now, they sluiced into those booms. History BR: Ya, well they had sorting pockets there for sluice stuff that was going down to the Johnson Mill went down that way and stuff going into Northern Mill went that way.

JE: So they had quite a bit of pine after Duluth peaked, 1904, 1905, 1906. The Cloquet area was still... ForestMinnesota BR: Oh, ya.

JE: Going quite strong, then wasn’t it?

BR: Oh, yes. When I was in Cloquet in the ‘23, then the mills were going strong then, they (unclear) up. It was 1927, when the mills started to, they finished this big block up here. That’s, excuse me, ‘27 is when that operation started up in Cook County, they started building that steel up there pulled up there. But they were the big years, they going strong.

JE: Now, did this, like the city of Duluth, did the Cloquet area Buzz, ship out to a place like Tanawana in New York?

BR: Ya, well Tanawana, course, was the big market in New York with a lot of the boats, shipments went off. But, I think, after 1920 I think much of the shipping of lumber out of Cloquet went by rail. Probably to Chicago and that way.

JE: Hines operation down there.

BR: Ya. Well, it went by rail. I don’t think it was much stuff that went down. Way little. See, prior to that, all the stuff went by boats, always took to cone down off the range from Virginia, Tower, Ely, Winton, Skibough (unclear). About all that stuff to come in you know by boat? Most of it.

JE: Now, did you see any big rafts of logs? Project

BR: No, I’ve, they had a few. Rafts of logs?

JE: Uh, huh. Society

BR: Well, never seen many big rafts of logs in Duluth.History There’s just a few here. But I seen lots of big rafts of logs over in Bemidji. Bemidji Lake was solid every spring. See that, they was solid full of logs every spring from right where Nymore is, right Birch Long Beach Hotel. I’ve run clear across the Bemidji Lake on logs fromOral where Paul Bunyan statue is, right across to the mouth of the Mississippi.

JE: Is that right. Historical

BR: I’d run right across there on logs several times. It was always solid logs. All that stuff coming down from Kelliher,History and Tenstrike, (unclear), and Blackduck and up there. Was dumped in Bemidji Lake. All them Crookston operations.

JE: Now, did you say Kelliher was dumped into Bemidji Lake, too?

BR: Oh, sure. Kelliher was one of the seats of the big operations of Crookston. Crookston had many spursForest out of Kelliher.Minnesota They had spurs that went way up over towards Mizpah, all that country in around Crook’s spur, and between Northome and Mizpah that was all Crookston stuff. That was our last operation in there. That pine stood some of the latest pine they logged. And they even had dispatches there at Kelliher for their own railroad.

JE: Now, let’s see, Kelliher and Mizpah are located in the eastern part of Beltrami, aren’t they?

BR: Well, Mizpah is in Koochiching County.

JE: Koochiching.

BR: And so is Northome. Kelliher is in Beltrami.

JE: Ya. There we go.

BR: Ya.

JE: Nizpah would be in the southwestern part of Koochiching.

BR: Ya, well, Northome is right in the corner, you might say.

JE: Ya.

BR: Runs over there in Bridget (unclear), township there, just west of Northome is the last in the corner of that county. You come down on the M & I Railroad, you Projectsee Orth is in, then there’s, right there’s the corner. Orth is in Itasca County and you go about a mile further you get Haupt is in Beitrami County, and Funkley. They’re right three towns right, three miles, just three different counties. Society JE: Now, when you come into Cloquet, did you ever run into the fellow by the name of History BR: O’Meara.

JE: O’Meara. Right. Oral

BR: Walter O’Meara. Ya, well I know Walter O’Meara. But I’ll tell you how I know about Walter O’Meara You see, Walter O’Meara clerkedHistorical up for Ed Netzer, up at Lake. Now I knew Ed Netzer very well. Ed Netzer was one that run camp 115. He was a walking boss on the river in 1923 and ‘24. Now, Mrs. Daley, old Jack Daley, Mrs. Daley, Daley was camp foreman for the Cloquet companies. And Historyin later years there they watched Shiels, the headquarters of Shiels, where they totaled out there for many years and they watched that camp they took care of the supplies and stuff. And, well then when we started the Fire Patrol Association, we hired Mr. Daley to work for us in the fire patrol. And Walter had clerk down there, I think about 1915 or ‘16, maybe ‘17 for Netzer, we used to talk about him a lot. But we come up to visit Mrs. Daley, cause he knew Mrs. Daley from when he clerked. And Mrs. Daley’s brother or son-in-law was Jim McLaughlinForest, and MinnesotaWalter O’Meara were good friends. So, he come up there to visit Mrs. Daley, and that’s the time I met Walter O’Meara. But I knew his dad. I knew the old man quite well. His old man was a scaler. He was still scaling in the woods that winter. When I was here I met the old man several times. But that was the only time I ever met Walter was when he come up to visit Mrs. Daley that day that he cone up from to visit. He come to visit Jim McLaughlin when, I guess he come with Jim McLaughlin. They come over to visit Mrs. Daley, and a course I was there. That’s how I met Walter O’Meara. Although, another way I knew him real well is this Ed Keto that he talked about in his last book that he wrote, We Made It Through The Winter. See, Ed Keto was a scaler in the woods and a very good friend of mine. Well, they had a hunting

camp right near my ranger station for years. In fact, he used to keep his four wheel jeep, well it was a jeep, e used to call it some kind of a homemade tractor it was. Kept that right in my ranger station all the time. He used to go up to Jack with it, and he talked about playing with him. But I know all them guys.

JE: So you were down here that time when, well you fellows must be all about the same age, then?

BR: Ya, well, Walter O’Meara is about eighty years old. He was clerking about 1917, I think. Or maybe 16 because Mrs. Daley always talked about him all the time. Then when he come back to visit her (unclear) very enthused she took me over there and we had homemade pie there and always had, over at (unclear) we talked about. And, but I knew his dad real well. See, I knew all them scalers, they had out about, see I worked that winter that I was inspecting logs, I was on the payroll of old Susan. And Susan was the head scaler. Susan worked for the St. Louis River Mercantile Company. The Mercantile Company scaled all the logs for all these combined interests. See, there was another thing they couldn’t understand there wouldProject be that all this, the camps were supplied by St. Louis River Mercantile Comp any supplied all the lumber camps. And the St. Louis Mercantile Company scaled all the logs in all the camps, furnished all the scalers. They had out forty, fifty scalers. And there’d be a check scaler for every six or seven skidders, they’d have a check scaler. That was a big business in thoseSociety scales. And so I knew all of them. History JE: Now, what do you call a check scaler? Checking on the other scalers, huh?

BR: Check the other scalers. They’d comeOral around about every, oh, every ten days of every other week. And he checked the scale. Generally and they checked two hundred logs two hundred logs. See, all the logs were numbered, and all the skidders had to number all their logs. And then it went in the book, and all the numbers. Put a numberHistorical on every log they scaled. And the check scaler come along and he’d pick out two hundred logs, odd and end numbers -- 10,031, 10,046 -- and he scaled that log. And that night he went into the office, he took the scaler and he took the scalers books and see whatHistory the scaler had on those logs. And they compared two hundred logs to see how close the scaler was, was about right. It’s just like this a check on, see? A lot of these scalers were new, and sometimes they were getting a little bit off...

JE: There’s a trick to scaling, though, isn’t there? You’re not always talking about exact round logs, or their curves in these logs, or... ForestMinnesota BR: Well, they, ya, they had to scale the logs. They, a course, the Weyerhaeuser’s scaled every contract you signed. And it said in the contract that you accept the scale the same as the Mercantile Company’s. So, you...

JE: Must have been a very reputable outfit, then.

BR: Well, they bought the Weyerhaeuser’s, bought logs for years, you know.

JE: We’re going to begin with Mr. Ryan describing the camp clerk, played a rather important role, usually a younger fellow in a camp. Buzz, you stated that you know some real top notch camp clerks. Could you relate that to us?

BR: Ya, a course, you know, in the smaller camps the clerks duties were a little bit different than they were in the big camps. See, in the real big camp, when I say real big camps I mean about two hundred man camps. Generally clerk’s job consisted pretty much of staying right in the office. In the smaller camps of fifty, sixty man camps, sometimes they had to go out and do a little woods work, sometimes they’d get to ship out timber, and had to check out. (Unclear) to do that and have a few in the camp or station man. Station men, or little stuff like that, little the big camps, (unclear) pretty much a job right in the morning until night. Now, in the winter of 1919 I clerked up camp 10. I got in a funny situation there. We had, we would contractor in to do the hauling the first a the year. And we kept camp, kept the bull cook, and the cook and we fed the men. And we charged the contractor so much for his men’s board. I had to keep that all ordered all the supplies and got the mail. I used to go to town every day.Project We was five and a half miles from town. And we had to keep a (unclear) close to camp. God, we used to go out in the morning about nine o’clock and wait till the logging roads, used to slide out four, four horse teams at night on the way to the camp. And we’d start then out about five o’clock in the morning. About the time we figured they’d got to town took about fourSociety hours, got to the landing. And we’d take the horses out of the barn and every time like, get in there and grab them lines by hand, them horses would run away on me. And they’dHistory run miles out of that logging road and if they ever met the loggers, they’d run right into them cause they couldn’t stop. But it was about four miles they’d run out of wind. And then I’d get in town, I’d pick up mail and do some little extra, somebody wanted you know, somethingOral special. And you get back in a couple hours I’d be back to camp. But the clerks kept the time, and ordered supplies for the cooks, checked the supplies when they come in to see if you got them, and made out the time and the checks for the men, and then sold the supplies from the wanniganHistorical to the men at night, snuff and tobacco, and socks, and whatever they wanted. And he’s pretty busy doing that.

JE: How big of a supply?History Now, they kept the shirts on hand?

BR: Well, in some camps they kept shirts and pants. I don’t remember back quite a ways. But a lot of the camps they just kept socks and, always have rubbers, footwear. Not so often pants. Sometimes if they wanted to have pants, they’d order them. Man would need a pair of pants, they’d send down an order, get an order in two three days. But, because they couldn’t always keep the sizes,Forest you know,Minnesota for the men. And, but in some of the camps of a way back, they’d had, they kept shirts and underwear, and everything, you know.

JE: Getting on the clothing aspect of this here, what kind of pants are you talking? Are you talking about eighteen ounce Malone pants or...

BR: Ya, Malone pants, ya. A course, you know, in the really early days they had what they called, over their wool underwear, they had on a polar underwear. Hadn’t seen that since about 1910, that went out of the picture. They had an over underwear that went over the underwear and

under their pants. That used to tie at the around the ankles, had strings on them. And that was mostly worn by teamsters. Teamsters wore that.

JE: Well, that came down below the knee?

BR: Come right down to the ankles, and it tied around the ankles and it tied around the ankles. Then it was an all wool, like a light wool pants. Today, you know, you got this here padded underwear. But in them days, this was an all wool outer underwear, they called it. This wool would keep your, men who worked in the woods and too warm for them to work with. But the teamsters (unclear) to see more of that outer underwear.

JE: Now you’re talking...

BR: That was generally (unclear) or Malone. (Unclear) was quite popular. And, in them days.

JE: Now, did they, did the tote teams haul that snuff in, and basically Projectthey, the stuff that was sold in the wannigan, and then that was all tallied up by the clerk, camp clerk and then he sold that out to the men?

BR: Ya. Threw it out and put it on the shelf. He always had a tobaccoSociety covered with, spearhead and climax, and the horseshoe was probably the main pipe tobaccos they had in camp. And then a course, we always had snuff, and Pearless, and Standard.History There’d be few smokers, few of them that smoked George Washington or something like that. But then they come in, you know, and you had it on the shelf, there, and they’d buy it. And you had day book, always had what they call a day book. Clerk had a day book and Oralthey’d come in and then wrote it down in the day book. And then after they left (unclear) made their entry into the ledger on each one of their accounts. Each of them had a little bit different system. The Northern Lumber Company had what they called distributional labor sheets, whichHistorical was a very complicated thing. It went into effect about 19, about the First World War. And that made clerking very complicated. Up till that time, a foreman would come in and it’s only men in the camp. Nobody give a damn whether, what the costs were. CostsHistory so much to run the camp. All at once they decided that they wanted to know what part of the camp was coasting them, and what they could do to correct it. So, some of the big companies, especially the Weyerhaeuser’s, got out distributional labor, so that when a man come in to the foreman and wanted to know what was charging the railroad, or, the skidding, or the decking or cutting. Was trying to pin the cost down to what phase of the work.

JE: Now,Forest you said youMinnesota knew some pretty top notch camp clerks.

BR: Clerks. Oh, ya, well, tell you, the top notched person I knew, Paul Perault, worked for many years for the Backus. And Otto Oddison, he was a crackerjack. They both come over after they left Backus and clerked for the Northern. And, Bobby Grattin, worked for the Cloquet for years. Tommy Lightfoot, Emil Peterson, Louis McDonald I remember some of the top notches.

JE: Now when you mentioned Lightfoot, are you talking about an Indian person?

BR: No, no. He’s not one of them. He’s an Englishman.

JE: He was an Englishman.

BR: Ya, hundred percent English. And he had a little cockney talk to him, ya. Little water clerks, they’re all had clerks, every year. They had seventy camps and had seventy clerks. But, these fellows clerked every years. Like Bobby Grattin clerked every year for Northern Lumber Company. And Emil Peterson clerked for many years. Scott Erickson, he clerked for many years. In later years he clerked for J.C. Campbell. And the fellows that followed that clerking, Dog Face Johnny McGuire, he clerked many, he still claiming today, he clerked in the Northern Lumber Company camps every year.

JE: Who in the world is Dog Face Johnny McGuire?

BR: Oh, they all, oh, we used to call him Dog Face Johnny. His real name was Johnny McGuire. We called him Dog Face Johnny. He had all this, he was knownProject as Dog Face Johnny. All these nicknames, I have an example you know, like...

JE: Did he look like a dog, or what? Society BR: Oh, no. But he just, we just called him Dog Face Johnny. History JE: So all these nicknames that they happen to pick up.

BR: Oh, ya. Like (unclear), and coffee (unclear).OralBut, they were the best, some of the best clerks that I knew. But this Otto Oddison him an account. He clerked for Backus for many years. He was down at Round Lake; he was always at camp 53. And McKee was out there at camp 53 for many years, too. But, when Tom Welsh was workingHistorical for Backus, was the logging superintendent, when they let him out them fellows had kind of a shake up there and they’d come up here and work for the Cloquet. You’d find these fellows, you know, fellows that clerked, you didn’t know where you gotHistory so many old clerks sometimes you go to a camp and you be surprised to find them unbelievably clerking in a camp. Ed Bodie used to for years with the Oliver, in their camps.

JE: What was the trick to clerking? Was there a trick to clerking?

BR: Well,Forest some of themMinnesota trick to clerking much . Just have to keep your books up, but get along with the foreman, you know. Foreman kind of, especially when they got this distributional labor. The foreman sometimes resented that because he wanted to know what the clerk was changing the time to. And then sometimes that distributional labor fell on the clerk more than on the foreman. See, the foreman didn’t care so much, the old time foreman. And they’d go up and, but they, it was mostly keeping the time and having the books up, have the stuff ordered, and have the supplies ordered and checked in, there wasn’t a shortage of supplies. But then the cook was, used to turn his orders into the clerk to write up the orders to send in for supplies.

JE: Was the camp clerk, in any way, Buzz, involved in keeping the records of the scaler?

BR: Oh, no. No. Not at all. Nothing to do with that at all.

JE: That was strictly a different operation. Okay. Now, you stayed oft times in the same building as the camp foreman, or what was called...

BR: Ya, in the office, ya.

JE: The camp push.

BR: Ya, the ordinary office of these big camps, like the one of the Cloquet camp, camp 115, 118, 127, 119, 120 or (unclear). Those offices would consist of generally a bunks in the office for eight people to sleep. They generally set up two double bunks. See, four men in a double bunk on each side of the building. That’s generally what they had in the office. You could sleep, and generally what slept in there would be the clerk, and the foreman, Projectand the scaler, and maybe...

JE: Walking boss, perhaps? Society BR: No, the walking boss, when he come there, he didn’t always stay at the camp. And a cruiser or someone running lines in the camp. Or some inspector,History like I talked about myself as a logging inspector, or the camp auditor. When auditors come around, audit the clerk too. John Oh, is that right? We had traveling auditors. Now for the Backus outfit they had Gus Broman was the camp auditor for years. Audit the clerks, he comeOral around and audit the clerks for their cash. They took in some cash, you know. Some men would buy a (unclear) of tobacco and pay cash. Wouldn’t always charge, you know. And they audited the books, traveling auditors. Johnson was a traveling auditor for the Virginia Rainy Lake forHistorical years.

JE: Now, what size of a building are we talking about when you talk about that... History BR: When you come in through the front door, you know on one side of the front door would be the cage where the clerk was in. You had that caged off, you know. That was always caged off and blocked. Because the clerk didn’t allow the foreman and stuff to go in there. The cage was locked so the foreman and scaler and stuff couldn’t have access to go in there and take tobacco and… He was responsible for that and that was generally locked. ForestMinnesota JE: What amazes me, in other words what you’re saying, Buzz, is that camp clerk really, in a sense, he was completely, totally responsible for what was in that wannigan.

BR: The wannigan, ya. He was responsible for the wannigan, ya.

JE: And he didn’t even, you know, one would think that he had had probably close working relationship with the boss, but yet he wouldn’t even allow the boss...

BR: Well...

JE: To come into his crib area.

BR: The boss wasn’t so much the foreman; so much as it was the inspectors and stuff, the man. And not only that, sometimes the clerk might be out. And the bull cook would come in to clean the camp, scrub the floor and carry in the wood and the water. And this stuff had to be so nobody could, more than the foreman. It wasn’t the foreman. I don’t think the foreman would generally so much as it was the other people that would be...

JE: Coming in?

BR: Come in there, ya.

JE: Now you said... Project

BR: I’ve had myself , had at one time, I went to get some files one time, and god damn, there was no files in there and all the files are gone. And I ordered some more files, thought they were moving awful fast. My god, the bull cook come in to me and he says,Society you know that fellow that’s scrubbing the floors in here, he says, ya see, we had a whole bunch of files in his pack sack. He’d slipped in there and got a bunch of files. They do thatHistory once in a while, you know.

JE: Now, you had stated basically like in a two hundred man camp, the size of that building probably be about twenty by twenty. Oral

BR: Twenty by twenty, I think would be a good sized office. Some offices were a little bigger, though. That’d be about right. Historical

JE: How about a one hundred man camp? Would you still have quarters for about eight men? History BR: Ya, probably. Because you may have, the overhead night be about the same. And maybe sometimes where the camp is situated, you’d get more inspectors and more people stopping. Like a camp that might be on a, close to a railroad, or something where men, inspector would get there to stay overnight, see. Some place, some camps were just situated so that these inspectors or check scalers would be at that camp overnight. So your, so that had something to do with it. ForestMinnesota JE: I want to get down to a little bit of detail on that camp, on that cabin. It actually would be a cabin at twenty by twenty, the wannigan. You say there was a wire mesh, was this something...

BR: Only a wire mesh, no there was never wire mesh. They’d have a counter about counter high and then they’d have slats. Slats built around it. Generally out of slats, out of, I’ve seen them with wire mesh, but generally out of slats of boards, or something. So they could see through then and have that little window. There’d be slats that you could look through, you know, so it’d be open so heat, cause when these slats would be up so high, and then the door itself would be

made out of slats, see? Slats door, four inch slats. That’s the way they’d be. And these slats would be up above the counter, from here up to the roof, see? Every...

JE: So the men could see in, but they can’t get in.

BR: Ya. Ya.

JE: Now, in the conjunction of that house, are you talking about two foot butt logs, or are you usually thinking of, Buzz, probably that that being it’s only a probably a twenty by twenty building, that it would be probably the top end of a bowl, which probably would only be about twelve, oh, let’s say, eight to twelve inch.

BR: Well you see, what you’d want there in five logs you’d want something that’d go about six and a half feet high. Them logs were generally about six and a half feet high, you know. And you could fit it either way with the butt (unclear) and the other way so you’d have about a six and a half foot (unclear), and it takes about five hours to do that, as a rule. Project

JE: About five.

BR: Ya. Society

JE: Okay. History

BR: If you look at those camps like you look at that one like over there... Oral JE: Yes.

BR: That’s about what they was. Took about fiveHistorical logs to come up about that high.

JE: Do you usually find that the boss’s quarters and the, where the camp clerk was, the wannigan, how was, generallyHistory speaking, that situated with the rest of the buildings in the camp? Was it usually across from the cook shanty, and across from the bunk house?

BR: It was, it was. Generally across the two bunk houses and the kitchen in a row. And generally it was across. Reason for that was so that they could come across, instead of have to walk along. And you could stay in there and look out and see better. Generally, right across. ForestMinnesota JE: Now, you had, you didn’t have a large barrel stove in there that took this four foot wood, like the wood in a regular stove?

BR: Well, there would be maybe a shorter one.

JE: But it was a pretty substantial...

BR: (Unclear) shorter one, ya. It would take quite a big stove in a smaller building, but otherwise there’d be a miniature bunkhouse. If you go in there, they’d have the sink would be on the right hand, the cage was on the left. You’d open the door and sink would be on the right. And the hot water barrel, you’d have your hot water thing, also be on your stove there. If your hot water wash your hands with, and if you’re shaving, and have wooden glasses there and your roller towel, and generally be up on the ledge as you went in.

JE: Buzz, was that hot water barrel that was connected...

BR: Hot water barrel wasn’t, in the office, wouldn’t be connected to the stove, it’d be sitting on top. Hot water...

JE: Be sitting on top.

BR: Sitting on top of the stove. Project JE: Okay. Now, was that a thirty barrel, or...

BR: Oh, it took, used to have a big camp kettle. I’d say they held about twenty gallons. Most of them had big handles on. They were quite often used in the office. TheySociety were big camp kettles.

JE: Okay. Now, what about drinking water? Did youHistory ever have drinking water?

BR: There’d be water sitting by the sink, and you come in, the sink would sit there. And generally the sink sit there in a place like this,Oral platform about, come over about two feet, and then the sink sat, sink a little lower. And then the drinking water could sit there next generally there’d be two pails. There’d be a pail of cold water there, pail of drinking water and a pail of cold water. And then there would be the, we usedHistorical the cold water if they wanted to wash their hands in the wash basin, see.

JE: Did you usually haveHistory tin pails, or porcelain pails?

BR: Well, there was always tin pails that I’ve seen.

JE: Uh, huh. How about drinking cups? Tin drinking cups, you know, with the long handle or...

BR: Ya. ForestIt was tin drinkingMinnesota cups with the long handle. Ya. Sometimes they were just separate. You have a round cup with a hoop that you could put a lot of handles. It was on there. Hooked onto the nail there. And nailed on them, you see that very often.

JE: Now, that was a cup or dipper that was used by all of the fellows in that wannigan.

BR: Ya.

JE: A lot of the fellows chewed tobacco.

BR: Ya.

JE: Did they ever get tobacco in that drinking water?

BR: Oh, I don’t think so. I think they’d wash their mouth out pretty good. I don’t think that there was much of a problem in that. They’d dip that out, and probably go over there and wash his mouth out and wash that out pretty good. I never found it bothering me.

JE: Okay. Now, on the bunks, Buzz, are you talking about, what kind of wood, in the first place? Are you talking about the use of cedar poles? Are you talking about small northern pine?

BR: Well, in some of those later camps, of course, there were boards. And before there were boards, there were pole bottoms in the in the... Project JE: Were they made out of cedar...

BR: Cedar or balsam. Society JE: Whatever was available, huh? History BR: Balsam was good stuff, little bit springy. Down there the other day to Hayward, I noticed they had had the bunk right on the ground, which wasn’t, I never seen then like that in my life. The bunk was always almost as high as theOral deacon seat. Just a little bit lower than a deacon seat. As a rule, they (unclear) the deacon seat they could reach back into the bunk. Just a little bit lower, maybe four inches lower than the deacon seat. Historical JE: Now, in the wannigan, probably about the most important thing in the camp of course was the camp push, the camp foreman. Now you’ve known a lot of these fellows. Who were some of the fellows that you wouldHistory say were probably the most outstanding that you can recall, of the camp foreman’s?

BR: Camp foremen? Oh, I knew lots of the camp foreman’s. Started way back from when I was a kid in Turtle River. There was Bush was one mentioning that there, and George Bush, Charlie Blakely, Otto Oddison, oh, John Brown, Billy Betz, Morrison, Burt Brunson, Dave (unclear). God, I couldForest name overMinnesota hundreds of those fellows. And Jimmy Under the Belt...

JE: Jimmy Under the Belch?

BR: Jimmy Under the Belt, ya.

JE: Oh, under the belt?

BR: Jimmy under the belt, ya and Jimmy the Beaver,

JE: Okay, now you’re going to explain why was he called Jimmy the Beaver.

BR: Oh, I suppose he must’ve chewed off with an ax, cutting that tree down and it looked like a beaver, so we gave him the name of Jimmy the Beaver or something. And Jack Robinson, Bill (unclear), Bill Kimball, Hank Marshall, Ed Netzer, Peabody oh, god, I could name over, name them all day.

JE: Okay. What was really, for the record, their responsibility?

BR: Well, they had complete charge of the camp.

JE: Okay.

BR: Everyone in the camp. Project

JE: Did you really run into fellows, Buzz, that most of the time they were one heck of a guy. They were smart, but yet they were illiterate? Society BR: Nervous? History JE: No, illiterate. They couldn’t read.

BR: Oh, a lot of fellows couldn’t read at all.Oral Like Chuck Blair, he couldn’t read a word and couldn’t write at all. And he’d go out in the woods and we had to pull (unclear) because he couldn’t read or write. Old Frank Blair he’s quite a logger. He’s up by (unclear) country. Ya, there’s quite a few like that. Old Fred Blair. HeHistorical used to work for my dad, he had, back home, he couldn’t write his name at all. A lot of them that way.

JE: How would this campHistory foreman be checking on people during the actual operation? I mean, was he the first man up and the last man to bed?

BR: Well, ya. Ya. He always the first one up in the morning. Ya.

JE: ft was not his responsibility... ForestMinnesota BR: He wasn’t the first one up, no. The cook’s supposed to be the first one up.

JE: Ya.

BR: But he’d have, depends on what he had, he was up in the morning, and he got the men, things going, you know.

JE: Uh, huh. Did he get the same time, let’s say, the teamsters, or was it the barn boy, or let’s say he wouldn’t be the cookee who am I thinking of?

BR: Barn boss?

JE: The barn boss and the bull cook. Would it be the bull cook’s job to wake the teamsters up?

BR: Well, the bull cook’s job, of course he’s like a janitor, you know. He kept the fires and got the men up in the morning. He kept the place warm. That was his job.

JE: How did he get up?

BR: Well, he, now let me tell you, the bull cook, suppose it was a cold night, he turned the lights out at nine o’clock and he stokes the fire up. And maybe he slept in the bunkhouse. And then maybe he’d have to get up about twelve o’clock and stoke the fire up again. Then he’d get up again, probably four o’clock and have the fire stoked up good so whenProject they woke the men up, it’d be warm, see? But he had an alarm clock or had the habit of getting up. Them bull cooks generally sometimes when their work was all done.

JE: Ya. Getting back to the boss, now you’re a big man. Were they usuallySociety big men?

BR: Mostly big men. Most, it’s been pretty much, bigHistory men seemed to have more respect. They never had too much respect for small men. You know the early days the logging camp, the boss was generally in order to be a boss you had to... Oral JE: Whip anybody in town, huh?

BR: Be physically able to take care of everybody;Historical show you were boss.

JE: Were they actually tested? History BR: Huh?

JE: Were they actually tested physically?

BR: Oh, I don’t think so too much, but… I never seen it happen where there were fights in the camp. Generally,Forest but theyMinnesota get in town and get brawling after their drunk, but not in the camp. But they were generally respected, you know, cause they gained their respect or they wouldn’t be a boss. They had to have respect or you wouldn’t be a boss.

JE: Are there times that you find the boss losing respect because he doesn’t want to operate, he can’t, is removed from his job? Or is he usually a man who has been already tested pretty much, Buzz that they know what he is going to be able to do?

BR: Well, in order to be a boss, you had to know the job, and the men knew that you knew your job. Or else he couldn’t do a good job of being boss.

JE: Now, we talked about a walking boss. A walking boss is basically a person that probably has control over several camps.

BR: Several camps, ya.

JE: Now, would they have then, Buzz, a boss within the camp also?

BR: Oh, yes.

JE: Okay. So there would always be a...

BR: Ya, he, see like Netzer in the winter of 1922, he was walking around the river. There was four, five camps on the river. And he was a walker on the river. And he,Project up and down the river checked on four, five camps up and down the river. And that was his job was to watch those things. Then he might have a little, maybe a few extra horses in one - camp and he might talk to the foreman they got a couple extra teams up there. And you know, little like this. Let’s see, maybe even use an extra sleigh, and they’re getting pretty well caughtSociety up over there and they don’t need an extra sleigh, got to get their stuff out anyhow. You’re a little behind and we’ll push over another sleigh down here from that camp. MaybeHistory a team would get your stuff out. This kind of an adjustment thing, see.

JE: Would he be making camp rounds onceOral a day or...

BR: Oh, no. Historical JE: Wasn’t two days, three days?

BR: No, no. He may onlyHistory come once a week. Generally, generally be located at one of the camps, it was more or less a headquarters in the area that he was a walking boss over. And, it depends all together, sometimes it was the spring of the year he’s, like now, for instance this particular year I’m thinking about, Ed Netzer was the stuff was going to be all river in the spring. And a course, by being walking boss over the camps in the winter, he was all that time finding out what he had to do to get the drive out in the spring, too, see? Getting out boom logs, where they had theForest boom tendedMinnesota to strung above the dam, and little stuff like this be going along with it, see?

JE: So he just didn’t end his operation when the logging season ended?

BR: Ya.

JE: He of times became the top man on the drive, too.

BR: Ya. Well, he might be a walker on the side, but his job would be to get the booms out, like if they’re putting stuff in north above the dam, you know. And if everybody would string a bunch of booms across there, we’d get a southeast wind and make that stuff all go back up the river, and you may have to bring her all down again. And everybody gets the booms strung in the ice before the ice melts. All this stuff goes along with it, see?

JE: He’s got the entire operation involved in his wind then?

BR: Ya. Ya.

JE: We take a look at the camp. And one of the fellows that comes to mind is a what we call a handy. And today when we think of handy man, we think kind of probably, well at least in my mind, I think kind of like a person that just helps out a little bit, and he’s not too awfully skilled. What kind of a person was this handy man?

BR: Well these handy men were called a handy man. It was a bunch ofProject those and some of them were very good. Some of them done nothing but build equipment. Like Old Dutch McCharles that worked for the Crook’s Lumber Company, you couldn’t replace a man like that. Do anything. He’d build anything. He’d take an ax and ground the wood into anything you want. A tongue for the sleigh or, but he’d work continuously, generally on sleighSociety making. And I had other fellows that were specialists like (unclear) Storlies dad, he made rutters. He was a good man on rutters he built four, five rutters. Knew how toHistory get them rutters built. So, timber worked for that. And another fellow would be building jammers. And they had to cut the jammer, make those jammer bobbins, make those sleigh, make those dreys up, and make eveners, and working on all this stuff, mostly wood work, see. MakingOral racks for the sleighs. Hewing out racks, and making bunks, and make new beams, replacing beams put iron on the beams. The blacksmith done the iron work. And the… Historical JE: You’re talking, one of the words you talked about was hewing it out.

BR: Hewing it out is very,History hewing it out and fitting it out, and putting them on. When the bunk and the sleigh come in with a broken beam, they’d pull the beam out, and pull the irons off, and hew a piece out, and drill the holes in it and get it back in, and put her back together. That’s the handyman’s job. And then if there’s iron work to be done. The blacksmith done the iron working job on it.

JE: WhatForest are the thingsMinnesota that, you know, about this hewing, we’re not talking about a chain saw, we’re not talking about any kind of a saw, we’re talking about use of a broad ax.

BR: Ya.

JE: Now, when these guys use those broad axes, is there a difference if you’re left handed or right handed?

BR: Oh, yes. Left handed and right handed. A lot of people hew from on top the log, and a lot of them from on the ground. There’s a lot of people that hew to the ground with an offset handle. And that was quite common. Very common they tell me in the east, to hew from the ground. But in Minnesota here with the hewing of ties tamarack, but many of them, instead of, do it from the top of the log.

JE: Was there advantage? I heard a fellow say that there was an advantage, if you’re left handed over that of being right handed.

BR: I don’t think so.

JE: Well, he tried to tell me about the way the twist of the tree was.

BR: Oh, I don’t think that’s...

JE: Well... Project

BR: No, I don’t think that be… You start the other, see, all you’d have to do is start at the other end. Society JE: Start on the other end. History BR: Normally, you start at the stump and hew out towards the top. But if the trees big, you could get out here at the top and start to hew right back on the other side. Instead of going back and hewing the other way, see? Oral

JE: Now, broad ax, how much weight are we usually talking about? Historical BR: Well, there were six to, six to eight, eight pounds. I figure would be about as heavier broad axe as they used. History JE: How did they, how did these handymen, when we’re talking about a sleigh runner and she comes up on the end. They hewed all of that out, too, then?

BR: Well, they hewed out a lot of that. But t an awful lot of the runners, especially in my time, was the timber, to get the timber soft. If they’re going to be, most the runners were four inch. Like my dad’sForest companyMinnesota there, we’d get a bun ch of oak; buy a bunch of oak. Four by twelve’s, or eight feet long. And haul them into the camp, and get them out of where we buy them and buy them down. And we bought them down in Wisconsin or some place, and we’d get them shipped in. And they’d be runner material. And there wouldn’t be much hewing, there’d be just sawing out a little bit.

JE: Right.

BR: Because there wasn’t so much oak, and, we had some sleighs that had oak beams. We bought a bunch of sleighs one time from the Clark Pole and Tie Company. The Clark Pole and Tie Company had over at Sly. And Sly was a little town that was between Bena and Cass Lake. And they had, evidentially had run across some oak, because we bought a bunch of sleighs from them. We bought twelve set of sleighs from them, and they had all oak beams. And they, but most the runners were oak. But, and sometimes tongues were oak. But most the time the, we got that some mills that hauled it in. Now, in the very early days I suppose they had to hew them out. When you were born they had the mills, or maybe saw them out with a quick saw, in these early days. That’s the way they sawed lumber.

JE: We’re getting, you get into a one of the fellows that is really paramount importance within a camps kind that of course is the blacksmith, who is really kind of an artist with steel. Now, this steel is in jap with one of the questions that comes up. In building, is an example, the sleigh runners. We’re not talking about the semi-soft steel; we’re talking about pretty hard stuff, aren’t we? Project BR: Well, now, here’s the two things now that--cast iron was the better than steel, because cast iron wouldn’t pick up the heat. And fit were on the snow roads, it had little gravel in it, they’d prefer cast iron runners. Steel is pretty good on ice because it wouldn’t be quite the friction. But on some those snow roads because you see. When you stop those sleighs,Society they picked up some heat and they’d set right away with that old rutter. That would get a little bit warm and set in a minute, and that would cause it to freeze right now. And,History but steel will, cast iron is supposed to be a better, easier running sleigh than steel.

JE: So, in other words, you’re going to haveOral to buy some of these casting, like for instance, the knees on a bunk.

BR: Oh, the castings, most runners were all bought.Historical

JE: Most runners. History BR: Most all runners were bought. Got mine from Marshall Wells Company here from 1898. Did you see our catalogues down here?

JE: Uh, huh.

BR: Ya, Forestwe bought mostMinnesota all of mine. Very few, there would be some of them that would make these flat runners, most of them had, you see there, runners were a little rounded on the sides. See, most of the runner steel was bought.

JE: Now let’s pretend that we’re walking into a blacksmith place. First of all, how big of a building, let’s say we’re talking about a hundred man camp. We’re talking then about, oh, probably thirty-four horses, somewhere in there aren’t we? And a hundred man camp, how big of a building are we going to be talking about?

BR: Oh, you’d probably have a twenty by twenty. You know the other day, a funny thing about, down the other day, down to Hayward. I walked into this blacksmith shop, had a very well equipped blacksmith shop. He had everything you could see in there you could think of. He even had an old bellow, you know, instead of a whiz thing. And, I looked around just a minute, and I said, “That is a hell of an outfit of a shop you have, you haven’t got no shoes for a few horses.” Probably I was the only one who ever noticed that. And them great big eight hundred horse, he said I haven’t the (unclear) for it. It’d have to be raised up about four inches, or the horses come in there with them corked shoes and they couldn’t walk right in here. They’d cut that board floor you got there. You got to have the shoes for it, set the shoes over in the building in one corner cause the team of horses stood on the floor, you know. You generally have it raised up about four inches higher than the rest, so the horses stood on it, see?

JE: Now, what is that shoeing floor made out of?

BR: Well that would be out of poles. Project JE: Okay.

BR: A few flat, but it’d have to be raised up a little, you know, cause they start with corks that long, you know. And they walk in there, and you’d have, that’d be generallySociety in one corner. And generally over in that corner would be the blacksmith bellows and... History JE: His forge shop.

BR: Ya. Oral

JE: Now, Buzz, when that stall for that horse, are we talking about some kind of apparatus… Historical BR: No, it’d just be a stall big enough, a platform big enough for two horses to stand on, you might say. History JE: Okay, now, was there a place where they could put that horse in and strap him up and...

BR: No, no. Not in the lumber camps. Not in the lumber camps. It generally, they didn’t have any bad two horses in the camp. They generally didn’t take them to camp.

JE: So inForest other words...Minnesota

BR: Occasionally you might get a little wild horse in the camp, but I don’t, they generally didn’t take that kind of a horse to camp. Too much of a problem to shoe

JE: So it was the blacksmith with big apron on basically to lift that horses leg up and shoe that horse, file it, file off that hoof, and dig her out a little bit, and put on that new shoe.

BR: Ya I’ve got pictures. I’ve got slides of it. We’ve got pictures down stairs showing that stuff.

JE: I remember my dad doing this.

BR: Ya.

JE: Back on the farm. But, I notice that sometime… I’m going to push this. Now in the opposite corner then would be the blacksmith’s forge. Now, I’ve seen forges from the size of what looked like good size round barbecue stands, to one up at, north of Oar, what’s the name of that place again?

BR: Cusson?

JE: Is Cusson where we got that water tank?

BR: Arbutis? Project

JE: Arbutis Landing, ya. That size of a forge was...

BR: A portable, huh? Society

JE: It was a big one. It was probably about three feetHistory by four feet.

BR: Ya, well, they get built either way, but it’s just to have that little nest in there, it’s about the same. Some places they had a platform builtOral where they put their tongs in around there and with the hooks you know. Now some places they had a rack on the side, an iron rack where they hung them. There’s many different ways they done that. Historical JE: Ya.

BR: But it’d generally beHistory in one corner of the building, opposite from where they shoed the horses. Then back in the other corner is here would probably be where the handyman worked when he worked inside.

JE: Now did they have a funnel over that forge or did they have a, just a hole in the opening or... ForestMinnesota BR: No, they generally built a kind of a boards funnel.

JE: Okay.

BR: Board type of funnel.

JE: Now how about the fittings?

BR: Square fittings and flared out like a funnel, funnel type out of boards.

JE: Out of boards.

BR: Yan out of boards.

JE: Now, was the flooring on that blacksmith’s side be boards, or would it be hewed poles?

BR: Well, it could be poles, too, but the shoeing platform was generally just a little higher because they stood on that more, you know.

JE: Now, Buzz, did they hew those logs, or I shouldn’t say hew, adz them flat, or did they...

BR: Adz them flat, ya.

JE: Okay. So are we talking probably, what, a pole… Project

BR: Six inch.

JE: Six inches. Society

BR: Six inch poles and then they’d flatten them downHistory with an adz. Some times they didn’t have an adz, they’d take a grub hoe and get it good and sharp use that as an adz.

JE: Use that as an adz. What kind of woodOral did they generally use?

BR: Well, they generally had coal, blacksmith coal, but it was brought in, brought in, you know. Historical JE: That was coal then?

BR: It was in the early daysHistory I understood that they used to have, they put, tell me that the only kind of wood that was actually made good and well would be green popple, it could make a hotter...

JE: In the camps that you been in, which have been a lot of, a lot of camps, do you usually find that the blacksmith had the turner blower? ForestMinnesota BR: No I never saw those. I never seen, only when I was a kid in Turtle River I seen bellows. My uncle had a bellow they went out very early, you know. The turner type of fan, they’ve been in a long time.

JE: Ya. I would imagine with the bellows is clumsy. They rot out. A lot of problems with them.

BR: They were, I seen one, only seen a couple of them operate. I remember my uncle was a blacksmith and he had one of them in his blacksmith shop.

JE: Now, when you have that blacksmith working in this thing, does he also have a handyman, usually?

BR: Oh, ya. He’s working in there with him. The blacksmith, if he wants to have him strike a blow, sometimes they have to, if he’s cutting something you have to have a man with another sledge to cut off some heavy iron. And the handyman strike a few blows for him. I used sit there, when I was clerking in the camp I’d go out in the afternoon and get in and bullshit with the handymen in the winter time, you know, and a couple (unclear) bullshitting, and fix sleds, and…

JE: Crack a blow.

BR: Crack a blow and he’d say get that sledge and cut this off. He’d be making a couple of irons. And the handyman would be there, you know. They worked rightProject together.

JE: Now, did he have that handle mounted on top of a big log, or...

BR: Ya, a big stump there. Big stump. Society

JE: Ya. History

BR: Big , ya. Oral JE: And that was up, of course, to the tote team to bring in all that handy, or the blacksmith’s stuff there. Historical BR: Ya. Ya.

JE: Now, how would thoseHistory windows be situated in a blacksmith’s shop? Did he have a work area usually, a bench area over on one side with a number of windows along side?

BR: Well, he generally got as much light as he could. He got as much light as he could and you know, the windows would get dirty awful quick in a blacksmith shop and you have the light...

JE: Did Foresthe have lanternsMinnesota in there besides, then?

BR: He had lanterns in the night, ya.

JE: Oh, he worked at night, too?

BR: Ya, the night. Well, lots of times certain horses pulled their shoes a lot, you know.

JE: Uh, huh.

BR: They generally come in at night, the blacksmith would have to go set two or three shoes at night. Blacksmith often worked until nine o’clock at night setting shoes, you know.

JE: Where did he sleep?

BR: The blacksmith as a rule, slept in the bunkhouse, but sometimes the teamsters had a separate bunkhouse. And if they did, the blacksmith generally was in with the teamsters. Sometimes blacksmiths slept in the filing shack with the filer. That was generally a matter of choice.

JE: Can you name some names of tools besides the hammers and pincer and tongs and all that stuff that he had that probably are unique? Did he have anything that, any kind of tools that you can think of, Buzz, that I would want to know about? Project BR: Well, I don’t think (unclear) in blacksmith, you know. A lot of lumberjack blacksmiths would make them round because the chains would break. And he’s welding chains together and making round irons for the ends of skidding wings strap and making stuff like that, and mostly just hammering out. And then he chisels… But half the bad horses, a Societybig part of his job was setting horseshoes, you know. History JE: Now, you talked about welding links. How in the world could a guy weld links without any welder? Oral BR: Well, he’d weld them. He’d weld them. The men would put them in there and they put that chain in there you know. Throw the chain in that fire, and get sand, that welding compound we used to get, you know. Historical

JE: Okay. History BR: In them little square boxes. Throw it in there, and the sparks fly out of it like hell, and get a welding heat. He welds those chains. Them links and those chains were all welded right in the blacksmith shop. And all that stuff.

JE: That’s what I wanted you to bring up was that welding compound. ForestMinnesota BR: Ya.

JE: Was there a special, what was it just called welding compound?

BR: Welding compound, and there was a sand. There was two things you could get in these square boxes. There was welding sand and there was a welding compound, looked almost like a gob of white stuff. I don’t know what it consisted of. Welding compound it said on it. Come in a

little square box about eight inches by six inches.

JE: Must’ve made it awfully hot.

BR: He must have had it awful hot.

JE: Ya.

BR: That’s what it was.

JE: One of the things I’d like to have you help me out as much as possible with this tape here is a filer shack.

BR: What?

JE: The filer shack. Project

BR: Ya.

JE: And that, I would imagine, would be somewhere, be somewhat smallerSociety than a twenty by twenty, wouldn’t it? History BR: Ya. Have you seen the pictures of our filing shack we have down here?

JE: Ya. Oral

BR: Ya, we get some pictures of that. Well the filing shack, could be smaller, you know. It’d be probably sixteen feet by fourteen or something.Historical Quite small. You’d have generally a bunch of lights coming up, two, three windows on the one side and maybe a couple on the other much light as he could get. History JE: Would he be facing. Would those light windows be facing usually the...

BR: East and south.

JE: East and south. ForestMinnesota BR: Most generally. They got the winter light, ya.

JE: East and south. Now, they oft times slept in there, you were saying?

BR: They generally slept in there. They generally slept in the filing shack.

JE: So he had his own...

BR: Well, they had a bunk there in the corner. That’s all. In the corner had a, maybe a single bunk.

JE: Did he have his own water?

BR: Well, he had his own water. Had his own water, his own wash basin and his own towel there.

JE: Indoor toilet and all that, I suppose?

BR: Well, now wait a minute. You don’t know what it’s like when you have to go out to the outside can.

JE: Ya. Now, what kind of tools did he use?

BR: Well, they done some gumming. And we got some slides that’ll showProject that the hand gummer, gummer that run by foot power, had a stone you know, stone that they could gum saws. But most the time they were just hand filed. Filed it by hand. They’d put those saws up and they’d file the teeth by a hand saw and this. They had raker gauges to cut the rakers down. And then once in a while they’d have to set them, you know, so that they hadSociety a proper set to saw it with. History JE: Okay now, let’s go over some of those things. You talked about something like a raker gauge. Now, on a saw would you explain, Buzz, what the teeth are used for. You’d have certain teeth for certain purposes, and other teeth forOral other purposes.

BR: Well, the rakers is that forked thing that come down. They’re generally a little bit shorter than the cutting teeth, you know. And they haveHistorical to cut them a little shorter . That’s why they have a raker gauge to see that they’re a little shorter than the cutting teeth.

JE: And the raker wouldHistory be that tooth that would bring the saw...

BR: Saws down to the cut. Ya.

JE: Ya. And the saw tooth itself would be beveled.

BR: Be beForestveled, ya. Well,Minnesota then a course, the set in the depending on, in pine you never have to (unclear) little set, you know.

JE: Now, what do you mean by set?

BR: Well that opens it up, you know, the width of the curve.

JE: Okay.

BR: The curve.

JE: Ya. Now...

BR: If it wasn’t, didn’t have enough setted with bine, the saw would drag in the cut. Those teeth have to be spun off to the side that it’d cuts a little wider. It was all, you know.

JE: Ya. Why, there are some, probably would have three raker teeth and then a cutter tooth. Why were some saws have more raker teeth in between the cutter tooth, some less?

BR: Well, the Simmons, you know, claimed they had their saws for special purposes. Now, the Cedar King. Cedar is a soft wood, see. Well, the Simmons Cedar King had more raker teeth, and some of them didn’t have any raker teeth. Some people preferred them without any raker teeth and they would just put a lot saw in, you know. Some people prefer one saw and some another. But in the cross cuts, the double two man cross cut saw, they were prettyProject uniform. But it was in the, when you got down to the one man cross cuts for cutting cedar and tamarack and different types of wood, some people say, well frozen timber and some for green timber. A little bit different. And that’s why one saw worked better in green timber and another one was better in frozen timber. Society

JE: Frozen timber, now. When one looks at a tree, oneHistory never really considers that in the middle of wintertime that tree is froze. It’s, even though it may be standing up there and it’s green, it’s a frozen piece of wood. Oral BR: Ya.

JE: And that is tougher cutting. Is it not? Historical

BR: Well, it’s not exactly tough cutting. It cuts, stuff is harder. History But the saw runs easier in it. But it doesn’t cut as deep. It cuts slower.

JE: Yes.

BR: And that’s it when you get the saw from the spring when the sap goes up then the wood starts softeniForestng and it Minnesotatakes a much bigger but it takes up more power to (unclear) that saw though. That’s the difference.

JE: Ya. Now, what did that filer set that saw in? First of all, Buzz, did he...

BR: Well, he had, they had, some of them have got, like I showed you that picture in there, see?

JE: Uh, huh.

BR: Some of them had those kind of things. Some of them had iron clamps that they made and set them in. And I seen them where they had a clamp that they push with your foot down and that would close it on top.

JE: Did you ever see. . .Go ahead.

BR: Then put your foot down and that would close the boards together. Some of them had individual ones, you know. Just different kinds. Some of them were homemade. Some of them were… I’ve seen them where they were just a bunch of bolts sticking up and they’d saw the hacksaw down to the bolt and put them in and stick a piece of wood behind. That way. And then like you probably noticed pictures where they go out and cut two balsam trees down about four foot high and saw down in them about six inches and use that, put the saw in that and then wedge behind them, and that’d be used for, to hold the saw.

JE: So there was no standard procedure, all they wanted... Project BR: No.

JE: To make sure the saw stayed still. Society BR: Ya, that’s right. So they didn’t, where they could see it. History JE: Did you run across the filers’ tools, or actually the man that was filing on this, did he at any time make a saw? Or were the saws all made? Oral BR: No, I don’t think in none of them lumber camps, I don’t think so.

JE: Ya. Historical

BR: But in a lot of the sawmills they done, a few saws made in the sawmills because you hay this machinery run gummer,History you know. I had a saw, in fact, that well, it’d take these big eight, ten inch band saws and you just make a saw right out of it. You’re just cutting the teeth out of it. Put this thing at an angle, and put it up there, and leave it there, and it just runs by the hour. It makes the teeth, you know, automatically.

JE: Ya. What’s a gummer? ForestMinnesota BR: The gummer is the thing that comes down and goes between the teeth, see.

JE: Okay.

BR: Cuts the teeth deeper.

JE: Ya.

BR: That’s the gummer.

JE: Okay.

BR: Goes down and cuts, comes back above the side, you know. They’re generally automatic, like in them big ban saws in the sawmill. They go around automatically. They go around. They’d push that way and that thing went up, and come down, and go around and up and down. Automatically. Business. That wasn’t used in the camps, though. But in these camps they had these little hand gummers that had this little grindstone up there, and they’d run it by hand, by foot power like you would a grindstone. And maybe they would go aver a saw and cut it a little deeper in places, you know.

JE: You’re looking at the world’s worst saw filer. I tried a saw of my dad’s, file my dad’s saw, and I think by the time I got through with it, there wasn’t any saw left.

BR: Ya, well, it’s an art you know. Project

JE: Ya, there is really an art to it.

BR: It’s an art. It’s the same way with these chain saws, you see. SomeSociety fellows could take the chain saws in a minute, and another fellow can’t never get them cutting good. History JE: Getting in to the horse barn. Most horse barns have a vestibule in between them? Between the horse stalls. I mean, the horses on one side, horse on the other side, with a probably a twenty foot open space between them? Oral

BR: No. In between the tails? Historical JE: No, between the, let’s see. Here would be a horse barn. Here would be a horse barn, there would be open space in between, but there would be a roof over the whole thing. History BR: Oh, ya. That was generally, cause you see, the trees would only be so long and they could only make a barn so long. And they would have two barns together; make that vestibule in between that so they could put their hay and oats and stuff, as a rule.

JE: Put their hay and oats. Would that actually hold enough hay? ForestMinnesota BR: Well, yes. They kept all the hay and oats. Tote team hauled hay all the time.

JE: Oh, it did?

BR: Tote team may not be enough hay in the camp to last over three four days. And the tote team generally were working steady...

JE: All the time.

BR: Ya. They were making trips weekly, ‘ring hay and oats and stuff in, you know.

JE: How, let’s see, we’re talking about a hundred man camp and thirty-four horses or a two hundred man camp with a sixty-eight to seventy horses. How big of a barn are we talking about? On a hundred man camp? Let’s say thirty-four horses. Are two in a stall? Or they each have a separate stall?

BR: No, two, generally have two in a stall.

JE: Two in a stall. With no partition, in other words, between them.

BR: No, no more partition between them? No.

JE: Okay. So we walk into the horse barn. Usually the doors would beProject on the inside of the vestibule, wouldn’t it? Let’s see… Here’s the buildings like this. You walk in that open space and the door’s...

BR: You never took the horses in from that vestibule. You took themSociety in from the other end.

JE: Oh, you took them in from the end. History

BR: See, that was just a hay and oat passage. Oral JE: Just hay and oats there.

BR: They’d go in from the other end. Historical

JE: Right. Okay. Now... History BR: The horse manure went out the other end, too, as a rule.

JE: When you go to the barn and the poles, well let’s see. The flooring would be the opposite way of the long poles, wouldn’t it? Ya.

BR: TheForest long poles, theMinnesota center aisle the poles would run length way. The stalls would run...

JE: Sideways.

BR: With the horse, ya.

JE: Or with, with the horse?

BR: Well, up, you know, where you stand, anyhow.

JE: Let’s say a horse is head here, back here. Would the poles in that stall run the same way as the long part of the horse?

BR: No, the horse would stand in the hall like this and the poles would stand on the other end.

JE: Ya. Sideways like this.

BR: Ya.

JE: Right.

BR: But in back of them here would be the alley, they’d run this way.

JE: Yes. Right. The long way. Project

BR: Ya.

JE: Right. Society

BR: Then they’d have the manger, and then a courseHistory feed box on each side of the manger. Manger was generally made out of poles, you know.

JE: How about salt? Would they have a saltOral box or would they...

BR: Oh, they put the salt... Historical JE: Salt in the manger.

BR: They put the salt in Historythe manger.

JE: With the oats or...

BR: Well, they generally give the salt to the horses. And they generally didn’t have rock salt. They generally had... ForestMinnesota JE: Coarse salt.

BR: Coarse salt. And they generally give them a little salt on a certain day. On Sunday or something they had a particular day to give them salt.

JE: I’m thinking of back home on our own farm, I head of horses. The barn boss would clean out that barn every day wouldn’t he?

BR: The barn boss, if it wasn’t too big a place, too big of a place is generally assigned to some other fellow to help him clean it. But a small one he generally cleaned the barn.

JE: Did he use a wheelbarrow?

BR: Sometimes he used a wheelbarrow, depending on how big the bar was. Sometimes he’d take it with just a shovel would get rid of it. Most of them had a kind of a wheelbarrow or some kind of a little slip or sleigh or something that they could throw it on. Haul it out.

JE: Now that horse barn would usually be, if I’m not mistaken on this, sloping downhill away from the camp.

BR: They generally had it away from the camp.

JE: Ya. Cause the manure pile would be there. Project BR: So it wouldn’t drain to the...

JE: Wouldn’t have the seepage in there. But then the seepage, Buzz, would go down towards a creek, would it not? Society

BR: Well it might go towards a creek, ya. History

JE: It might? Oral BR: Ya. If the creek was down in there, it generally would, ya.

JE: That leads me up to this question here. In Historicalall the camps that you were in, would you find usually predominantly, a well being dug, or did they usually take the water from a lake...

BR: They generally dug Historywells. They dug wells as much as possible. In the Cloquet Lumber Company camps, when I was going to build a camps in the twenties there, a fellow name Dave Nyssula dug all their wells. Old Dave with his boy, God, he dug at camps all over. They were generally those wells that were in camp, like 127, 119, 120, camp 114, 130. Those were all about forty feet deep, them wells. And they would dig them by hand and crib them. And when the camp was going to be there, he’d move them in and they’d start digging. As soon as the camp was built Forestthey’d start diggingMinnesota the well.

JE: Okay, now, let’s take that well for a moment. How do you dig by hand, a forty foot well?

BR: They’d dig it by hand. They’d put a windlass above and they’d have this bucket. This wooden bucket like made out of a barrel. And they’d start digging, going down, and they’d wind it up, dump it. Wind it down; he’d work from the bottom. I think they used to get about a hundred dollars a well, that old Dave Nyssula. He dug all of them.

JE: Now, would he crib it too?

BR: He’d crib it. He’d get the cribbing in there, and they’d crib it. And when they cribbed it, they’d dry it down, see? Cribbed on the top. They’re generally about six foot square. And they’d crib it. Then they’d drive it down.

JE: Okay, now, explain to us what’s cribbing, so we understand.

BR: Cedar cribbing, generally, or whatever they crib it with, built a crib around you know. Then built it above the ground. Then they would pound it down with corners so it kept it going down. It was cribbed all the time, built it on from the top, and gradually would crib down. It was rocky country up there. They couldn’t work down in there without cribbing

JE: Ya.

BR: And then they’d generally get about six, eight feet of water downProject that well and that was a supply of water, all they’d need.

JE: How long would it take before that sediment, three, four days before you could use that water? Society

BR: Oh, I think they could start after three, four days,History ya. They generally need, at number camp 30, there at Telelot Lake. I remember them digging that just as well as yesterday. They were in, they built that camp in August. And then he dug the well. And the camp didn’t start really until October. Camps were built and they didn’tOral start getting men in there until October.

JE: Would they have a top over, shelter over that well? Historical BR: No, they wouldn’t have boards on it. And they’d have pumps on it. Course, a few of them had pumps on. The earlier ones they didn’t, but the later ones they had pumps on. They’d put pipes down the cylinder. HistoryGet the cylinder down in that.

JE: The horses would not use that water?

BR: No. The horses then they generally would have another well for the horses or maybe they’d water the horses out of the creek. And of course, if it was a winter camp, the horse manure wouldn’t Foresthave no drainageMinnesota so as the creek would be full, you know, and it wouldn’t try drain in the spring. Wouldn’t be no pollution towards the creek. Anyhow…

JE: How long would it take them to put down forty feet of well?

BR: I’d think that it’d take him; I don’t really know, four, five feet a day. Take them...

JE: So it’d just make it probably...

BR: Ten days.

JE: Ten days. A hundred dollars in ten days.

BR: Well, I think that’s what they used to get, Old David. And he had a big fat boy, Abraham, Abraham Nyssula. They dug a lot of wells around in the twenties there.

JE: Abraham Nyssula?

BR: Nyssula.

JE: Nyssula.

BR: Ya.

JE: Was he Jewish? Project

BR: No. He was...

JE: Wasn’t Jewish. Society

BR: Was a Finlander. N-Y-S-S-U-L-A. History

JE: Okay. Nyssula. That sounds like a Finlander. Now, in that horse barn, they usually had what, a pole behind the horses that they hungOral their lanterns on, or was there a...

BR: No, you see, at the back of the stall, generally right at the back of each stall there’d generally be a post that come up to the roof. AndHistorical of course, that generally had bored holes in there, and put these things in to hang the harnesses on. One on each side, see? And each saw would have that post cause that horse from that side hung on there and that horse on this side hung here. And then downHistory through the middle they had a, right through the middle of the barn, they had a hay that some lanterns hung on. They’d come and they’d put their lanterns on there and they could push then lanterns along and they had snaps you know all them snaps and maybe they’d have two, three lanterns and maybe the barn boss would light those lanterns. And then if the men cone and looked after the men themselves or something, you’d leave them lit and then push them along the wire back of their own horses, see? ForestMinnesota JE: Did you usually find, Buzz, in the camps that you were in, horses’ butts facing each other or heads facing each other?

BR: No, butts facing each other.

JE: Butts facing each other.

BR: Oh, ya.

JE: Okay.

BR: Oh, sure, you couldn’t have those tails out where you’d get then. You’d have to have a second alley, and then you know.

JE: Ya. That’s right. That’s what I’m getting at. Seen some, I’ve seen some pictures, but very few pictures.

BR: Oh that’d be more like a race track or something.

JE: So, there would be how much space in the front for feeding these? You still have to have some kind of an alley in there, wouldn’t you to feed, to walk...

BR: No, walk in between the horses to feed them. Project

JE: You walk in between the horses.

BR: Walk right in and fed them. Ya, walked in between there put theSociety feed in the feed box.

JE: Okay. I suppose when the horses came in, the barnHistory boss probably had the hay in front of him anyway?

BR: Ya, generally had the mangers full ofOral hay.

JE: Ya, how about the use of bedding. Did they use the old hay, or... Historical BR: They’re already out.

JE: What are some of theHistory unusual tools or buildings that a camp has besides the regular sets of barn, and bunkhouse, and things like that?

BR: Well, those railroad camps of course that they had in the in the years where they had railroad camps, they generally had a (unclear) for the railroad men. That was in most of the camps after about 1910, in the railroad camps they had a railroad in, was a little different thing. Had a railroadForest men’s camp.Minnesota

JE: Now, how about a root house. Was the root house usually attached?

BR: Root house was attached to the kitchen.

JE: That was usually dug down?

BR: Generally about a foot below the floor. Generally about a foot below the floor of the

kitchen with the floor of the root house. Generally on the side, near one end.

JE: Probably the, preferably the northwest side?

BR: No. In most cases that I’ve seen it, it’s been on the south side, or on the southeast side. For some reason I don’t know why, but gene rally on the southeast side, quite often.

JE: Now that was an addition to.

BR: Addition to, you know, the camp running this way. The door here, the back door here. Then this way about right in the, that’d be about like a root cellar would be.

JE: Okay. Okay, now, would that root cellar be plugged right into the main wall...

BR: In the winter there’d be a door going right in from here, see. Now your stoves would be in here, and your dish up tables, and your sinks in here. This is the cookingProject area in here. And generally right in here that the door went into that. And this was generally log you know, and generally about a foot of dirt on the roof.

JE: Uh, huh. For insulation. Society

BR: A foot or something on the roof. And it wouldn’tHistory be as, the whole thing wouldn’t be just about as high as the eaves of the building here.

JE: Okay. Oral

BR: Maybe slightly higher. And it’d have a low door, and they generally had it down about a foot lower so that when you stepped out of thisHistorical you stepped down about a foot and went in there.

JE: Okay now, that was always dark, wasn’t it? There weren’t any windows or anything in there. History

BR: There wasn’t any windows in it. They generally had a lamp in there. And the stuff they kept in there was all the vegetables that would freeze, and besides that they kept syrup in there. One thing sure they always kept syrup. Syrup used to come in barrels. So there was an awful lot of syrup in camp. And salt pork come in barrels, and that was usually in there. And other, bacon we hung inForest there, and Minnesotamaybe even ham and stuff like that. But, syrup would be the cookees job to go in there rand tap the barrel, and fill the syrup pitchers, and put them on the table. That was the last job at night always. Until that was, there was a story connected to that, I’m afraid I know it very well. Old John Neary was logging in the camp and they just got a full barrel of syrup. And they had this young cookee. And the cookee went in there the last thing at night and he filled each syrup pitchers and put on there, and he forgot to close the spigot. And old John got up in the morning about four o’clock in the morning, and started cooking the breakfast. Suddenly he dodges into there for something and there was about three inches of syrup on the floor. That whole barrel of syrup was on the floor. And he fell down in there and rolled around in it, and he

come out. And they say he was chasing the cookee. The cookee heard him holler and jumped out of bed. And he chased the cookee out the front door with a cleaver and was going to kill him. Ya, well that’s about how they’d be. They could be on either side the house. I see they had a picture down there in the Virginia Rainy Lake’s last camp and that’s on the east side. But they were generally that way.

JE: In a camp or in a cook shanty that you have made or drew right here on this paper, where are your cooks and cookees going to sleep?

BR: The cooks, in general, they had a little addition on here, like this. The door coming in and they had the quarters in here. And sometimes it had it on this side, and sometimes a little thing along here. And sometimes, of course, it was big enough, they had it inside here. But quite often they were on, had a little lean-to.

JE: Now... Project BR: Cook’s quarters.

JE: Usually there was one cookee for every twenty-five men. Society BR: That was as a rule. The cook would demand a cookee for twenty-five men, as a rule. Then if he got fifty men, generally he wanted two cookees.History And some of them, if they got fifty men, they wanted a second cook, besides.

JE: Just probably a meat cook, or a baker,Oral huh?

BR: Second cook, and then they had, then if they got up, two hundred men camp, and then they have a cook, a baker off man, a meat cook, a secondHistorical cook, and the cookees.

JE: Okay. Now, you have spent some time in the kitchen of one of these camps, have you not? History BR: Ya.

JE: Okay. Now, how big were these stoves? Are we talking usually about six hole stoves, or eight hole stoves?

BR: EightForest hole. Minnesota

JE: Okay. And usually on the left hand side there would be a water barrel...

BR: Water barrel and a water front. Ya.

JE: Okay. And a water front on the stove?

BR: Uh, huh.

JE: And that was circular.

BR: Ya.

JE: Around. Now, would the ovens be facing out towards the men, or away from the men?

BR: Away from the men. Face towards the back.

JE: Towards the back. And the wan-up counters would be then on the side of the men?

BR: There’d be a counter, a dish-up counter. They’d pick them up andProject take them back on the table.

JE: So, it was the cookees job them to fill up all the dishes... Society BR: Ya. History JE: Put, place them on the...

BR: Take them up here and they’d put themOral on the dish-up counter, find the second cook would be standing there with all these pots and stuff back here, and he’d dish them up, fill them, and the cookees would take them back. Historical JE: Okay, now...

BR: Coffee pots, too. History

JE: What kind of coffee pots are we talking about? Are you talking...

BR: Well, we had individual, about a three quart coffee pot. They’d set them on the table about every six men, there’d be a coffee pot sitting on the table. ForestMinnesota JE: Now, let’s take a pork breakfast. You’re going to be making bacon. Did they have bacon oft times for...

BR: Well, bacon sometimes, but I never had so much bacon in a camp. But they had bacon quite often, especially in the spring if they were fortunate enough to get eggs. But bacon more often would be fried salt pork, or wieners, or pork sausages. Ya, pork sausages for breakfast.

JE: Okay. Did they ever serve pork chops?

BR: Pork chops, no. Have them just rarely on Sundays in these Shanks’ camps. There was very few pork from, old Pork Chop Shank, he served us every Sunday. Pork was something that wasn’t universally served in camps. It was beef mostly. Only rare occasions it was pork.

JE: What did you have for breakfast besides your flapjacks?

BR: Well, you’d have had potatoes.

JE: You’d have sourdough pancakes.

BR: You’d have pancakes, you’d have potatoes, you’d have bread, and you’d have meat. You’d have meat on the table.

JE: What kind of meat? Project

BR: What kind of meat? Well, it might be roast, it might be stew, might be cold meat, pork sausage, or... Society JE: How about beans? Any kind of... History BR: Ya, might have meat, and it might even have beans for breakfast.

JE: Now, when we’re thinking about theseOral ovens that are back here--different kind of wood for different kind of heat, right?

BR: Well, mostly used tamarack and birch woodHistorical for cooking.

JE: Okay. These big pans, oh, let’s say that they’re about two and a half feet long, probably about a foot and a half wide,History somewhere in there.

BR: Ya, and about six inches high.

JE: Now, what kind of pans, are those bean pans, or...

BR: No, Forestthey were meat...Minnesota

JE: Meat pans?

BR: They cooked meat in them. Yup. They cooked meat in them, quite well. Cooked meat in the oven. Roasted meat in them.

JE: Okay. What other kind of utensils, generally speaking? They had the meat cleavers, the big butcher knife...

BR: Well, you see, they had an awful lot of what they called camp kettles. Camp kettles ranged all the way from a gallon kettle up to a five, or even to a ten gallon kettle. That was that round kettle with the bail on them with a cover. Those camp kettles were very popular.

JE: Now you said, what was on it? A bail?

BR: A bail. A bail. On a pail, you know.

JE: Okay. A wire handle.

BR: Ya, a big bale. It had the big ears on the side, you know, have an ear out here.

JE: So you’d only tip it half way. Project

BR: Ya, then the bail went around it like that, then that also was the cover. Went up like this with a handle, and the cover hung over a little like that. Them camp kettles were very popular type of… Society

JE: Cast iron? History

BR: Well, they were heavy galvanized. Oral JE: Galvanized. Heavy galvanized. How about pie tins? Were pie tins usually a twelve inch pie tin, Buzz, with one of those little steel things or iron things that came around in them? Historical BR: I never seen so much them turn around, but a few of them had them. But they were pie tins of different sizes, all the way from eight inch up to sixteen inch. Sometimes they made these here flat cakes in them. History

JE: Did you have such things as cornbread ever for breakfast?

BR: Well, sometimes we had cornbread for breakfast. They made it on them cookie sheets, you know. Ya, cornbread. Pancakes was an old staple thing, and always potatoes, and meat and... ForestMinnesota JE: How about prunes?

BR: Prunes, always prunes on the table and apricots...

JE: Are those...

BR: Peaches, and...

JE: Canned or dried?

BR: They were cooked, but they had been dried, ya. Home dried, no canned. No canned fruit.

JE: Okay.

BR: Canned fruit was a little later, you know. It was mostly all dried fruits. Most the time.

JE: Cookees job, or was it the, well it would be the cookee’s job to get the water and all those things for...

BR: The cookee?

JE: Ya. Project BR: No. The bullcook brought the water in.

JE: Bullcook, ya. Society BR: Bullcook brought the water in, kept the water barrels full in the camp. Besides these hot water barrels, sometimes we had an extra barrel of waterHistory on the side there right next to the sink, you know. The sink would probably be in here. They may have an extra water barrel here. Cold water they kept full too that they would use occasionally. Oral JE: Now, at dinnertime out in the woods, if it was too far for the men to come in they’d use a swingdingle to take it out. Historical BR: Ya.

JE: Now, did the swingdingleHistory usually have a box with pails, containers stuck down in, or were they just a small sled with the food on and kind of packed in there?

BR: No, they generally had a box. Some of them boxes had a, kind of a rack inside; cause generally the food generally was in these camp kettles. With these covers on them. It was a very common thing and they’d set them in there. Some of them sometimes they had a little platform in that box theyForest could raiseMinnesota up on one side that they would set the biscuits and stuff like that on. Maybe on the bottom they’d set the camp pans of potatoes and beans, or whatever we were having, you know, meat. And they generally had those lined with an old blanket, or sometimes fresh burlap.

JE: Now the...

BR: The stuff was all covered that was in there.

JE: It was the cookee’s job to take that out to the men.

BR: Generally a cookee, one of the cookees, generally went out with the (unclear).

JE: Now, would there be a fire built usually out in the woods, or...

BR: Ya straw boss was in charge of the crew. Generally had the fire going at eleven o’clock. Assigned a man to have the fire going, have it warm by the time the swingdingle got there, you know.

JE: Now, in the, am I missing anything about that cook shanty? Is there anything, oh, by the way, did they ever have a bread slicer?

BR: Bread slicer, no. I never seen a bread slicer. Project JE: Okay. In other words, it was sliced by the cook or cookee.

BR: Ya. Ya. Society JE: And that was always made fresh every day. History BR: Ya.

JE: And that came in, what, a hundred sackOral pound of flour, or...

BR: Oh, ya. Hundred pounds, and sometimes a little bit earlier, they use to make barrels. Historical JE: Barrels. Now, they always tell us about in these camps about lice. What about cockroaches?

BR: Cockroaches? History

JE: Ya.

BR: Never seen one.

JE: NeverForest seen one. Minnesota

BR: I don’ think they’d get that far to camps.

JE: Because, you know, some of these fellows didn’t stay in the motel...

BR: Oh, I don’t think the camps run that long. It could be if you get an old camp like headquarter camp or something like run several years, summer and winter, there could be such a

thing that got in those camps.

JE: But you never ran into them?

BR: No, I never ran into them. Bedbugs, of course, was in a bother in the camps. Mostly in the boarding cars and in the camps that run year around.

JE: What’s a bedbug?

BR: Bedbugs?

JE: Ya.

BR: All I know is the biggest problem they ever had at every hotel in the country was loaded with bedbugs for years. Project JE: It was a bedbug?

BR: Your mother must’ve had to fight them when she was young... Society JE: Is a bedbug…? History BR: The bedbugs were so thick, that you couldn’t sleep...

JE: Is a bedbug a louse? Oral

BR: No, not lice. They were little red bugs about, looked something like a wood tick, only they were soft. There were thousands of then in theseHistorical hotels and boarding houses, and stuff. How they’d ever get rid of them, I’d never know. There were millions of them. That was the big problem, even your homes was full of them. My mother was always fighting them. Kids would go and sit down some placeHistory and they’d bring home bedbugs. And she used to always open the beds up and open out the corners of the mattress to see if there was bedbugs that we’d brought home, you know. Go over the mattresses with Black Flag and stuff, trying to get rid of the bedbugs. That was an awful problem for years is bedbugs.

JE: Now, you see, I don’t know what a bedbug is at all. ForestMinnesota BR: Oh, the hotels were loaded with them. And boarding houses. Oh, God.

JE: Now, are there anything’s in the bunk, or the cook shanty. We know that there was no talking aloud. And every person had his own place. The main idea was to get in there and see how much you could shove into your gullet as fast as you could. The food, generally speaking, was very good food. Some case it was not, but in other cases it was superior food. It was wholesome food.

BR: Good, fine food.

JE: Ya. Now, are there anything’s that I’m missing here in that cook shanty? Oh, how about the stove inside. Was that, in a hundred man camp, being that they had the cook stoves in there already Buzz, was there another barrel stove in there?

BR: Might have. They might have. Might have a barrel stove sitting in between here in the middle. You see pictures, you’ll see...

JE: Ya. Ya.

BR: Might have. To keep it warm.

JE: Okay. Now, did all the men cone in at one time?

BR: Yup. Ya, they rang the bell and they all came in. Project

JE: Did they sit down and start eating right away, or did everybody have to be seated and then...

BR: No, no. Sit down and start eating right away. Society

JE: Start eating right away. History

BR: They all sit down right fast. Oral JE: Okay. How about smoking inside there?

BR: No smoking. Historical

JE: No smoking. History BR: No smoking and no talking in your seat. And if you didn’t if you were a stranger in your camp, you come in, you just stood there and the cookee assigned you a seat right away.

JE: But you never took anybody else’s seat?

BR: Ya. ForestNever took anybodyMinnesota else’s seat. He’d show you where to sit if you weren’t already in the, the cookee would show you where there was a vacancy.

JE: Okay, now in the bunkhouse. Which was more prevalent? The muzzle loader or the breech loader bunk?

BR: No, the breech loader. The muzzle loader passed out real early. That was real early. That was just in the very early camps that I could find. They were trying to get more people into a small camp because they didn’t have much material to build with, you know. But that passed out

real early. I seen a couple of them muzzle loaders, you know.

JE: Now we notice that in a bunkhouse, it’s really kind of a barren place, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve got probably a table on one end, the wash up counter with the little mirror above it, probably a drinking pail, long spigot thing on it, or I mean a long handled cup on, the deacon’s seat in front. How was that deacon seat built? I mean, did...

BR: Oh, it was built in two ways. Some of them had, you see deacon’s seat that were built with a bench. Even built out of a half log with two posts in it. Some of the early ones. Some of them were benches built like a regular bench. Like this. They’d be braced like that.

JE: Out of sawed lumber. Ya.

BR: Or, some of them were, the bunk come down like this and the board that come out from the bunk formed a deacon’s seat. Project JE: Okay.

BR: Like this, and a brace under it like that. And the bunk laid in here then. I’ve seen all kinds, see. Society

JE: Now, the, there wasn’t any back to the deacon’s Historyseat then?

BR: Huh? Oral JE: There was no back to the deacon’s seat?

BR: Well, some of them had, in that picture it Historicalshows you there, some of them had boards there on the end of the bunk. The bunk would be like this. Some fellow had a few boards lowering his bunk. So sitting right there you’d have a back, but you wouldn’t here in the middle. As a rule, there wasn’t any, no. History

JE: Now, were the floor of this bunk building, what size walls are we talking about? Those were all adzed off, weren’t they?

BR: Some of them were adzed. The very early ones were adzed off. But most the ones that I saw wereForest rough, roughMinnesota boards in the floor.

JE: Rough boards in the floor.

BR: Ya so that when they scrubbed the floor very often. The floors were scrubbed very often and the water runs through the cracks. But they were scrubbed and they used quite a lot of lye in their water and they got kind of a yellowish tints the boards. The bull cook would scrub and throw the water on the broom, scrub them very heavy. And they were fairly clean in spite the

heavy use they got.

JE: Now, if you’re putting in about, oh, I suppose if you’re camp is, your bunkhouse is fifty feet long, you should be able to stack, let’s see, let’s make it easy. It’s fifty-four feet long. That’ll be nine bunks long approximately.

BR: Ya, well, I think most bunkhouses had about fifty men. And then, generally if a hundred man camp, generally had two bunkhouses. Find that a lot more often than having that many men in one. Generally fifty men in a bunkhouse. Most often.

JE: Only fifty men.

BR: Yup.

JE: So, okay. Now, there’s a couple of little things that we’re missing in this bunkhouse. And what are they? We’ve got the stove. We’ve got the sink. We’ve got theProject wires hanging around for the drying of the socks...

BR: Ya, the racks up there. Society JE: The racks. History BR: Skylights, got the skylights up there, they’re open and closed...

JE: With a handle... Oral

BR: With a pole, a pole coming down, ya. Historical JE: Now, did the men have any little individual knicks and knacks that they used. Probably like a little wooden spittoon or something like that. History BR: Well, they had spittoons. They had spittoons under the stoves. They had sand under the stoves, and they didn’t like to have them spit under there. All, most all of them had a wooden box filled with sawdust to spit in. And the bull cook would take them out and empty them and put in fresh sawdust.

JE: Now,Forest was that, wellMinnesota let’s say the man is up on the top.

BR: Ya, well, he wouldn’t spit down from there.

JE: He wouldn’t spit down.

BR: No, he’d tobacco; he’d get down on the deacon. When he went up on the bunk, he wouldn’t spit down.

JE: In other words, the men very seldom would ever chew tobacco in their mouth when they went to bed?

BR: No, I never seen that. Might smoke up there. Might get down and empty his pipe then on something, but I never seen them spit from up there.

JE: Okay then. Well that’s what I’ve… That’s what I want to know...

BR: No, I never seen that.

JE: I run into a story once in a while…

BR: I never seen that.

JE: Where guys spit... Project BR: They sit and spit in that wooden spittoon. Quite often they had those. But they would spit in that thing underneath the stove that had that sand in it, and they didn’t like that. The bull cook was always giving them hell. That generally had sand under there and some of them would spit under there. Bull cook was always giving them hell for spitting underSociety that stove.

JE: Stinking it up. History

BR: Well, they’d spit under there and it’d dry up, you know. Heat of the stove would dry it up. Oral JE: Oh, ya. Ya. Right. How about the back door? Was there a back door to those?

BR: Ya, that was generally a back, front door Historicalwas the back door here going to the toilet, you know. The toilets were out behind. There’s generally one toilet for an ordinary hundred man camp generally only had one toilet. It’s about six, seven men could sit in it at one time. They didn’t have holes, they justHistory have a pole to sit over, you know.

JE: What did they use to, did they have Charmin?

BR: No, no, no. They just had, some they seemed to have papers. There was always some paper around. Papers, old catalogues and stuff somehow got into the camp, I don’t know. That was always thoseForest newspapersMinnesota or something to wipe their hind end on.

JE: What did the men take for such things as laxative?

BR: They didn’t have to take a laxative, they had prunes.

JE: They’d eat prunes, huh?

BR: Didn’t see very much laxative remember. Occasionally you know I remember once in awhile we’d have a man in the camp that’d be a little bit on the unhealthy stomach sort or something and he’s generally a quiet fellow. But they very seldom ever took anything. Inside their bunks sometimes they’d put up a little, on the wall they’d put up a little sets of shelf to put an alarm clock on, or a knick knack or something they had, oh a little shelf in there. And they generally hung their packsacks inside the bunk on the wall. Everything they possessed was generally inside the bunk, hanging on the wall. Up over the head or on the wall along side of them.

JE: Now what was the name of their packsack?

BR: Well, they called them turkeys sometimes...

JE: Turkeys.

BR: But sometimes most of generally times called them turkeys… Project

JE: Turkey’s ya. Now, let’s get into sky pilots. Who were some of the sky pilots? Society BR: Well, a sky pilot, there was only rich sky pilots, of course. We’d get an awful lot of that sky pilot stuff. And flying Higgings who was the originalHistory sky pilot, was a couple of books wrote about him, you know. I don’t know if you’ve read those books or not.

JE: Yes, Frank. Yes. Oral

BR: He was a Presbyterian minister and a course I knew him personally for two reasons. One was that he built this little Blakely and Farley wasHistorical the big contractors that contracted for the Burlington and the J. Neals out on the Turtle River. They built the Turtle River. They built the town of Farley because they couldn’t get a spur at Turtle River and so they went up and built this town and built this big hotel.History And old Farley was a kind of a dude, and he promoted a bunch of girls in there to take the lumberjacks money. And they were kind of a wild outfit, although old Bill Blakely was a good logger. They put in as much as ninety million one winter. It was an awful lot of logs, and many camps. And the town of Farley was the headquarters. And it was supposed to be kind of a wild town. And right at that time, Frank Higgins was operating out of Bemidji. And because Blakely and Farley was supposed to be one of the lawless camp outfits, he was kind Forestof giving themMinnesota a little hard time on account of the town of Farley. They built a church in Farley. Right there by the river, right down by the river an old bridge where the old C. Hiley took off. And I remember as a kid we used to go over there and fish, spear suckers by the bridge. And if it would rain, we’d go on up and get into this church. And they put hay in the church. I don’t never remember them ever having church in it though. When I was about eleven years old, there was hay in it. They hauled hay up there and put in it. But my mother belonged to the Presbyterian Church at that time. And because she was Presbyterian and he was the Presbyterian in Bemidji at that time, I, he would come up to Turtle River and he’d preach there in Turtle River. And so I had the occasion to see him a couple times. And he pointed out to me seeing me;

he had my mother at one of his church meetings. I knew him so that I, but then I’d read a lot about him and heard about him then afterwards around the camp. But he was of course, the king of all sky pilots. And of course he had his (unclear). He had his (unclear) and it was his… But then there was a lot better walking ministers, too, around. All kinds, the local ministers. Up on the M & I we used to hear some of them, you know, what in the Daniel was that fellow’s name that used to carry that organ on his back, Test. His name was Test. Wore big thick glasses. He used to come around. A lot of ministers in the camps. But of course Higgins was the king of all sky pilots. And a course you read this sky pilot book, The Last of the Giants, you probably heard that about this fellow up at Kelsey?

JE: Uh, huh.

BR: The last of the sky pilots. We have some stuff downstairs here. We got an organ that belonged to another one them sky pilots. There was quite a few of them around.

JE: Were these fellows, Buzz, pretty understanding of the men, or wereProject they hell and damnation preachers?

BR: Well, Higgins a course, got the respect of the men cause he was a big husky man. And a course the lumberjacks respect anybody that could lick a man. And heSociety was a solid, husky man and he could lick most any lumberjack. And they respected him more for that reason than anything else. And anybody that would give lip to Higgins,History he could give them a cutting down. So that was why he gained his respect mostly, because he was an honest guy and worked up along the Gut and Liver Line out of Deer River an awful lot. And that was a tough town. So, lumberjacks got to know him. He was wellOral respected, and of course he was probably the king of all sky pilots for that reason. But there was many of them went to the camps.

JE: Now... Historical

BR: And besides that there was some sisters, of course, went to the camps all the time. They’d preach with them around Historyselling their...

JE: Hospital cards.

BR: Their hospital cards.

JE: Now,Forest were these...Minnesota

BR: There was other organizations come there. I can remember one woman coming one year. I think that was 1918, some woman come around collecting for some orphanage. And she’d talk and she’d take collections for some orphanage.

JE: Were these men missionaries or were they paid by the congregations?

BR: No, they were, he was a Presbyterian. Now, this Test or Tess that I talked about, he was a Methodist. He headquartered in Northome. Then there was another fellow up at Mizpah. They had quite a few of those ministers that made the camps locally, you know.

JE: You said about Deer River, that Deer River was a pretty tough town. Well Bemidji wasn’t all soft egg either, was it?

BR: No. Bemidji, the old one was. But Deer River was because of, well, I think maybe on account of Frank Higgin’s sky pilot stories seemed to polish up a lot. But it was a pretty rough town. And the Gut and Liver Line headquartered there and they had everything that went along with it. The houses of prostitution and, but Bemidji was too. Bemidji was the center of that whole country up there, you know. All the lumberjacks went down blowing their stakes in Bemidji, you know.

JE: In 1918, you’re a young man. Were there still houses of prostitution in places? Project BR: Oh, ya. A lot of the prostitution all the time. And they got, one of the last houses of prostitution was run quite openly. The one at Gemmell. That one at Gemmell run, oh hell that was run after I come over here. It run up into the late twenties, anyhow. Society JE: How about Craig? History BR: Well, Craig that was in the early twenties that some of them old girls thought that when Backus went down there and logged around Craig, they started that little town of Craigville, there. And a bunch of them old guys, wentOral over there and started these little lumberjack places and they all flopped down. It only lasted just a little while.

JE: I interviewed Peggy Ann Mattice. She wentHistorical there in 1939.

BR: That late, huh? History JE: Ya.

BR: Well, there might’ve been a few that late, but it was pretty well over by the time, you see, when McGinny, when what-you-call-him shot McGinny there in Craig. That was pretty well over at that time when (unclear) shot McGinny. I’ve got account of that right in my car there now. ForestMinnesota

JE: Ya, I interviewed a fellow that remembered that from Deer River, that worked on the Gut and Liver Line.

BR: What-you-call-him, John (unclear) was right in the hotel when...

JE: Was he?

BR: Upstairs and he shot downstairs. He was working for the forestry when he went there I had, I told him to write it up and he wrote it up to me this spring.

JE: That’s great.

BR: Ya. But, it only lasted for two or three years there. It wasn’t much of a place. But that place in Gemmel run over a period of twenty years. That Charlie White had houses of prostitution there and then there’s your Alice Simmons come up there. She was there, and then she died.

JE: One of the things that I seldom hear of, Buzz, is venereal diseases. Were there venereal diseases in these houses of prostitution?

BR: Oh sure. But you see, a lot of those, now like big Al, black Alice Projectthere at Gemmel. The local boys used to go there and she didn’t cater to have the boys there too much. But when they would come, she’d say if any of the boys--she’d go up and get a lot of her girls up there from Minneapolis. Whenever she’d get a few girls up from Society Minneapolis, cause she’s from Minneapolis personally. And she’d get some girls up there and she’d say if any of the boys got the clap, she wanted toHistory know if she wanted to have get them, she’d give them money to get cured up.

JE: Now there was no... Oral

BR: She’d tell anybody, if anybody gets anything from my girls, let me know and till see that they send them to the doctor to get fixed up. SheHistorical was good that way.

JE: Now, there was no penicillin... History BR: No penicillin.

JE: There was no sulfa.

BR: No penicillin then. There was no good doctors. They had other things that they’d use, you know. They’dForest use, wellMinnesota in them early days they’d use oil, and what in the hell else would they use…

JE: Or sometimes they scraped...

BR: Huh?

JE: Sometimes they scraped them, too.

BR: Well, they had shots. Oil was one of the common ones and stuff that they would use in them early days.

JE: What did the girls charge?

BR: Charge?

JE: Ya.

BR: Oh, them lumberjacks, they ain’t going to charge but two dollars.

JE: Which means a day’s wages or something like that?

BR: During the CC days here in Duluth here, they got CC rates. Most of them charged a dollar right here in Duluth. There were half dozen places; none of them charged a dollar. Florence White, Elsie Ludwig, Josie Meyer and those places Project

JE: Has those kinds of things died down completely?

BR: Oh, ya. As far as I know. Maybe I got too old. Society

JE: There might be a possibility there. But, there’s aHistory number of things we’ve got to go over yet. When you get into the woods operations. Let’s start from the very beginning of having the bull cook get up and he is stoking up the fire and he is now going to wake the teamsters up. What time, usually, let’s say when the sun comesOral up about seven o’clock in the morning, what time would those teamsters usually be out of bed?

BR: Well, I’ll give you an example on that. Now,Historical like the winter of 1919, out at camp 10 there, north of Mizpah. We had a four mile haul from the camp into the sawmill there at Mizpah. And we had about a mile and a half into the woods from the camp, the bulk of the timber. And we spotted out loads, at the camps.History We have a spotting them out (unclear). We spotted out four loads at night. And so we’d get up, the men had to get up about end of…

(Break in Recording)

JE: Okay. ForestMinnesota BR: And he set in four, five posts in the ice so you’d have a block and tackle passage where you’d run the tackle out and put to the hind runner of the sleigh...

JE: So you could bust her loose in the morning, huh?

BR: And then in the morning you got up and you had a big mallet made out of wood. With a wooden hammer, and you get up and get the horses all ready to go and you got a snatch team on the block and tackle along the runner. And you hit four, five runners with the mallet. And all at

once, all together and you got her going, you know. And you try to rack her off and got her going, you could hear if it was a good cold morning, you could hear her grinding for the first half mile. Then she started to run smooth. Well, anyhow, they’d get up about five o’clock and get a little bit earlier breakfast for those teamsters. And they’d get out on the road, because they spotted up. But, as a rule, that’d be the only thing. The rest of the men would get out and start by seven o’clock. Wouldn’t be before eight o’clock. And generally they’d plan on getting the men to work by daylight. In that case if we would happen to be cutting that winter in two different places, some east of the camp and some west of the camp, the stuff west of the camp and some of it was about a mile and a quarter. The timber was almost; decided to build another camp, but it wasn’t quite far enough. But that’s the way we do it. Now, one thing we were talking about that we haven’t discussed at all was the wages. Now the wages, wages never meant too much to lumberjacks. Lumberjacks were more interested in good food. Very early in the logging days with the loggers I found out that if they had good food in the camps and good cooks, they got good men. And if they got good men, they got in more timber than anybody else and that’s what they wanted in the first place. So the whole secret of the whole thing was good food, good cooks, you had good men. And that’s the whole thing. And they were more interestedProject in lumberjacks is in who’s cooking at the camp and how good the food was whether it was $26 a month or whether it was $22.50. That didn’t, that wasn’t particular. It was because most of the men were interested in the food. Society JE: Have we, if we start out operations in the fall, we first of all have to have a man usually go out and pick the location of exactly where he is goingHistory to place that camp. The cruiser’s already gone out there…

BR: Wait, wait, wait. Your cruisers’ go whereOral your timber is. It’s not particular interesting. Now we had three forties that lay right west of the camp a mile and a quarter. And we had two forties that laid east of the camp about half a mile. And we had another forty that laid about half a mile south of the camp. So we placed the campHistorical in the middle to get those, that particular timber that year. And we placed that camp on a little homesteader field because it had to be open in there and just right for the camp. History JE: So in other words, if you could not find an open spot, you usually made one?

BR: Ya, made one, ya.

JE: Because you didn’t want to take a chance on having a tree fall down into that camp, nor could youForest be pulling muchMinnesota equipment around inside.

BR: No, no, no. Have to clear the camp.

JE: Now, who really picked the place where that, you know, it’s going to be centrally located. Okay, Buzz? But who goes out there and says, this is how we’re going to build the camp? Whose job is that?

BR: Well, it was a big company. Depends, every company’s different, but in a big company of course, that’ll probably be the walking boss. The walking boss is assigned at this job. He’s generally the walking boss is probably working with one of the cruisers. Maybe one of the cruisers and the walking boss go out together, but maybe the walking boss set the camps. He may have to have three camps before he can find how to operate in that winter. He trying to locate them

JE: Now, who would go out there and build that camp? In other words, were they swampers?

BR: Well, the Cloquet Lumber Company and the Northern Lumber Company, if they were going to build a camp, it was a bunch of Finlanders from up in the Martin Guild Company that done nothing but build camps. They built them every year. They generally went in August and start building the camp that we was going to log that winter.

JE: Was that usually the case? Project

BR: Well, that wasn’t probably usually the case., That is no real answer to that, because we built a camp up at Windsor one time, built it right in the middle of January. You know if we going to log there, we had to run out and just build it in January. So you got to...Society

JE: Probably I should place this question differently.History Was it usually the swampers that went along...

BR: That built the camp? Oral

JE: Ya. Historical BR: No, no. Generally you picked out some men that was good ax men, or maybe some of these handymen we’re talking about. These handymen that you talked about around the camp, they were generally the men thatHistory built camps. Then the fellow that built camps. And they also, these same handymen I’m talking about, very often built dams. Worked on the dams of the rivers and these dams had these little repairs in the spring. Woodwork on the dams. Put the cribbing and stuff into the dams and stuff. And these same types of handymen, axmen and handymen, worked on those dam repairs. And they built camps and this type of stuff. They kind of follow that. That’s the kind of guys you got to pick camps. You wouldn’t get teamsters as a rule, but... ForestMinnesota JE: Would the cook go out with those guys?

BR: Ya, they generally came out. Generally they build a camp like; we built a camp up north of Northome there in 1920. The first building we built, we hauled the lumber out in the spring, just like this when the snow was on the ground where we was going to build the camp. And we didn’t start building the camp for about a month after that. Then we went out and the first building we built was the office. We set the cook up in the office and had about sixty, seventy men. We built the cook room in the office. And they all stayed in the office the first three; four days

the next building and then we started building the kitchen. And we built the kitchen. And then we built the bunkhouse, and the barn. And during the break up, we built that camp all during the break up. And that was a good time to build camps.

JE: Well, a lot of the camps were built in early fall.

BR: Ya, most of them early fall.

JE: Ya. Now, when they would bring that camp so they’d haul that in by tote wagon?

BR: Ya.

JE: From another camp.

BR: From another camp or from another landing or wherever the tote would be. The toting was a real profession of its own. This toting camps. Project

JE: Now, who would make that tote road?

BR: Well, the tote roads were made by the walking boss and his crewsSociety you know. Now, like we had some famous tote roads up here. They toted all the camps along the river. They toted off the, in there fifteen to twenty miles out of Shiels to all thoseHistory camps along the river. And the, all the camps that the St. Croix Lumber Company had up along the Stony, they had some famous tote teams. You’ve probably seen pictures of what they call the St. Croix Six, Gray Six, St. Croix Brown Six, St. Croix Black Six. They had Oralnoted six horse tote teams and they had pictures of them. You’ve probably seen them. We’ve got several pictures of them here. And they had tote teams that toted down there fifteen or twenty miles. And a lot of these camps right north of Duluth here, they toted right out of Duluth. Up Historicalhere twenty miles, up along these camps of the Brook Scanlon. They toted right out of Duluth here. A lot of stuff.

JE: How big was a tote wagon?History

BR: Well, the tote wagons were big heavy, just big heavy farm wagons.

JE: Was there racks on the sides?

BR: HaveForest racks on theMinnesota sides and it took an awful big one too. Boarding over those rocks. I seen tote wagons up on that clay country up around Northome in the fall after a rain when four horses couldn’t pull an empty wagon with the clay just wound right up in the wheels and they had left the tote wagon. But that toting was a knack all of its own. See there’s something you read about people don’t understand he thing is, see, you’re going down a tote road, they refer to a logging road as a tote road. It’s often referred to as a tote road.

JE: And it’s not. At all.

BR: Nothing to do with it. They say they were hauling the logs down the tote road. Nobody ever hauled logs down the tote road. Tote road was the road that was picked, generally on high land to get the supplies in to the camp.

JE: Whereas the logging road usually was on the lower part.

BR: Ya, well, on low flat ground, ya.

JE: Ya. And if at all possible, could follow a creek bed or something like that.

BR: Ya, that’s right.

JE: Now, the tote teamster must’ve been a man with a darn good pair of kidneys?

BR: Oh, yes... Project JE: To go over...

BR: Frank McMinn was the greatest tote teamster I ever knew. He was…Society

JE: Who was that, Buzz? History

BR: Frank McMinn. Oral JE: Frank McMinn.

BR: He worked for us on the fire patrol in laterHistorical years, but he was a great tote teamster. I tell about him right here in my stories. And, he had tour horses and they claimed he could go on some of the damnedest roads with them horses. It’s just an art of its own that toting, you know. History JE: Are you usually thinking in terms of four horses, or six horses on a tote team?

BR: Well, four horses in the summer toting and generally six horses in the winter. I see the St. Croix got all their tote teams are all six.

JE: Now,Forest in the wintertime,Minnesota Buzz, are you talking about a tote wagon, or are you talking about a tote sled?

BR: Oh, a sleigh in the wintertime. I’ll show you the pictures of a tote sleigh. I think I’ve got them in here, maybe I haven’t. This is out in Kelliher. Now, there’s a tote wagon. And there’s a tote team. There’s a tote road. Now that’s a tote team and this is Horse Charlie driving that tote team. That’s Charlie Ellier. And that is the size of the tote wagon.

JE: That’s a good size wagon.

BR: Up at Smith Dam. Now, here’s a tote sleigh in the winter. See, they had, for some reason; they had that type of rack. Thin there and kind of widened out. That was quite common.

JE: Just like a hay rack.

BR: They done that, cause, you see, there are stumps along the road, would clear down here and wider up above. This is the type, this fellow lives right here in Duluth. He’s from Kelliher.

JE: I notice there’s only two horses on that team.

BR: Well, this, ya, this happened to be a little two horse tote team. That’s out of Kelliher. These fellows here are Stud Horse Shy, I don’t know who this fellow is. Right at Smith Dan.

JE: You’re talking about on page... Project

BR: That’s an old one right there.

JE: Okay. Page 46, and Buzz wrote this book called Early Loggers ofSociety Minnesota. Which is a series of finely written articles on a lot of aspects of the logging industry. It covers really a lot of things. One of the things that, after that camp was builtHistory of course, were the, was the person who would lay out the road. Would that also be the walking boss, Buzz, that would lay out that logging road? Oral BR: Could be, or it could be the, or maybe take the camp foreman, with him or the walking boss, you know. Walking boss was kind of, oh, may have a foreman, man say well, may have to kind of pick before, or the foreman. Historical

JE: Now, once that logging road was built, now that’s the skid road. Is it not? History BR: No, the logging road.

JE: Okay. That’s the logging road. But the skid roads were the off shoot roads.

BR: Ya. ForestMinnesota JE: Okay. And that, a lot of times people would get confused on that. The skid roads were not the iced roads.

BR: No.

JE: It was the logging roads that were the iced roads.

BR: Ya.

JE: And that would take the logs to the landing.

BR: Ya.

JE: Right. Now, would they pile logs, would they skid logs up to the, and pile them?

BR: Deck them on the logging road? Ya.

JE: Ya. Because we sometimes think, you know, and...

BR: Well, sometimes they had short branches, you know, but it would be just slightly iced. Slightly iced, but they’d be part of the logging road. But they wouldn’t be, be kind of a branch, of the logging road but they’d put the sleighs in there to load them. But they may be a quarter of a mile or an eighth of a mile down to the main logging road. But they wouldProject be slightly iced, depending on the number of loads that they planned on coming out of there. But they’d be skidded to that logging road and they’d be decked there. Sometimes there’s hot logging, you know. Hot logging they wouldn’t have enough teams, they’d load the sleigh right there without decking. That’s what they called hot logging. Society

JE: Yes, but... History

BR: The sleighs, they’d pull the sleigh in there and unhitch the teams and they’d load that load. Then they’d hitch on another sleigh and takeOral it, and then they’d come back and hitch on to that sleigh, see. That’s what they called hot logging.

JE: A number of people think, Buzz, that loggingHistorical in these logging camps, that everybody went out at the same time and all of a sudden, bingo, they jumped into it and did it all. Where actually it was kind of in phases, wasn’t it? History BR: Oh, sure.

JE: You first start building the camp and laying out the roads, probably grub hoeing out the big roots that are in the way...

BR: Oh, Forestsure. Minnesota

JE: Moving rocks...

BR: Even had to dynamite some stumps out and rocks out of the roads. You had to make some cuts where you couldn’t get around a little hump and you couldn’t over it and sometimes they had to take the slushers and a team of horses and make a little cut to get sleighs through.

JE: And then of course, a lot of the timber cutting was accomplished before the teamsters even got out into the woods.

BR: Oh, yes. Most of it.

JE: Ya. Most of it.

BR: A lot of the logs was generally a lot of snow on top of it. Sometimes there was four foot of snow on top of the logs that were laying there. That’s quite hard sometimes...

JE: To get that...

BR: The winter of 1907, that was the winter of the eight foot snow up around Cass Lake. They had to quit. They had to give up entirely. They couldn’t get logs out at all.

JE: Eight foot snow. Project

BR: Ya, they claimed there was eight foot of snow that winter.

JE: So, it’s in really kind of phases and a course, leading up to the springSociety breakup, which only God controlled and nobody really knew when spring breakup time would actually come. History BR: No. Generally figured on the tenth of March, so you better have your sleigh hauls done.

Oral JE: And then a course would come those infamous log drives down the river.

BR: Ya. Historical

JE: That leads us to one of the things that people, when they drive along, for instance Highway 2 going to Grand Rapids.History They see a small creek called White Pine River. Now, a small creek like that, actually logs could go down. Could it not?

BR: They drove a lot of those small creeks for the use of dams, you know, because they’re small. When the water would end and the mud in the creeks, sometimes they’d jump across from anyplace. They’d go to a lot of them to use the dam. ForestMinnesota JE: Now, I heard, is there a special name for these dams, Buzz?

BR: Well, they had these dams, you know, like when the water come in, a lot of dams, and had them close together and they’d put the logs in. They just kept flushing the logs down, you know. And they’d float some pretty small creeks.

JE: There’s quite of a bit of a trick to this, too, wasn’t there? To make sure that the water would be backed up and then there was enough water to push it down to the next one and then another

one.

BR: Ya, that’s right. Whole lot to it, ya. You bet there was.

JE: The, what’s the names of the three parts of the log drive? The head part was...

BR: Well, there was the front, and then there was, the rear a course made up the rear, and then there was the, well, you might call the swing they called it. I just, different names they had for them. But, called the front, and the swing, and the rear is generally whatever called them.

JE: The rear was a sacking operation.

BR: Ya. Cleaning up the stuff.

JE: Ya, cleaning up. And jam breakers and all that. Project BR: Ya.

JE: People don’t realize the tremendous height that some of these log jams can get, and how far back they go. Can you explain, briefly here, Buzz, some of the jams thatSociety you’ve seen?

BR: Well, a course, the jams that I seen on the CloquetHistory River, they jammed up on the Cloquet River there for two, three miles. But I seen a whole river for five miles that was solid logs before they started the drive. But then on rivers like the Little Fork, where water raises up without a dam, what happens there is the water comesOral up and the logs turn up way back in the woods. And they have to start, when the water goes down, they have to start logging the stuff over, bringing it back into the water again. Historical JE: Uh, huh. That’s what happened in the 1937...

BR: 1937, ya, that was, that’sHistory that flash type of flood. But down on the St. Croix, a course that’s, I seen pictures of that St. Croix Taylor Falls...

JE: That was…

BR: My God, that was a tremendous thing. Ya. ForestMinnesota JE: Buzz, in the woods there were several methods of loading these logs onto the sleighs. And later on then, onto the rail cars. The first method was the use of a horse with the cross haul method. Could you explain that to us?

BR: Ya. The cross haul method was the method used probably for loading about ninety percent of the logs hauled on sleighs, and probably seventy-five per cent of them hauled on railroad cars. And that was the method where a team of horses or a team of oxen were used as the power. And a long chain called a rolling line come down over the sleigh or car that was going to be loaded

and went around under the log. And the log then was rolled up on skidders and the horses furnishing the power and the log was just rolled up on skids to the top of the load. And that’s where the men doing the what they called the send up men, had to be very much experienced because they had to have those logs cut just proper so that when they fell onto the logs that they’d fall place, because they couldn’t be moved end ways after the (unclear) had cut just proper. And that’s where you hear that word, like you was talking about yesterday, about giving her the, giving her, or give her the St. Croix, or in order to cut her so that she’d fall right in proper place. And that’s the way about most of these big loads were loaded the championship loads. And that’s just about a rolling these logs out. That’s called the cross haul method.

JE: How big were those chains? What size?

BR: Most of those chains was about a, oh, I don’t think they were over three eighths inch lengths, and about a hundred, a hundred twenty-five feet long. They generally had a hook in the end of them. They generally had a hook like a cant hook in the end of these. Hooked the anchor with that hook. Instead of tying on that anchor, that’d hook in something.Project That was called a ground hook or something.

JE: Now, those logs were not even, of course, and they would roll up, I suppose with the butt handed wood have more of a chance to go faster, because... Society

BR: Ya. They had to cut it proper, you know, so thatHistory when rolled up because you see when it’d land, it all had to be the same length end ways. And they couldn’t move, especially the big logs, couldn’t be moved end ways all it always had to land right proper. Oral JE: Now, would you usually find that on the sides of the sleigh, or the sides of the Brussel cars, would they usually put the bigger log on first on the outside? Historical BR: Oh, ya. They generally had a big uniform log on the, what they called a lump log, a corner bind log. That had to be on, put that on first. History JE: Now, you talked about corner binds. What really is a corner bind?

BR: Corner bind is a chain that went through a hold or notch. Some bunks had a notch in, but most of them had a hole drilled through. The corner bind went through the notch and around the log on the end of the bunk and held that log tight to keep it from rolling and in or out or moving forward. ThatForest was the Minnesotabinding of those corners of the sleigh. That’s with the corner hoist.

JE: Okay. Now, later on they went into the jammers. Some were relatively small jammers; some were very big jammers like the steam jammer.

BR: Well, there’s many different kinds of jammers, but most of them was what they called the common lead jammer with the horse jammer. That’s generally about from a twenty-five to a thirty-five to a forty foot lead, depending on how high you had to hoist it. If you were hoisting

cars, you had to have a little higher lead.

JE: Now, what do you mean by...

BR: Leads were the height of the jammer. He went out in the woods and cut two good spruce leads and the jammer was made out of them. Or made out of runners, you know.

JE: Now, were those on a moveable sleigh type of thing or were they sunk into the ground?

BR: No. they were moveable on sleighs. They had a big runner, like you… They’d get these two leads like this and they’d have a runner, big runner hewed out of logs like this for the bottom two of them. And of course, these leads sit on one, then the other, then the other was over here about six feet. And of course, this other tilting pole tilted it. You could tilt it over the load. Then when you got through loading, you tilted it back.

JE: How were those anchored onto those runners? Project

BR: They’re mortised steel. And they’d cut a hole into this big runner about on the (unclear) to this here lead, they’d square it up and then they’d mortise a hole down in there, into that Norway or whatever used. And they sunk down in there. Then sometimes theySociety had an iron the side that held them in there, see. The iron on there was (unclear) iron, you know. History JE: Now, did they use chain on those...

BR: No, they used a cable. They used a cable.Oral

JE: Cable. Historical BR: And a course. Some real long, like it was a big rope, but a cable. And they used four blocks. There was a block on the top, a block on the bottom, and the traveling block. Sometimes, most the time just three blocks,History but sometimes a fourth block. There was three blocks, they were called archinal blocks. Jammer blocks.

JE: Jammer blocks.

BR: Ya. They were called the archinal block. They were shields. Thin shields of cable block. SometimesForest the one upMinnesota on the top had a D ironed to the top of them. You would fasten these together and they had a big D ironed to the there were they hooked the thing in and that would… Then it’d come down, went around the belt. Sometimes they had that fourth block so the workers had to pull, so they’d pull down the roads, you know. Sometimes they’d pull straight down. Then a course they had to have a rope or an anchor that went to the top that anchored back to the tree, or something, back in the woods. Then if they’d lean it you know, they’d lean it over the road so it stood up like that. And then (unclear) leaned it over, and this thing that come down to the other runner. The other runner had a pole there and it had some holes drilled in it and they could push that up and that would lean this over. Some of them’ just a spot runner, they’d just pick this back

runner up and put a little block under it and made it lean.

JE: Now...

BR: There was many kinds of jammers. There was an A-frame jammers that worked from here, but most jammers worked from the side of the load. But I seen a few that worked from the end of the load. What they call end loaders, because they worked behind the load. Worked from the end, picked the log up. The end jammers had a swinging boom on them, short shooting boom. Like the swinging booms end poles that they used in cedar gardens.

JE: But most of them were on the, most were side? Side jammers?

BR: Side jammers, ya.

JE: Ya. Now, those were operated with horsepower too, weren’t they? Project BR: Oh, ya. They were horsepower, ya.

JE: Ya. Now, the jammers would pick up how many logs? Would it pick up... Society BR: Depending on the size of the logs. A team of horses could pick up, what the horses could pick up, you know. One big log or two, three little ones.History

JE: Now, did they have, when they used the jammers, Buzz, did they also have sender uppers, or did they just have a top loader? Oral

BR: No, we had sender uppers and they had the hook, see? It come down, this cable come down the split (unclear) on these hookers. They’d hookHistorical these logs with end. And a single logs and if there were two or three logs, they’d have besides the hook there was a (unclear) chain there, see? And they pulled that through and around and put the hook in the chain so it kind of went around the logs like that. History

JE: So the sender uppers could stand on the ground and...

BR: And they had a line. They had a rope that went up and they pulled the rope either way so that it would drop it down, drop her. ForestMinnesota JE: Right. Ya. Now, were those horses you hear a lot of stories about those horses. They’re pretty smart. Did they really get to know the kind of a job that they were on? I mean, could they go up, take that log up, and generally back down. Is that the way they...

BR: Well, there were two, three different ways that way. That way, we had what we called a, now they used to deck in the woods. When they decked logs in the woods, they used the tripod method. Instead of a jammer, there’s just a little tripod up on the skid way. And they had a pulley just little pulling up on that, and one pulling the bottom. That was the tripod method of decking.

And when they used that, quite often they didn’t use a skidding rigging on the horses, they used what they call a loading bar. And when they used a loading bar, quite often they could train those horses to come back without a driver. And they’d just turn and come back and left a man free to help a little bit with the decking. But they all used a loading bar instead of a skidding, because the loading bar hung high up on the horses back. And there was just a hook there to hook the chain in that and the man held it. Then when the top loader said, “Down”, he just flopped that back and the logs dropped right down. Now, along about, oh, soon after 1900, invented what they called forced loader. And that was where they invented the, a friction clutch affair. Up until that time, whenever you wanted to back down a log, you had to the horses had to back up to lower it. When they got the friction clutch and the horses furnished the power on this wheel and you held the clutch on this wheel, then they could let it down and unhook the horses and hold it, and let it down by itself. That was called forced loader. That helped an awful lot. It improved loading an awful lot.

JE: So he could let that load down slow, or... Project BR: Ya. Ya. Let it down slow if he wanted to. That was a hard job, especially if they’d have a heavy log to pull up and the horse had to, they would want to leave it down kind of slow. The horses could back up and hold. It was a hard job for the horses to hold a heavy load and back up. Society JE: Ya, especially backing up. History

BR: Ya. Especially backing up. Ya. Oral JE: Now, when did the steam jammers come in?

BR: Well, the steam jammers come in along justHistorical before the turn of the century there when the Clyde jammer here in Duluth. Now, they were fore runners of it, they invented the Clyde/Gifford jammer, which was built and used all over the world. The Clyde now that was a jammer that was very much automatic. In Historythat jammer, the jammer itself could, had wheels that could run along on the track. The empty cars come along under the jammer, and they’d let these wheels down in. They had two short pieces of track they’d lift up. And then the cars run along them self to the next skid way, on its own power. It’d have a chain that come down to the wheels and run along…

(Break inForest Recording) Minnesota

BR: What they called a slide ass. The Crookston and the Backus interest all used a slide ass hammer.

JE: A slide ass?

BR: A slide ass. They called it the slide ass because it slid on the ground, or on the top of the cars. And the Crookston Lumber Company had just as much success with the slide ass hammer

as the Mo’Gifford. In fact, they wouldn’t use anything else. Now, they slid along the top of the bunk. They sit on kind of a big base, something like runners on top of the bunks. And they’d move it along by running down a cable and pull itself along on top of the cars. And it always sit on one car. When you got through loading, then it set on another car. They put the other cars in, and it’d move itself along and it could also move the cars along by running that. They’d (unclear) it to the bunk of the car and run a cable out to a stump or something and they could pull the cars along. So it could move itself from the skid way to the skid way that way.

JE: Kind of a genius method.

BR: They had much, just as much success; in fact, the Crookston Lumber Company had some of the finest logging crews. That’s Crookston Lumber Company pick up crews. They used to pick up their contracts up and down the M & I Railroad. Ya, they were a noted loading gang. They were the called Big Greens the Big Green Loaders. He was a Frenchman. He was mostly French Canadian. And when they would come into town, you know, to pick up most of those spurs would only hold about thirty cars. That’d be a big railroad spur. AnProjectd that’s all they could put in. They’d wait until the next train would cone and switch for it. God, they’d have their cars loaded at ten o’clock in the morning, and then they’d be walking up and down the street, you know. Then talking loud, telling about they really were a loading crew. And they picked up little landings of two or three million feet all up and down the M & I from Societyhere to Bemidji as far as they bought as far as Big Falls. Backus International Lumber Company used slide ass jammers, too. And a course, there was other, see a lot; besides theseHistory jammers being used was leads. An awl lot of the steam jammers used the tripods. A lot of the lakes had tripods made. In Turtle River when I was a kid in Turtle River we had three tripods right below my house that stayed there. They were there until after I left there in 1915,Oral they finally cut them down. And that is where they put up the permanent tripod, see great big pine, it’d be a permanent hoist. Then just, back their steam jammer out under that and hook their big blocks up on top and they used the tripod instead of leads. A lot of them used that. Historical

JE: Now in the places like up by Namekon Lake, oh, along the Canadian border there, they had, I’m thinking in particularHistory of Hoist Bay...

BR: In Hoist Bay they had tripods.

JE: Those are tripods.

BR: Ya. ForestAnd then theyMinnesota also, then there’s another type of hoist, of course, that they used and they had them up there, too. They had the, later on they had the more or less permanent hoisting places. They had the hoist and chainless, the chainless, endless chain hoist. It was allowed to come up sideways, you know. They had them up on, like if the logs come down off of Bass Wood Lake up at Ely, went down four mile forty, they put in endless chain hoists there.

JE: Would you explain what an endless chain is?

BR: Endless chain was almost like taking a sawmill when lumber come up on a chain. And they had a raft built down into the water, because two endless chains come up and the logs come up on the car sideway then. And you see they’d push these los in between these two rafts that went out in the water. And then when these chains come around to (unclear) they just went up, see.

JE: Were there hooks on those chains, or...

BR: Ya. There’d be a bar on, see, like on to catch this lumber. You know, how lumber is caught in the mill?

JE: Just…

BR: (Unclear) took out there to foot. And run around and carried the log up.

JE: Carried the log right up. Project BR: Ya. And they get, the top part of them could be raised or lowered on a hinge, probably four feet from the bottom of the car towards the top of the car. And they’d raise it and, some of them had raised with a big crank on the side that you could raise the (unclear) portion of the (unclear) hinge in it. So, you could go like this, or it could be raised like that. AndSociety the chain still went around it, see? And it was a little bit different method that way. History JE: Now, how big of a load, generally speaking, in number of board feet would they put on those Brussell cars? Oral BR: Well, on those cars, single Brussell car, on a single Brussell car on a single load would take six thousand feet. An ordinary two tier car, an average would run about it took a good carload to have six thousand feet of average logs. Historical

JE: So they could, actually with a good sleigh of logs would be a lot more than a Brussell car load? History

BR: Ta. Probably a little bit more than a Brussell car load, ya.

JE: Now, yesterday I was thinking in terms of the sixteen foot bunk and a fourteen Loot bunk. The steam jammer, or excuse me, the steam hauler would use a sixteen foot bunk and the horses hauling onForest the ice roadsMinnesota would use a fourteen foot bunk. Is that right?

BR: Ya. Most of then used a fourteen foot bunk and there was seven foot four between the runners. I think I told you that yesterday.

JE: Seven feet four.

BR: Seven foot four was the average between the runners so the horse could walk just in between the ruts and still not the horse could not fall in the ruts. That was the average one, seven

foot four. And when they got the steam hauler, they lengthened the bunks out to eight feet, because it took eight feet to run the tracks inside of the ruts. Them steam haulers were a little wider, see?

JE: Okay. So, when you got up to sixteen foot bunk, then that means that you widened the portion between the sleigh runners, then?

BR: Well, they widened them out to eight feet.

JE: Ya. So it was...

BR: And they widened the bunks out to sixteen feet.

JE: Okay. So it was from seven feet four with the horses, and up to eight feet with the steam hauler. Project BR: Ya.

JE: Now, how prevalent were these steam haulers? Did they really take hold in the woods? Were they much more used than horses, or... Society

BR: Well, they were only used on the main long hauls,History you know. You see, for instance, you know, these old lumberjacks that talked about oh God, that one that worked up in that camp for Jay McHardy, that got a god damn horse killer up there. You know, a four mile road would be a good road. That’d mean two nice trips a day.Oral And the horses would do well. A five mile road was pushing the horses quite a ways. That’d be twenty miles a day. And a six mile road would be starting to get pretty tough. Anything over six would be a horse killer. Historical JE: Horse killer.

BR: Then they’d have toHistory start picking up to a trip and a half a day. And when it got up over eight miles, you know, that’d be one trip a day. And, so these steam haulers were used pretty much on these long hauls back, people like the Pagen Hill and National Poles, and some way back twenty-five or thirty miles They’d makeup a train, that’d make, probably they ‘d be a day pulling the loads out of the spurs on to the main load, and then they’d have maybe only one trip a day, and maybe one trip every other day with ten sleighs. ForestMinnesota JE: How fast were those steam haulers?

BR: Well, they’d go along...

JE: Four, five miles an hour, something like that?

BR: Ya. Faster than you could walk.

JE: Now, those were pretty heavy...

BR: Oh, ya. There were a couple different makes. I’m not… As a matter of fact I never paid much attention. The master pole would (unclear) gravel pit. They loaded with that more than any of them. I was on that a few times. But, there weren’t too many of them you know.

JE: One of the, when I look at that steam hauler, I think of the ungodly position of that driver, isn’t it? He is sitting in front of that thing. He must be one cold human being after a day...

BR: One of those right around Duluth here that was used quite a lot was the Lumber Company out here on the west, west Duluth. Had the ice logging roads went up to Lakeside up in (unclear) township here. And they had that for about three or four years, they used the same hauler. And that was supposed to be a real nice. I got a picture of that. But you know the road had to be pretty level for steam haulers.

JE: Oh, they do? Project

BR: Ya, that was that eleven hundred or wherever they used that Magellan Level Company, out pretty much like where the railroad would go on. They couldn’t come up over a big hill much. Society JE: Oh, oh see, that was the question that I had in mind. I would think that it, you know, looking like a caterpillar, that it would be used in probably a littleHistory bit more heavy stuff, but...

BR: Well, caterpillar tractors weren’t too, I, caterpillar tractors were (unclear). There was a few caterpillar tractors use for the last years downOral at that camp up at Little Fork, we used some. They were used at (Unclear) Lumber Company in, south of Northome there, east of Blackduck hauling into Hackley one winter, they had an old steam hauler that broke down and that was about 1918, right after the First World War. They had one ofHistorical them first ten ton Holt tractors in there. And they finished the job with a ten ton Holt. But they weren’t many of them tractors used in logging.

JE: I saw a picture once,History of a steam jammer out in the woods, and they had long cables that would extend out in to the woods and dry in towards, but it said it was not very successful.

BR: It wasn’t, it wasn’t a steam jammer. That was a steam skidder. Now, the (unclear) made a steam skidder. Now the only ones in Minnesota that really had a success with steam skidders was the Crookston Lumber Company. The steam skidder was used very extensively around Kelliher, between KelliherForest and MinnesotaMizpah. The steam skidder that, I’ve got a lot of slides and pictures of that. And there was a steam skidder used in a couple other places in Minnesota, but not very successfully. In fact, the General Logging Company tried one, as late as the 1928, up at (Unclear) Lake, but they just tried it.

JE: Why would...

BR: They’d wanted to use one in there and I guess it didn’t work very well. But they had set it up in camp 26. But the Crookston Lumber Company seemed to have good success with theirs.

JE: Why would one be successful, Buzz, and not another?

BR: Well, they were a high priced costly outfit, you know, and they run, had to have these spar trees out in the woods, you know. So they were used all through the west, you know. And they were destructive son-of-a-gun thing, knocked down all the trees in the country coming in. And the Weyerhaeuser outfit never used them at all in Minnesota. Just that one that they tried up there in the General Logging Company in 1928 when they went up in the (unclear) country. And they tried that and they brought a used one someplace down in Wisconsin, around (unclear) or someplace, they got a hold of a used one and brought it up there but it didn’t work. Wasn’t very successful.

JE: So basically it was the horse power that brought those logs out. Project BR: The Cook’s Lumber Company used that one quite successfully in all that area in around (unclear) Spur and between Mizpah and Kelliher, in that country in there.

JE: Now, was that big pine country up there in Kelliher? Society

BR: Oh, ya, that was all Cook’s, the big Cooks was holdingHistory for all in there. From most Northome to Kelliher, they went through, that was the last pine we cut. And that was solid pine there, way after everything else was cut, that was pine in there. The very last operations they had. The very last pine that the Cook’s LumberOral Company cut was that, and then there was also one track that was right west of Hines. You know where Hines, Minnesota is?

JE: No, I don’t. Historical

BR: Well, it’s right above Tenstrike, there’s Hines. History JE: Okay.

BR: Went right, road right west of Hines. They had about fifteen million over in there, and they had a big camp there in 1924. It was the last big stand in there they had.

JE: Now,Forest when we thinkMinnesota of pine, this virgin pine, actually it was really, what? A hundred and fifty, two hundred years old? Two hundred and twenty-five years old? How old was this stuff?

BR: Well, it could be up to two hundred years old.

JE: So, it was a pretty mature tree?

BR: Ya. Oh, sure. All mature. They were all mature. Most all of them, rot and bust you know.

JE: So somewhere along the line, there must have been previously a big forest fire?

BR: Oh, yes. They got history of many forest fires. Go right in them virgin pines stands and take down the pine. Used for charcoal, you know, in the ground.

JE: Now, people think of some of this logging in northern Minnesota, as if it was just all pine. But it pretty much went in accordance to the soil types. Could you explain, Buzz, for us the types of pine, or types of trees that would grow in accordance with the kinds of soils?

BR: Well, in fact, you know, there wasn’t in the first place in northern Minnesota, is over half swamp. The forest is over half swamp, that land makes half of it. And it was very seldom that you’d see a solid forty acre track of pine. It would be very seldom. We used to figure that if a forty is containing a two hundred fifty thousand; average forty was a good forty. And of course, I’ve seen forties when we cruised forties that cut up to a million, million and a quarter. That eighty that we cut up there south of camp 26, we argued on that for a long time. Many people cruised it. And they finally sent a sawmill in, and cut three million on thatProject eighty. And that was one of the finest stands in the country. But a million, Its-ill forties along in there north of, east and northwest of (Unclear) Lake, camp 114, those forties run along in there .n that flat, right around a million. And then that, they were forties that without a break in. There were very forties that you would find a solid forty without a swamp or something in theSociety forty.

JE: Now, how many board feet usually to one of theseHistory big pines?

BR: These big pines? Oral JE: Ya.

BR: Oh, well, most of that pine, that pine ‘fl whatHistorical we call, generally average five long timber. Five sixteen foot logs, that mature stand of stuff was in there.

JE: So, you got about anHistory eighty foot.

BR: Ya. That’s about what it, was. And it, I suppose, four hundred feet in a tree, maybe would be a pretty good average. We always say ten log timbers, ten log timbers, but you know, an average stand of pine, we’d figure around fifteen logs to a thousand, average to the stand.

JE: WereForest those trees Minnesotausually pretty nicely tapered, or...

BR: Oh, some of it’s, that white pine generally sits pretty straight up for quite a ways, then tapered off pretty fast, towards the top. White pine was that way, you know. Norway was the same way. You get, sometimes you took that last log, but in the early days they wouldn’t take that last log. They’d kind of leave that last log in the woods. Ten inch top was about all they’d take it first in the river driving. Towards the last it was took down to six inch top. Those ten inch top logs were the first, first was left in the woods as a rule.

JE: Did they when they come in pretty much clear cut?

BR: Oh, ya. Cut everything.

JE: Everything.

BR: Logging that was the idea.

JE: And you mentioned yesterday of, probably a little knoll in a swamp that would probably…

BR: Ya.

JE: And cut her down in there, beneath there. When we get into these woods area, out grouse hunting, I notice in some places where they never took the logs out. One wonders what happened in that kind of a place. Project BR: Well, it may have been that, or it may have been such a thing that one them deep snow, real deep snow winters. And they couldn’t get the, couldn’t find the logs. Now, the winter of 1920, we had one of those, and we cut early in the fall. And we happened to have a small run of Norway. We had one knoll there especially that two, three swamps wasSociety Norway. It wasn’t running over about sixteen inches on the stump. And darn, you that along in February you couldn’t find a lot of those logs. We had to go in thereHistory in the spring after the snow went down and we picked up alt them. The top the log, and sometimes we’d miss the whole tree. Couldn’t find it, the snow would still be four foot deep, you know, and we couldn’t find the darn things. Sometimes that happened. Oral

JE: Now, in the woods there are two types of marks on a tree. You’ve got your bark mark and your stamp mark. Who would put on that bark Historicalmark, and when would he put it on? Would he put it out when he was swamping? Would he put it out when he got in by the skid way, or when did they really put that bark mark in? History BR: Bark mark, it was most the time it was going on the sleigh haul, was going on the skid way. It was being skidded or gray hauled to a river to put on, you know, just as it was skidded. As it left the wood. It was generally as it come out of the skid way, and to be decked. That’s when they put the bark mark on.

JE: Now,Forest was there aMinnesota special man that did that?

BR: Oh, ya, generally had some guy that was good with the ax, you know. And of course, you had size that thing up because you had to have that bark mark so it’d be right on the top of the log, you know. The same way you stamp them. You had to have, stamped the edge of the log so you could read it. The edge that floated above the water.

JE: So, the stamp hammer man did not slap that log right dead in the middle. That was on the edge...

BR: No, that was always on the edge. Generally on the edge that you know would float up, so they put a couple along the edge.

JE: How good are the...

BR: That is when the stuff is going into the water, or when it’s going on to a, when it went into the water it didn’t make any difference. You know a lot of places a lot of the logs are scaled many times. Now like old logs that went into the mill in Cloquet and the Cloquet Lumber Company. This is an odd thing, people don’t understand it. A lot of those logs weren’t’ even sorted, like you asked me about the sorting. A lot of times the logs weren’t even sorted. All the logs come to the mill, regardless of what stamp that was on them. And then the scaler at the top of the haul claim that they came into the mill, scaled them by stamping them. Right there is where the separation is made. Project

JE: So, in other words, if those logs were...

BR: And they used to scale the stamps that come up in the mill and atSociety the end of the (unclear) they had so many going in at the... History JE: So, that mill would cut the log regardless of whose log it was, and then they would make an exchange between each other. Oral BR: Ya. And charged to the company.

JE: Okay. Historical

BR: Charged to the company. That day we might have sawed thirty thousand (unclear) logs and ten thousand of NorthernHistory Lumber Company logs, and ten thousand Cloquet fire post logs. But it would saw it in one day.

JE: Now, did you ever get down into the country, what river am I thinking of here? It’d be southeast of Minneapolis. The St. Croix. Now, did you ever get down into that big boom area down in there? ForestMinnesota BR: Ya, well I was, first my dad come from in Wisconsin; that’s right across the river from Stillwater. I used to go down there visiting as a kid. My grandparents lived there.

JE: Now, that was the beef slough down in there?

BR: Ya. That was the beef slough, here. See, that Weyerhaeuser had this big, they done, see there’s a lot of things here that you get out on the tape. See, these big boom companies that we had right here in Duluth. They had the Magic River Boom Company. Where all these logs went

into the river, see. And the boom company drove the logs. And so much a thousand.

JE: That was strictly their job.

BR: Ya. They formed a boom company. They drove so much a thousand, ya. And that’s what happened down in there that big beef slough country see. The logs come down there and they’d have the boom, and the separating and the sorting works and they’d (unclear) on so much a thousand. And some of that stuff was scaled so much though, and that’s what the scaling, at one time it was as much as seventy- five or eighty scalers working there, so there’s general scalers. See, the general scalers were supposed to be neutral scalers, you know.

JE: Neutral?

BR: Ya, they were appointed by the scalers. One of those things with the division of weights of measures would be. They’d scale the logs and they’d have a (unclear), and they’d buy and sell. And the surveyor general and he’d scale by mark for the company see.Project And he wouldn’t even work for either one of them; he’d work for the surveyor general see. And a lot was scaled in the scale room with what do you call then? Oh, hell, downstairs here… Scaled with calipers.

JE: Oh, calipers. Okay. Now, explain to us how these people scaled.Society We talked a lot about scaling. What is scaling? History BR: Well, scaling, you got the scale rules, you see, and put on the end of the log tells you how much board feet of log is in it. And of course they had the Minnesota Standing Rule, and they had the West Council, and the Doyle Rule,Oral and the International Rule. You must of heard of that. There was quite a difference in some of those, of course. The Minnesota Standard would say twenty-eight feet and thirty-two feet, while the (unclear) would say thirty for most of them. Mostly twenty-eight and thirty-two, see. I meanHistorical that’s just an example.

JE: How fast did a man scale? Did you have to measure the, how’re the logs were cut sixteen’s, fourteen’s, twelve’s, usuallyHistory

BR: Ya.

JE: And then you’d scale that butt end. You’d find out the circumference of that.

BR: Ya. Forest Minnesota

JE: Of the butt end. How fast can you scale?

BR: Well, depends all together on how the logs are. If they’re flattened down on skid ways when, like they’re (unclear) St. Louis, St. Louis Mercantile Company scaled most all their stuff as it was loaded, and it was flattened on the skidways. The skidder would have a pretty good chance, see, when the logs were flattened out, he could go out there ahead of the loader, he’d keep ahead of him on the flatten. Because they’re breaking down the skid way, you only got a

short way and you got to keep. I think he would have to go some to scale; some scalers scale twenty carloads a day. I seen that scale them twenty carloads for this Crookston Lumber Company loading crew. And he’d scale right ahead of the loaders. He’d break them down and he’d have got, he’d be jumping them. And of course there was some of the old scalers would get so they’d cut, they’d know a log by looking at it without even putting the stick on it. And some of them now the Crookston Lumber Company never numbered their logs. A lot of lumber companies, all their logs were numbered. The Crookston Lumber Company didn’t number their logs, they’d just scale them.

JE: When you scale those logs, Buzz, do you also take into consideration the, let’s say they had rot in there too?

BR: Oh, ya. Sure.

JE: And, probably was a crooked tree... Project BR: The crooks...

JE: So, you take all that into consideration. Society BR: Oh, ya. History JE: You figure how many board feet actually then is cut...

BR: The scale of a log isn’t any more differentOral than the estimated timber. You don’t know what’s inside until you open it up, so it’s actually just an estimate of what’s in there. If it’s a perfectly sound log, of course, you can figure it out by anything. But if it’s a defective log, how you going to know what’s in there until you openHistorical it up? It’s actually just an estimate. That’s what one of the mistakes that so many of these young foresters think. They think an estimate of timber is exactly. An estimate is an estimate. An estimate could be off from ten per cent to ninety per cent. It’s an estimate. History

JE: Now, on these sorters, sorting this timber out into the booms. It seems to me that if a man put a bark mark on a log with an ax, he is no big artist. And yet when that log comes down through that water, these men that are sorting out can recognize those bark marks pretty clearly, can’t they? ForestMinnesota BR: Ya.

JE: So they, now another thing we should clear up. You’re very well familiar with bark marks because you have a super collection down here in St. Louis Historical Society. How many bark marks were there for a company? Did one company just have one bark mark, or did they several?

BR: No, they had many. They had, they registered not so many bark marks as you would the stamps, but they registered stamps for whatever purpose they’d want it for. Now, a contractor

might, somebody might have several contracts one winter, you know, coming into the woods. There’s several little contractors. Now, you’ve got a job out here and the fellow, you only want to have one scaler on the river. But there’s two, three little jobbers coming in there. And so you’d say, well we must have a stamp made for these fellows. And they’d go down and register a stamp, and then have a fellow--stamp it for them. And then the skidder would only scale those logs with a stamp. One skidder would take care of three, four little jobbers they were hauling on the river then, see. And each agent had this. So that’d be a case there where they’d register and have a stamp hammer made for two or three jobs, see.

JE: So that way they knew how much a jobber was actually cutting out.

BR: Ya. So he’d have his own stamp. These are my logs and scaled that way. So that’s a different reason they wanted the stamp for.

JE: Talking about these jobbers, what would they do? Have a cruiser, company cruiser go out and look at a territory and basically state, well, there’s so much timber Projectin there. And then they would let a contract to this jobber?

BR: Oh, ya, most contractors sell so much a thousand to put in all that timber something. Some of these big jobbers just paid me as a little jobber. As long as there wasn’tSociety any small jobs, you know. Oh, there’d be a few like up in the Finn country there, and there’d, be a couple, two, three Finn families. One up at Finn forty. Back there four daysHistory laid off. Because those Finns put that forty in, they’d haul it over and they would have small sleighs and haul it over, see.

JE: Did Weyerhaeuser ever cut any lumberOral or timber himself?

BR: Oh, yes, sure. These northern lumber companies say Weyerhaeuser is that there (unclear) companies is Weyerhaeuser burned down here Historicallast night, down here in Duluth, all their lumber up. But that was hundreds of Weyerhaeuser companies. The Northern Lumber Company was a Weyerhaeuser company. The C.S. Nelson Lumber Company was a Weyerhaeuser company. The Virginia Rainy Lake had Historya Weyerhaeuser was, Hines was...

JE: Hines from Chicago.

BR: Cook and O’Brian owned that together, see. They were all, all these companies. Johnson (unclear) was a Weyerhaeuser company. It had interest in Weyerhaeuser. There’s many, many of them, see.Forest Hundreds ofMinnesota Weyerhaeuser companies that Weyerhaeuser had interest in. So you can’t say...

JE: Ya. Ya.

BR: The Weyerhaeuser Sales Corporation is what they generally think today and they’re just a big sales corporation. There are many of these, like out west with the Potlatch Timber Company.