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July, 2006
Hiring on the Drive
By Chuck Harris
Continued from the June issue
After traveling by thumb from art school down south, the author and his friend Jim arrive in Greenville, Maine, looking to sign on to the Kennebec Log Drive for summer work.
We left them on their way from Greenville to Indian Pond, traveling with two French Canadian rivermen. Our heroes still do not know if they are hired yet or not.
Heading for Indian Pond from East Outlet on Moosehead 1970, the road had not changed much, we thought, from 50 years before. Jim and I were rested after a different evening in the way of bunks. We helped our two French Canadian rivermen chums load a bateaux, which hung out each end far too much for comfort, threw our back baskets in the back of the old Ford pickup, whistled to Ribs the redbone hound and loaded up. Ribs could jump, with ease, a three-rail fence; and one spring and she was beside us in the truck. A very potholed winding trip through shaded spruce and fir brought us to the shore of Indian Pond. The steel and wood racks swayed and creaked, bounced and shook, but held on, as we did, watching all the while to be crushed beneath a ton of 30-foot boat.
The head of Indian Pond receives the Kennebec's East Outlet from Moosehead Lake. The pulp was floating on into the boom which was strung at the point where the water converged. A capstain on a raft floated there; and two small shacks - bunkhouses for a small Booming Out crew: lunch table, stove, tidy and well lit - gave a good view of the boom filling. A crew could overnight here if need be, marry the boom ends together when the bag was full and help with the hooking on process as the big tow boat, "Big Squaw" arrived with the slack boom from its tow to Harris Dam.
We fellas unloaded the old red bateaux, flipped her over and managed to nose her in. Jim and I are still not aware of the plan here. The Frenchmen bid us good-bye, pointing towards downriver.
So, there we were again, but with only time enough to discuss if we were at the end of a joke. If so, it was a long hike out for grub.
Up the lake came a 30-foot boom jumper boat. All steel, all business, smoke was rolling out of her stack sideways with the breeze. This was our ride. A large bent-over man waved a massive paw at us to come on out. He drifted there a bit as we used two pike poles in the bottom to pole out. Ribs jumped in, perhaps her first boat ride; she was game, as long as Jim (her master, the man who had saved her from starving) was leading the way. In no time, we poled on out and threw the man our painter line.
"Come aboard," a gravelly voice commanded. A flip of the bowline to the sternpost secured the bateaux and we were underway.
Bob Folsom (the "boss"), said, "Where was you lads headed?"
"Headed to sign on.".
"Ever work on the drive before?"
"Chesuncook."
"Well, I'll think on it. You fellas take a bunk when we hit shore, you look tired. If you come all that way from the south you must be. Call you with the wash up bell."
After a nine-mile ride towing the old bateaux, we reached a wharf system in behind a large barn-like boathouse. Swallows were in and out of the large doors held open to the lake. All river drive camps and Boom Houses seemed to draw swallows: barns, sheds, overhangs on dams, their activities and chirping all part of the daily work around the water. We helped Bob tie up and went looking for the bunkhouse. Walking past an office, L.P. gas shed and kitchen, we slowed to smell the aromas filtering out through whitewashed screen doors. I knew homemade bread, giant molasses cookies; pies of all manners were just beyond that door. It took us a week to catch up on meals, for three meals a day and a lunch or two still never seemed enough working in those places, which is not a bad thing.
We found a bunk in among the 18 others, dropped our packs, lit a satisfied smoke and relaxed up against a bunch of well-worn old blue ticking striped pillows on bare mattresses. Heaven.
Bang, slap, bang… we were awoken by clogging boots.
"Hey where you guys come from?"
Before us stood who they called "Joe Junk." Joe was a young salvager of anything with an antique look. His boots were wet, socks drooped with wood splinters and mud-caked laces. He grinned from ear-to-ear, his curly head of hair wrapped in a gypsy scarf.
"I'm Joe Junk. Rest of the guys comin' right in. Glad you guys are here: even out the crew some."
Joe had worked the drive two summers previous. He always seemed to be the spokesman. A well-earned title, as he was one of those people in life who jumps out of his bunk with a song and goes to sleep still happily talking away, as the chorus of the snores increased.
The rest of the younger men came in for that brief sit down and smoke. The bunkhouse was filling up, wet clothes and boots being shaken and hung, lockers open and shut. A few college students, a couple more, a few old Frenchmen, two Mic Mac brothers, World War II vets. A guitar-playing artist, lanky and redheaded, his pants staged off at the knees, trailing wet boot laces, bid us welcome.
The "wash up bell" rang, summoning Jim and I to the office. We wondered if we would be back.
Walking down the daisy-strewn path to the office, the kitchen smells once again drew our full attention.
"Boss wants me to sign you guys up," we were told. That was it back then. No physical, no nothing. We signed up. Then we found bunks we liked, spread our two sheets apiece and waited for the dinner bell.
Every camp is different. At Indian Pond, there was running water and flush toilets- a modern thing it was - hot showers! A sawed-off cant dog handle against an empty L.P. tank, always too close to our bunkhouse was "the bell."
It rang first thing each day - 5:30 a.m. - to wash up, then the breakfast bell and so on. The cook took special delight in this operation, and the noise would lift you, like a dead man from the soundest sleep. I never finished a nice dream the rest of the summer. Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang. Good Lord!
We worked ten-hour days, six days a week. It was 14 miles to The Forks. (The nearest beer was Ida's Store at Moxie Pond Camps, nine miles away). Some of the fellas had cars, and each evening we would pile in who we could and head for The Marshall Hotel in The Forks.
The owner would put us in an older, unused dining area, mix two good-sized pitchers of whiskey sour mix, show us the cold beer and everyone was happy. The owner spoke little English. Hand signals among thirsty men helped, as did one of the guys' small French vocabulary. A few of the truck drivers and other whatever traffic that came in were always French, and were seated in another room. Wives and daughters waited on them, giving our room a wide birth. There were two English songs on the jukebox.
This activity went on about every night, with us returning to the camp in grand form, in total darkness, trying not to awaken the older men who were sound asleep … asleep until we hit camp! Quiet as we tried to be, ten 20-year olds laughing and loud whispering is not a good night's rest for the rest of the crew. They learned to live with it, and things settled into a routine as hot days came to Indian Pond.
Bunkrooms can be hot in July. Yet, between handling pulpwood all day and our visits to the Marshall Hotel, sleeping atop sweltering sheets was possible. And any wisp of lake breeze was also helpful.
Our first job the day after being hired was to take the same old bateaux, flip her over and pay all seams with hot pitch - tar as it were. We payed all the length of the bottom, with long searing irons kept hot in the fire on shore. Calked and tarred, we paddled her out to an island and sunk her with rocks right there. There she lay, swelling for use "taking down the rear" at the end of the drive down river to The Forks.
Booms full of pulp were towed across Indian Pond night and day to the dam. For our next job, Jim and I were given a flat bottom boat and a 20 horsepower Evinrude to collect pulp lost out of the booms.
Then it had to be sluiced through the dam and down into the river. Our tools were pick poles, hook poles and picaroons. Boating pulp, running that load to the edge of the old leaky splashboards and flipping the four-footers down over what seemed a 100- foot drop to the river below was a bit hairy at first. The sight of the pulp spinning and flipping down off the sides of the dam until she splashed was the reward. After a while, we got good at sneaking up alongside, tying off and unloading. It was cool up under the catwalk for that brief time (the sun bakes one working on the water). We used any oil we could find for protection: Mazola corn oil, old woodsman's fly dope. We turned black. You could always dive in the lake to cool off.
When we weren't picking wood from the shores, we sluiced pulp all day through the dam. Working on four-foot wide sluice booms (squared timbers bolted together), one gathers a row or bunch of pulp by spearing the wood behind you and walking it slowly towards the gate. The current would do the rest. It's not unlike poling a flat boat up the Missouri River: back and forth: pulling, spearing, letting go. No safety lines, no life jackets, nothing. One slip near the gate on the wet booms and "goodbye Mable."
The wood shot down through a quarter mile sluice with enough force to splinter pulp when it struck a rock at the bottom. We could talk among ourselves working the sluice. Each man had his own pole and kept it to his liking: sanded, re-twisted, sharp. You did not mess with another's pole.
Soon we were doing so well, putting at least a full boom through the gate each day, that Old Bob Folsom came to watch one day. We always liked his visits.
"Say how would you 'young Christers' like days off each week?"
Sounded good to us.
"All you gotta do now is sluice wood all nights now, in shifts: day crew, night crew."
So the floodlights were turned on, enough to see the area at hand. We began to work these cooler nights, always with an eye to the dark mouth of that sluice, gateway to death in the night darkness below.
To be continued…
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