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August, 2006
Working Nights on the Water and the Sight of Chase Stream Sluice
By Chuck Harris
Continued from Hiring on the Drive, July Issue
Our crew worked nights on the walk booms on Indian Pond the summer of 1970. Driving Scott Paper Company wood, they decided to step up sluicing by working in shifts. With the dam's flood lights engulfed by moths and may fly hatches it was eerie across the water. Nights on northern lakes are a world unto themselves: star-filled and punctuated by the mournful call of loons, awake along with us until dawn. There was alys hot tea in pails, freshly run over from the kitchen along with large cookies and donuts, boxed up for the long nights,
Nights were cooler. Sounds more than sights became guides, reference as to the work at hand. Sluicing about fifteen hundred cord of four-foot wood down through a gate mouth and trough to the river below. The smell of balsam hung thick in the night air as we poled and pushed as much wood as we could jam into the mouth of the sluice gate. The sounds of bumping, thumping, rumbling pulp against the gate sides followed by the swishing sucking sounds of a thousand foot water fall never stopped. Always careful around the wet slippery ends of our walk boom, where one good slip or trip would be all she wrote, we tread lightly through the night. A million stars kept us company. The dawn slowly breaking told us bacon, eggs, beans, ham, homemade bread, hot coffee and sleep were not too long away. Nights to remember always. The days were ours to roam, explore places, hitchhike to Jackman, Skowhegan even as far as Lewiston and back in a day, a little buffed up, but back up that old dead end road to work.
There were a bunch of young Indians that ran the Big Squaw tow boat in shifts. Sometimes they slept while we worked and vice versa. Sometimes we worked with them. There was a pusher boat we used out inside the bag of wood with wind against us certain days this small boom jumper was equipped with a plow, not unlike a snow plow, but with a few planks atop to enlarge the pushing surface. This was an open boat, motor in center, lever for forward and reverse off the semi-exposed transmission and drive shaft and a throttle for power. On the port side was a steerage lever attached to the rudder, and there was a hydraulic switch for the up and down of the plow. So, all three hands of a man were busy all at once. The boat would slowly start way out in the pulp and push a long a long arc of a run, packing and pushing wood towards the dam gate. At the last minute the operator would throw her into reverse and get out of there, the wood would jam and we all pushed like hell and the whole works would go at once with much vibration and splashing. Jerry Augustine from Big Cove Reservation took special aim when doing this pushing. It was a long boring push each run, to break the boredom as the boat closed up directly in front of the gate, Jerry would dash to the plow, climb out onto the pile he was pushing, give a wild war whoop and run aft just in time throw her in reverse. Like I said, it broke the boredom.
Seeing how many floating booms one could jump with the flat bottom outboard was another game. Sometimes I thought they would either shear off the shafts - as one had to hoist up the motor at the last second to slide over the logs - or go completely airborne, landing somewhere short of Caratunk.
What a sight at the end of the work day!
We would also race to see who could get across the booms and to the shore the quickest way on foot. This boom jumping extreme sport was comical, exciting and foolish. Mostly it was wild fun at day's end. The older men just shook their heads, but with a knowing grin, for in their day they had their games as well.
Working wood out from the shores - another of our jobs - was no game when the mosquitos were thick on damp overcast days. Some days we tied our sleeves shut with bailing twine and wore gloves. Fifty mosquitos in one swipe of your forehead was normal. Hats pulled down, pants bloused, it didn't matter: when the mosquitos were out, they were thick. Wading chest deep in water helped, outboard motor fumes helped; but not much.
Lightning storms came up like squalls, suddenly, catching us far up shore at times, all we could do was get back in the woods, smoke and hope for the best. Lightning seemed to always strike close by with hair-raising electricity. "Boys that was a close one." All you could say.
We worked the shore gathering wood into small booms, "pups" they were called. A dozen or sixteen 30-foot boom logs chained together formed a horseshoe-like scoop. A boat held one end out in the lake while two men worked and snaked the shore end in and around every stump, rock and outcrop, backing up, poling ahead as a crew of men waded ahead using the bag. At day's end if we filled a bag, that would be "turned in" over the sluice gate. If the bag was half full, we would continue on the next morning.
River drivers are always wet; and the bunkrooms on a cool August evening got pretty steamy and dank with a fire in the stove. There were card games, songs, snoring, laughter and jokes played. Most evenings if one laid down after those big suppers, it would be lights out from fatigue, that's why the younger men headed out to The Forks for whatever excitement could be found. Not much then. Berry's Store, Webb's Store, the Marshall Hotel. A dri-ki statue of an earthworm to mark the sale of worms to fishermen who came to the area for years.
Chase Stream Sluice was in operation then. Within ear shot of the dam, we could hear the mighty roll and crash of truckloads at a time being dumped down the sluice into the gorge below. Some days we took a walk down to watch… it was awesome.
Once the truck driver backed his load up to the edge of the 100-foot long, curved-up-at-the-bottom slide, he walked back, pulled his tailgate pin, took a peavey and snapped open the hung latch … and Katie bar the door!
Two rows of pulp started rolling out in firecracker-like rows, two at once, about twenty cord down over the slide until the reached the up turn, all in perfect slow-motion formation. All tight together they arched up and far out into the air where suspended before they started the fall, like stop motion for an instant, they held … then all together they ripped and bobbed downward. Then quiet for a few seconds, then the giant splash, which actually sent water up sixty feet or more level with eye sight. Truck full after truck full all summer, one could watch this for hours. The gorge was deep there.
The metal sluice, hot on our backsides as we slid down into the older, out-of-use slide into the bark pile below, which stopped our slide. The bark, four inches into the mulch, was so hot it seemed ready to ignite. I'm sure fire broke out there at times. It was a hot slide going down, but we had to give it a try. The sun had heated the metal sluice so hot that standing near on a warm day was like frying biscuits: one could only take the heat so long. The operation was worth the walk down river, what a spectacle those arching cords of fresh pulp made out over that deep gorge.
The older fellas kept telling us not to go to the Jackman bars as the lumber mill workers were a tough lot. So first chance we got one night we headed up to Jackman in force, excitement was brewing among the crew, we packed a few cars and trucks full and headed for trouble or fun, or both.
To be continued…
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