There were about a hundred men working, flipping the
claws of the skyline tight over the logs, watching the great
logs suddenly lifted into air, dangling; and then, a lever
pushed forward at the track below, the logs rushed down
the skyline, down the hill, not like great hulks weighing
many tons, but like fragile twigs-hitting a huge tree in
the way of the skidline and smashing it out of the way,
down, down, where they were lowered at the track, where
the loaders'
claws seized them, lifted them, dexterously
placed them on the railroad cars.
I climbed up the tremendous skidder, the world's largest
piece of movable machinery, set on four flat cars, and sat
with the operator and watched his hand move forward and,
the gesture multiplied a million times by power, a mile up the
hill, at the other end of the steel cabled skid line, a log was
lifted and began rushing down. The other day the cable had
snapped, and like a mile long snake, had twisted below, cut-
ting off whole trees, and killing a man who had been in the
way. I watched the loaders riding on the logs, and as these
were set down on the cars, the loaders jumped up to avoid
the shock.
I left the road bed and carefully stepped on a fallen hem-
lock and walked down it in my city shoes, nervous that at
any moment I would step on a piece of loose bark that, more
slippery than a banana peel, would send me flying into the
brush. There were over a hundred feet of this log, and then
I jumped on a Douglas fir and walked down it; to where I
joined the two Bottleson brothers,
Big Quart and Little
Quart. Little Quart set the head of his axe against an enorm-
ous cedar, pointing the way it would fall, hung the oil bottle
on, and began knocking off the bark. Big Quart joined him.
His axe swung inside of his wrist and hit the naked wood,
chipping off a piece. The brothers made the cut-Big Quart
and Little Quart, then one and two-even,
and so smooth
it was almost polished out. On opposite sides they made a
hole in the bark and set their shaking stands, stepped on
them, set the saw opposite the cut, and swung easily this way
and that way and in and out, in elbowed rhythm. They let
me try to saw. They told me to exert no effort, to swing
the
saw
as you would swing a baby, as softly; and them-
selves, they did it, I felt, as tenderly, and one to the other,
oiling it constantly. They took the saw out, they set a wedge
in the cut; they hit the wedge with a hammer-one,
two,
three; they lifted the tremendous tree a small bit of an inch;
waited. The tiniest crack was heard. They shouted, jumped.
The cedar stood still. Then it leaned-
like a swan diver,
spread itself very slowly down-and fell---erashed-smashed
-breaking itself in two. A tree had been in the way; it had
snapped off the tree. It had shaken the side of the entire hill.
At four-thirty,
they heard Number 110 coming down the
grade and knocked off work; Big Quart picked up the lunch
boxes and the heavy wedges; Little Quart threw the saw
upon his shoulders, making it dance. The bucker had fin-
ished sawing a log across and joined the brothers, and to-
gether they stepped up hill on the fallen hemlock, walking
easily in their calk-bottomed boots.
On the track, the loggers were climbing into the ancient
coach, behind Number 110, falling into the plush, torn,
oil-filthy seats, staring at the fresh stickers that asked them
to join the lumber workers'
federation, that had been mys-
teriously pasted on each glass pane somewhere through the
day. They half lay, and steam rose out of their clothes. They
were too lazy to light cigarettes.
"Oh, for Mae West," somebody called out.
Everybody smiled.
24
"Oh, for a turkish bath and a glass of beer."
Slowly they passed the lunchboxes to be piled up forward.
"Look at this damned thing," said one they called San
Quentin Joe. "Why can't I get a thermos that doesn't leak?
I want some coffee, too."
Somebody suggested: "Throw it out of the window."
"I'd like to," said San Quentin Joe, "throw it the fifteen
miles straight down to headquarters,
so it will smash against
the purchasing agent's head."
"Pipe down, Joe," whispered the other. "I'll bet there's
a stool pigeon around."
San Quentin Joe slowly stood in the aisle, turned around
and announced in a loud voice: "Listen, stool. I've served
time, and I'll serve time again. You tell that purchasing
agent if he ever comes to Camp 2, I'll cut his heart out and
send it to his mother."
After supper, we went to the bunkhouses, and it seemed
to me everything was too quiet. Men lay on their bunks
and read magazines. I asked if that was all they did. I was
told these were the married men, who had to save their
money. Some others were in Bunkhouse 9.
I went to 9. I slid back the door; and there were about
twenty men sitting on the bunks, watching, and in the cen-
ter of the room, on the table covered with a blanket, there
was a poker game going on. I joined the game. They were
the wildest crew I'd ever played with. It was table stakes,
and they thought nothing of putting twenty dollars on an
ace in the hole, twenty dollars it had taken them weeks to
save, and which they were going to spend on a wild week-
end on the Seattle skidroad. Sometimes they won and their
imaginations soared, and again they lost and went to sit on
the bunks and to watch, forced now to remain in the camp
for many weeks to come.
I was returning to my bunkhouse that night, and one of
the loggers suggested I go with him. He took me to another
car; there, half of the men in camp were listening to a union
organizer.
And he had not ridden up on trains as I had.
There was no transportation for an organizer.
He had
walked uphill along railroad ties, hiding each time a logging
train went by. If the time-keeper found him, he'd have been
beaten up. They listened to him urging them to support
the federation; and when at 8 :45 the lights flickered, warn-
ing us that in fifteen minutes all lights would be out, the
organizer had the signed slips in his pocket and had disap-
peared in the mountain night, to somehow find his way back
to the road, fifteen miles below.
That was when they worked. The whistle blew at 5 :30 in
the morning, and shivering, lips trembling with the cold of
mountains,
they wriggled out of bed and into overalls and
sweaters, got their big boots on, and rushed to the mess car
for breakfast. They ate enormous breakfasts: fruit and oat-
meal and eggs and ham and chops and steak and potatoes
and coffee and cake, not just one or two items, but almost
all of these-even I, who did nothing but stand around and
watch, ate three times as much as I usually ate-and hurried
to the coach, all alike,' sleepy, sitting in the seats and rolling
cigarettes. I could never, just by looking at them, tell what
they did; whether they were skilled mechanics operating the
locomotive logging crane; or fallers, who almost with an
extra sense knew which way to point a giant tree to fall; or
just loaders, to be gotten, young and agile-footed,
by the
hundreds in Seattle and Tacoma streets. The night before,
sitting on the top bunks in Bunkhouse 9, swinging their legs
in space and tossing obscenities at one another as they
JUNE,
1936
