Newspapers, MILL TOWN LIFE., LaSalle Parish, La. Submitted by Jack Willis Date: 11 Oct 2004 Source: Grass Roots and Cockleburrs Date: 18 Aug 2004 ************************************************ Submitted to the LAGenWeb Archives ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** *********************************************** MILL TOWN LIFE For the men who labored all week in the woods or at the lumber mills in the Deep South during the early 1900's, Saturday at 1:00 p.m. was the bewitching hour. The mill shut down so maintenance could be pulled and would not be fired up again until 5:00 a.m. Monday morning. These mighty men of the logging woods worked hard, lived hard, and played hard on occasion. It was also time for the Saturday night bath because these Deep South Paul Bunyans could be smelled a mile away after a week of swinging a 4 lb. Kelly Perfect axe, pulling a 7-foot crosscut saw, and not having a bath until week's end. Contests were held every weekend to see who could walk all the way across the mill pond by jumping from log to log with out falling in; was the best with a cant hook, who had the smartest Catahoula Cur, and who had the fastest horse. The workers took a bath and changed clothes once a week whether they needed to or not, and the only way to get the turpentine resin and in-ground dirt out of the old jumpers and overalls was boil them in an iron wash pot fired by pine knots, and using liberal amounts of homemade lye soap made from "Merry War" lye and oak ashes. You had to have a wooden "punching stick" to poke and stir the clothes while they were boiling, and when deemed free of most of the dirt and turpentine, they were pulled out of the pot with the "punching stick", rinsed once, and then every one took turns on the Wheeling rub board. Octagon soap was then used to wash the lye out and return the blue color. This was a backbreaking job that had to be done every week, with the left over wash water being used to scrub the floors of the company house they were living in. The churches were where all social functions took place, and when the date was set for a dinner on the ground, it was the topic of the conversation over all dinner tables and in the logging woods. Peddlers and panhandlers would make their periodic rounds so cooking and sewing supplies could be obtained in anticipation of the up- coming event. The typical hard-working sawmill town mother wore many hats. She was wife, mother, teacher, peacemaker and guardian of the purse strings. By her frugality, she was able to obtain dried apples and flour for baking, and from the roving backpack merchant she obtained yard goods, buttons, thread, patterns, needles, zippers, snaps, eyelets, ribbons, lace, thimbles, scissors, pins, extra bobbins for the singer sewing machine and she was able to peruse the latest fashion catalogues. The young ladies would be dressed in their bonnets and long dresses. They wore high top button shoes with black hose. The young men usually looked somewhat like "Alfalfa" Swietzer from the "Our Gang" comedies. They always wore long sleeved white shirts, even in the summer time accompanied by khaki pants starched so stiff with razor sharp creases, that could stand in the corner by themselves, and high top brogan work shoes, some times worn without socks, completed the young man's courting wardrobe. Their hair was usually straight, with sprigs sticking up, wiry, unmanageable, parted in the middle hanging in their eyes; lips were parched, dried out and cracked. They sometimes had pimples all over their faces, sporting large rough calloused hands from hard daily labor. When the young man extracted an "I Will" from the young maiden, this ended a usually brief courtship. She was usually younger than 15 and he less than 20, and they were destined to have anywhere from 8 to 15 children. The marriage vows would bring on washing, ironing, cooking, scrubbing, and altering and sewing hand-me-down clothes, and when the hand-me-down clothes were so dry-rotted they wouldn't hold another stitch, they became dish cloths or quilt patches. The wife and mother would hold a pine knot torch for their husband so he could hoe the meager garden at night after the day's labors, because after all, the children had to eat. The young couple usually stayed with the husband's parents until the birth of the second or third child. Later on the children would eat first, with the parents then eating what was left over, and on a lot of nights the parent's evening meal consisted of left over cornbread and black coffee. The husband or breadwinner's first job would probably be as a "flathead" or crosscut saw puller. He and his partner would have a quota of 10 trees to fell per day, to be sawn up into 22' lengths, and if you didn't cut the quota set by the Woods Foreman, there were at least 10 men waiting to take your job. The minimum quota per day was 50,000 board feet in a 10-hour shift with no rest stops. Most of the virgin timber was at least 3 feet through, no sap and pure heart. It was a demanding, backbreaking job for very meager pay, and you rested while walking from the last felled tree to the next to come down. By 1915, skilled laborers, blacksmiths who had to form and fit and shoe as many as 30 head of mules per day, along with mule skinners, bull punchers, carpenters and sawyers were up to $3.00 per day. Common laborers, flat heads, lumber stackers, and green chain hands averaged 25 cents a day. Farm laborers, plow hands and produce pickers averaged 50 cents per day plus room and board. One thing that contributed to the demise of the big mills and companies was the fact that they had "cut out" or finally exhausted what was first though to be an endless supply of timber, and suddenly, one day the virgin timber that had been around for three centuries was all gone. Lumber companies which had "scrapping" timber left, had a ready market when World War II broke out. Army camps sprang up all over Central Louisiana. Until 1941 the companies were paying common laborers up to $1.00 per day plus housing, water, electricity and medical care, but with war looming the financial rules changed. Anyone who had a square, hammer and hand saw was considered a carpenter and hired immediately upon arrival at the camp site for $1.00 per hour. Logging woods laborers suddenly went from $6.00 a week to $1.00 an hour. The years of deprivation and misery that began after the 1800s depression was finally ended by the onslaught of prosperity because of World War II. Many of the men would eventually be drafted or be commandeered for the war effort, with many of those who went over seas never coming back to the site of the former vast, primeval pine forests and mill whistle sounds. The saws of all denominations were finally stilled. GR&C (8-18-04) JMW