Boys of the Old Sea Bed: Tales of Nature and Adventure

by Charles Allen McConnell

Bread, potatoes, meat, coffee, some kind of dried fruit—and beans—such is the usual fare of the lumber woods.

With the completion of the camps, Rob found his duties a little more complicated, but he was able to arrange his long hours so that, while work was hard, he had the meals on time, well-cooked, and of abundant quantity. At four o’clock in the morning the chopping boss would call “Cookee!” and Rob would crawl out from his “feather bed” of pine boughs covered with its heavy Mackinaw blanket. No time to roll over and take the “forty winks” these mornings. Soon he would have the pitch-pine roaring in the big sheet-iron stove for the men; then he would cross over to the kitchen side, where the fire in the great range would set to steaming the big pots of food. By the time the hot biscuits were ready, the teamsters would be in from the stables, where they had fed, curried and harnessed the horses, and the choppers and skidders would be plunging through a hasty toilet. By five o’clock Rob would cry, “All ready!” and then would come a rush, each man crowding in where he could and more like a pack of hungry wolves than supposedly civilized men, the crew would fall upon the food.

I must make one exception—a teamster who was early dubbed “Parson.” This man, a little past middle age, never sat down to a meal without silently bowing his head in thanksgiving. There was no spirit of bravado in the act; cant seemed to be impossible to the man. He took the ofttimes brutal gibes of the men with a kindly smile, and went his own way. At night when the lanterns were swung from the ridgepole, and the men, during the hour between supper and bed, would be playing cards, telling stories, or singing songs of their wood and river life, Mr. Jackson would take out a well-worn, black Testament and read, and then, with always a kind word to Rob, and often some little helpful act, would climb into his bunk.

Breakfast over, Rob had the bunks to put in order, and the house to thoroughly sweep—for Mr. Medford’s camps must be kept clean and tidy. Then, if the crew happened to be working at a considerable distance, dinner must be put on at once, for an hour before noon a team would be sent in for it, and it must be ready, safely packed in large, tightly covered cans. What a job it was to get an out-of-doors dinner for twenty hungry woodsmen! Actually, one of those men would often eat at a meal as much as would be placed upon the table for a half dozen in the city boarding house.

Dishes washed and the table set, the sponge, started the night before, for sixteen loaves of bread (for it would take this number daily, in addition to hot biscuits), would be kneaded down and placed in a warm place to rise. Then there was the woodpile to tackle, and a big stack of dry pine and birch cut and piled up for both cook stove and heater. If dinner was to be eaten at the camp, there were a half-dozen pies to be made from the dried fruit, or two great pans of pudding to be baked, before the sixteen loaves of bread would demand the oven. Peeling potatoes and turnips, and giving attention to the bean-hole outside, helped to fill to the full every moment of the forenoon.

After dinner dishes were attended to, there came a chance for two hours of sleep—and insomnia, at this time, was not even a passing acquaintance of Rob’s. At four o’clock preparations for supper must begin. Then serving the meal, washing dishes again, and making ready, as far as possible, for the morning meal, filled the time until ten o’clock.

It is not good for man to be alone. Explorers of the polar regions declare that the terrors of that trackless waste are not found in the intense cold, but that it is the awfulness of solitude, driving men insane, that is most dreaded.

A strange malady of peevishness, discontent, developing into downright meanness, seems to creep over a company of men shut in together for a lengthened time. Seamen on long voyages mutiny; soldiers in isolated barracks commit ugly acts of insubordination, or take desperate chances to desert.

So it is not strange that during the long winters, when a score of men are shut up together with little or no reading matter, no news from the outside world—nothing to take their thoughts away from themselves, or break the deadly monotony of their daily lives, that this untoward trait of human nature should show itself. Usually, before spring comes, the ill-nature of a crew settles upon some particular one, and from becoming at first the butt of good natured jokes, he finally is the object of genuine persecution. Woe be to that one if he be weak in body or in mind, or if he be a boy.

It was perhaps natural that this crew, all unawakened to and untrained in the higher sensibilities and ideals of life, and hardened by much gross sin, should fall upon the teamster Jackson, who was so unfailing in his religious observances. He seemed out of place to them; his very presence was a rebuke to their profanity and foul stories and songs, even more so than the sharp command of young Medford, that occasionally brought them to silence. But to all of the chaffing and sneers and cursing Jackson presented a quiet, even temper, and his smile held a world of pity. As Jackson’s kindness to Rob became noticed, it appeared to the crew that here was a way by which they could reach the teamster, and all the devilish annoyances and coarse brutality of a dozen man were directed against the boy. They began by growling about the “weak” coffee, although, as swamper Flynn said, “Sure, ’tis as black as me hat, and ’twould float me iron wedge, entirely.” The bread was “no good,” the meat was “tough.” Day after day, Rob, having prepared a meal that would do credit to a high-priced hotel, would be reduced almost to tears through mortification, by the brutal complaints. That Jackson stood up for the lad, and told the rude fellows that by their grumbling they showed they had not been accustomed to good food at home, did not help matters.