The Life of Me: An Autobiography

by Clarence Edgar Johnson

I could not tell a lie, so I told him, "A little." Then he and I went away together to one old dilapidated truck.

That was another case of my getting more understanding through experience and research, neither of which was intentional. Now, you may or may not know that, in a snowy place like that, where snow is forever, the snow in the ruts of a road is hard-packed snow, and stacked up, and the snow on either side of the ruts is loose, fluffy snow.

When driving on a muddy road, your truck is apt to slide into the ruts and you might not be able to get it out. But on a snowy road, your truck is more than apt to slide off the ruts and you might not be able to get it back up on them. And if you get your front wheels off the ruts to the right and your hind wheels off to the left, you have just about had it, especially a truck with solid rubber tires.

I was using the truck to haul crossties to the Moffat Tunnel. The ties were to be used in the railroad through the tunnel. The tunnel was eight miles long and would cut 25 miles off the railroad distance through the Rockies. The railroad which served our mill was curved one way or the other just about every foot of its entire length. A 30-car train would have three engines pulling it. And the three engines would not all be at the front end of the train. That would have a tendency to pull the cars off the rails on sharp curves. So, the engines were placed at regular intervals between the cars. Even with all safety precautions we constantly heard of derailments and the loss of freight cars down the mountain sides. The trains had no time schedules; they got there when they could.

I signed on for that lumber mill job at an employment agency in Denver and rode a bus to the mill. Naturally I was not clothed for that cold weather. But the bookkeeper at the mill told me to go to the company store, get what I needed and have it charged. That was before I started to work. That same night, in the bunk house, one man was raving mad because they wouldn't credit him at the company store. He and I had come out on the same bus and were to begin work the next morning. I kept quiet about my credit. I didn't want him mad at me like he was at the company.

One day the foreman told me to go to the tool house and bring him a half-dozen picaroons. Now, I knew how many a half dozen was, but I didn't have the slightest idea what a picaroon looked like nor what it was used for. What's more I was too proud, or too stupid to tell him I didn't know. So I went to the tool house and looked at all the tools. I knew the names of all the tools except one. I took him six of those, hoping they were picaroons. I don't know what I would have done if there had been two kinds of tools I didn't know the names of. Anyhow, he thanked me and I went back to my other work.

In case you may not know, a picaroon is like a single-bladed ax on a regular ax handle, except most of the ax blade is cut away, leaving only a pick instead of a blade. The workman can thrust the pick into the side of a log to roll it over, or he can stab it into the end of a small log and lift the log into a desired place.

Another time, the foreman came to me and asked whether I could handle a horse. Again I could not tell a lie. However, I knew he was speaking of Old Nig, and I also knew it would be a pleasure for me to work for Old Nig.

Now, Old Nig was a black horse, and I'm not sure, but I think his color had something to do with his being named Nig. This horse had won first place in the state one year for his skill in the art of log-skidding. That alone meant that Old Nig was a horse to respect as well as to obey. I had watched a few men work with the horse but had never seen one of them stay with him for long. In fact, Old Nig changed drivers three times one day. He simply wouldn't put up with anyone who cussed him or scolded him. He knew more about the log-skidding business than most of the men he had to put up with. He didn't need anyone to drive him nor try to boss him around. Mostly what Old Nig needed was a man to work for him, to pull his single-tree back when he backed up, so he wouldn't step on it, and he needed a man to hook him onto the next log. He had no hands or he could have done it himself.

If you scolded or cussed Old Nig, he would bite you, if and when he got the chance. Or he might stomp his hind foot and switch his tail just to remind you there was fire in that end of him too. One man who worked with the horse was so afraid he might say the wrong thing to him that he put a rein on his bridle and led him around all day without saying anything to him.