The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1883-05-04

by c~oaxing and keeping the frost out
of it. The dexterity and precision
with which a first-class chopper
handles his AK are remarkable. Trees
three feet in diameter are often cut en-
tirely through and still retain their per-
pendicular position until a breeze or
some slight shock topples them over.
The two gaps on either side meet in a
straight line. 10th novice there are
many strange things within the prov
ince of an ak. In clearing a piece of
farm land it is frequently a stipulation
that the chopper shall "bucket" his
stumps to hold a pail of water; in
other words, leave a concave bowl on
their tops to catch rainwater and rot
them. In the pineries the ak is used
for nearly every purpose for which a
cutting tool is required. With
it the chopper trims his ''boot-
packs" cuts lacing thongs, "buckets'
horse and cattle feed-boxes, pins up
his sheds, shanties and out-houses,
constructs his hobs and "~go-devils,"
and even whittles his toothpicks. He
cutters chips for drinking cups, fixes
tobacco for his pipe, throws flying
bridges over winter streams, whittles
out the checkers for his evenings
amusement, and carves the checker
board. In a word, it is a part and
parcel of himself, and its song is the
music of life to his ear.
After leaving the pineries the ak has
a long ramble to a new life upon the
Pacific slope. In California, on the
coast range, it enters the famous red
woods. These noble trees, the Goliaths
of the forests, are fast disappearing.
But their gigantic stumps still remain
to tell of their departed greatness.
And enormous stumps they truly are.
SO much so indeed that the ak has to
climb in the world to overcome them,
and the chopper assumes a position
which he is not compelled to attempt
anywhere else. To surmount the
enormous swell at the base of the tree
and commence operations where the
average diameter of the trunk may be
said to begin, he builds a platform
made of stakes with cross-pieces of
rails, sometimes six or ten feet high,
around his victim, and chops from
that, cutting above the dubious swell.
Or, if an expert, he will simply
"bucket" a hole in the trunk, and
driving a stout stake into it, stand
perched upon that slender foothold as
he dexterously swings his blade. The
size of the REDWOOD giants is world
famous, and it is a legend of the coast
that a woodSman having chopped for
a week on n side of a tree, walked
around it and found another chopper
who had been at work for a month on
the other side.
But it is not until the cypress
swamps of the southland are reached
that the AK takes the water. In those
dark-shadowed and moss-draped
lagoons the chopper becomes amphib-
ious, and performs his work while skill
fully balanced in n of the most
treacherous of all aquatic ~contrivances,
a dug-out. OF the TX in the oak-lands
of the Southwest, where it labors for
France and Spain, sending them an
nually thousands of dollars worth of
slaves, and also of its desultory
existence in cordwood chopping,
"grubbing," misunderstanding, hoop
~pole-cutting and kindred industries
little need be said, save that it does
its share of the work honestly, and has
u settled policy that no man shall
hold intercourse with it with his coat
on. This Difference it exacts from all
with whom it enters into business
relations, whether among the ice
locked lakes and rivers of the white
pine, the laurel-scented canons of the
Coast Range OIL the magnolia-haunted
lagoons of the mournful, moss -draped
cypress. There is no healthier, cleaner
and more enjoyable exercise in the
world than swinging an AK.