The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1884-05-23
Enjoyment in I Lumber Camp.

Enjoyment in Lumber Camp.
have Just returned from little inn
prompsu farewell tour in the lumber
camps toward lake Superior. 1t was
nv dea to wade around in the snow for
few weeks and swallow baked beans
and ozone on the half ell The q e
wa. success. l p up at Boot ack
camp on the raging Willow Rive.
where the gay plumaged chipmunk and
the spruce gum have their home.
Wint.r in the pine woods is fraught
with fun and frol;c. 1t is more
fraught with fatigue than funds,
however. This winter q man in the
Michigan and Wisconsin lumber
camps could arise at 4:3O, .. m,
eat . patent pal full of dried apples
soaked with Young Hyson and sweet
ened with Persian glucose. go out to
the timber with lantern, hew
down the giants of the forest,
with the snow up to the pit of
his stomach, till the gray owl in
the gathering gloom whooped and
hooted in derisiOn, and all for twelve
dollars per month and stewed prunes.
I d d not try to accumulate wealth
VIII lie / was In camp. / Just allowed
others to enter into the mad rush and
| wrench q fortune from the hand of
fate while l studied human nature
and the cook. l had q good many
pleasant days there, too. l read such
literary works as 1 could find around
the camp, and smoked the royal
Havana smoking tobacco of the
cookie. Those who have not numbered
much do not know much of true Joy
and sylvan smoking tobacco.
They are not using a very good grade
of the weed in the lumber regions this
winter. When say lumber regions I
do not refer entirely to the circum-
stances of q weak back. Monkey
wrench, oil-can and screw-driver sent
with this joke; also rules for working
it in all kinds of goods.) The tobacco
used by the pine-choppers of the north
ern forest is called the Scandinavian.
1 do not know why they call it that I'M
less it is because you can smoke it in
Wisconsin and smell it in Scandi-
hoovia
When night came we would gather
around the blazing fire and talk over
/ old times and smoke this tobacco. /
smoked it till last week. then l bought
a new mouth and resolved to lead .
dinerent life. shall never forget the
evenings we spent together in that log
shack in the heart of the forest. They
are craven on my memory where tine
effacing fingers cannot monkey with
them. We would most always con-
verse. The crew talk ed the Norwegian
language, and 1 am using the English
Lang uage mostly this winter. So each
enjoyed himself in his own quiet way.
This seemed to throw the Norwegians a
good deal together. It'also threw me
a good deal together. The Scandi-
navians soon learn our ways and our
language, but prior to that they are
quite clannish.
The cook, however, was an Ohio
man. He spoke the Sandusky dialect
with q rich, nut-brown flavor that did
| me much good, so that after / had
talked with the crew for q few hours in
English and received their harsh, cor
duroy replies in Norske, gladly fled
to tie cook shanty. There l could rap
idly change to the smoothly flowing
sentences peculiar to the Ohio tongue,
and while ate the common twisted
doughnut of commerce, VIC would talk
on and on of the pleasant days we had
spent in our own native land. don't
know how many hours l have
thus spent bringing the glad light into
the eye of the cook. l talked to him Of
his old home till the tears would unbid-
den start, as he rolled out the dough
with a common Budweiser beer bottle,
and shed, them scalding into the -four Tar
eel. Tears are always unavailing, but
sometimes think they are more SO
when they are shed into barrel OF
iour. He was an easy weeper. He
would shed tears on the slightest provo.
cation or anything else. Once told
him something SO touchful that his eyes
were blinded with tears for the nonce.
Then took pie, and stole away SO
that he could lie alone with his sorrow.
He used to grind his coffee at a. m.
The coffee mill was nailed up against a
partition on the opposite side from my
bed. That is one reason did not stay
any longer at the camp. 1t takes about
an h ,ur to grind coffee enough for thir-
ty men, and as my ear was generally
aSalnSt INC pine DOaTuS WITH thc GUN
began, it RULED my slumbers and made
me a morOse man.
We had three men at the camp who
;nored. Ii they had snored in my own
language l could have endured it, but
it was entirely unintelligible to me as it
was. Still, it wasn't bad either. They
snored on different keys. and still there
was harmony in ia kind of chime OF
imported snOre as it were. fused to lie
and | stem to it for hours. Then the
cook would begin his coffee mill over.
ture and w uld arise. When / got
home slept from Monday morning till
Washington's birthday, without food Or
WATERFALL Nye. in Denver Opinion.
Vienna Firemen.