Arizona weekly citizen., 1885-04-04
LOGGERS AT MEAL-TlME.
Kitchen CalisthenIcs as Illustrated in .
 Michigan Logging Camp.
ICharles Ellis in The Current.l

They literally chuck their food; and it would be more correct to say of them at the table, using their own unique term, that they are ''chucking' than that they are eating" When a meal IS ready the cook opens the door and calls and the men rush in with a silent, grim, determined energy that IS sugges- tive of gathering of old soldiers in the banquet rooms of Walhalla. The secret of this is that the men all wear rub bers or packs, and so move over the floor without noise; and the eargerness with which they crowd forward, bareheaded, with swinging arms, and legs striding far, and all without sound, almost makes the be- holder wonder if he has not by some mistake got down into the wrong place. Hungry men are reticent. The sensa- tion of hunger Overpowers all social sense and reyerts civilization for the time to savagery. These men march in and seat themselves at the tables with out word. If there were only one table and food enough for dozen of them, they. world, it is easy to see, scramble and fight for it like Savages, and the strongest ones among them, that is, the greatest bully and gluttOn, would be elected chief. But there is plenty, as they know, and so each goes to his place, loads his plate and begins chucking without ceremony.
 For five minutes you hear nothing but the incessant clashing and chatter ing of knives and forks against tin plates and see nothing but the u, ward Jerk of hundred hands and the down ward bob of fifty heads as, midway, the well-trained jaws, agape, arc catching the chuck on the fly. By that time the stomach has got fairly to work, the sen sation of hunger is relaxing its grip, the social instincts begin to exert them selves again, the savages are once more becoming civilized. Here and there you hear them talking Quip and quirk are on the wing, contentment Is in the air In five minutes more the place has become joyial and the more skillful chuckers are leaving the room with pipe and tobacco in hand, to finish the neal with the inevitable smoke. Then of tO work, and a repetition of the scene at the next meal.
 Salt meat, often half-bOiled, potatoes ditto, fried pork stuck fast m half-cOld pork grease: good fresh beef ruined for ever here and hereafter by being fried while swimming in pork fat; fresh beef boiled and served without seasoning of any kind; beans that sometimes are scoOped from barrel to boiler and so baked" without change of water or vesSel-a deed against which every Boston stomach must rise in protest bean soup served with the beans so hard that they will break between your teeth, and the water as clear as when the work began, but with its transparency a trife Obscured by bits of broken cracSer that seem to float anl sail around their iron-bound coast; hot soda biscuit, spoonful of -four to a quart of soda. 1t seemed to me, very short with oceans of lard; mlnce pies of hashed beef and pork. salt and fresh. dried apples, with molasSes tO suit, and raisins thrown Tn to support the crust that is made of chilled pork fat sprinkled with flour; tea that IS boiled down, filled up and boiled again, and kept boiling from meal to meal, dished out from the boiler, grounds and all, into measures llldl lAAGA MAAu NgAA UT AAhI warm water, and drank from tin cups whose inner surfaces arc coated with the brown and dirty-looking sediment of the Oyer-b boiled tea, without sugar or milk-all this sort of thing ''the boys endure from day to day with an amia- bility that would make New England dyspeptics miserable with envy.
 Put it must not be understood that camp cooks are without skill They are often good cooks Most of them can make excellent yeast bread which is, after all, the staff of life. But there Is so much work to be done. and only the one man. with one or, at most, two chore hands to assist him, that much of it must be hurried over and sighted. From in the morning until $ or later at night the cook must be on duty, the season through. Mike, our French cook, is as good as they average. He IS active and industrious, and will cut more me't, in his way, dish up more potatoes, hash, fried pork, steTed steak, soda biscuit, baked beans, etc, in five minutes than any other man l Ter saw at work, and the way he will place and arrange dishes on table is luminous with deAterity.