Inventions speeded logging. Yet the chief tool of the logger remained his axe. Before the advent of the crosscut saws in the 1870s, lumberjacks felled trees even into a headwind with an axe. The scarf on wood was so smooth the mark of a blade was barely discernible. Like the maul to the handskidder, the axe was prized by the faller. If he went to church, which was seldom, the logger sat through the sermon and held his axe. It was enough to make a preacher nervous.
During the winter, most loggers wore beards. Only on special occasions such as a big blow-out did they remove the growth--with an axe. The logger sat on a deacon seat in the bunkhouse and, using a whetstone, brought the axe blade to razor sharpness. Then he would slap soapy water on his face and shave.
Almost as important as the axe was the haywire with which hay was bound for the oxen and horses. The haywire was used for stretching a clothesline across the bunkhouse, for the cook's kitchen utensils, for busted chains and split peavey handles. Haywire bound together the cookstove. Haywire came to mean all that was broken, busted, crazy or unlikable. A haywire camp was a place with faulty equipment and the worst of everything from bosses to cooking. The opposite to a haywire camp was the candy side in which the crew of a high-lead camp had the best equipment. Haywire permanently appeared in the American language. |
