Remember When

40 YEARS AGO • AUGUST 3, 1978

LOGGERS DEVELOPED COLORFUL LANGUAGE

By W.L. Olson, Kootenai Logging Specialist

"The flapjacks were too round so I went countin' ties." A poor excuse to quit a job was often better than none at all, so the logger headed down the railroad tracks for town, countin' ties.

In the old days of the logging camps there wasn't much to do on those long, cold winter nights after the horses were bedded down and socks were hung to dry around the pot-bellied stove. The loggers sat around and swapped tales or talked about the day's work and it is said that loggers still do more logging in town and "girlin" in the woods than vice versa. The days of the bull whacker, mule skinner and six-horse snatch teams are gone, but the stories and the descriptive words have hung on, changed some over the years until today the original usage is often buried by time.

There aren't many left who remember the "muzzle loader." No, not a squirrel gun, but the bunks the loggers slept in, jammed in and stacked up so close together that the only way to get into bed was through the end (the muzzle).

The term "tin pants" has survived to describe our present day rain pants of nylon and neoprene, but originally tin pants were of heavy canvas, liberally greased to keep out the water.

The "bull cook" was the camp handyman who did everything from chopping wood to sweeping floors. Originally the bull cook fed the big bull logging oxen, hence "bull cook."

"Flunkie" is the term applied to a handyman around the cook shack, but the derivation of the term seems to have faded with time.

The haydays of logging in the lake states brought the pine logs rolling and boiling out of the woods on the crest of a freshet from a "splash dam." Dams were constructed on the small tributary streams to hold back a head of water. The gates were opened quickly and the torrent of churning water carried the decks of pine down to the big rivers on their way to the saws at Muskegon and Saginaw. The river drives brought us phrases like "easy as falling off a log," which needs no explanation, and "high water pants," which describes the loggers' staged-off jeans, without hem and cut just below the boot tops to drain water outside the boot. The cookshack became the "wannigan," an American Indian word for bait, hence, bait boat, which followed the drive down river to the mills.

The last of the river drives on the Kootenai and the Clark Fork came in the mid-1920s, and as the echoes of the drivers faded away they were replaced by the snort of steam and the clang of the hammer driving spikes for the logging railroads. With this advance in log transportation came new words to our vocabulary. The "Swede hole" appeared as the Swedish laborers dug borrow material to level and grade the track. These "Swede holes" often filled with water as there was no drainage, and they became a source of amusement for the old-timers when a greenhorn, packing a load of "Old Numbskull," stumbled into one on the way back from town.

The railroads made it possible to introduce heavy machinery into the woods. The "donkey engines" spooled miles of wire rope, dragging logs out of the woods, and the "donkey puncher" was born. Why not? The cattle ranch had its cowpunchers.

The skidding of logs with cables also brought the "blue ribbon hang up," a term further described by a string of adjectives that would make the old mule skinner blanch white.

Politely described, the "blue ribbon hang up" is a condition caused by downhill skidding where the log rolls down behind the biggest stump on the claim breaking chokers and bringing the whole "shebang" to a screeching, grinding halt.

Continued next week