It is Friday, October 12, 1906, at 6:05 am. The chow whistle at the Hubert “Hugh” Mungus Timber Co. Logging Camp 2 has already sounded, and loggers are jostling for seats at one of the long tables. Platters piled high with ham, sausages, eggs, and griddle cakes cooks are being placed on the table as the coffee pots are passed around. Within minutes, the platters are empty as the hungry loggers chow down.
The three camp flunkies, Billy Jo, Bobby Jo, and Betty Jo all daughters of Ida Baker, one of the camp cooks, keep more platters coming and the coffee flowing. In a few minutes, the loggers will have consumed over 2,000 calories, only a portion of the 6,000 that they will need for the day ahead.
At 6:30 am the second whistle of the day will sound, alerting the crews that it is time to assemble for the trip to the Camp 2 logging site a couple of miles up the hill. As they leave the chow hall, they will grab their lunch buckets, each of which has been neatly packed with two meatloaf sandwiches, a butter and jam sandwich, and a large piece of cake, for another 1,500 or so calories.
After the loggers depart, the flunkies, who started at 4:00 am, will clean up, wash the dishes, and take a well-deserved mid-day break, returning at 4:00 pm to help prepare dinner. The flunkies take turns earning a little extra cash by washing and repairing the loggers’ clothing during their downtime.
The camp is far from deserted. After a couple of hours break, Kris P. Bacon, head cook, and Al Dente, his helper, will spend most of the afternoon preparing a dinner of chicken and dumplings while Ida Baker will be doing what she does best, baking biscuits and apple pie for tonight, with enough pies leftover for tomorrow’s lunches.
Elsewhere in the camp, the blacksmith will be hard at work repairing the previous day’s damage to the tools, and the saw sharpener and his assistant will be ever-busy keeping the saws and axes sharp. The store’s keeper will be checking his inventory and preparing a list of needed supplies to give to the conductor of the train that will be by later to switch empty log cars for loaded ones and to swap out the soon-to-be empty commissary car for a full one.
The two commissary cars, rebuilt by the Fungus and Mungus Railroad, were once Minneapolis and St. Paul Refrigerator cars. They were converted to half refrigerator and half dry storage by installing an insulated bulkhead in the middle of the cars. Perishable meats, milk, and fruit are stored in the refrigerator side while flour, sugar, lard, and other non-perishable food are stored in the dry half. The two cars are switched out a couple of times a week and returned to the commissary down at Cloud’s Rest where they are cleaned, dried, reloaded, and iced.
Once the loggers reach the loading site, the crews will split up, with a few remaining at this site and the others continuing up the side of Big Pine Mountain to where the timber is currently being cut.
The donkey crews, choker setters, buckers, and loaders will continue to ready another day’s worth of timber for shipment by rail down to the Hugh Mungus Lumber Co. sawmill near the base of the mountain. Two to three cars of 5-6 logs each is a normal day’s shipment. This late in the season, they are pushing to get all the fallen trees down to that landing before the first heavy snow closes the logging operation for the season. The landing does not get snowed in, but you can bet the logging site will before a couple more weeks pass.
The toppers, fellers, some choker setters, and the teamsters will continue up to the logging site, about 30 men in all. The toppers will climb up to the tops of the trees to cut off the narrow tops while the fellers, working in two-man teams using whip saws, will bring the trees down. After the limbs and branches are removed, the choker setters will attach steel cables and ropes to the trees and attach them to the logging wagon so that the teamsters can haul the logs down to the log landing where they will be bucked to length for loading. This time of year, it is an all-out race against mother nature to get the trees off the mountain and down to the landing before winter closes the site.
At noon, everyone will knock off for an hour, enjoy their lunch and rest up for a busy afternoon. At 6:30 pm, the loggers will quit for the day and bring their teams and tools down the mountain where they will join their fellow workers at the landing site for the wagon rides back to camp. They will only have a few minutes to turn in their tools and clean up before the dinner whistle sounds at 7:30 pm.
After dinner, the loggers will have time to relax in their bunk houses, take a not-so-warm shower, as there never seems to be enough hot water, maybe play some cards, or write a letter to the wife and kids back home. Tomorrow’s another day, but it won’t be any different than today. The day repeats itself, six days a week, 8-9 months out of the year.
In a couple of weeks, heavy snow will bring the logging season to an end; the loggers, fellers, toppers, teamsters, and many others will return home to their families, having been away for up to 8 months. Loading at the landing will continue through the winter, keeping some of the workers employed year-round. Ida Baker and her daughters will move on, hopefully, to return in the spring. Many of the loggers will return season after season, a few pounds heavier and with lighter pockets. Camp 2 will continue to run, to house and feed the twenty or so who remain. There is always work to be done at the end of the season.