By The Sweat of thier Brow

[hurleyjd]

My wife and I married in 1961 in 1963 we bought 88.5 acres of wooded land for 87.50 per acre. A man had set up a cross tie mill down the road from me. He came and looked and we struck a deal for $3 a tie. A man moved on the place from Oklahoma built a tar paper shack and a corral for his mules. That is what they skidded the logs with. You could hardly tell he had been in the woods. We sold about $3000 dollars worth of ties and it went a long way to paying the place off.

 

[Jogeephus]

My wife and I married in 1961 in 1963 we bought 88.5 acres of wooded land for 87.50 per acre. A man had set up a cross tie mill down the road from me. He came and looked and we struck a deal for $3 a tie. A man moved on the place from Oklahoma built a tar paper shack and a corral for his mules. That is what they skidded the logs with. You could hardly tell he had been in the woods. We sold about $3000 dollars worth of ties and it went a long way to paying the place off.

That's pretty neat. We used to have a lot of those "peckerwood" mills scattered around. Just out of curiosity, is the sawdust pile still there? You can still find them scattered in the woods here. They don't seem to rot and don't seem to burn.

I knew an old man who told me his grandfather bought a farm sometime around 1910 and when WW1 broke he sold three trees to Navy for a dollar a foot and trees paid off his land. All his grandfather had to do was drag them to the road - which I imagine was a job.

Land here was cheap and many viewed it as a tax liability because a family couldn't work about 40 acres and anything more seemed inefficient. There is a land lot next to my house that was traded for a shotgun and everyone thought the man was crazy.

 

[backhoeboogie]

The lumber companies badger me with requests to cut my timber in East Texas. I would let them thin the pines. But they all want to clear cut it. Take out the old growth hickory etc. So it sits there. I have had fears of tornadoes. Thieves. There is an old Caddo village in the middle of it and you can see the foundations still. I don't want that section desecrated and I don't want any do gooders knowing it is there.

So my land just sits.

 

[Jogeephus]

Yeah, the wrong person could cause you grief with a historic site on your property. I know where there are some indian mounds on private property. They are difficult to get to but the landowner cannot do anything with this portion of his property and the gov't comes to check on things a few times each year. I'm real tempted to hike in there with a shovel and root around a bit and see what I can find but its only a pipe dream.

 

[backhoeboogie]

Jogee I was told these were burial mounds in my youth. After much research on the Caddo, I have learned they had farming villages out from main villages etc. They mounded up their floors to keep the houses from flooding. Every three years or so they burned their houses down and started over, building upon the old foundation.

Looking at the layouts of the dirt mounds, spacing, and number, I have decided that I have a small hunting or farming outpost.

I also read that they always hid a cache of tools and utensils nearby. So my interest has changed and centers around finding the cache, if it still exists. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever dug on or near the area. But I could be dead wrong there too.

 

[TexasBred]

The lumber companies badger me with requests to cut my timber in East Texas. I would let them thin the pines. But they all want to clear cut it. Take out the old growth hickory etc. So it sits there. I have had fears of tornadoes. Thieves. There is an old Caddo village in the middle of it and you can see the foundations still. I don't want that section desecrated and I don't want any do gooders knowing it is there.

So my land just sits.

Hardwoods should be ok but pine beetles are killing worlds of old timer in East Texas. Keep an eye on it.

 

[hurleyjd]

That was a pretty nice Studebaker pickup the folks arrived in to fight the fire.

 

[Jogeephus]

That was a pretty nice Studebaker pickup the folks arrived in to fight the fire.

Far cry from a 2017 Dodge Laramie Longhorn though. Just saying. ;-) :lol2:

 

[backhoeboogie]

That was a pretty nice Studebaker pickup the folks arrived in to fight the fire.

Far cry from a 2017 Dodge Laramie Longhorn though. Just saying. ;-) :lol2:

Dodge is now making a Studebaker knock off too? :lol:

 

[Jogeephus]

Only in the solar model. Gonna compete with the Prius. Prius sounds so prissy so the Studebaker with its swagger should be some tough competition

 

[greybeard]

Jo,
Pulp wood cutters that worked here on this place in mid 60s had a bow saw, a couple gallons of gas, a gallon of water, a couple biscuits and sausage wrapped in a paper towel, a truck with a jib boom and winch & about 100 yards of 1/2 line on it and that's it. He'd drive as close as he could get to the tops and scrub and go to cutting, tie the line on and drag it over to his truck and load it. No log hog tractor or skidder. Some days, I thought that truck was going to turn over when he was dragging the cut sticks to the truck.
Looked just like this painting, except the guy that cut ours when I was a kid worked alone unless he had his cute young wife with him.

Or this diorama model:


Heck, some I saw around town didn't even have a winch and boom--they loaded by hand.

 

[greybeard]

Jo, a few years ago, a local guy I knew came by and said the mill was taking hard and soft pulpwood..long sticks of course and asked me if I had any scrub pine or gum I wanted to get rid off. I did and he said he couldn't pay much because the mill wasn't paying much, and I told him to just take it..I wanted it gone. He started cutting and that evening came and asked if I wanted the tallow trees left. I didn't even know the mill would take them but he said "They will if they don't know they're stuck in the middle of a load of gum."
Oh happy day!!! I grabbed my garden sprayer with remedy and diesel and next day I followed right behind him.
The Lord sure smiled on me that day. He made a little money and I got rid of a lot of seed bearing tallow.

 

[TexasBred]

Jo,
Pulp wood cutters that worked here on this place in mid 60s had a bow saw, a couple gallons of gas, a gallon of water, a couple biscuits and sausage wrapped in a paper towel, a truck with a jib boom and winch & about 100 yards of 1/2 line on it and that's it. He'd drive as close as he could get to the tops and scrub and go to cutting, tie the line on and drag it over to his truck and load it. No log hog tractor or skidder. Some days, I thought that truck was going to turn over when he was dragging the cut sticks to the truck.
Looked just like this painting, except the guy that cut ours when I was a kid worked alone unless he had his cute young wife with him.

Or this diorama model:


Heck, some I saw around town didn't even have a winch and boom--they loaded by hand.

Use to see dozens of those at the RR siding when I was growing up. Unloading those old beat up trucks onto a railcar. No shirts, wet with sweat and nothing but muscles. Hard working folks.

 

[RanchMan90]

We still get a couple hundred semi loads of pulp wood a day for the chipper at the mill I work at. I think it's close to $15 a ton, landowner gets paid $50 a load. Seems like a fair deal for all. Any cardboard box you see there's a 70% chance it was made here.

 

[Jogeephus]

That is very similar to how it was done here but as the pulp mills became larger they needed more wood and a more consistent supply of wood and this created the era of tree length pulp and these loggers were more focused on efficiency and production. To do this, the pulpmills set up what was known as the dealer system. Each dealer was responsible for procuring a given amount of wood for the mill. Those who took on the risk and responsibility of becoming a dealer were well rewarded and most became millionaires. These dealers typically ran the concentration yards where the shortwooders would deliver their wood.

In a way, the inefficiency of the shortwooder would have led to their downfall but as sawmills and plywood mills moved in the area the demand for timber grew. These mills were very inefficient and required large top sizes which created huge amounts of waste left in the woods. This was godsend to the shortwooders because - like your tallow trees - there were a lot of people who would rather see it hauled off their property than have to deal with it themselves and this "free-wood" was a win/win deal and spawned a heck of an industry and created a lot of jobs. True, it was hard work but generally speaking a man could make much more in the woods than he could working a regular job.

I've heard it said that if Bill Gates stopped to pick up a $100 bill his pause would cost him money. I can't fathom this and suspect Gates would pick up the hundred if he saw it. None of these people were anything like Gates but many did see free money laying on the ground and many picked it up. Its a shame the insurance companies saw money here to and put these guys out of business because I'm sure none of these guys had any political connections or a voice where it mattered.

 

[backhoeboogie]

We still get a couple hundred semi loads of pulp wood a day for the chipper at the mill I work at. I think it's close to $15 a ton, landowner gets paid $50 a load. Seems like a fair deal for all. Any cardboard box you see there's a 70% chance it was made here.

Valiant? Is my old buddy Larry Guest still living? How about those Jordan boys out of Idabel?

 

[RanchMan90]

We still get a couple hundred semi loads of pulp wood a day for the chipper at the mill I work at. I think it's close to $15 a ton, landowner gets paid $50 a load. Seems like a fair deal for all. Any cardboard box you see there's a 70% chance it was made here.

Valiant? Is my old buddy Larry Guest still living? How about those Jordan boys out of Idabel?

Yes sir, international paper in valliant (used to be Weyerhauser). I've just been here a year so not familiar with everybody yet. Are they millwrights or electricians?

 

[hurleyjd]

We still get a couple hundred semi loads of pulp wood a day for the chipper at the mill I work at. I think it's close to $15 a ton, landowner gets paid $50 a load. Seems like a fair deal for all. Any cardboard box you see there's a 70% chance it was made here.

Valiant? Is my old buddy Larry Guest still living? How about those Jordan boys out of Idabel?

Yes sir, international paper in valliant (used to be Weyerhauser). I've just been here a year so not familiar with everybody yet. Are they millwrights or electricians?

So your are living in the Little Dixie part of Oklahoma.

 

[backhoeboogie]

We still get a couple hundred semi loads of pulp wood a day for the chipper at the mill I work at. I think it's close to $15 a ton, landowner gets paid $50 a load. Seems like a fair deal for all. Any cardboard box you see there's a 70% chance it was made here.

Valiant? Is my old buddy Larry Guest still living? How about those Jordan boys out of Idabel?

Yes sir, international paper in valliant (used to be Weyerhauser). I've just been here a year so not familiar with everybody yet. Are they millwrights or electricians?

Instrumentation. I worked a shut down there in '82 Ran a ton of tubing in the machine room. They didn't have a whole lot of tubing hands After they saw me bend 1 1/2 inch tubing, they made everyone else quit and I had to run all of it. It got me off of the bench boards.

It was there that I went dead broke. Had 4 paychecks in my pocket and no money to buy food or gasoline. I had to take off of work to go cash a paycheck. I had been working 16 hour days for over a month. No debit cards or direct deposit back then. No store to cash checks that big. I had to get to a bank, during banking hours so that I had money to eat.

 

[RanchMan90]

Valiant? Is my old buddy Larry Guest still living? How about those Jordan boys out of Idabel?

Yes sir, international paper in valliant (used to be Weyerhauser). I've just been here a year so not familiar with everybody yet. Are they millwrights or electricians?

Instrumentation. I worked a shut down there in '82 Ran a ton of tubing in the machine room. They didn't have a whole lot of tubing hands After they saw me bend 1 1/2 inch tubing, they made everyone else quit and I had to run all of it. It got me off of the bench boards.

It was there that I went dead broke. Had 4 paychecks in my pocket and no money to buy food or gasoline. I had to take off of work to go cash a paycheck. I had been working 16 hour days for over a month. No debit cards or direct deposit back then. No store to cash checks that big. I had to get to a bank, during banking hours so that I had money to eat.

I hear that. Cashing checks was a real chore when I was traveling and first got into the e & I field. I started out as a tubing hand here due to the demand, now I calibrate valves, transmitters, controllers, etc. I did get more satisfaction out of running tubing and getting to see my work at the end of the day. Being home nights and weekends now is priceless though. Can't say I know your friends, will keep an eye out for them next time I'm at the machines. Pulp mill and chipyard is my area.