A Logger's Dream

By Richard Etheredge

Aging logger Daniel Hobgood looks back on a life lived in pursuit of a dream. Born the son of a struggling pulpwooder, he fought against the odds to rise above the path that folks thought he ought to follow. Always looking for a better way, young Daniel's thinking was always outside the box. He would try any idea that would help him in pursuit of his dream.

Life in post-World War II Alabama was a time of hard work, poverty, sorrow, humor, and joy. The church is a big part of the culture, providing the backdrop against which lives were lived. Daniel's life is no exception. Work, church, coon hunting, and family are all he knows. The more he learns, the more he realizes he has yet to learn.

Did Daniel achieve his dream? Was the dream worth the struggle? If you have ever had a dream, join Daniel as he remembers his six decades of living A Logger's Dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 27, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595858439

Richard Etheredge

Richard Etheredge has worked in and around the forest industry for over thirty years. He has built, repaired and operated logging equipment for several generations of south Alabamians. As with his characters, it has become an addiction for him. Richard lives with his wife Judean in rural southwest Alabama.

Book preview

A LOGGER’S DREAM

A Novel

Richard S. Etheredge

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

A Logger’s Dream

Copyright © 2006 by Richard Shane Etheredge

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-41493-2 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-85843-9 (ebook)

ISBN-10: 0-595-41493-1 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-85843-0 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

EPILOGUE

For Judean

PROLOGUE

Day Dreamin’

They say that smells are the most powerful triggers to memory. You can pass a fresh mowed yard, and suddenly, you’re back in your childhood, playin’ on a summer’s evenin’. Leaves burnin’ in the fall take you back to a marshmallow roastin’ after a long day of leaf rakin’. Well, the other day, I was in the Western Auto, standin’ in line to pay for some plumbin’ parts to fix a leakin’ faucet. All of a sudden, an odor comin’ from the guy in front of me sent me on a sixty-year mental field trip. Most people would have found the smell offensive, but to me, it was the perfume of a better time. This unique bouquet is an eclectic mix of pine-sap, stale sweat, staler whiskey, and chain saw oil.

While this may not be common now in our modern, clean, anti-bacterial world, there was a day, far in my past, when almost all the men I knew, and a few of the women, wore this aroma like a dog wears his fur. They were the folks I grew up around and they were loggers and pulpwooders. This guy was buyin’ a gallon of chain oil, probably cuttin’ firewood for the winter. Nobody much uses chain saws for loggin’ any more. Besides, this old geezer was probably seventy years old, makin’ him almost as old as me. This line of thinkin’ sent me to considering the changes that had happened to loggin’ in my seventy-two years.

CHAPTER 1

THE DREAM BEGINS

I started helpin’ my Daddy cut and haul short pulpwood at the tender age of fifteen. For those of you that might not know, pulpwood is to writtin’ paper what corn is to cornbread. The startin’ point. Pulpwood ain’t nothing fancy, it’s mostly trees that ain’t straight enough for logs and the tops and limbs of trees that did make a log. Daddy never did haul logs, cause it takes some equipment to haul logs. Equipment costs money and that’s somethin’ that a pulpwooder never had much of. So that’s what Daddy was, a pulpwooder. Folks always separated the two like that. Pulpwooders over here, loggers over there. Loggin’ is an occupation, pulpwoodin’ is what you did to feed the kids and maybe buy a jug of whiskey now and then. Daddy’s pulpwoodin’ equipment consisted of a worn out old McCullough chain saw, a piece of an old ton and a half truck fitted out to haul short wood, and the strong backs of me, my brother Tommy Lee, and occasionally some other local guy who couldn’t find nothin’ better to do. After a logger went through a tract of timber, cuttin’ all the trees fittin’ for poles, pilings, or logs, the timber dealer would send in a pulpwooder to cut what he could out of the tops and limbs, and maybe they would let him cut a few standin’ trees that would never be good for nothing else, kind of like throwin’ a bone to an old dog to keep him from starvin’. The old dog was always hopin’ there would be a little meat left on the bone, but there usually wasn’t. The pulpwooder benefited from the logger already havin’ cut loggin’ roads all over the tract of land, the land owner got useless trees and the tops took off his place, as well as a few extra dollars per cord of wood, the wood dealer got the biggest chunk of the pie, and of course the old pulpwooder got a few bucks per cord.

Our day, ‘specially in the summer, started real early. Daddy would holler at Tommy Lee and me to get up. We always kept a few hogs, cows, and chickens, so us boys had to feed up before we all left for the woods. Daddy would be patchin’ the old truck one more time, mixin’ the gas for the two cycle chain saw, and fillin’ up water jugs for us to drink, cause pulpwoodin’ will make you sweat like nothin’ else on earth. We always parked the truck at night on what we called battery hill, which wasn’t nothin’ but a little rise behind the house big enough for the old truck to get enough rollin’ speed to crank up when you popped the clutch. We never could afford a battery that would crank that old truck after it set all night or after rainy days when we didn’t work.

So, after we got cranked up and goin’ we would head over to Leroy Edward’s Gulf station. We would put gas in the truck, not quite fill it up, ‘cause it leaked up near the filler neck. Then we would get some cans of vienas, potted meat, Georgia hash, and soda crackers. Leroy would put it all on Daddy’s tab, to be paid Saturday, if Leroy and us was lucky. Next, we would head over to Bubba Daniels’ shack to see if he was in any kind of shape to want to help us for the day. Sometimes old Bubba would work like a borrowed mule, other days his head would hurt him too bad to leave the house, mostly ‘cause he was too fond of the shine made by some of the locals. That stuff is sometimes run through an old car radiator to make it condense. That works good, but the lead solder in the joints leaches in to the brew, and it will give you a headache so bad that you can’t see straight. That’s why they call it pop skull whiskey. On the days that old Bubba didn’t want to work, he would send one of his twelve younguns out to say he wasn’t there. Trouble with that was, the cracks in the wall boards was so wide, you could see him sitttin’ at the table, holdin’ his head like it was goin’ to fall off.

Then, with or without extra help, we headed to whatever fencerow or loggin’ woods the dealer had told us to go to. We would pick us a spot to start, and park the truck close up on some tops or standin’ wood. Unlike today, where a skidder drags the trees to the truck, back then we toted the sticks of wood, one at a time, to the truck, then hoisted them, again by hand, up on to the truck. Daddy always ran the saw, cause he said a bow saw is about the second most dangerous thing on earth, the first thing bein’ Mamma, when she was mad. Bow saws would suddenly kick back on the operator, often doin’ some real damage. A cut by a saw chain leaves a nasty looking scar, if you survive the wound and the infection that follows. Tommy Lee and me would push, pull, carry, or drag the sticks of wood to the truck, and Bubba, if he was around, would load it up on the rack built on the truck bed.

Let me tell you a little bit about a pulpwood truck. Back in that day, there wasn’t any such thing as a factory built pulpwood truck. Most trucks were old military flatbeds, and pulpwooders would build a rack out of used drill stem from an oil drillin’ operation, or railroad steel, or sometimes they would just weld short pieces of pipe to the frame and stick hickory uprights, called standards into the pipes. This held the wood on the truck, at least till it decided to fall off at the worst possible time. Because you had to get the truck deep down in the woods, most of these old trucks were bent and dented just about everywhere that they could be bent and dented. Not many had head or taillights; some didn’t even have any glass or doors. Those that did have doors always had an old screw driver stuck through the drip rail, above the door, to hold it shut, because the latch didn’t work any more. The seat in these rollin’ wrecks was often a wooden crate, wired to the floor, so the driver would not fall out on the rough spots. Since the trucks were often the only vehicle the family owned, boards were usually nailed together across the rack, behind the cab, for the rest of family to ride on to town or church. In my mind’s eye, I can still see, even after all these years, truck after truck pullin’ up to the Shady Grove Baptist Church, kids in their Sunday best hangin’ all over those old rusty pulpwood trucks. A man sure needed to go to church on Sundays; to repent of all the bad things he had called that truck, not to mention the saw, all week. Dealin’ with a cantankerous old truck could sure cause a man a world of sorrow.

One time, a bunch of men were sittin’ around the stove at old Leroy’s store, discussin’ what they would do if they was to win a million dollars. Like that was goin’ to ever happen to any of them. Anyway, when it come to David Earl Thompson, he said he would buy a brand new pulpwoodin’ truck. This drew a big laugh from everybody, but after aggravatin’ with a wore out old pulpwood truck for years, a new truck was about as high as David Earl could dream.

But let’s go back to our days in the woods. Daddy would saw in a circle around from where he started, getting farther and farther away from the truck. When he got to where he thought we was goin’ to have to tote the