Old Time Saw Mill Was Social Center by “Anne Hawkins” (Who was she?)

Old Time Saw Mill Was Social Center – Missoulian 6/7/1925

Anne Hawkins Compares Big Establishments of Today With Those of Long Ago.

By Anne Hawkins (pseudonym)

I made a trip up to Bonner just especially to see what resemblance I could find in the splendid big mill there, to the little, old stumpy saw mills of the early days. I saw three trim band saws ripping into the logs, in place of the old-time circular saws.

Mr. Lubrecht explained that the band saws cut a much narrower width of saw dust from the log than the more cumbersome circular saw, thereby eliminating a lot of waste. The old-time circular saw was the most wicked looking piece of machinery I ever gazed upon, and I recall an early day play where the hero was bound onto the log carrier by the villain and headed straight for the cruel teeth of the circular saw, when by the timely intervention provided by the playwright, the hero escaped being sawed up.

I never have been able to quite overcome the feeling that it must humanly “hurt” the log when the saw bites into it, or repress a little shiver as for a human being on the operating table.

Four hundred thousand feet per day, Mr. Lubrecht said, is the capacity of this great mill, the largest in the state of Montana, and some five hundred men are needed to operate it. Mentally, I was comparing our little early-day mill with its fractional part of such an output with this huge plant at Bonner. It made me almost disloyal to even make the comparison, so I added stoutly under my breath but “she” was a good little mill and a sturdy worker, our old-time mill was.

The general classification for the work is about the same now as in early days. Mr. Lubrecht said, but the lumber itself is graded much more closely, twenty-five or thirty grades now, to two or three grades then. I asked if there was much improvement over the old time way of “snaking” in the logs to the mill, with horses and oxen, and Mr. Lubrecht smiled as he said although they had dispensed with oxen, they hadn’t found anything that was an improvement on the horse for getting the logs out of rough country. I was glad, because I know now there is one place I can go where I won’t have to flee for my life from the onrushing honking cars. They have some fine horses at Bonner. I noticed one big handsome black horse that hauls out little cars of lumber on the tracks. He could do everything but attach himself to the car and speak the English language.

Then there was a big dapple gray team, noticeably good to look upon, hauling loads of lumber across the yard. Very seldom in the old days did we see anything so handsome in a mill yard. We had the little old bronc, the government mule and oxen, oxen (sic).

I looked around for the sawdust pile and was told that the big incinerator took care of that as well as all other waste material not used for fuel. What a capacious maw!

A Change From 1873!

Standing on the elevated walkways inside the big Bonner mill above the whizzing, whirring machinery and looking down the immense amount of lumber being handled, one realized how much in speed and efficiency had been accomplished since the days of the old Hammond mill in 1873.

My recollections of the early-day saw mills in a sparsely settled country are those of a place where you could go and have a real good time, much as community houses are now. We had dances, and Fourth of July celebrations and once we had a school exhibition (please note the word “exhibition” and then on rare occasions we had “Spelling Bees.”

Probably more of the old-time dances were held at saw mills than at any other one place. It was good to be alive and ride in the dusk of the evening through the sweet-smelling pines and dreadful logging roads up and up to where the mill was and then to dance all night on the new pine floors in some one of the clean new buildings. The little old saw mills had a cluttery mill yard with a big pile of sawdust and piles of slabs and pieces of most everything lying around. We liked it that way, though. A Fourth of July celebration meant considerable extra work in the way of building platforms and roofing them with boughs and even building a merry-go-round, but we couldn’t have celebrated properly without them, we thought. People came a long distance to attend and those were the only attractions we had to offer.

I recall but one “School Exhibition” that was held at a saw mill and that was because of the limited space in the school house not far away. Stage and scenery was built on a generous scale, in fact, it was rather awe inspiring to some youthful amateur performers who were dreadfully afraid they would “fall off.” Just why entertainments given by schools in those days should be called “Exhibitions” I do not know, although sometimes they were that literally.

Now about Spelling Bees at the old-time saw mills, of course, we had many “personally conducted” ones in the old log school house, but somehow the spelling bees at the mills were funnier. Maybe it was because of the unique characteristics to be found there. Usually there was quite an assortment. I recall one man by the name of Dick Rose who had drifted in from – no one quite knew where – a man of noticeably fine appearance and was very well educated. He might have been a diplomat at a foreign court, but – he wasn’t. He was a booze-fighting cook for the saw mill crew. I do not know where or how he learned spelling. I know I didn’t teach it to him, but if there (sic) couldn’t spell it was because he had not heard of that particular word and at that he could sometimes spell it.

Sir Oracle, did you wish me to take issue with Heywood Broun about the seeming reflections he has cast upon the old time “spellers?”[1] In the first place, I do not think he has spelled his own name right. I think it should be spelled B-R-0-W-N. Mr. Brown assumes that the children of today are sixty percent more expert in spelling than the scholars who lived in the days when the three R’s were so much magnified. Well, maybe so, but my recollections of “Joe” Worcester, “Sam” Johnson, Noah Webster, D. Whitney and Dr. Murray are, that they were tolerable good old-time spellers. And yet, according to Mr. Broun, they would lack some sixty per cent of being as smart as the Massachusetts children. The world do move.

We had some pretty good spellers in our old-time spelling bees, too. They could not only “spell the house down” but they could wear out two or three “pronouncers.”

Dick Rose was like that when we had our little spelling matches at the saw mill where he cooked. Of course there were other good spellers, too, even those that hadn’t gone beyond the fifth grade, if they happened to have had access to a mail order house catalogue.

Most of the people that came to the mill for lumber had to stay over night and so, with the crew and the one or two families that lived there, there were usually enough people to try for some form of amusement, ‘most any time. I have recollections of going to the mill on the running gears of a big wagon with our men folks for lumber. I would have a cushion and sit over the back axle. One started out joyously enough but you know there were no springs or shock absorbers in connection with the back axle of the running gears, and before many miles had elapsed, I would begin to get moody and have bitter introspective feelings and ask myself why I was so foolish as to select that style of locomotion. Certain it was the wheels never missed a rock and the horses always trotted in the roughest portions of the road. As soon as I reached the mill my gloom would vanish and I would immediately find plenty of interesting things to see and do.

The old circular saw always fascinated me even if I did shiver every time it struck a log. The engineer was always sociable and raised his voice high above the buzzing of the saw to talk with me.

Once the engine “blew up” in a government saw mill and knocked the roof off and made quite a scattering.

The off bearers didn’t have much machinery to help them out in those days, any more than the sawdust men did. I helped pack shingles once and wrote my name and address on one shingle, but nothing romantic came of it. I liked to sit on the steps of some family house and watch the teams come in, the government mule teams of six or eight mules, and the oxen like “dumb driven cattle.” In those days to be compared with a government mule was a term of opprobrium, and yet most of them were perfectly respectable mules, only a bit tricky. It is presumed that the word “mule skinner” for drivers must have originated from the fact that the old long-lashed whips used by the drivers could draw blood every time it was cracked. If I remember correctly three wagons piled high with lumber, all fastened together, could be hauled out with the eight mules. How slowly the oxen moved and how cumbersome they were and how much “whacking” it took to get them along, I never learned just how many “whacks” it took to make a full-fledged bullwhacker, but a great many, I imagine. I remember old Tamarack, a big black and white ox that I tried to “whack” and got my fingers severely pinched between the stick and the top of his sharp back bone.

I do not know which ranked higher in social distinction, a mule skinner or a bullwhacker, but as I recall, the seating arrangements at the oil-cloth-covered tables at saw mills, a question of precedence never came up and so I presume their social standing was about the same.

What a variety of types sat around those long tables and how I loved to partake in a meal there. “Montana” was one of the saw mill women I liked very much to visit with. ‘Tana had been married four times and she could neither read nor write and after her third husband died she married an impoverished Italian count. ‘Tana, the countess! Now an educated woman couldn’t have done any better than that, could she? And the countess was the cook for the saw mill crew.

I recall seeing a big forest fire and the men trying to save a sawmill – and they did save it, too, by working all night. I rode to the top of a gulch and looked down into the fiery furnace. It made me positively sick to see the fine old pine trees suffer so. They writhed and twisted and seemed to groan as the fierce, red flames laid hold of them.

I wonder if the beautiful description that Dean Stone has written of the life of Sentinel Pine has sunk deeply enough into our appreciation of fine things? And if we realize just what the life of the pine means? Going through the Art Institute in Chicago, I stood long before a painting of an old pine tree. The picture was not likely to have been done by a master artist, but it brought a mist to my eyes and lump in my throat for it was a true likeness of one of my dear friends in the big pine forests of the west.

The above article appeared in The Sunday Missoulian on June 7, 1925.

The author of this article, Anne Hawkins, chose to use a pseudonym while writing articles for The Daily Missoulian.

Her first column appeared on February 26, 1922. The introduction to that first column went thus:

“This interesting account of school-teaching in the days of the early west is written for The Sunday Missoulian by a resident of this city. She is a veteran of the west and she was a pioneer in education in this part of the country. She does not choose to write under her own name, but she assumed the title of “Anne Hawkins.” Today’s article is the first of a series from her pen.”

“Anne Hawkins” later provided the Missoulian with several more articles over a period of years in the 1920’s. She had a substantial knowledge of early Montana history which she didn’t mind sharing. Identifying her would be a challenge today without more information. A few of Missoula’s early teachers don’t seem to fit the description – e.g., Emma Slack Dickenson, Olive Rankin, Sarah Countryman Woody, and some others who resided in the area by 1873. Maybe someone out there can provide us her name. A hint – Her first article – ‘West of Long Ago and Its Schools’ – noted that she was a 17-year-old teacher in in the territory of Wyoming.