Shirley Quant
November 29, 1994I was born in Mitchell, Oregon February 1, 1915. In 1919 we moved to the coast and then to the valley and came back here in 1930. That's when I started logging. All I ever did is work in the woods since I was old enough to pull a cross-cut, the old hand saw. The woods have been my whole life. Eventually I had my own logging outfit.
We actually didn't plan on moving back up here in 1930. Dad brought us back over here to show us where he had worked for the Forest Service. To show us the country and to show us Mitchell where I was born. He had worked for the Forest Service from 1914 to 1918. He was one of the first rangers in the Ochocos. His job was riding for fire watch on Pisgah; the north rim, the east point, and the main top of Pisgah.
When we came back through here we stopped at Summit Prairie. Two guys had just opened up a cinnabar mine and they needed people to work in the mine. We all went to work in the mine during the summer of 1930. My mother cooked, my dad carpentered, my brother worked in the mine, and I was a flunkie. I was 15 at the time. We earned $16.50 a day and board for all of us.
In the fall of 1930 I started high school in Mitchell. I couldn't afford to stay in high school so I went to work for Mack Nichols, a rancher, for $1.00 a day. Rube Rosenbaum put a little circle mill in and he needed someone to cut logs for him. Mack Nichols had horses. He took the job and we furnished the logs for Rosenbaum's mill. We logged with two mules and four horses. I helped cut the logs and chopped off the limbs. Rosenbaum cut lumber for ranchers in the area and hauled some lumber to Prineville to sell.
Mack had his horses well broke for logging. They knew more about logging than we did. In the winter when we'd come to a hill and start down it, the log would take off. The horses would outrun the log and when they got to the bottom of the hill they knew when to slow down and go right on along with the log.
When I first started falling, I worked for Charlie Jackson in Mitchell. In the winter we used a sled with a bunk on it for hauling the logs. We put one end of the log on and cross-hauled. In the summer we used a set of wheels for skidding logs. Sometimes we had to skid almost a mile to the mill site.
About 1936 Hudspeths came out of Oklahoma and put a mill out at Camp Watson. I felled timber for them. We were paid by the scale. They kept track of the logs cut by putting two notches in the end of a log for the No.2 set of fallers, and for the No.3 set of fallers they put three notches in the end of the log and so on. The logs were scaled as they went up a ramp and it was written down as to whose they were.
I moved to Prineville in 1938 and went to work for Alexander-Yawkey. Tom Yawkey and a man by the name of Alexander owned a big block of timber north of town. They had three mill sites out in the woods. One was on Willow Creek; one was on Allen Creek; and one was on McKay Creek. They yarded them in with old time Caterpillars that had what was called an 'arch' behind them. The Cat had two tracks but there were no cleats on the tracks. There was a big arm behind it with a line going through it and a drum. They could hook on to the trees and yard them in in tree length.
The pay wasn't much but it was good money compared to what other things were. When I worked for the rancher in Mitchell I didn't get any pay. The rancher kept me in all kinds of livestock. He'd work out a cow or a couple of pigs, maybe some chickens, which helped my folks who were living in Mitchell. There wasn't much money in those days.
At Alexander-Yawkey's I was paid by the hour because at first they didn't have any way of scaling the logs. We got paid $1.50 or $2.00 an hour for falling. That was good wages because wages in the mill were 65 cents an hour. The falling was all done with a cross-cut saw.
My brother Andy and I worked for Alexander-Yawkey four or five years. World War II broke out and the government needed timber so we were given deferments. I went to work for Bill and Fred Endicott who were logging for Pine Products.
During the War what was known as the first power saw came on the market. It was run by electricity with power coming from a generator on a little D-4 Cat. The first one came out in Burns. I was sent to Burns for two days to learn how to run it and how to file the chain.
After that first electric power saw we got the twin-cylinder Disston. It was big and heavy. It weighed 130 pounds and it took two men to carry it. Actually, one man carried pretty near all of it because the motor was on the handle. Your partner held on to the lighter end.
The little circle mills in those days were real slow and they didn't cut much. The logs were rolled up on a platform that ran back and forth on a track. A man sitting there would set the ratchets. He'd set the log and set the pins to hold the log, then he'd run the saw through the log and cut off some very wide slabs. The ratchet setter would then kick the log over, set the ratchets again and saw again until the log was sawed up.
The biggest tree that I can remember falling was about six feet in diameter. In those days we didn't take the little timber. We didn't cut anything from 20 inches in diameter down. A guy by the name of Kelley in the 1930's moved a mill on a big block of timber over on West Branch. He just took them up to the limbs and left the rest lay in the woods.
In 1944 my deferment was cancelled and I enlisted in the Army. I served in the Phillipines and on Okinawa. I received an Army Medal of Commendation for service. When I got out of the Army in '45 I went back to falling for Endicott who was still logging for Pine Products.
In 1951 I bought an old RD-6 Cat and went to logging on private timber on McKay Creek. I kept adding more equipment and had a pretty good sized logging outfit at one time. I had four or five tractors and a couple of loading machines. I even went back to Colorado and tried it but I lost my shirt back there. Some friends of mine, who made a lot of money from timber they had bought from Leo Hahn at Summit Prairie and resold to Pine Products, bought some timber in Southern Colorado. They came to me and asked me to log for them. They were going to build a sawmill in Fort Garland County, Colorado. I agreed to go there and do their logging. I took with me a lot of equipment, built roads, and started logging. But they didn't even put in a sawmill. They left me holding the bag and owing thousands of dollars.
I came back here and logged properties for Kelley and Hudspeths. It was timberland that had been logged off before but there was still a lot of good timber left. I relogged for the Dollarhide Ranch and the Connelly Brothers. I logged small ranch jobs around Sisters four or five years.
It was dangerous working out in the woods. I got careless a few times and darn near got killed a time or two. I never did get hurt, but I could have been killed real easy. The nearest I ever came to getting killed was falling with a cross-cut at the head of Trout Creek for Alexander Yawkey. We felled a great big Tamarack in a thicket. It was supposed to fall in the thicket a certain way. My brother was on one side and I was on the other. He chopped left handed and I chopped right handed, so we didn't have to change sides. Well, the tree started down and a dead Tamarack came right back down alongside the one where I'd been standing. It would have mashed me into the ground. It was just that close. I didn't even look up. I just jumped when my brother yelled. I was real lucky that time.
The most dangerous part was falling in a thicket in a stand of timber. You always had falling limbs or tops coming back. Out in the open it's not as dangerous but you still have to be careful. When you're falling beside another tree there's what they call 'widow makers' up in the tree tops. Those are limbs that break off and hang up in another tree. Maybe they'd stay there a long time and maybe they'd stay there a few minutes. I've had them fall beside me several times. You look up and it looks pretty safe. You'd go on working under them and pretty quick BANG, down they'd come. They'd break loose from where they were hanging and down they'd come right on top of you. That was the dangerous part of working in a thicket.
Another thing you had to really watch for was dead standing snags. Especially Tamarack. A Tamarack is just pefectly straight. After they're dead for many years the root rots away and the tree is just standing on kind of a bowl-shaped stump. It doesn't take much to get that going. Like that Tamarack that pretty near got me. You'd brush up against a dead Tamarack and they'd go down just like that.
There were quite a few guys killed back in those days. I knew several guys who got killed putting chain wrappers on log trucks. The trucks didn't have stakes then. We used something called 'cheese blocks' that held the bottom layer of logs to keep them from rolling. You had to know how to load. You had to pile the logs on just so, and then you'd have to throw a chain over a row of logs. You'd put a layer of logs on top of the chain to keep the load from coming loose. We called these 'gut wrappers'.
Another time I came darn near getting killed. My brother and I and another guy by the name of Moffitt were loading right in the bottom of a creek. We got it loaded up pretty high using the cheese blocks. There was one little log on top of the load that I didn't like a darn bit so I threw a cable over the middle of the load and snapped the chain on it real quick. About that time, she rolled. Luckily, the chain caught the log as it rolled or it would have killed all three of us right there in the creek.
My brother and I worked together for years and years. We actually started falling together about 1931 for that little mill in Mitchell. I think we held the record for the most scale ever cut by two men out here at Alexander-Yawkey's. Once we averaged 48,000 feet a day for two weeks.. We put in 7-1/2 to 8-hour days, and I mean we worked. We held all the record around the country for scale with a cross-cut. Almost a million feet we put in one month with a cross-cut. It was posted on the board in the mill office at Yawkey's.
One man could buck by himself and one man could limb by himself, that is, chop off the limbs. But falling by yourself was another matter. You had to use what was called a 'rubber man'. It was a steel bar that you'd take around to the other side of the tree, or you carried it around just for that purpose. You'd drive it into the ground and tie a strip of inner tube on it and then tie on to the handle of your saw. You'd pull toward you and the rubber man would pull back. A rubber man was used when one man was falling a tree alone. We didn't use this too often, but it came in handy if your partner was sick or hurt.
The old cross-cut saws had to be kept in good shape. They had to be filed (sharpened) every day. You'd have to get what was called a 'set' in the saw. In the winter time you had to be careful with the set in your saw. Sometimes the trees froze and if you got too much set in the saw it would double cut. We had a tool called a 'spider' that was used to gauge the set in a saw. Filing and keeping up the cross-cut saw was quite a job.
We had some good times working together in the woods. An example is the time my brother Andy and I pulled a fast one on some fallers working with us. There were four or five sets of fallers sawing for Endicott this day. We felled up to lunch time and then all of us got together and had lunch. Meantime, Andy and I had cut into about six or eight trees. We had cut the undercut in and cut in behind, but the trees were still standing. After lunch we said to the fellas, "We're going back to work and cut some more trees."
We had no sooner got back to the trees when Bang, Bang, Bang, those trees were hitting the ground. The other fellas couldn't imagine us falling trees that fast. They didn't know what happened.
I started logging when I was about 16. My whole life has been in the woods. I loved being outdoors and I loved the timber. I wouldn't have had it any other way.