Cut and Run: Loggin' Off the Big Woods

Rating:
Summary: A history of a colorful era
Review: Book Review
That "Cut & Run" Loggin' Off the Big Woods" is a coffee table book is obvious when you see its cover with the three lumberjacks posed with their axes but, it is much more than that. There are over 150 pictures in its 144 pages all of them clear as bells and none of them seen before by me.
In addition to the pictures, there is text on each page and the text is what sets it apart from other books of its type. The book is written by Mike Monte, who I know. He lives in Crandon, Wisconsin, is a former logger and the son and grandson of old time lumberjacks. Where he got all the original photos I don't know but, the writing comes naturally to him from a life long interest in the logging history of the north woods. If its possible to love the sinner while hating the sin, Mike does that. He makes plain his contempt for the timber barons who were responsible for the cutting and running but his love and respect for those people who actually did the work and lived the life shows through on every page.
Although most of the book is about the loggers, teamsters, railroaders, sawmillers and river rats who did the work, there is also a lot about their wives and families. There is an entire chapter on "Padus" a typical "sawdust" town which no longer exists. Its now part of the small town of Wabeno. There are pictures of boiler explosions, train wrecks and fires all of which plagued these early towns and mills. Pictures of stores and saloons and mud choked main streets. People in their Sunday best and lumberjacks sleeping 4 and 5 to a bed in the logging camps. All with colorful descriptions , some from elderly people who actually lived the history.
You learn a lot about those days. Beneath a shot of a 'Jack with a two bitted axe, for example, Mike explains that they kept one edge sharp, the other dull and used the dull end on frozen wood since a sharp edge would chip out on frozen wood.
Since the timber companies all paid about the same wages, food in the camps made all the difference. Mike says that 'jacks would quit jobs to follow good cooks from one job to the next.
The book doesn't stop with the clearing of the pines. There are sections on the follow up harvests of hemlock and hardwoods and, finally, the cutting of what was left for pulpwood. By the 1920s it was pretty much all over. Some 70 years to take it all.
For those who are really interested, Mike shows pictures and explains, for example, the difference between an A frame jammer and a slide ass jammer, both of which were used to load logs onto railway cars. The book can serve as a history lesson into a colorful industry of the past and/or, simply a collection of interesting photos. Either way, its well worth owning

Dave Johnson

Rating:
Summary: A history of a colorful era
Review: Book Review
That "Cut & Run" Loggin' Off the Big Woods" is a coffee table book is obvious when you see its cover with the three lumberjacks posed with their axes but, it is much more than that. There are over 150 pictures in its 144 pages all of them clear as bells and none of them seen before by me.
In addition to the pictures, there is text on each page and the text is what sets it apart from other books of its type. The book is written by Mike Monte, who I know. He lives in Crandon, Wisconsin, is a former logger and the son and grandson of old time lumberjacks. Where he got all the original photos I don't know but, the writing comes naturally to him from a life long interest in the logging history of the north woods. If its possible to love the sinner while hating the sin, Mike does that. He makes plain his contempt for the timber barons who were responsible for the cutting and running but his love and respect for those people who actually did the work and lived the life shows through on every page.
Although most of the book is about the loggers, teamsters, railroaders, sawmillers and river rats who did the work, there is also a lot about their wives and families. There is an entire chapter on "Padus" a typical "sawdust" town which no longer exists. Its now part of the small town of Wabeno. There are pictures of boiler explosions, train wrecks and fires all of which plagued these early towns and mills. Pictures of stores and saloons and mud choked main streets. People in their Sunday best and lumberjacks sleeping 4 and 5 to a bed in the logging camps. All with colorful descriptions , some from elderly people who actually lived the history.
You learn a lot about those days. Beneath a shot of a 'Jack with a two bitted axe, for example, Mike explains that they kept one edge sharp, the other dull and used the dull end on frozen wood since a sharp edge would chip out on frozen wood.
Since the timber companies all paid about the same wages, food in the camps made all the difference. Mike says that 'jacks would quit jobs to follow good cooks from one job to the next.
The book doesn't stop with the clearing of the pines. There are sections on the follow up harvests of hemlock and hardwoods and, finally, the cutting of what was left for pulpwood. By the 1920s it was pretty much all over. Some 70 years to take it all.
For those who are really interested, Mike shows pictures and explains, for example, the difference between an A frame jammer and a slide ass jammer, both of which were used to load logs onto railway cars. The book can serve as a history lesson into a colorful industry of the past and/or, simply a collection of interesting photos. Either way, its well worth owning

Dave Johnson

Rating:
Summary: A treasury of old photographs
Review: The publisher stumbled onto a treasure in this collection of photographs of early logging in America. Mike Monte's enthusiasm shines through his commentary on the history of logging. He's interested in the loggers, their trees, their lifestyle, their machinery, their locales, their women, in short, in everything associated with the logging industry in the United States more than a century ago. I keep wondering what it would be like to eat in the logging tent at the table with these rough-looking guys, or sleep on a plywood cot next to a fellow still wearing his hobnail boots--or hang out the laundry in a couple feet of snow....this book is to die for!