_ WINNETKA WEEKLY TALK, SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 1923 .Woodman's Life Shorn of Romance When Dan Wields His Cynical Quill Editor's Note:--Last autumn Daniel Kohlsaat decided to give up his studies, for a spell at least, and take a fling at the lumbering "game." Downtown offices of great lumbering concerns did not appeal to him, nor even the huge city lumber yards. Dan wanted to get down to the "source of supply, 2» so to speak, step into a genuine northwoods lumber camp and "rough it" with the "Jacks," and, not incident- ally either, "learn the game from the ground up." Dan has been in northern Michigan all winter and his latest letter affords an insight into the life of the modern woodsman. Dan cruelly strips the lumber-jack's life of all its old-fashioned romantic appeal, but, here we have it! A LETTER FROM NORTHERN MICHIGAN Have 'you ever been in a lumber camp? No? Then you have doubt- less depended on books and on "sil- ver sheet" for your information con- cerning them? I have to admit that I did, until I got the traveling bug in my head and decided to find out for myself. So here I am, and this is what I've learned. When I came to Camp 14 I half ex- pected to find a group of buildings in a small clearing surrounded by huge forest monsters; for the most part, pines and hemlocks. I would not have been surprised to have found them inhabited by a rough, care-free gang of stocking-capped, scarfed, and moccasined men, who would work as hard as they looked. and would as soon fight as eat. For the most part they would be French- Canadians and "Breeds," with here and there a Swede or a Nordic. They would rise by moonlight, grab a hasty meal and hasten to their res- pective tasks. Through the day they would toil with a fierce pride in the difficulty of .their work and in their own brute strength. At noon, they would snatch a bite and hurry back, to work until dark, when they would race back to the camp for a hearty dinner. In the evening there would be joking and the rough pranks of hard working men. There would be card games, songs; perhaps someone would bring out an accordion or a mouth-organ and give an impromptu "stag" dance, or there would be some tenderfoot to haze. The men would "go in" in the fall and would stay until the camp broke up in the spring. They would be ruled over by a huge foreman whose word was law and whose scepter was an axe handle or a cant-hook stock. Yes! I was really for all this, and more! My first impression of Camp 14 was a group of farm buildings nearly lost in a huge clearing. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but brush, wild cherry, and, here and there, some larger tree that had been so rotten as to escape the axe. There had been a fall of snow in the night and a shabbily clad South Italian was clearing away a drift from in front of the office. To my greeting, he replidd that he did not speak English. Later, I learned that the common vehicle of conversation was a mixture of Polish and Russian. It seems that this country is flooded with a conglomeration; of Poles, Russians, Italians, Fins, Austrians, and Czecho Slovakians. They came over here at the start of the War to evade impressment into service. Needless to say, hiding away up here, they were equally successful in evad- ing the "draft." They are of the poorer class, and are making them- selves an obstacle in the way of progress in this section of the country. They refuse to talk English, work only a week or so at a stretch, and are all I. W. Ws. as well as con- firmed Reds. But, to come back to the original subject there are also one or two of the old "Jacks" still in the country, and they, with the help of a few French, Germans, and Americans, manage to keep the camps going. But there again is a change. The day of the hard working woodsman is over. The modern men sleep late, linger over breakfast, and then walk out to the "work" as slowly as they can. They readily grasp at the slightest excuse to stop and rest; in fact, resting seems to be their specialty. They eagerly await the noon whistle, when they huddle around the fire and spend a good hour eating their lunch. In the af- ternoon, after wasting a good half hour in getting started, they work on a bit faster than in the morning, but they always keep their ears peeled for the whistle. Going home, they walk silently in single file, and there is no racing between the teamsters to see who will get to camp first. At sup per, as at all other meals, absolute si- lence is the rule, and a man may sit next to another for months without ever hearing his name. Then too, the old air of rough so- ciablity in the evenings has passed. There are no games, no pranks, no music. The new men are left to them- selves. Over in the corners the vari- ous races congregate to talkover, in their various jargons, the advisabil- ity of going on a strike. Even these meetings are shortlived and soon dis- solve, the various members going off to sit silently by themselves until bed- time. The young foreman is no longer the master of his men, but rather an agent of the company whose diplo- matic task it is to urge the men to re- main at work. He is in an unending quandary as to how to get new men to replace the ones who are constant- ly leaving. Hardly a day passes but some five or six men go out, and not always are there incomers to take their positions. Nowdays the goal of each foreman is not to get out more logs than his rival camps, but rather to keep his camp from closing down from lack of men. No! The romance of lumbering has largely become a myth in this section and is doing so in the others. Be that as it may; this is a wonder- ful country in spite of the cold and snow, both of which are plentiful. I used to think that Winnetka was cold in winter but, after wearing my entire wardrobe and even then near- ly freezing I've changed my mind. We've had the weatherman predict- ing "snow and colder" so long that he's forgotten that there ever was any other kind of weather. Well, the weather's pretty good right now, so I guess I'll go out for a little hunting. Yours for warmer weather, Dan W. Kohlsaat. FORMER RESIDENT DIES Word reached the village this week of the death on February 12 of the Rev. E. O. Wiederanders at Oswego, Oregon. Mr. Wiederanders was well known in the village and left about a year ago to make his home in the west. He was an active member of St. John's Lutheran church and for many years was prominent in the Luthern ministry. 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