1458 
The RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
November 22, 1924 
Hope Farm Notes 
THE THANKSGIVING SONG 
Part II. 
Long before daylight Sam, the foreman, 
came into the men’s shanty with his lan¬ 
tern and shook me up. I slept in an up¬ 
per bunk near the door, easy to reach. 
The “bunk” was a wooden shelf about 
seven feet long and three feet wide, fitted 
for two by placing a large bag thinly 
stuffed with hay on the slabs which 
formed the bottom. You slept—if you 
slept at all—with most of your clothes on. 
A thick blanket was spread over you. If 
extra covering was needed, fragrant 
boughs of cedar or pine above the blanket 
might be used. As Sam shook me up that 
morning I saw my bunkmate, Mike, lying 
on his back, snoring the sleep of the un¬ 
troubled. Sam’s lantern dimly lighted 
the interior of the low, log-built room. 
There was a big stove in the center. 
Around it were strung lines from which 
hung a collection of clothing and boots— 
hung there to dry. The bunks ranged all 
around the room, and at Sam’s call sleepy 
faces framed in tangled hair looked out 
from the shadows. 
“Hurrah, Bert. Hurrah!” 
If things keep on as they are now head¬ 
ed, I imagine that 25 years hence the boss 
will approach the hired man and say: 
“Excuse me, but the night is far spent 
and day is at hand. May I suggest that 
it is time to arise?” 
In the days I am describing the lumber 
boss had more power over his crew than 
any modern czar, and it was simply “Hur¬ 
rah !” with more or less forcible comment. 
“Hurrah, Bert! Andy’s sobered up and 
we’re going to sweat him with an ax. You 
turn out and play cookie today !” 
A command is a command. I stumbled 
out of the bunk and pulled on my boots. 
There was a skim of ice on the basin 
standing on the shelf beside the door, but 
I had no time to consider whether cold 
water is a better cleanser than hot. I 
will leave that to the chemists. I washed 
as best I could with ice water. That may 
be quite comfortable on the Fourth of 
July, but quite another thing on a cold 
Thanksgiving morning up near Lake Su¬ 
perior. I have observed that men drop, 
one by one, the habits plastered upon the 
race by civilization as they go back to 
pioneer or primeval conditions. One of 
the first to go is the attempt at bathing 
some part of the body each day. The last 
to remain is the effort to provide some 
form of bread to eat with meat. It was 
a dark, foggy morning, and I stumbled 
over to the cook’s shanty, picking up an 
armful of pine chips as I went. 
* * * * * 
Martin, the cook, was master, and he 
profanely ordered a fire. Fat chips full 
of pitch are nearly as combustible as ker¬ 
osene. and it was not long before I had a 
roaring fire in the stove. 
“Go out and get the beans,” said Mar¬ 
tin. 
This camp had kept up the practice of 
using a “bean hole.” This was a well or 
pit dug into a bank just behind the shan¬ 
ty. We built a roaring fire in it each day- 
after dinner and, late in the afternoon, 
filled the bean pots with boiled beans and 
pork and set them down into the hot 
ashes. Then the bean hole was securely 
covered and left for the night, so that 
while we slept the beans in that miniature 
inferno turned into perfect angel food. 
After all is said, that is the perfect way 
to cook baked beans. Now I took my 
pans and stumbled through the chilly air 
to the bean hole. Quite frequently as we 
came near it, dark shapes would slink 
away. They were bears which during the 
night had been slinking about, trying to 
get at the beans. I took off the cover and 
“spooned” out the hot, fragrant mess into 
my tin pans. The bean hole had held its 
heat all through the night, and it was the 
most agreeable part of the cookie’s life to 
linger over the bean hole on a cold morn¬ 
ing. 
But there is but little lingering in a 
lumber camp. The men would soon be 
impatient for breakfast. Two long tables 
ran the length of the cook’s shant$, with 
wooden benches beside them. At each 
place was a tin plate and cup, a knife, a 
steel fork and a pewter spoon. As a rule 
the forks were rarely used—a knife makes 
a better shovel, and eating for the strenu¬ 
ous job of cutting pine and cedar is much 
like throwing coal under a steam boiler. 
Martin was short of bread that morning, 
and he had mixed a great bowl of flour 
and water and baking powder. It was 
my job to fry slapjacks, and any man who 
keeps 25 men going on a four-hole stove 
knows he has been over a fire. In a New 
York restaurant you order “pancakes.” 
“Brown the wheats!” yells the waiter, 
and the cook fries them over a gas heater. 
In the pine woods you fry them in great 
stacks and pile them up on the table. 
The cookie’s job is to help fry, keep the 
bean and pork dishes filled, and pass 
around with the big coffee pot filling the 
tin cups. Brown sugar was used, but we 
had no butter or milk. Blackstrap mo¬ 
lasses was used on the cakes, and po¬ 
tatoes were boiled with their jackets on. 
If you get up for your breakfast before 
sunrise on a cold, damp morning, it is 
quite likely that you linger at the table 
talking the news of the day, but let me 
tell you that nothing of that sort hap¬ 
pened in the pine woods. In those old 
days there was no morning paper to bring 
the world’s news to your door. The fact 
that the foreman was to “sweat” Andy 
with an ax was far more important to 
the community than*any possible Euro¬ 
pean war. In these days I am told that 
the radio is found in such places, and the 
sound waves somehow make their way 
through the singing pines. I never could 
quite see how the sounds from a concert 
100 miles away can ever struggle through 
the giant harmony of the wind as it 
sweeps through the tossing branches on 
a windy night, but they tell me such 
things are possible. 
Some people eat as though they wanted 
to prolong the agreeable sensation of food 
against the tongue. So they sip the “de¬ 
licious brown drops” slowly, and take 
small mouthfuls, working their teeth over¬ 
time. Not so with those husky folks who 
came crowding into the cook’s shanty 
when I stood in the doorway and beat a 
stick against a battered tin pan. Those 
men gulped down cup after cup of strong 
black coffee and devoured mountains of 
beans and boiled potato. A favorite way 
of eating a slapjack was to smear it with 
black molasses, then fold it into a roll, 
hold it in the fingers and see if they could 
finish it in three bites. Andy had a 
standing bet of a week’s time that he 
could eat a plate of beans so fast that no 
one watching his throat could see any 
difference between “swallers.” I remem¬ 
ber thinking, as I stood over the roaring 
stove, frying slapjacks for the crowd, that 
food and the manner of eating it repre¬ 
sent man’s adaptation to his job and sur¬ 
roundings. Some brain-worker or clerk 
at his soft city job could not live in this 
way, but put him at the end of a cross¬ 
cut saw—12 hours in the open air, frosty 
and full of the scent of the pine—and he 
would rival Andy in his haste to sw-allow 
this food. This flour might have been 
mixed with eggs and sugar to make a 
cake for some enervated cit—-but my slap¬ 
jacks were far more satisfactory to this 
hungry crowd. 
“Twenty minutes for refreshments,” 
was the sign hung in the old railroad 
eating-houses, and even this short period 
was cut at our shanty. 
“Hurrah!” called Sam, and the men 
rose and filed out to the job. It must be 
said that Andy hated to go. He lingered 
for a moment, but Sam had an eye on 
him. 
“Hurrah, long boy, get out of here,” 
and he aimed a blow with his boot which 
Andy escaped only by jumping through 
the door. As Martin and I ate our break¬ 
fast we saw the men filing off into the 
woods for their day in the swamp. Most 
of them carried axes tucked under their 
arms. No one was permitted to carry 
an ax over his shoulder in this camp. 
The previous year some tenderfoot walk¬ 
ing with the crowd with ax on his shoul¬ 
der stumbled and fell forward. The ax 
swung with his fall and hit the man in 
front, breaking his shoulder. Now, not a 
man in camp would work with one who 
carried his ax in that way. 
“Wash them dishes and clean up ! I’ve 
got to make bread. Then wash out them 
towels!” 
Martin was a man of few words, and 
in the cook’s shanty every one was law. 
I gathered up the tin plates and cups and 
knives and put them in a washboiler. Just 
a little kerosene oil was poured over the 
plates. Then the boiler was nearly filled 
with water and put on the stove to heat. 
While I served as cookie in that shanty 1 
thought out a machine for dishwashing 
which might work. Even now I have in 
mind a mixture of chemicals which might 
act as a suitable dishwashing compound. 
Most people despise dishwashing as a job, 
but if you will only look at the poetry of 
it you will see that it is an ennobling of¬ 
fice—dealing with things that have been 
soiled through ignoble use—and purify¬ 
ing them for future service! I suggest 
that as a text and theme for some minis¬ 
ter’s sermon—but I advise him to help 
his wife wash the dishes a few times be¬ 
fore he prepares his discourse, for only 
those of a very peculiar disposition can 
ever see any poetry in dishwashing. While 
my dishes were boiling I put the dirty 
towels into a wooden tub, soaped them 
well, and poured hot water over them. 
Then I took the teakettle and poured boil¬ 
ing water on the tables, scrubbing them 
off with a short-handled broom. When 
your guests use neither tablecloths nor 
napkins, such heroic treatment is needed. 
Meanwhile, Martin was making bread. 
He stood over a wooden trough with his 
hands in the dough. If I saw the Presi¬ 
dent of the United States trying to decide 
whether this nation ought to declare war, 
the last thing I should think of doing 
would be to interrupt him with imma¬ 
terial questions. I feel much the same 
way about interrupting a breadmaker 
after Martin’s remarks wdien the Indians 
came in. Our camp was not far from a 
small Indian reservation, and these rath¬ 
er degenerate sons of the forest came to 
see us now and then—on business matters. 
I do not know whether the Indians have 
handed down their own traditions of 
Thanksgiving, but these visitors knew 
that the white men like to pack away the 
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