Daddy's Sawmill Job

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Daddy started out his career as a fifteen year-old working with a gang of sawmill hands. They camped in the woods and every day would go out and cut trees with manual two man crosscut saws, haul them back with mules and then saw them up for lumber with a steam powered sawmill. Each day they ate a hearty breakfast and a huge dinner but had no lunch. Members of the gang took turns cooking unless there was someone hurt and then the invalid would stay in camp and cook until he was ready to go back out on the job. The job paid a dollar a day for everyone that worked. There were no weekends or holidays - you just worked until all the trees were cut and sawed into lumber. Then you helped haul the lumber to town. He said that each day he would start out by drinking half a quart jar of moonshine and giving the rest to one of his buddies. Daddy had connections and each week would leave money in a tree stump which would be replaced by a number of quarts of white liquor. One of Daddy's favorite stories was that he had his foot "mashed" by a tree and had to stay in camp and cook. He was asked if he knew how to cook and he said yes. As soon as everyone headed out for work, he cleaned up the site and washed dishes in the creek beside their camp. Then he poured about 20 pounds of navy beans in the cook pot, covered them in water and sat back to take it easy all day. Within an hour, the beans were out of water and he got more from the creek. He kept adding water until the beans started overflowing the pot and then he started taking beans from the pot and hiding them. When supper finally came, he served the scorched, crunchy mess to the crew. They didn't string him up, but they did find someone else to cook!