the Sampson men and their Lumber

(free stock photo; no copyrights were injured by this posting.

Brook:  The exchange between you, Jon, Dave and Sam on your blog are funny. The last one reminded me of a time I was helping Grandpa  (Vake) split cedar to make roof shingles and a bird nailed him in the hand. He laughed and said that that is a sign of future luck. Didn't seem that lucky me though. Brook

Sam: That sounds like Uncle Vake alright, funny...I'm surprised he didn't say..."Sit, I'll be got-dammit" ! Now that would have been a real chip off the old block of Pappy, which I witnessed when he hit his thumb with a hammer! Sam

Jon: I would like to have been a (metaphorical) "fly on the wall" when uncles Buck & Vake, & Dad (Johnnie) got the forest service permits and collectively went out to harvest the downed old-growth red cedar to be split into shake siding &/or shingle roofing. Apparently, they chose logs on the uphill side of a given road, then cut them into lengths appropriate for roofing or siding, and, after having strung a line (wire?) of some sort, would use gravity to slide the blocks of wood down to the road & vehicle. The blocks they harvested were around for years, and apparently sheathed numerous buildings. Jl

Sue: Vake saved his “pay” from the saw mill in the form of Port Orchard White Cedar planks. Eventually he had them planed and cut into tongue-and-groove paneling that lined the upstairs bedrooms in our 30th street house. For years he kept a section of myrtle that a gal pal and I dragged home from the beach. (Mark might have it now.) Vake also had a choice piece of curly maple, I think it was, cut into a gun stock. In recent years that got to be a joke with Brook (or Eric?) and Mark continually sneaking it into each other’s house or luggage or car and leaving it there. But I think the hoarding of nice wood might be contagious—Jon has some Virginia heartwood pine, and Brook has a pile of pumpkin pine (New Hampshire pine heart wood) salvaged from his remodeling his house and stashed in his barn. SueS

Jon: Dad (Johnnie) had a supply of 1/2" planned Port Orford white cedar in the rafters above his garage/workshop, & referred to it as "boat lumber." Dean ended up with it and used some on his remodeling projects. I would like to have offered some to Uncle Vake (for a skiff project), but didn't have a say in those days. Lumber saved from the three sawmill settings ended up on Buck & Sylvia's property (at their farm in Bridge), in properly covered piles, & I assume was distributed as per some agreement. Even in Florence, it seemed that Dean, Dunc (LaChapelle), & I were always moving some quantities of lumber from one place to another. I guess the last (of Dad's) was used in the building of the new store building. His MANY gun stock blanks of myrtle &/or maple I think were sold off in later years. jl

Dave:   For my wedding to my New York wife, Dad bought me a wedding gift consisting of a Myrtle Wood coffee table that weighed 250 pounds or so. The legs were branches and the top surface was irregular in shape and it was about 7 foot long by 3-4 feet wide; unbelievably beautiful shine and color, protected by a thick, clear lacquer of some kind. Dad said it cost about $750 plus shipping to New York.

After I got divorced I stipulated that this piece of furniture could stay with my ex under the condition that when our son Geoff started his own household it would be his. One day several years later, I went over to pick Geoff up at her house to spend the weekend with me when she was gone somewhere. Glancing around I asked Geoff where his table was, and he didn’t know what the Hell I was talking about. When I described it to him, he said something to the effect of, “Oh, that! Mom was using it out in the entryway to display potted plants/flowers when she had a garage sale. Some guy offered her $50 and she sold it.” Sue, would that have been cause for justifiable homicide?

Dave: Where did all this “logging” take place, down around Bridge?

Jon:  I'm guessing the Siuslaw National Forest somewhere within driving distance of their respective places on the lakes. Dad (Johnnie) at about that time had a beefy Ford 4-wheel drive pickup which may have been used in part for transportation. I'm guessing Brook was invited to help Vake split shakes because he was available (what we used to call the “hey you” roster). Jl

Sam:

Pappy  (Eli) made furniture during his retirement and I have several pieces. He made a full bedroom set including a full bed head- and foot-board with matching upright dresser and sit down vanity with mirror and drawers and bench. The only piece I don't have is the bench. Arnold needed one and took it only to sell it after his divorce. It is "fiddle-back" maple.--awesome. I also have a small myrtle wood cabinet, a fiddle-back maple small octagonal table, a vertical grain fir coat tree, and a small flip down lid secretary made from walnut that he bought from a damaged piano shipment to a company Gene used to work for. I've also stockpiled vertical grain heartwood redwood from my rebuilt deck in Salem and I have a 1" thick by 8" wide by 6' long myrtle wood slab I have been packing around with me for years. Hoarding wood definitely runs in the family.
Sam

Sue:  The Port Orford White Cedar used for paneling came from south of the Umpqua River; Vake commented that it does not grow north of the Umpqua. My impression was that the white cedar was harvested around Bridge when they had a logging or sawmill company. However, I don’t know the source of the red cedar for shakes.

Mark:  The cedar was from Forest Service lands up Canary (east/ne of Siltcoos Lake), possibly above Maple Creek, so not far away. As per below, yes, they used "Uphill from the road" cedar; in general the Coast Range hills are way too steep to move wood up hill with limited equipment.

I went with Dad (Vake), Uncle John &Uncle Buck one time and indeed they used an uphill site with a cable ("hayline" or 1/4" cable) strung up to which they attached the cut cedar and slid them down the line. I remember Uncle John's Jeep 4x4 pickup but not the”'beefy” Ford.

Some years later when I worked at the Forest Service, I got a permit and along with Marc Wangerin (who's married to Hal Hylton's daughter Lori) cut 11 cords of cedar which was piled mostly on the lot just north of Mom and Dad's place on Manzanita. Dad and George Reedal split the cedar which got used to roof a detached building on George Reedal's Woahink lake property and also the covered wood storage area behind the garage at Mom and Dad's. Dad used mallet and fro to taper split the shakes; one of the mallets is on the cement wall behind my lake house; I don't what happened to the fro. The shakes Brook help split were from the cedar I cut.  Mark 

Jon:   Port Orford cedar had a value when our parents were young, when it was milled into what were called 'battery separators.' We may have discussed in some earlier blog entry the 'logging' operation which Dad (Johnnie) & some of his buddies had in bringing Port Orford cedar out to some landing (I'm assuming the high side of some road). They hired a mule to drag the logs to the landing. That was the enterprise which Vake looked at, and decided to not have anything to do with. That was also the time when they practically ran out of food, but Dad took what was left: onions, condensed milk, bacon & some potatoes, and made a soup/chowder which was a big hit. (He was making the same stuff until he went to the assisted living “home,” Shorewood.

 

 Mark, I felt that it was pretty close to their living areas. I don't know whether Dad had the jeep before or after the Ford. 

Eleven cords of cedar stacked end to end would be 88' long, 4' wide, and 4' high. 

Each of the three cedar cutting rogues had their own purposes, I guess. In the case of Uncle Buck, it was most likely to roof' &/or side a new & bigger house on their property. The trouble was, when new planning & zoning laws were implemented within Oregon, Buck & Sylvia chose to have their property zoned Farm & Forest (for tax purposes). Then, when they approached time to build a new & better house, it was not within the zoning regulations. HELLO! Jl

Sue:  Jon, are you sure they used a live mule and not a “donkey,” which was a steam engine mounted on a couple of big logs, to yard the trees up the hill? I remember seeing “donkeys” that had been abandoned when we drove up mountain roads looking for good blackberry patches. As for the battery separators, one of Vake’s early jobs was working in a battery separator plant. Since he developed Parkinson’s in his old age, and because there is some indication that Parkinson’s can be caused by toxic exposures, I have always wondered whether working with batteries (lead, acid, cedar) contributed to his disease. 

Jon: I had the feeling this was kind of an undercover operation, in which case it would have been a real mule, not a mechanical one. The landing was, of course, uphill of the road where the logs were loaded onto a truck (which may have been at night). There was something about the operation which steered your Dad (Vake) away from it. jJL