Beech Tree News Network

I’m thinking it was the summer I was either fifteen or sixteen, when I first saw the real world.

My daddy sold his store and bought a third-interest in the timber business. The other two partners were his cousins Henry and Shug Vick. Daddy was, “tired of being inside.”

The enterprise consisted of buying a tract of timber, felling it, cutting it into logs – while Daddy and the two cousins set-up the saw mill. “A couple of fellows cut-down with a two-man power saw, while another boy, about my age, and I followed the downed logs and cut them into different lengths with a hand-operated crosscut saw; the handle on each end – you learned to just pull. You never pushed a crosscut saw! The other guy pulled, then you pulled. You get a rhythm going.

Needless to say, dinner break didn’t come too soon – neither did quitting time. My mother got up and fixed my and daddy’s breakfast and lunches before we left for the woods, bless her heart. The very same mother who gave me and my first “birds and bees,” lecture. It was short and to the point: “… If a girl ever tries to sit on your lap, you make her get up.” That was it.

Well, they got the saw mill going: Shug was the log skidder; Henry the sawyer, and my daddy, Luther, was the head off beams. He also ran edges saws and pushed the slab, and sized lumber to me and my partner – the tail off beams and lumber stackers.

Did I say my partner’s name? It was Junior Walker. The boy about my age.

I think I worked two summers in the timber business. “Welcome to the real world.”

Junior Walker went to the Korean War, ‘was highly devoted. He stayed in the U.S. Army and retired as a senior master sergeant.

Daddy eventually sold his share in the mill and bought back into the store business.

I’m still here.

Kindest regards…