Fall Newsletter

News of

The Sierra Nevada Logging Museum

Friends of the Logging Museum

Fall/Winter 2007 • Volume 10, Number 1

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Message from the President

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Welcome to the Museum’s first adventure into the on-line publishing of our newsletter. By publishing it ourselves, instead of having it printed, we can increase the contents since we’re not limited by the print format. Naturally, this will also save money that can be used for other Museum projects. Please let us know what you think about the on-line newsletter by leaving a note in the ‘Leave Us a Reply’ section at the bottom of the page.

Since this newsletter coincides with the end of 2007, let me review some of the year’s highlights.

Let’s start with Labor Day weekend and the 12th Annual Logging Jamboree. It had all the ‘bests’, including our best attendance ever, our best fundraising, the best weather imaginable, and our best ever logging competition. Huge thanks go to our competition coordinator, SPI’s Steve Kafka. Also earning recognition are the countless volunteers who did everything from selling sandwiches to climbing trees to put up signs. Most important of all are our great local citizens and clubs who donated materials, services, and hard work to make the jamboree a success. Thank you, all.

In mid-September, we joined with the Smithsonian Institution and museums across America in celebrating National Museum Day. Turnout was good, as our fully costumed docents and skilled volunteers showed logging history in person.

This fall we will complete the new library at the Museum. We were able to convert the old storeroom into the library because of a generous development grant from the Arnold Lions Club. The library is named for the late Don Harris, a highly regarded member of the Lions. In the library, we’re putting in computer tables where you can access the Museum website, shelving for our collections of books, photographs, and journals, and a conference table where you can work or just get together. Take a look next time you’re in the Museum.

Despite the award of our surface transportation grant to restore the Shay locomotive, we haven’t seen a penny yet. Patrick Karnahan and Ron Glass, our project managers, are ready to go but it’s taking a lot longer than we thought it would to get our Department of Transportation/CalTrans funding. Scott Maas at the Calaveras County Council of Government and our treasurer, Angie Thompson, are working together to pry loose the paperwork that’s stuck on bureaucratic desks.

You may have noticed that we put off the Snagfaller’s Ball for this year. We have always held it in the fall, when it’s getting cold, but the ball was an outdoor event when the Blagen Mill was still operating. So we’re shifting the ball to a warm spring evening in June. We’ll have news and tickets available early next year.

Also next spring, you’ll see the culmination of several years of planning and prep work as we widen Dunbar Road in front of the Museum. The plans are done, the permits taken care of, and, by the time you read this, the trees that need to be taken down will be gone. This has taken a lot of work, but we’re ready to finish this long-awaited project.

Finally, as if you haven’t noticed, the Logging Museum’s website was completely overhauled this summer. John Hofstetter and Mark Johnson have expanded the site into an essential part of the Museum, so you can visit the Museum on-line, or in person, or both. Take a little time to browse the growing quantity of on-line logging information.

We’re looking forward to the coming winter up here in the Sierras. Don’t forget that in the winter we don’t have fixed hours at the Museum. Instead we just open the Museum when you want to visit. When you’re planning your trip up to the tall timber, call me at 209-795-1226 so we can round up a couple docents, and turn up the heat.

Sincerely,
Ginny Kafka
President

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Election of FLM Officers

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Are you interested in being an officer of the FLM and the Museum? We’ll have our officer elections in November and we’re always happy to find new faces to join us in making the Museum so popular. Our current officers are: Ginny Kafka, President; Pat Bradley, Vice President; Angie Thompson, Treasurer; and John Hofstetter, Secretary. If you would like to serve as an officer, and enjoy the thanks of your friends, please contact Ginny, 795-1226, for more information.

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John Wells, Docent of the Year

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After considerable deliberation, the FLM board selected John Wells, our long-serving Sunday docent, as the Logging Museum’s Docent of the Year for 2007. John talked with Pat Bradley about his life and things that matter.

John Wells, Docent of the Year, manning the main desk at the Museum with Annette Linebaugh and Marge Bowman

John Wells was born in Winner, in south central South Dakota, on June 4th, 1919. Winner was a small community, mostly farmers with big families of eight, ten, even twelve children. Soon after his birth, John and his parents moved 250 miles west to Bear Butte in the Black Hills. When the stork brought the family a baby girl, and then another baby boy, the family moved again, to Lesser Slave Lake, north of Alberta, Canada, where John’s maternal grandparents lived and where his grandfather worked for the railroad. Although John was just a tot, he vividly remembers his father talking with heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey while riding the train to Canada.

John’s father was not an ambitious man and the jobs he found didn’t last so the family made many moves. Eventually they returned to Bear Butte, where John’s father found housing for the family at a spot where the children could attend school in the adjoining district and be compensated for doing so, thus bringing in a few extra dollars. After milking their cow in the early morning, eight-year-old John and his six-year-old sister would hitch up their horse and wagon and travel eight miles to school. In the winter, John and his siblings rode a six-foot-square sled that was pulled by their horse; to keep warm they heated large rocks, wrapped the rocks in blankets, and put them in the sled for the ride to school. At school, the rocks were reheated on the school stove and placed back on the sled for warmth on the trip home. John was very bright and completed eight years of elementary education in six years.

John’s parents ended up having nine children, three girls and six boys, although one of babies, a girl, died in infancy. In 1930, John’s father abandoned his wife and eight children, leaving them with no financial support. John had to take on ‘part time’ work that sometimes included 14-hour days, filling 100-pound bags of vegetables for fifty cents a day, or shocking grain for twenty-five cents a day.

A year later, John’s mother married ‘Uncle Jim’, his father’s brother. The family moved thirty miles west to Spearfish. Because high school was sixteen miles away and the winter weather was very cold, there was no way John could attend high school. Life was such a strife, John says, that if it hadn’t been for support from local store and churches, their family could have starved.

In the mid-thirties, John came to California. He lived and worked in the Sheldon area, not far from Sacramento, and in the Modesto/Escalon area. He worked on ranches during the summer and in mines during the winter. He was hired at the Melones Mine at Carson Hill near Angels Camp. At the mine he worked as a chute blaster, breaking up huge boulders. About then he met the love of his life, Olive Brower, who was attending Bret Harte High School.

In the fall of 1937, John went to northern Idaho where he cut cedar masts for sailing ships and debarked frozen logs. A year later he returned to Calaveras County and the Melones Mine, as well as the Sheep Ranch Mine. Top miner’s pay at that time was $3.50 per day.

In 1940, John and Olive married. To get a better job, John pretended he could operate a caterpillar and got himself hired by the Caterpillar Company in Stockton. They sent him to work on a farm on an island in the Delta. Later he hauled tomatoes and worked in the woods for two or three months. In the spring of 1941, John and Olive’s first baby was born, a son, at the Jamestown Hospital.

In December of 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed and World War II was declared, John was working for the Civil Military Police. Before they were married, he had told Olive that if there were a war, he would want to enlist. He became a prison guard at Mare Island, and was then transferred to San Diego. In 1943, out of a whole busload of men, John and one other fellow were chosen to become Marines. He was sent to Guam but they retired his unit to Hawaii. John experienced terrible times, including the job of identifying the dead on Iwo Jima, serving much time on the front line, and being shipped to Japan for occupation duty. Along the way he was awarded the Bronze Star, the fourth highest combat award of the Armed Forces.

John didn’t return from the war until 1947. He went to work for Cilenti’s Sawmill on Summit Level, followed by work at the Belden Mine at Buckhorn in Amador County, the Getchell Mine in Nevada for a year, four years with the Associated Lumber & Box Company in Wilseyville, and fifteen years with Wetzel/Oviatt before retiring. While falling timber at Rob’s Peak for Wetzel/Oviatt, he used his mining skills to help build a tunnel to transport water for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. At other times, John worked in a turkey processing plant, and served as a ranch foreman, a mine foreman, and a sawmill foreman for Wetzel/Oviatt. In the Hornitas community, he even worked for four months digging water wells.

After forty-three years of marriage, Olive passed away on May 14, 1983, after suffering ten years with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. She would allow only John to care for her. He and Olive had three boys and a girl, who died as an infant. The two most important things to John were to have a daughter and to defend his country. He is grateful for being able to have accomplished one of them, his service as a Marine. When asked about his happiest moment, he recalled initiating his great granddaughter, Sierra Olivia Sparvel, in 2003 into the Eastern Star Lodge.

In addition to devoting four hours every Sunday as a docent at the Logging Museum, which doesn’t include his ninety-minute drive each way, John has also volunteered at the Calaveras Library in San Andreas, was President of the Mountain Ranch Community Club, is a member of the Gem & Mineral Society, and spent thirty-five years in the Masonic Lodge. Today, he occasionally serves at the San Andreas Museum and works as a volunteer at the new Wilseyville Library on Saturdays.

John is invaluable at the Logging Museum; when asked what he thinks of the Museum, he replied, “If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t be here. I hope I can do more for it!” The FLM Board is grateful to have John as a good friend and a fantastic docent. We also must mention our appreciation for the delicious home-grown vegetables John brings each week to share with his fellow workers. Even without the vegetables, John would still be our Docent of the Year.

John Wells, the Logging Museum’s Docent of the Year

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History: The Blagen Mill’s Only Fatality

By Bill Wakefield as told to John Hofstetter

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In talking to Dale Brooks and Bill Wakefield, as they remember it, there was only one fatal accident in the entire history of the Blagen Lumber Mill. We’re talking here about in the mill itself. Strangely enough, the man killed was the Mill Superintendent, Ray Hollingsworth. Ray had come down from CalPine with Frank Blagen in 1937, and had worked his way up the administrative ladder with American Forest Products to the level of Mill Superintendent.

At the time, in 1952, Bill was working on the pond, but on that particular day, the mill had shut down for maintenance and repairs. Bill and Carl Fields had come into the mill to get a gas welder to make repairs to the D7 Caterpillar tractor that Bill used at the log deck.

Mill Superintendent, Ray Hollingsworth, a man always kind of bursting with energy, came into that area and told an employee that there was a better way, rather than tying it, of connecting a chain to a timber that was going to be lifted to the second story by use of a stiff leg. (A stiff leg is a boom setup, much like the gin pole boom used out on the pond or deck, but smaller) Ray connected the chain to the timber by use of a crossover, a way of connecting a chain to enable quick undoing of the chain from whatever it was fastened to.

As the timber, which measured about 12 inches by 14 inches by 12 feet long raised to the second story of the mill, Ray came over to the gas rig that Bill and Carl were moving and started to help pull it out. The timber by this time, had reached the second floor and was ready to lay down on the deck. The stiff leg operator, instead of lowering it gently, let it fall to the floor which disconnected the chain and the timber fell off the edge of the upper deck. It hit the bottom floor on one end and fell into Bill, Carl, and Ray. Ray fell on top of Bill.

When the pile of men began to be untangled, Carl had a dislocated shoulder and was in great pain, Bill was kind of wandering around trying to help, and Ray, whose head had probably hit a concrete curb, was rubbing his shoulder and saying that he was all right and to get Carl and Bill to the hospital.

Carl and Bill were put in the panel truck that served as an ambulance, and Ray went home to take a shower. At about 4 PM Ray was taking that shower and fell unconscious.

Bill, and probably Carl, were treated by Dr. Elmer Mason a physician who lived in Murphys at the time, and later by Dr. Noetling from Angels Camp. Ray was brought in to the hospital, unconscious, and the doctors tried to get a neurosurgeon to come up to do brain surgery to relieve the pressure from the hematoma. The neurosurgeon said that by the time he could get to San Andreas, Ray would be dead, so the local doctors went ahead with the surgery about 8 that evening. In spite of their efforts, Ray died about 4:00 AM the next morning.

It’s interesting to think about the only fatality in the mill, in all those years, being the Mill Superintendent, and then only because he was the kind of person who was full of energy and wanted to be involved with his men and what they were doing.

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The True Story

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As one of the editors for the Fall Newsletter, I chose this story because of the great respect so many of us have for both the storyteller, Lars, and the subject of the story, Doc.

Personally, I never knew Doc at all, but I knew dozens of men who did, and without exception they spoke his name with great respect and admiration. Lars, I mostly knew from bowling with him and marveling at far down the alley the ball would be before it hit the wood in the alley. That was one strong Swede! I won’t mention that he could also drink me under the table, and not even show that his drinks were having any effect on him. The third way I remember Lars was from all the good work he did for his community. Two wonderful men and both deserving to be in this edition of our Fall Newsletter.

–John Hofstetter

An Evening with Doc

by Lars Sanders

For ten of the twenty-two years that I fell timber for S.C. Linebaugh Logging, I was president of the local Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union, I only missed one meeting in those ten years, and that was to go to my brother, Morton’s, funeral up at Mt. Shasta.

During that time I had many meetings with Doc, after supper, up at his house. He had an office off the entry hall at the back step and I don’t remember ever being in the rest of the house, except once when I brought a jar of wild honey that I recovered out near Cottage Springs when we logged there.

We had a grievance committee in the union, but it was just like pulling teeth to get anyone to go with me to see Doc when we had something to discuss, like wages, working conditions, etc., so it was up to me to go and see him; it wasn’t always a friendly visit and to this day I feel bad that we had some hot words once in a while.

Most of the time our evenings were pleasant though, and after our business was finished we talked logging and old times and sometimes about modern problems in this world of ours.

One evening, especially, I will never forget. We went away back in memory and talked about horse-logging. I told him that I earned my first pay-check in the woods when I was eighteen, driving a big team of Black Percheron draft horses skidding logs for the Federal Government, as they logged pine, birch, and cedar on the Red Lake Indian Reservation about eight or ten miles from my home in Minnesota. I stayed in a logging camp and I never ate so much and such good food in my life, up to that time. Days were short in the winter in Northern Minnesota and we left the barn before day-light and returned long after sunset. If it was more than 45 degrees below zero we did not take the horses out, because it could frost their lungs when they worked hard.

Doc said that he started in the woods skidding logs with horses also, and he was about sixteen or seventeen too. His dad wanted him to stay in school and learn to be a doctor, but he liked woods work, especially the horses, and so stayed in the woods all his life. It seems to me that he told me that the young guys he worked with nick-named him “Doc” because of his dad’s wishes, he didn’t like his first name anyway, it was Silas.

He was living up around Doris in Northern California and Klamath Falls in Oregon. In about 1926 he moved lock, stock, and barrel down to Calpine to log a timber claim there. He loaded everything on a big wagon (or wagons) and I don’t remember whether he said he had four or six horses, but he headed south. He drove from daylight until dark, except for a full hour or more at lunch to feed and rest his horses. For three days of steady traveling he could look up at Mt. Shasta and see it if the weather was clear. Then he said “In this day and age, if you travel the same route, if you don’t stop for lunch you cant see Mt. Shasta for three hours.”

It’s super to have good memories, and I have many of them. Those of us that worked for Doc didn’t realize it at the time how good we had it. We made fairly good money and at no time were we more than forty-five minutes away from home, except one summer Doc contracted to log a unit of timber for Pickering up by Griswold and Skull-Creek.

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Well, we hope you enjoyed the first on-line version of the Logging Museum’s newsletter.  If you liked it, or if you didn’t like it, leave us a comment so we know what you think.  We’ll consider any suggestion for making the newsletter better.  Enjoy the coming holidays and have a wonderful winter.

Mark Johnson and John Hofstetter