Granddaddy in the Timber Camps

In the 2nd row (just to the right of the tear) is my great-great grandfather, Charley Burns, who worked the timber camps around the turn of the century.

I grew up hearing about the timber camps ever since I could remember. I heard stories about my Granddaddy Don, who filed saws in the timber camps. I heard stories about Don's father, Charley Burns, who worked in the early timber camps of the region. I heard stories about my Aunt Mid who worked as a cook in the timber camps out in Bemis, WV. So, as you can see, I have heard alot of stories about the timber camps that were set up when the vast forests of the Potomac Highlands were cut.

In the early logging days there were quite a few men who wandered from timber camp to timber camp looking for work. Some of these camps were several miles apart so these men, having no other family or home, would stop at various homesteads between the camps. None were never turned away and they were all given a meal to eat and a place to sleep, but the faces that kept turning up on a regular basis were figured out to be men who weren't necessarily looking for work in the timber camps, but rather just trying to get by without having to go to the camps. You see, up until the time that the timber barons came in and set up these camps, there was no such thing as wage labor in these mountains. People would just barter for goods and services, and they would sell surplus farm goods or animal hides for cash. Hired hands were paid with a place to live and food to eat, so wage labor was an entirely foreign concept for some of these men. That isn't to say they were lazy, not at all, it is just they were brought up in a society where people worked until a job was done, and not when someone in authority told them when to begin work and when to lay off work. Before the coming of the timber camps, these men worked jobs that the seasons and weather necessitated! In addition, many of these men didn't take well to instruction and orders either, but after the timber companies came in and bought up so much of the land, a large contingent of these folks were left without a home, work and a means of support. That is why some of these men would walk the countryside, pitching in here and there and doing whatever needed done in order to stay out of the timber camps.

My granddaddy Burns would talk about how rough these men were in the timber camps, and how dirty some of them would become. Granddaddy told that it was expected of men to bathe only one day a week, and that was after work on Saturday (bathing more frequently than that would reportedly make you sick). Granddaddy said they worked six days a week and 10 hours a day, so you can begin to imagine the smell. Granddaddy said that the bunkhouses where these men lived would make a mans eyes water whenever you would walk in the door.

Granddaddy said there was always laughter and some running jokes going on in the timber camps. He told that one of the best tricks some of the older wood hicks would pull on the new boys just coming into the camps was to pull the humongous gray lice out of their beards and hold them between their fingers and talk to the lice like they were a favorite dog. They'd pet the louse, and talk to the louse, and then reach it out to the "green" boy like they expected him to pet and talk to the louse too! When inevitably the newcomers would shy away from the huge louse, the old wood hick would stick it back in his beards and tell the louse to "not pay any mind to people who didn't know any better." Granddaddy said they pulled that trick every year and it never did get old!

Speaking of the big gray body lice that were common in the timber camps, Granddaddy told of how some of the men would put a big louse under the glass face of their pocket watch just for the novelty of it, and they would keep the louse that like for months. It was a thing of pride to have the biggest louse!

Granddaddy Don said the roughest place that he ever worked was in Davis, WV, for the West Virginia Pulp & Paper Company. Granddaddy would tell us that "the fastest way to get to Hell was to go through Davis." He said the men there would just as soon shoot or stab you as to look at you, and the management of the company didn't try to stop the violence because having the workforce constantly in a state of fear kept down wages. Granddaddy said that one time a bunch of them were playing cards while riding the train from Davis to Dry Fork, and that a man who was known to be unruly was playing with them. Granddaddy told us that the game was going fine until the man started losing, and he said to everyone playing in the game that "the next damn man who wins a hand against me is going to bust Hell wide open before they get a dime out of me." Well, the men didn't pay much mind to him because after all, it was a card game with timber men so you kind of expected rudeness and rough talk. It just so happened that Granddaddy Don won the next hand of cards and as he started reaching for the winnings, he saw the man going for the pistol that he had tucked in the belt that held up his britches. Granddaddy said he never was so scared in his life but he done the only thing he could do, he jumped off the train! He said the fall just about killed him because he landed in some cut down tree-tops about 4 miles outside of Dry Fork. Scraped and bruised pretty bad but luckily with no broken bones, Granddaddy walked alongside the tracks into Jenningston on the Dry Fork line where he got on the train headed back to Davis. But he learned his lesson, he never again played cards with that man.

Granddaddy worked in the WV timber camps until the timber was cut out, and then he started his own small timber company and hired some of his friends to work for him. They cut timber for a few years on the old Fredericksburg battlefield in Fredericksburg, Virginia, but Granddaddy lived longer than the timber boom so he went out of business in the early 1940's. He then decided to go to Baltimore, MD, like so many other men who had worked the timber camps of the Potomac Highlands, and he found work in the Glenn L. Martin airplane factory, which was booming because of the War Effort. Granddaddy worked there until he retired in the early 1960's, at which time he returned back home to the old Burns homeplace on North Mountain, where he lived out the rest of his days.

Guardian Angels

Today I'd thought I'd post the lyrics to one of my favorite songs, "Guardian Angels", and include some of my old family photo's to go along with the lyrics.

Guardian Angels
Written by Naomi Judd, John Jarvis & Donald Schlitz Jr.

A hundred year old photograph
Stares out from a frame
And if you look real close you'll see
Our eyes are just the same,

My great-great grandparents Charley & Jennie (Cunningham) Burns & their son, my gr-granddaddy Don.

I never met them face to face
But I still know them well,
From the stories my dear grandma tells.


My great-grandparents, Don & Mary (Kile) Burns.

Elijah was a farmer.
He knew how to make things grow.
And Fannie vowed she'd follow him
Wherever he would go.


My gr-gr-gr-grandparents, George & Phoebe Jane (Bennett) Cunningham

As things turned out they never left
Their small Kentucky farm.
But he kept her fed,
And she kept him warm.


My gr-gr-grandparents, Fon & Rosie (Nelson) Lawrence.

They're my guardian angels,
And I know they can see
Every step I take
They are watching over me
I might not know where I'm goin'
But I'm sure where I come from.
They're my guardian angels
And I'm their special one.


My grandparents, Richard H. & Virginia (Thompson) Burns.

Sometimes when I'm tired
I feel Elijah take my arm
He says, "keep a-goin, hard work
never did a body harm."
And when I'm really troubled
And I dont know what to do
Fannie whispers, "Just do your best,
were awful proud of you".


My gr-gr-gr-grandparents, Anderson & Dianna (Lantz) Lawrence.

They're my guardian angels
And I know they can see
Every step I take
They are watching over me
I might not know where I'm goin'
But I'm sure of where I come from
They're my guardian angels
And I'm their special one.


My gr-gr-gr-grandmother, Phoebe Jane Cunningham.

A hundred year old photograph
Stares out from a frame
And if you look real close you'll see
Our eyes are just the same.


My gr-gr-gr-gr-grandparents, Joseph & Catherine (Andrews) Lantz.

Granddaddy's Strongbox

One of my most precious possessions is an old antique strongbox passed down to me from my great-granddaddy Don. The box came to me by way of my brother, who got it from our granddad Rich, who got it from his daddy, Don.



The strong box is worn with age, and rather beaten up in appearance, but I don’t have the desire to paint it or refinish it. I want it to remain just as Granddaddy Don knew it. How it came to me is a story in and of itself. I told you that before me, the strongbox belonged to my brother. Well, he wanted rid of it because he claims it is haunted. He said for as long as he had it, the box would be visited by Granddaddy Don who would rifle through it on occasion. He won’t tell me the whole story, and I really don’t care to know it, but Granddaddy Don is welcome to look through his strongbox whenever he wants to. I figure the most he will do is holler out, “Hell bohunk, where’s my…?” or tell me as he once did when I was a little boy, “Just for that little boy, you’ll get nothing more.”. In any case, I am only the temporary owner of the strongbox, and the treasures it contains. Come with me and I’ll show you some of them.



As I open the strongbox, the musty smell of old papers floods the room. Everything seems to be coated with a film of some sort. I can’t describe it but you can feel it coating everything. The contents are strewn about in the box, I’m sure it is the result of many searching relatives looking for money. While I never got money from Granddaddy Don, I got stories and the strongbox, and to me, these are worth more than all the money in the world.

The first thing that I see in the strongbox is an old White Owl Cigar box. Inside there is Granddad’s old corncob pipe. It looks store-bought, which is odd considering what a skin-flint he was. I’d have figured he’d make his own. Also, I see a little case, inside are two medals that Granddaddy got in the War. He was in World War 1 so perhaps these are from that bloody war. Also, there is an old pocketwatch, I don’t know where it came from, but I know Granddaddy must have treasured it for it to end up in his strongbox.

There are also a few old ratty books, worn thin and covers missing from frequent use. By the time I knew him, Granddaddy had poor eyesight and no longer read very much, so these books are evidence that he must have liked to read in his younger days. Since I mentioned Granddaddy’s bad eyesight, I remember one time he was sitting in his favorite chair beside of the living room window. He would sit for hours just watching the world go by. I remember one day he hollered for Grandmaw to come in and look at something. She did, and he said, “Hell Mary, there’s a fox out there in that bush”, pointing to her lilac bush. Grandmaw looked and told him, “I believe you’d better look a little closer, that’s not a fox, it’s a fox squirrel.” Granddaddy, trying to save face retorted, “Hell Mary, you must have scared him away when you came to the window.”



Among my favorite items in the strongbox is Granddaddy’s old calendar. I remember he used to religiously write down the high and low temperatures for every day of the month. Only when he was sick and in the hospital did he miss a day. I like to look over the temperature for the days of every month, scribbled in his shaky handwriting, and wonder what Granddaddy was planning to do by preserving this information. Was he keeping a log for some reason, or was it just a hobby to pass the time.



Also in the strongbox were a few pictures of my Dad when he lived with Grandmaw and Granddaddy, and some ledgers where Granddaddy kept track of his finances. If Granddaddy owed you a penny, he made sure it was paid to you, and if you owed him a penny, he wanted it paid with interest! He lived through the depression, worked the timber camps, later owning his own timber business that operated on the land that is now the Fredericksburg Battlefield outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Still later, after the timber industry collapsed, Granddaddy made his way to Baltimore where he worked for Glenn L. Martin airplane factory where he was a supervisor during World War 2. He stayed with the Martin company and retired from there, at which time, he backtracked on the hillbilly highway and returned home on the mountain.

There are many memories buried in this strongbox, and many fascinating stories, perhaps sometime I will share some of them with you.

Do any of you all out there have similar items that are priceless to you, based solely on their sentimental value?

Cold Weather Stories

It’s Cold. Since all the talk seems to be of the weather, I thought I’d tell a few stories about the chilly times on the mountain.



Old steamshovel wreck on North Mountain. Granddaddy Don is in the back row, 3rd from the right (wearing a toboggan).

I remember my granddaddy Don used to tell of how cold it got out on the mountain when he worked in the timber camps back in the early 1900’s. He said that it was a real danger for the timber men when it got down real cold. Frostbite and hypothermia were regular occurrences in the camps. He even told of it being so cold one time that a tree exploded when they started chopping it down. He said the tree split apart into several pieces and piece shot in every direction for several yards around and that the base log cracked up the tree about 15 feet. Granddaddy Don also told of how deep the snow would get in the mountains around lumber camps. He said many’s the time they’d cut timber in the winter while standing on the packed snow, and come spring when the snow would melt, they’d go back over the same area and get another 8 to 10 foot log off the stumps which were previously buried under the snow.



Granddaddy Don & Grandmaw Mary

This reminds me of another story that occurred about the same time as when Granddaddy Don was working in the timber camps. This one involves Grandmaw Mary and the kids who were left at home while Granddaddy Don was off at work, sometimes for months at a time. He’d send money to them in the mail, but not on a regular basis. Grandmaw always fended for herself, so she canned and put up food all summer long so they usually had enough food, but they’d sometimes run short on firewood, especially when Granddaddy was gone for long periods of time. One time, it got down real cold and Grandmaw Mary saw they were running out of wood. She told the older children that they would have to go cut down the old Chestnut tree near the fence line in order for them to have enough wood to get through the cold spell. The oldest of the boys was only about 12 at the time, so it was a major undertaking. Well, the kids took to chopping at the huge chestnut tree with axes, and since the tree was dead (courtesy of the chestnut blight), it made a great racket as they hammered away at its base. Well this noise alerted the cantankerous neighbor man who lived up the holler from Grandmaw. Well, the man came down to where they were chopping down the tree and cut a fit on them. He said that the tree belonged to him, and that it was on his property, when it was clearly on the Burns side of the fence. The boys went and got Grandmaw Mary and told her about what the man was saying, and she went out to talk some sense into her neighbor. She told him that the tree was on Burns property, but the man argued that the fence line was in the wrong place. Grandmaw then saw that it was futile to argue about whose tree it was, so she tried a different tact with him. She explained to him that since Don had been gone for the past few months, that they were running low on firewood and were in great need of it. She said that the tree was dead and needed to be cut down anyway, lest it fall over on his fence. Besides she added, Chestnut wood wasn’t the best for burning, it cracked and popped a lot and created a lot of sparks, so really it wasn’t her first choice either, but when you need wood, you get what is readily available. The man seemed to understand that Grandmaw meant to have that tree, and he appeared to acquiesce but just as the boys finally felled the giant Chestnut, the man took to cussing and carrying on and saying how he was going to have them all arrested for stealing his tree and damaging his property. Grandmaw once again told him that the tree was on Burns property and that it belonged to her, and she instructed to boys to keep cutting. The man then started cussing the boys and threatening them with his gun which he said he was going to go get and he’d show them whose tree it was. Well, Grandmaw, fed up with the cantankerous old man, said to the boys, “Come on boys and let’s go back in the house, and let the old bastard have the tree. Maybe he can use the lumber to make himself a coffin so he can go through Hell a-cracking”.



Grandmaw Mary

Well that old man was so stunned by Grandmaw’s words, that he immediately took to apologizing to her and the boys, and he said, “Now Mary, if you need that wood, why you just go ahead and take it.” Grandmaw, now with her dander up responded, “I aim to.” The old man then told her, “I’ll go get my boys to come and help you all split that wood up, and get it stacked in the woodshed. Now Mary, are you all okay with food? We have some hams in our smokehouse that we’d gladly share with you all.” Grandmaw told him they had plenty of food, they were just out of firewood. She always got amused at how fast the threat of a crackin’ coffin in Hell will turn people around!



Mom & Dad, Summer 2005

Another story about the cold weather was when my Dad was a young man. After Granddad Thompson died when Dad was 10 years old, Dad moved up to Monkeytown to live with his parents. You see, in my family, it was custom that the oldest grandson live with his grandparents. Well, once Dad moved in with his parents, it became abundantly clear that there wasn’t enough room. My granddad worked in Baltimore at the time and came home just long enough to get Grandmaw pregnant, and then he’d leave again. He’d sometimes send money, but often he did not. So the next summer, when Dad was 11 years old, he went to work in the hayfields in order to get money to help out with the family expenses and in order to build himself a room onto the house. Dad was big for his age so the farmers all thought he was about 15 so they hired him on for a dollar a day. Dad worked all summer and come the fall, he had saved enough money to buy the lumber to build him on a room. With the help of a few people, they built a very crude room onto the front of the house. There were cracks in the walls that you could through a cat through, and it had one little window that resembled the one in the storybook of Noah’s Ark. But it didn’t matter to Dad, he finally had a bedroom all his own. Well, for a few days anyway. His little brother Tom decided that he would sleep there too, so Dad soon had a roommate. Since Tom was still little, he often wetted the bed, and Dad would have to get up and change the covers out, and give them to Grandmaw to wash the next day. Well, winter soon set in, and Dad said that many mornings he’d wake up with a dusting of snow on the bed covers. He said they left the door open which was next to the kitchen where the wood stove was, and that on the side facing the door, you’d be real warm, and on the side facing the window, you’d freeze. He said you learned to turn a lot throughout the course of the night. As the weather got colder, someone gave Dad and Tom a big old feather tick to sleep under. Well, one night when the weather was down around zero, Tom pee’d the bed and Dad didn’t realize it, and when they woke up the next morning, the feather tick was frozen to Dad’s bed clothes! Dad then told Tom that he couldn’t sleep with him any more until the spring! Dad’s room is still on the house, only now it has been remodeled, and is now the kitchen area. It doesn’t, however, resemble the rough little room of necessity that Dad built so many years ago.



Me & Shirley, Fall 2007


My final story about cold weather concerns one of the first times that I took Shirley home to the mountain to meet my family. Shirley, although a child of the coalfields, always led a pretty pampered life. She grew up with all the amenities, including central heating. Well, Mom and Dad still have a wood stove so the heat comes from only one area of the house. Shirley insisted on closing the bedroom door that one night, which I advised her was a bad idea. I told her to sleep in my bed…a heated waterbed…but her modesty and upbringing wouldn’t allow her to sleep in the same bed with someone she wasn’t married to, so Mom set her up the old cast iron bed to sleep in. Well, it was down around zero that night, with the wind whistling around the corner of the house. Shirley kept waking me up with her question, “What is that? It sounds like a banshee.” I’d always reply, “It’s the wind. Haven’t you ever heard the wind before?” She’d say, “Not like that!” and would soon go back to sleep. Well this went on nearly every hour, until finally about daylight, I was awakened by a nudging on my shoulder. It was Shirley. I asked her what was wrong and I turned on the lamp by my bed. There stood Shirley, pitifully asking, “I’m s-s-s-s-oooo c-c-c-c-old. C-c-can I g-get in b-e-e-e-e-ed with you?” I swear to you that her lips were blue! I reminded her that I told her it would get cold if she shut the bedroom door, and that of course she could get in my nice, warm, heated waterbed. She then decided that she needed a drink of water and walked over to get her glass of water on her nightstand. She gasped and I asked her what was the matter now. She said, “my water is frozen!” I told her to open the bedroom door and to get in bed with me. As soon as she opened the bedroom door, the warm air flooded into the room and she soon warmed up. She slept like a baby the rest of the night. Shirley still claims that is the coldest that she has ever been in her life. Poor girl, she sure has led a sheltered life!

So just keep in mind over the duration of this current cold spell, that it won’t be long before we see the first green sprouts of spring, and soon thereafter, the warm breezes of summer will return to these hills. The nightbirds will once again croon their songs of passion, and nature will once again caress us into slumber with the softness of the season.

Granddaddy Don

I remember well my Granddaddy Don. He was married to my sainted Grandmaw Mary. They lived in the house that is now beside my parents, as a matter of fact Granddaddy Don built both houses.

I was about 9 years old when Granddaddy Don died, and his passing signaled the end of an era for the whole family. You see, Granddaddy Don ruled the family with an iron fist, and he was a cantankerous old feller. I was always told that he was the way he was because he was the only boy among his siblings, and that his parents petted on him something fierce, so nothing was ever too good for Granddaddy Don, and he expected this to continue throughout his life.

Charley, Jennie and Don Burns (center) about 1902.

That’s not to say Granddaddy Don wasn’t a hard worker or that he felt like he was entitled to something, quite the opposite was true, Granddaddy worked extremely hard, he just wanted things to be his way.

When thinking of Granddaddy Don, I am always reminded of how he pinched pennies. In the summers, his grandkids would always like to visit for a few weeks. Granddaddy had in his head a set amount of food that each kid would eat, and if the kid ate more than Granddaddy thought he should, Granddaddy would send a bill for the remainder of the food to their parents. Granddaddy also did all of the grocery shopping, he said Grandmaw always spent too much money, and wouldn’t even shop around for better deals. Granddaddy was known to travel several miles out of his way to save a nickel! He was also honest, just as if you owed him money, he expected it paid in full, and if he owed you money, you always got paid in full as well. One time, my dad said he borrowed $10 off of Granddaddy to go out on when he was a teenager, and for the bill Granddaddy told him to just buy him two bags of grain for the milk cow. Dad bought the grain the next weekend when he got paid, and the grain bill was $10.03. Dad put the grain in the grainhouse and told Granddaddy that would make them even, and gave him the receipt. “Hell,” Granddaddy said, “I owe you 3 cents hunky, you’ll never get ahead in this life if you don’t collect what’s owed you.” It was widely known that my Dad was Granddaddy Don’s favorite grandchild, and Dad even lived with Granddaddy and Grandmaw when he was in elementary school.

The steam shovel wreck on North Mountain during the building of Route 33. Granddaddy Don was 3rd from the right in the back row ( in the toboggan). About 1930.

Later on in years when I knew him, Granddaddy was really crotchety! Like I said, he had his ways of doing things, and one time he told my uncle Wood to get him “about that much soft drink”, measuring off on his index finger how much pop he wanted. Well, Uncle Wood always was one to cut up and have a good time (people tell me I’m a lot like him) so he measured up his finger on the outside of the glass and got Granddaddy just a small amount of pop in his glass and gave it to Granddaddy. To this Granddaddy said, “Hell boy, you’re a might stingy with your soft drink ain’t you?” Then turned to my Grandmaw and said, “Mary, I believe the polio has done affected his brain.”

Grandmaw Mary and Granddaddy Don, about 1950.

I remember I’d visit with Granddaddy and Grandmaw a lot when I was a kid, you just had to give Granddaddy a wide berth because you never knew what for mood he’d be in. And for the love of God, you never wanted to speak when he was watching the evening news. He sure loved Dan Rather, and every time Dan Rather would sign off the air by saying, “Good Night, America”. Granddaddy would say, “Goodnight, Dan”. And then you were allowed to talk without fear of him scraping his knuckles across your head and telling you to shut-up. That was his favorite way of silencing a child, “peeling the bark off the old sky-pate” as he called it.

Granddaddy Don in his favorite chair.

One time while I was visiting, Granddaddy was having his favorite snack, pudding and vanilla wafers. I noticed that after every bite, he would say, “Nam, Nam”. I thought this was pretty funny, but I didn’t dare laugh. Then he took a bite and didn’t say anything and I couldn’t help myself, so I piped up and said, “You forgot to say Nam, Nam”. Wooo, that got him, and he nearly came unglued, he grabbed my pudding and cookies from me and said, “Just for that little boy, you’ll get nothing more”. I soon headed out to Grandmaw where I’d be safe, and she said, “That crazy old man”, and gave me back my pudding and cookies, and told me to just stay away from him for a while. The next day, I went back over to see them again, and Granddaddy mistook me for another grandkid, and said, “Hell boy, I believe you have some birthday money coming don’t you” and he gave me a dollar. I gladly took it, thanked him and left. My grandmaw just smiled, she knew it wasn’t my birthday but I couldn’t disagree with Granddaddy or he’d get belligerent. Later that day, my cousin whose birthday it was came by for his birthday money, and Granddaddy said, “Hell, I done give you your birthday, you’ll get nothing more out of me.” You know, I probably should have given the money to my cousin, but I never did like him that well, so instead I spent it on hot sausages!

I have lots more stories about Granddaddy Don that I will share in coming posts, but I can see this one is getting a might long. If I were to make this post longer you might say, “Hell, I believe polio affected his brain.”