More Wood!

Tony Chapman

I learned how to cuss early in my life. While I got many lessons on the subject from older kids on the bus rides to school and on the playground at recess, it was from loggers that I acquired my most complete education in irreverent, sometimes blasphemous, language.

My father was a logger, but he was pretty tame in his use of bad language; some of the men he hired to work for him, and others who were friends and fellow woodsmen, were not as reticent. I would often accompany my father to his job site, a saw shop, or out in the community. In the 1950s and 1960s there were many local wood mills, and a great many more loggers around to cut and deliver the boltwood and sawlogs they required to operate. That was before those jobs mostly disappeared, as corporate America availed itself of cheaper overseas markets for all sorts of merchandise, including those made from wood.

More Wood!

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