A Tall And True Tale

control, it can hurt someone. I have been burned by it, been wet
and covered up with soot and ash by it, but I still love steam.

When I would hear an old steam train, I used to stop whatever I
was doing and head for the railroad. First to see her go by huffing
and puffing, and also to smell the coal smoke!

Now for my tall tale or story:

Whatever you may call it, it’s still true, to the best of my
memory. This happened about 1937 and took place in North Carolina,
Cabarrus County, near Cabarrus Station. At that time we were still
having a hard time keeping bread on the table. We had already
killed all the rabbits and possum for food. What we did not eat I
would box and sell for 15 cents each to a man who ran a wood yard.
I never could figure how this man and family ate so many
rabbits.

In the year of ’37 I began to work at a sawmill, I
wasn’t 16 years old yet, after our corn and cotton was lay
byed. (This is a Southern term used when we stopped plowing the
corn and cotton).

The man I worked for was Mr. Morrison. He had two sawmills. One
was a portable mill which he moved from place to place. This mill
was powered by an old Samson tractor. I sure would like to have
that old Samson now. The first day that I went to work Mr. Morrison
put me in the bull pan or off bearing. (This is what we call it
here in the South.) He was sawing 2 x 10 wood, 20 feet long. So you
know what a time I had in the bull pan. The wood weighed more than
I did. I would put one end at a time over the belt. Also I carried
the slabs and put them on a pile.

Mr. Morrison also had a stationary sawmill near his home. This
one was powered by steam. The old boiler on the engine was probably
built in the 1800s or early 1900s. Anyway, it should have been
junked twenty years before I saw it. The water was always leaking
out of it. An older man and I would have to carry water from the
branch in five gallon buckets to fill up the boiler. This would
take a day and sometimes longer to fill it up enough to be able to
see the water in the column.

Mr. Morrison only employed two people and I don’t see how he
paid us for more than we sawed. We sawed 2000 to 5000 feet per day.
He paid us when he had the money, if not we got no pay. Maybe we
got $1.50 to $2.00 a week and it was hard to get that. The other
man’s name was Baxter. His job was to fire the old boiler to
keep the steam up. Sometimes he failed with this. The old boiler
was in bad shape and sometimes I would kid Baxter about going to
sleep on the job. He would burn slabs, shavings and sometimes the
sawdust trying to keep 75 lb. of steam up. The old boiler had some
flues plugged up or blocked off when it started leaking.

One cold morning, about 20 degrees outside, I asked Baxter,
‘How about letting me fire the old boiler?’ I was cold in
the bull pan. I told Baxter he was doing a good job that I could do
better. This almost made him mad and he mumbled and talked to
himself, but finally he told me to get myself up there and see if I
could do better. He really hoped I would get burned.

This was my mistake. After about 15 minutes of throwing slabs
and shoveling everything I could get in the old boiler, she was
huffing and puffing. The old engine sure was sounding good. The
drive belt from the engine to the mill was going strong when the
boss pulled the lever on the mill. The belt would almost go
together with the tractor.

I was standing in front of the old boiler, facing the mill and
when I turned around, reached up and opened the flue door, looking
at the flues, I stepped to one side about the time one of those
flues which had not been plugged, blew out the end next to me. Hot
water shot out fifty feet to the mill and steam was so bad, you
could not see the mill or the boiler.

By this time I had my bearing on the branch and foot log, about
fifty feet away. The branch was about twelve feet wide and Baxter
said I hit the foot log one time with my feet. I ran as fast as I
could until I was about a quarter of a mile up the other hill. I
had to sit down and rest before I could return to see what was
going on at the mill.

One other time with this old boiler, I almost had a heart
attack. I was under the planer, sitting beside the old boiler. I
was cleaning the shavings out from the pulleys. The tailpipe or the
blow off pipe broke off and steam, soot and ash covered me up. I
couldn’t see to get out from under the planer. But when I got
out I took off like a jet, across the yard into a three corner or
stack of lumber. I climbed the side of the lumber stack, through
the woods and open field.

This is how I learned the hard way to respect steam. From all
this and a few times in the cotton finishing plant and a cement
plant, and more. I thank the good Lord that I’m still around.
God has been good to me and I praise Him. Some things I never
forget.