The Chippewa Valley was ground zero for Wisconsin's lumber industry. Billions of feet of lumber flowed from this area. Hollywood may have glamorized the cattle ranchers and cowboys of the old west, but life was just as hard and rough'n'tumble in northern Wisconsin when logging was at its peak in the late 1800s as it was out in Tombstone. Lumbering was ball-busting work. Men spent the winter away from home out in the woods felling, trimming, and hauling trees to landings at the shores of rivers. Imagine having to wash your skivvies outside in the snow when it's freezing. Uff da!
After the spring thaw, the logs were put into the water so they could float downstream to a sawmill. These were called river drives. As noted in the book Wisconsin Lore: "The river drive was probably the most dangerous of any occupation in the history of the state. Many, many river drivers, or 'river rats' or 'river pigs' were drowned. Many more had legs or bodies broken. A driver who met death was buried on the bank, and often no stone marked his grave. He was simply forgotten. Injury or death was considered a part of the job. Regardless of danger, logs had to move."
The Lumberjack Championships in Hayward may be quaint to us today, but being able to scale trees, chop & saw them, and traverse logs in water were valuable skills back in the day. The latter must have come in mighty handy when things went really wrong on the river drive and you had a logjam on your hands. Some logjams made news around the state as rivers became choked with logs moving nowhere. Here's a photo of one on the Chippewa River in 1903 from the Wisconsin Historical Society.
A good place to learn about being a lumberjack is John Nelligan's Life of a Lumberman. Nelligan was a lumberjack in northern Wisconsin in the latter half of the 19th century. Frontier justice is a common motif in our vision of the Old West, but it was also present here in the Land of Cheese, as Nelligan recounts this tale from Oconto.
On the Sunday evening of which I speak, the dance was in full progress when the gang of roughnecks, as usual, appeared on the scene with mischief in their manner. Denny White, who came from Chatham on Miramichi Bay, near my home in New Brunswick, was the instigator of all the trouble. They started to "clean up" the place and the "bouncer" becoming unduly excited, pulled his revolver, aimed at one of the disturbers of the peace, and fired. But his arm was shaky and, instead of hitting the man he intended to, he shot an innocent bystander, a young fellow named Joseph Rule.
The bouncer ended up in the pokey, but not for long. Nelligan continues.
A crowd gathered around the little jail and mob spirit was rapidly aroused to a point of action. The leaders obtained a small saw log and, using it for a battering ram, knocked in the door of the jail. The unlucky poor shot was dragged from his cell and out of the jail, screaming and protesting…They dragged him on, across the bridge and to the spot where, strangely enough, a house of justice now stands, the Oconto court house. There they hung him to a tree and Joseph Rule was avenged, if such be vengeance.
Yikes!
Not everything in lumber towns involved lynch mobs. Indeed, there was some good, if morbid, humor to be had. For instance, there's the story of Chippewa Falls' own Peg Leg Pat McCann, as recounted in Wisconsin Folklore. In 1876, the railroad line between Eau Claire and Chippewa was completed so Chippewa threw a big party which included this joke.
Those who were not well acquainted with Peg Leg Pat did not know that he had lost a leg during the Civil War and went about with a substitute. For the parade his wooden leg was removed and a round piece of wood the shape of a leg fastened in its place. As the float in which Pat was riding stopped in front of the bank, he was held, struggling, to a table by several husky lumberjacks, while the leg was being sawed off. To add a touch of gore, gruesomeness and reality to the operation, a can of red paint was used as an excellent substitute for blood.
Back to 2009. The D and I rolled into Chippewa Falls around 7:30 to find downtown deserted. We maundered the streets but could not find a single coffee shop nor café open. Having a few hours to blow before our final brewery tour, we opted to head back to Osseo for breakfast at the Norske Nook one last time.
I forgot to mention this in the post detailing our first stop there: The woman to whom I paid the bill was an old high school classmate. I don't think she recognized me and I was too timid to say anything to her. We weren't best buddies so I wasn't really sure if she'd remember me. Aside from seeing someone from my high school class, which I haven't in 15+ years, what interested me was her manner of speech.
Normally when we ask a question, the pitch of our voice goes up. But my former classmate would raise the pitch of her voice when making a declarative statement. To me, this is part of a Norwegian accent. Any linguists reading this who can confirm or deny it?
After breakfast (I had the lingonberry-apple pie for dessert), we still had a little time to kill so I took the long way back to Chippewa Falls. We went up Highway 93 and took a little detour through my old stomping grounds.
It felt very weird to be back in the neighborhood where I spent most of my high school years. I'd last been up there in January 2003 and it had been even longer since I'd actually wandered around the area. To be honest, it made me a bit nostalgic, but mostly it made me feel old and sad. The old part came due to the trees. Many of them were on the order of 50% taller than I had recalled. When you notice that trees are significantly bigger than when you last saw them, you have seen more than a few moons. The melancholy was due to all the memories of my father. The last time I was up this way was to move him down to Louisiana, where he passed away a year later. He spent the last few years of his life in utter misery owing to my stepmother's illness and eventual death in 2001.
And so I was ambivalent. I had lots of good memories come back to me of wandering the woods and hiking along Graham Creek but there were also those memories of my father drinking himself to death.
With my memories tucked neatly away, we headed north once more for a date at the Leine Lodge.
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