ALEX.: Where do you work?
GALFORD: Well, I've worked mostly all over the Pocahontas County.
I used to, my dad used to. I was raised and born right
over here. My dad used to have a sawmill, and me and my
brother got the sawmill off him. We sawmilled awhile
around up through the country here. And then, uh, we
sold the sawmill. I just worked for the company, took
jobs cutting timber, cuttings logs, you know, by the
thousand. I cut timber on this here Cherry River Boom
Lumber Company.
ALEX.: Oh, yes, uh huh.
GALFORD: Course that wasn't just the first nor reckon I cut, but
then I cut for a different--people come in and bought
tracts, you know, for the government, too. I cut timber
for poor old man where he worked over here on the other
side of that mountain yonder, and then up the river I
cut on government timber for, uh, for the name is Saller,
that's lived at Bluefield. Oh, I've, and then there's
another Republic Note Company, they called it; come in
here, and we was up here up the river, what they called
up the Williams River, Camp Five, and I took a job in
there of cutting timber for them. And I cut over, help
cut over, I reckon, million and a half feet there.
ALEX.: Is that right?
GALFORD: Yeah.
ALEX.: That's a lot of lumber. What kind, what kind of timber
were you cutting?
GALFORD: Mostly, uh. . .well, we was cutting what they call
hardwood, uh, mostly, and of course we cut spruce too
when we'd come to 'em. Pine, that's pine timber. . .
hemlock, and spruce, and white lynn; we call it white
lynn. Now, basswood, uh, I think's the right name for
it. And then, uh, hard sugar, maple sugar, you know.
And then there's two kinds of sugar, different kinds,
beech timber too, you know. Oh, there's a lot of
different kinds of timber. I cut timber over there; tree
or two. I had an old name for it. . . We used to call him
Ironwood. And a scaler from the government, scaler come
around and scaled it, and he didn't know what to call it.
ALEX: Is that right?
GALFORD: And he was supposed to have been up on the leaves and all
the kinds of timber, and he said, "Now what kind of log
do you call that?" I told him, and he said, "Well,
that's the first one I've ever seen," and he said,
"That's big enough that we have to scale it, it's sound
and nice. I hardly ever get one like that. That's the
name for it."
ALEX.: Well, they had a couple big sawdust piles right down the
road here just up the hill at Woodrow. What companies
cut that?
GALFORD: Oh, that's, oh, I forget that is old man Curry, fellow by
the name of Curry, had a sawmill there several years ago.
I didn't cut none for that outfit, but I cut for
sawmills, and worked on sawmills.
ALEX.: Now when did you first start cutting?
GALFORD: Oh, I reckon, I don't know when. I just, I cut a little
bit all along for years, ever since I was, oh, I reckon,
uh, twenty-five years old. I took a job back here on
Little Laura, we call it, cutting timber by the, down
there by the thousands, you know.
ALEX.: Yeah. How old are you?
GALFORD: I learnt to file the saw, you know. What I cut was a
Fuller wedgewood filer, and he lent me and my brother-in-law. Yeah, you say, how old am I?
ALEX.: Uh, huh.
GALFORD: I'm eighty-three years old.
ALEX.: When were you born?
GALFORD: I was. . . when, when?
ALEX.: Yes.
GALFORD: I was born in eighteen and ninety-one.
ALEX.: Eighteen ninety-one. I declare.
GALFORD: My wife is ninety-three.
Gal.Wife Ninety-three, honey, you're telling a story. I'll be
eighty-two in the third day of June.
GALFORD: Eighty-two, oh yeah. That's a fun story. Been married
sixty, be sixty-two years this fall.
ALEX.: Married for sixty-two years.
GALFORD: Had nine children.
ALEX.: Nine children. How many boys?
GALFORD: Five.
ALEX.: Five boys and four girls.
GALFORD: Lost one daughter long back Thanksgiving. She lived in
California, and I had a son in down at the Hominy Falls,
he was a preacher, he died two years ago in December from
cancer, twin of the boy inside. He was a twin brother.
This one here never did. . . he went to school, but he
never could learn.
ALEX.: Yeah. Well, you say you cut over the mountainside here,
have you?
GALFORD: Yes sir, I've cut, I've cut over, I cut all in through
there when I was, well that was before I was married. I
was about . . .I was about twenty-three years old. Cut
timber all right up through yonder and around . . . with
the Campbell Lumber Company.
ALEX.: The Campbell Lumber Company. Oh, yeah. Tell me a little
bit about how they got this timber out of here . . .they
take it out on the . . .
GALFORD: Well, the skids or float or uh . . . the Campbell Lumber
Company, they, they had a railroad went right down, back
down here. They took it out to Marlinton on a boat. what
they call Campbelltown, you see.
ALEX.: Uh, huh, yeah.
GALFORD: Took it out there; there's a Campbell Lumber Company
there. That's the reason it's Campbelltown. And they
took . . . had a big landmill there. Took it out and
about all down the river and back all around, and took it
out. Then the Cherry River Boom Lumber Company; they
come up so far. they took theirs down to Richwood.
ALEX.: I see. Now uh . . .
GALFORD: I cut for them a lot . . . different places for them.
ALEX.: What about . . . they took them out by train, did they?
To Campbelltown?
GALFORD: Yeah. On train.
ALEX.: What kind of train?
GALFORD: Oh, just on log trucks, you know . . . these old
stem winder engines, old-timer ones. You've, I don't know
whether you've seen one or not.
ALEX.: You mean the shays?
GALFORD: Yeah.
ALEX.: They were the shays.
GALFORD: Yeah, and there was a way around the mountain, you
know . . .
ALEX.: You call them the stem winder, huh?
GALFORD: Yeah, stem winder is what we used to call them. It used
to be, uh, they'd come out of the Spruce Lumber
Company . . . that's the one at Cass, you know, back up
in there. I've cut logs for them. Now they had a
railroad come through that big, 'round that big knob,
high knob down there . . . come right through a low place
from down on the Elk River. Come up the Elk River and
right around and back in on Tea Creek. I cut logs in
there for them.
ALEX.: Yeah, now . . .
GALFORD: Now there's them engines way up there 'round under that,
high under that top of the mountain.
ALEX.: Is that right? I can see the old tram road still there.
GALFORD: Oh, yeah, yeah, they're still there . . . some of them
grown up. They put this pressure too; they put some of
this here gravel road on . . . the government did since
that . . . where they went through, you know. A lot of
that old road is right there yet, you know, just like it
was. I've hunted all back through that country, deer
hunting, turkey hunting.
ALEX.: I guess you've killed a few wild turkey?
ALEX.: Uh, twenty some.
GALFORD: Twenty some.
ALEX.: Hey, what'd you do with all them; I didn't see 'em?
GALFORD: Oh, yes you did; you seen most of 'em.
ALEX.: What about the, uh, bear? You got any bear stories?
GALFORD: I never did kill a bear; I've shot at 'em and seen 'em.
I had a brother that lived down here on the river. He's
dead now. He was two years older than I was, and he
killed ninety some bear.
ALEX.: Oh, he's a regular bear hunter then.
GALFORD: Yeah, he killed 'em way back in nineteen and fourteen.
They'd pay the bounty on 'em. You know, they eat up the
sheep in through this country so, and they'd even give
him bounty. They used to raise dogs, and people come
from Charleston and Huntington out here go hunting with
them. And he'd take them out and take them dogs and
trail 'em and kill 'em.
ALEX.: Do you know Ben Carpenter that lived back in this
country?
GALFORD: Ben . . .
ALEX.: Carpenter?
GALFORD: Carpenter, oh uh . . .
ALEX.: Is that his name, Ben?
GALFORD: Used to be a Dan . . . Dan, Dan Carpenter. Yeah, Dan
Carpenter, oh yeah, I know'd Dan well. He's dead now.
Yeah, he lived back on what I called Spruce Flat country.
Yeah, I know'd Dan. Frank, his brother, younger brother,
I worked with him. Oh, I've cut timber over here next to
Marlinton, and little jobs around. I've cut a good
many million feet.
ALEX.: You use a six foot cross cut, huh?
GALFORD: Yes, sir, five and six. Finally got to using five. I
had to use six way down on Elk. I cut timber one time
down there. I didn't stay there very long at a camp, and
we had to have, cut these big poplars, and they were so
big, you know, and the Spruce Lumber Company made you cut
'em right at the ground, and their six foot saw wouldn't
reach. You had to just chop in around and then saw it.
Yeah, I cut trees down there that had, one tree that had
five thousand in it.
ALEX.: Five thousand feet?
GALFORD: Yeah, poplar, yeah.
ALEX.: I'm telling you; that is something . . . that is
something.
GALFORD: Oh, I've done a lot of hard work in my time.
ALEX.: Can you tell me anything about some of the men you work
with, are they all local laborers or is a lot of this
labor imported? Do you remember any of these fellows
that came in here to work on these jobs?
GALFORD: No, uh, different people I don't . . . with my brothers,
you know, they . . . I've got brothers; they worked, you
know for the companies, some of the companies. Me and
part of my brothers worked together, you know, taking
jobs.
ALEX.: Yeah. How many brothers do you have?
GALFORD: I have uh, oh, six brothers. That is, six of us all
together. There are six boys and two girls.
ALEX.: You're a pretty good size; what did you dress out in
those days? How much do you weigh?
GALFORD: I don't weight much now; I'm poor.
ALEX.: What did you weigh then?
GALFORD: I run around about hundred and, I went a hundred and seventy pounds, seventy some pounds at one time, but my
average weight used to be a hundred and sixty-five pounds.
ALEX.: You're tall though.
GALFORD: Yeah, yeah. I've never, I was pretty fleshly at, oh,
when I was young.
ALEX.: How tall are you?
GALFORD: I was five feet and, I believe, nine inches and something
when they examined me to go to the army. I didn't go to
the army, but they examined me to go. I was an able man
to go, but I had three children, and that put me back in
class four, and I didn't have to go.
ALEX.: First World War?
GALFORD: Yeah, that was the First World War.
ALEX.: Well, you've lived over in this country all your life,
you say?
GALFORD: Yes, sir, eah, I built, I reckon I built this, bought a
piece of land here. This was logging timber here when I
bought it . . . just rough timber, you know.
ALEX.: Yeah.
GALFORD: Campbell Lumber Company done moved out and took all the
big timber off, but there's just a lot of trees--beech
trees and everything. I cleaned this all up. I just
cleared it up. I set out my orchard. Yeah, that
orchard's been there for, oh, forty some years. You see,
I've lived here, I reckon, about forty-eight years . . .
since I built this house.
ALEX.: When was the last store located around here . . . what's
the closest store?
GALFORD: Store?
ALEX.: Yeah. You know, lately, used to be a store out at
Woodrow?
GALFORD: Yeah, used to have a little store out Woodrow there.
Post office used to be there.
ALEX.: They tell me that there used to be a, one of the older
stores down at the, down at Edray. Do you remember a
grocery store there?
GALFORD: Yeah, oh yeah, I do . . .
ALEX.: About what year was that? Do you remember the year?
GALFORD: No, I don't know just what the year was now, but I lived,
I lived at one time after I left here, and lived off this
down on a big farm down there two winters. Then I come
back . . . course I owned this, or had it bought. Now I
never did get it all paid for in the beginning. I got,
finally I got ten acres paid for . . . enough to live on.
ALEX.: Yeah, yeah ten acres is a lot to take care of.
GALFORD: Yeah, yeah. It's all I need anyway.
ALEX.: You say there was a store at Woodrow, too?
GALFORD: Huh?
ALEX.: Was there a store at Woodrow?
GALFORD: Little, little store out there . . . oh, it was, it was
after this Campbell Lumber Company already left this
country . . . just about the time they left. Well, I
believe that they just had left . . . Woodrow . . . No,
I'm wrong, the Campbell's was still running there when
they first started the post office Woodrow. You know,
Woodrow Wilson . . .
ALEX.: Yeah.
GALFORD: That's what they named it for.
ALEX.: Is that right?
GALFORD: Yeah. Woodrow Wilson, he was the President.
ALEX.: They named that little town after the President?
GALFORD: It wasn't no town; it was just a, they called it a
summit, you know. Now they had a switch there, and the
Campbell Lumber Company would pull their cars out there,
you know, and pull up so many . . . uphill, you know,
here . . . take 'em out there and, and they'd put 'em all
together and go off the mountain to Campbelltown.
ALEX.: Yeah. They didn't need as much power to get them down
the mountain?
GALFORD: No, no, they had to put the brakes on sand to keep them
from running away. They had some of 'em to run away an
interesting time or two.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah. Did you see any train wrecks back in Tea Creek
country?
GALFORD: Huh?
ALEX.: Did you ever see any train wrecks in the Tea Creek?
GALFORD: No, I never seen any. Now, I worked in there when they
moved in there on ahead of Tea Creek, and I helped build,
oh, a bridge where they put, you know, the railroad
on . . . what they called an improvement. I worked for
a man on that back in Tea Creek.
ALEX.: What did they do, get their supplies in there by
train . . . and.
GALFORD: Yeah, that's right. They had big camps, you know. They
put, back ahead of Tea Creek. They had a Camp Nine, they
called it. They went by numbers, you know, where they
started. Camp Nine is on Tea Creek there, and they'd
bring in supplies on that train, you see. It was over a
hundred men there.
ALEX.: Do you know this feller, Mr. Crickard, Bruce Crickard?
GALFORD: Bruce Crichard. No, it don't seem like I do now,
uh . . . was a Crigger, I used to know a Crigger . . .
something like that. He used to live over here at, oh,
the other side of the mountain, back up in there . . .
Huntersville.
ALEX.: Huntersville, uh, huh.
GALFORD: He was a, kind of a government man; he worked for the
government like my brother did. Now my old brother
killed so many bears he works with the government. He
was a fine man, and was on the fire patrol. We cut, we
cut trails all over these mountains.
ALEX.: Is that right?
GALFORD: Just cut out a little path, you know, so you could travel
Along. And if a fire got out you could have a path, you
know, you could rake and fire again if you know.
ALEX.: You ever see any big fires back there in the country?
GALFORD: Oh, my, we had the awfullest fires in here in thirty. The
droughts, you know. We had droughts in nineteen thirty.
A fire fell around even right here on these hills here.
ALEX.: Is that right?
GALFORD: Yes, sir. It got so smoky you couldn't hardly see
a . . . oh, it just burned right into the earth back
here . . . burnt them there trains down on the Richwood
there. I mean the Cherry River people’s trains let that
fire get out. I think, you know, from the engines. They
wasn't certain hardly how it did get out. It got so dry,
and it just got set to fire that the whole country was
afraid of it. I fought fire for about a week.
ALEX.: Is that right? I guess it had to burn itself out, huh?
GALFORD: Oh, my goodness . . . dangerous, too. I've just done a
little bit of everything.
ALEX.: What'd you make? How much money did you make a day back
there?
GALFORD: Oh, I didn't make anything hardly. I've worked for,
well, for some of them places I got pretty good wages
along at last. The first place I ever worked was the
Spruce Lumber Company. I worked for them on, just before
the war, just before this here First World War. They cut
the wages down, and I only got a dollar and forty cents
a day now for six, uh, whole days.
ALEX.: Yeah, eleven hours, probably.
GALFORD: Eleven, yeah, eleven hours.
ALEX.: Six days a week.
GALFORD: Yes, sir. I've had to take lanterns to get to my work.
ALEX.: Start out before daylight?
GALFORD: Yeah. That's right, turn right out, and you had to be
out there at your work at six o'clock in the morning.
ALEX.: They wanted to make sure they got a day's work out of
you.
GALFORD: Yeah, boy . . . you betcha. Now, now people thinks it's
awful to, if they have to work six or eight hours,
wouldn't they?
ALEX.: Yeah, that's right. That kind of work, they'd be done
in, wouldn't they? It's do 'em in. Sure would.
GALFORD: Yeah, I carried lanterns, and I worked on Tea Creek for
a job there, three dollars then. They'd raised the wages
some. That was after that fire, now, that burnt through
there.
ALEX.: In the thirties, late thirties then?
GALFORD: Yeah, and they had to get out there and peel that old
burnt stuff off for pulp wood, you see, that went to the
paper mill, you see, at Richwood. They had to peel all
that old burnt stuff off, and we had to take the lanterns
to get out to our work there in the mornings. All at
once, you know, after a certain time, they cut the wages
to eight hours . . . was down to eight hours. Well, that
kind of tickled me. I said, "Well, I won't have to carry
no lantern now." With the, times got pretty hard then
for awhile, and nobody much, didn't get much work. There
was a three or four years I didn't have no work hardly
after that drought. I worked, I made roads, all this
road goes here, and under part of that road I put base
rock. Oh, I expect we put 'em that deep all under there,
under that hard top rock before they ever put any tar on it.
There wasn't no tar on it then; it just went over
it and put gravel on it, and leveled it up. Now I worked
for days at that.
ALEX.: That was in the thirties, huh?
GALFORD: Yes, sir. You know, I've done a lot of hard work.
That's what makes my hands . . . I used to use a hammer
so much and axes, and you see these gristles? I can't
use, I can't get my fingers bent.
ALEX.: Yeah . . . because of holding the hammer and holding the
ax.
GALFORD: Yes, sir. I think a lot of that caused arthritis, what
they called it, the doctors do, but I can shut them up,
but that cramp may hurt me some. I got a big toe, I got
a toe comes right over top of the other one there. I
had. . . have wire shoes now cutting holes in it.
ALEX.: Well, that's all from that work, that work down through
the years. Do you have a favorite story from back in the
hills there when you were working in lumber?
GALFORD: No, no, nothing particular.
ALEX.: How about snakes . . . do you see any snakes back in the
woods?
GALFORD: Snakes? Oh, there ain't no poisonous snakes around here
much. You might happen to be chance one, but they've
seen a rattlesnake or two in this country. But now on
this mountain, I've never seen a copperhead or
rattlesnake out here. I lived here eighty-three years,
but now I've see 'em a lot of places. I've killed 'em.
Down on Greenbrier now there's plenty of 'em, and on down
on Tea Creek way on down the river there's plenty of 'em.
But they just . . . some lady, I don't know, I guess
chance few the people said they'd seen one or two. I
never did. Now big black snakes . . . you'll see them,
lots of them; but there ain't a lot of them like they
used to be. You know these, since they made these roads,
they . . . cars kills an awful lot of snakes. That gets
rid of a lot of 'em. But now these old copperheads and
things like that, they've got dens, you know, dens. I've
got a brother that lives down in Monroe County that, down
in there where the copperheads is thick down in
there . . . rattlesnakes.
ALEX.: You've named the companies now that you've worked for;
you worked for Spruce.
GALFORD: Yeah, Spruce . . . I worked for the Spruce Lumber
Company. Campbell Lumber Company is the first company I
worked for.
ALEX.: Then Spruce.
GALFORD: And I worked for the Spruce Lumber Company, and for the
Cherry River Boom Lumber Company. And then after that
just little companies buy a patch of timber off the
government after the government finally bought it. The
Bank of Marlinton down here bought the Campbell Lumber
Company land . . . all their land.
ALEX.: Is that right?
GALFORD: And that's how I come to buy this. I bought it off the
Bank of Marlinton. And so they sold it out then finally
to the government. They just had little patches here and
there, you know, that the government didn't buy, you
know. They hadn't bought it yet. The government hadn't
bought any when I bought this; but after the government
got it, why then these jobbers come in here . . . little
companies, you know, come and take a great big job. I
cut timber for 'em. I made, I cut for six and seven
dollars a thousand while . . . you didn't make, you
didn't get very many thousands, you know. Two men . . .
with a cross-cut saw.
ALEX.: What did a couple of good men and good timber make in a
day in terms of a thousand in foot?
GALFORD: Oh, it finally got so he could make maybe eight or ten
dollars a day.
ALEX.: How many, how many thousand feet could they cut . . . I'm
talking about, you take a good saw, say a good knot
bumper, good timber . . . about how many feet a day could
a couple of men cut?
GALFORD: Well, four or five, about five thousand is about the best
you can get.
ALEX.: That's a lot of lumber.
GALFORD: Yeah, that is, now. You had to know to get it done I'm
tellin you. There's a lot of difference in a lot of
people. I've worked with people, and I had people
working for me that wouldn't do it right, you know,
wouldn't bump 'em and all so right . . . and skidding
with teams then, you know, . . . horses, you know, them
old rough knots, well, if you don't bump 'em smooth and
fix 'em up right, why they just can't hardly haul 'em.
I always had the name of being a good timber cutter. The
government, oh, after they got it . . . and I done some
jobs down here. Cut timber for the little companies right
in there, and after I got to cutting, why they come
around, the rangers, you know, what they call rangers,
and said, "Now, I want you to cut all this timber you
can." Says, "You're the only man that will cut it like
we want it." A lot of 'em just cut down and just throw
it and tear up all the young timber. They didn't allow
you to tear it up first, like, finally they got just to
taking it all, but they didn't at first. Why I didn't
dare to get out and blaze a tree out of the road
hardly . . . where they was going to make a road.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah. You let it stand.
GALFORD: Yeah.
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
GALFORD: And I was always particular about it, and just cut what
they brand. You see, they painted it, you know. Rub
paint on it . . . and then, they put that paint on it,
and you can cut it, you see. One company I worked for,
the boss said, "Now cut them in on the, in on that other
tree there; knock it down." A nice tree that they didn't
paint . . . some nice one, you know, and I wouldn't do
it. I said, "No sir," I said "That ain't the right thing
to do," and I said, "That's a dangerous thing. You cut
a tree that's hanging another, then you have to get in
there and cut that one down, it's liable to fall right on
you if you don't watch it." And that there, one of the
rangers told me . . . I got my leg broke when I was sixty
years old cutting over in Cherry River, for the Cherry
River Company. It was for jobbers . . . it's what it
was on; it was on government land. And there was a
jobber over there . . . it was a ranger come up . . . two
of 'em come from Richwood, and said, "I'd like for you to
go and cut timber down at a certain camp." Well, I
hadn't, didn't know the fellow who was telling me, but I
said, "They do it all by the day." He said, "It doesn't
make any difference; if you'll go down there, we'll get
the job for you. I don't want you to even to work on the
do the filing and look after the cutting." And I got my
leg broke then those two days, and I never did cut
anymore timber. They come to see me, them rangers did,
when I was in the hospital . . . come here at my home.
Yeah, I get along with rangers. I always try to do what
I thought was the right thing.
ALEX.: That's right. That's what's important.
GALFORD: Yes, sir.
ALEX.: Now, Mrs. Galford, you said you've been married how many
years?
Gal.Wife It'll be sixty-two this year, this November.
ALEX.: Sixty-two this November. Now you're both natives of
Pocahontas County?
GALFORD: Uh, huh.
ALEX.: Both born in Pocahontas County?
* That's right.
ALEX.: Where were you born, in Marlinton, or . . .?
* No, it was a place called West Union, I think it's
past . . . Just over back around up through another
holler . . .
ALEX.: Oh, yeah. West Union . . . and where were you born?
* I was born right over here, raised and born right over
here at the foot of this big high mountain.
ALEX.: Is that right? What do they call that mountain over
there?
* It's the Red Spruce.
ALEX.: Red Spruce Mountain.
* Red Lick Mountain runs plum back down there . . . see Elk
River heads up right back there.
ALEX.: Is that where it start?
* Yeah. It heads up right in a low place here right from
that there big high mountain . . . goes right down along
the Elk River.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah. I know the Elk. That Elk's a fine river and
that's fine country over there.
GALFORD: Oh, there was fine timber in this country years ago. I
can remember when all this timber was just big spruce
timber.
(PART OF CONVERSATION LOST ON TAPE)
* And another one was dead when it was born.
* Yeah, I raised nine.
ALEX.: That's a big family.
* Yeah, that's a big family.
* Took a lot of work.
* Yes, it did.
* Took a lot to put them into school and live.
ALEX.: Yeah, you've . . . I suspect you pulled that saw pretty
hard when you got to thinking about those youngsters.
GALFORD: Yeah, I sure did. I spent many days back in these camps.
(Mrs. Galford ends the conversation talking about how she washed on
the board and the children working in the garden, and how the women
today wouldn't hardly be able to stand all that work--all this in
order to raise the children.)