Chapter III Working in the Cook House
Here I was sitting on the floor peeling potatoes beside another guy who was old enough to be my grandfather. A large pile of potatoes lay before us and 40 hungry men would be expecting them before noon. I was pretty glum. I had signed on at the camp to be a lumberjack and here I was relegated to the lowly role of Cookie. I had arrived in the lumber camp the day before and the camp manager took one look at my skinny frame and had decided this is where I belonged.
The cook who was my boss at first seemed dangerous. He was a large heavy set man with a ruddy complexion and threatened to skin me alive if I didn’t stop cutting off so much of the potatoes while peeling them. After several days I realized he really wasn’t going to skin me and besides I was getting better with the peeler.
It was a long day in the cookhouse, ten hours (and 6 days a week), the same as for the lumberjacks and mill workers except my day was broken up. The workers arrived for breakfast at 6 AM so I had to be up at 4:30AM to light the fire in the iron stove; This was followed by assisting the cook in preparing the porridge, mixing the pancake batter, preparing the tea and coffee and cutting up the bread and slices of fruit and setting the table before they arrived. And all of this while the chef kept threatening to have me boiled alive or cut up in the stew if I failed in any of my assignments.
Then just before they men arrived we prepared scrambled eggs, pancakes and fried bacon. The tradition in lumber camps was that there should never be any bare space on the table so that in addition to the things we prepared, the table spread also included pies and cakes from yesterday, jams, jellies and syrups, and cold meats. What they didn’t eat at the table was packaged up for a mid morning snack. A strict rule in all lumber camps was that there was to be no talking at the table; they ate in silence. I was told that the reason for this rule of silence was because discussions could result in fights breaking out. In any case, we in the kitchen liked the rule because they came in and ate and in twenty minutes they were out again and we could get on with clearing the table and washing the dishes. By 7:30 AM I was finished and had time off until 10:30AM when it was time to prepare lunch. All the meals were the same: huge, because the men faced 10 hours of hard work every day and burned up a lot of calories. The lunch period required 4 hours because peeling vegetables for lunch and dinner were part of it. Then another break until 4:30PM and finally ending my day by 7:30PM.
Time off for me was usually spent swimming, running across the logs in the log boom in the lake, fishing and reading. My partner, the old cookie, usually just sat and smoked or went off for a snooze. A nice thing happened on my first morning. I picked up a fishing line that was lying on the dock and lowered the line in the water just to see how deep it was before diving in for a swim. There was a sudden violent yank on the line and a mill worker seeing my struggle came running over to help me battle with a nine and a half pound pike. The men were impressed. I caught a lot of fish after that but this was the biggest and best.
My boss, the cook, had been a chef in a Hotel in London Ontario. He was an alcoholic and had decided to spend the summer at the camp to sober up. The problem was that the Cookies were instructed to collect any fruit juice and wild fruit and store it in a barrel to ferment. About once a week he would drink from this raw and bubbling brew and get roaring eyed drunk. He would then lie on a cot outside the kitchen and watch through the screen and sing and shout out his crude and violent thoughts. We liked him because he was actually kindly and gentle although when drunk he would do crazy things. For example he would often throw the slops out the door and deliberately splash someone walking by. He would then rush out and profusely apologize as though it was an accident. The men knew it was a game and forgave him because he was famous in the north for his cooking and for many of the men the food was more important than the money they earned.
After about ten days in the kitchen the cook became weary of my complaining about working in the kitchen and arranged with the foreman to have me transferred to the mill. I was delighted to start my new career.
Just an observation: I can't recall ever seeing a fat man in a lumber camp. Despite eating three large meals a day the physical demands of a lumberjack's way of life burned off all the calories. Compare that with today's sedentary way of life with machine aided work and hours spent in front of television and computer screens while consuming copious quantities of junk foods.
Here I was sitting on the floor peeling potatoes beside another guy who was old enough to be my grandfather. A large pile of potatoes lay before us and 40 hungry men would be expecting them before noon. I was pretty glum. I had signed on at the camp to be a lumberjack and here I was relegated to the lowly role of Cookie. I had arrived in the lumber camp the day before and the camp manager took one look at my skinny frame and had decided this is where I belonged.
The cook who was my boss at first seemed dangerous. He was a large heavy set man with a ruddy complexion and threatened to skin me alive if I didn’t stop cutting off so much of the potatoes while peeling them. After several days I realized he really wasn’t going to skin me and besides I was getting better with the peeler.
It was a long day in the cookhouse, ten hours (and 6 days a week), the same as for the lumberjacks and mill workers except my day was broken up. The workers arrived for breakfast at 6 AM so I had to be up at 4:30AM to light the fire in the iron stove; This was followed by assisting the cook in preparing the porridge, mixing the pancake batter, preparing the tea and coffee and cutting up the bread and slices of fruit and setting the table before they arrived. And all of this while the chef kept threatening to have me boiled alive or cut up in the stew if I failed in any of my assignments.
Then just before they men arrived we prepared scrambled eggs, pancakes and fried bacon. The tradition in lumber camps was that there should never be any bare space on the table so that in addition to the things we prepared, the table spread also included pies and cakes from yesterday, jams, jellies and syrups, and cold meats. What they didn’t eat at the table was packaged up for a mid morning snack. A strict rule in all lumber camps was that there was to be no talking at the table; they ate in silence. I was told that the reason for this rule of silence was because discussions could result in fights breaking out. In any case, we in the kitchen liked the rule because they came in and ate and in twenty minutes they were out again and we could get on with clearing the table and washing the dishes. By 7:30 AM I was finished and had time off until 10:30AM when it was time to prepare lunch. All the meals were the same: huge, because the men faced 10 hours of hard work every day and burned up a lot of calories. The lunch period required 4 hours because peeling vegetables for lunch and dinner were part of it. Then another break until 4:30PM and finally ending my day by 7:30PM.
Time off for me was usually spent swimming, running across the logs in the log boom in the lake, fishing and reading. My partner, the old cookie, usually just sat and smoked or went off for a snooze. A nice thing happened on my first morning. I picked up a fishing line that was lying on the dock and lowered the line in the water just to see how deep it was before diving in for a swim. There was a sudden violent yank on the line and a mill worker seeing my struggle came running over to help me battle with a nine and a half pound pike. The men were impressed. I caught a lot of fish after that but this was the biggest and best.
My boss, the cook, had been a chef in a Hotel in London Ontario. He was an alcoholic and had decided to spend the summer at the camp to sober up. The problem was that the Cookies were instructed to collect any fruit juice and wild fruit and store it in a barrel to ferment. About once a week he would drink from this raw and bubbling brew and get roaring eyed drunk. He would then lie on a cot outside the kitchen and watch through the screen and sing and shout out his crude and violent thoughts. We liked him because he was actually kindly and gentle although when drunk he would do crazy things. For example he would often throw the slops out the door and deliberately splash someone walking by. He would then rush out and profusely apologize as though it was an accident. The men knew it was a game and forgave him because he was famous in the north for his cooking and for many of the men the food was more important than the money they earned.
After about ten days in the kitchen the cook became weary of my complaining about working in the kitchen and arranged with the foreman to have me transferred to the mill. I was delighted to start my new career.
Just an observation: I can't recall ever seeing a fat man in a lumber camp. Despite eating three large meals a day the physical demands of a lumberjack's way of life burned off all the calories. Compare that with today's sedentary way of life with machine aided work and hours spent in front of television and computer screens while consuming copious quantities of junk foods.
No comments:
Post a Comment