A Poor Man’s Dollar
Few people, I being one, realized that sleepers or wooden railroad ties were once a substitute material for stone blocks. In the 1830's a railroad ran out of stone blocks on which to mount the rails, it was then decided to try hewing a substitute material from logs out of the nearby forests. It was soon noticed the wooden sleepers or ties provided a much smoother ride. Stone blocks were abandoned and the wooden railroad tie became a permanent fixture.
As the west was expanded and the railroads followed, a continuous supply of sleepers were needed to not only build new tracks but to repair the existing ones. Missouri forest land was a virtual gold mine creating a whole new industry.
In the earliest times of the 1800's great stands of timber enabled a man to easily “hack” out a living for his family on the hillside close to his cabin. In the Benton County area and any county skirting along the Osage River, the ties were generally taken to the closest tie slide and shoved into the water to be “herded” down stream to old Bagnell. Men, referred to as “river hogs” balanced on the logs and floated with them. It was a dangerous occupation. Many drowned and being permanently wet in all seasons often brought about early deaths from a variety of diseases.
My father and his brothers worked in the ancient tie trade in the late 20's and early 30's. Their father had been a champion tie hacker in his earlier days and often won contests for making the most ties in one day. His biggest competition was always his cousin, Jim Taylor.
My Dad and his brothers, like their father before them, had a special set of tools for their work. It included a cross cut saw that required two men to operate. A double-bit axe, a broad axe, a measuring device called a tie scantling, a horse or preferably a mule for skidding logs and a small quantity of coal oil for removing sticky resin and gum residues from the saw blade. A side note, the coal oil was often used to doctor bites or small cuts incurred on the job.
The noon day meal was packed along in a lard bucket or sometimes a large galvanized milk bucket. Sometimes they would bring a mason jar with buttermilk to soak up leftover pieces of cornbread or biscuits. The noon meal could consist of beans, fried pork or fried squirrel and along with the bread might have an onion or a small jar of molasses to be spread on the now stale bread. Large stone water jugs were filled at the spring on the way to the woods and wrapped in burlap bags to keep them as cool as possible.
Keeping anything cool in 1934 was totally impossible in what is still remembered for having record breaking heat. Dad said they never wore socks because they only became drenched in sweat and they often paused to actually pour water from their shoes. When the horse was not available they would often carry the heavy ties out of the distant hollers on their shoulders to be placed on a wagon to be taken to either Cole Camp or Stover. The tie slides had become a part of history when they closed the gates on Bagnell Dam in February 1931, making the Osage River no longer free flowing.
Now the ties were hauled with great difficulty to town and the railroad depots. There were long steep hills to be traversed and at one time there was a route that skirted the base of the steep hill just NE of Boylers Mill on F hwy. Dad said it was known as the “tie trail” because it was chiefly used by the tie hauler wagons.
Railroad ties were eight feet, six inches long while switch ties would range from nine to sixteen feet long. Those were usually cut on special orders. By the time my father and his siblings were struggling to “make a buck” the quality trees were hard to find. Dad told me that trees had to be free of rot and holes. Holes in a tie resulted in deceit by some tie hackers. The tie yards would not buy them so a limb from the same tree was used to create a plug which was driven into the hole. The plug would be hewed off and sometimes have a large amount of dirt rubbed into the area, disguising the flaw.
The hand hewing of ties was doomed to become a lost art as a small, efficient sawmill was being developed. That meant the loss of jobs on a nation wide scale. The numbers were estimated in the early 1900's at 60,000 to 70,000 men hewing ties. Not all of them were full time timber workers but some often supplemented their Ozark farm incomes with marketing ties. It was estimated that an additional 50,000 men worked at collecting, drying, stacking along with distribution and sales. Nevertheless the small affordable sawmills were developed and soon ended the hand hewing of wooden sleepers.
My dad and his contemporaries were the last of a breed here in the Ozarks. Their ancestors had migrated across the country from Virginia and the Carolinas. The expertise in hewing logs for a cabin and out buildings was turned to a salable skill in producing ties for the railroad industry. Thus, enabling my father and his kin to make a poor man’s dollar.
