Old-Time Loggers Remember When Trees Were Big, Backs Were Strong

SEDRO-WOOLLEY - Jim Hardin's chain saw bites into the log like a knife cutting butter. But he kills the motor about a quarter of the way through.

After all, his logging days are long past. This is just a demonstration.

"I've cut trees 14 to 16 feet (wide) with that thing," he said. "That one's a Cadillac."

The Cadillac is a battered Stihl chain saw and, like Hardin, a veteran of the woods.

At 72, Hardin is a walking history book. Likewise, fellow logger Bob Taylor, 73, has his share of stories. Their tales harken back to a robust timber industry, one where a man's worth was measured by how fast and how long he could stand the "misery whip," or two-man hand saw.

But their era fades as the years pass. Book learning has replaced the importance of a strong back. Trucks traveling the highways carry logs so small they would have been considered scrap in Hardin's day.

"Those were the glory days of logging," said Mike Janicki, vice president of Janicki Logging & Construction. "Those guys lived them.

"Now, it's more of a business. You've got to have an MBA in marketing, a degree in accounting."

Both loggers began their careers when rail lines, not logging roads, laced the back country. The 1930s Depression beat up the finances of all the big mills and they began shutting down their logging camps. Taylor said it was then "gyppo" companies like that owned by his father, Roscoe, made their mark working faster and cheaper.

In 1988, bad knees Hardin attributes to climbing too many trees forced his retirement. He worked for three generations of the Janicki family from Stanley Sr., Stanley Jr. and Mike. Janicki called Hardin "the grandfather of them all."

For 50 years, Hardin did it all. He saw gas replace steam power, trucks replace trains and chain saws replace misery whips.

"I probably topped 50,000 trees," Hardin said.

Vestiges of the woods litter Hardin's weathered barn.

"I got a couple of them misery whips here hanging," he says, climbing over a pile of debris to get at them.

One of the rusty saws measures 10 feet. A touch reveals cutting teeth still sharp enough for two men, or "fellers," to hop on spring boards and take down a tree. The men sawing the trees stood on these boards, which were stuck into notches above the thick base of the tree. That's why many of the old-growth stumps seen today are tall with the notches still visible.

Taylor, a man with massive hands, tackled the misery whip his first day on the job. He was 15 and mostly grown.

Taylor figures he has logged from Tacoma to the Canadian border on top of every one of the mountains in between. He said two big changes in the industry have been what mills consider a good tree and the equipment they use.

"When I started logging, anything without a 12-inch top was a cull," he said. "Now they go to a 2-inch top. That's why on second- and third-generation (harvests) you take out more volume.

"All you took was a nice big log."

Taylor explained that trees with too many limbs, odd coloring or those that were too small were left.

Hardin said many companies made the mistake back in those days of burning clear-cut fields, a practice that sterilized the soil and removed fertilizing components of decomposing woods. They also failed, until the early to mid-1950s, to replant. He said if they logged better in the 1930s and '40s, more old growth would still be around.

"I've always had a theory," Hardin said. "You save your water and your dirt and you can grow any kind of tree you want to in this country."

Hardin would string a cable system capable of lifting logs from one place to another rather than dragging them along the ground. He said setting up the cables took a little longer, but his company never caused any slides or washouts from tearing up the land.

He recalled that back in the steam days, a cable would be attached to even a huge 40-foot log and the steam donkey would yank it back at a clip sometimes as fast as 70 mph - above the ground.

The two loggers have a lifetime's worth of stories to tell. Many of the best, Hardin says, are practical jokes.

Hardin recalled when a foreman told two greenhorns from the South to cut down a tree. He pointed to a misery whip already embedded in a trunk - with the spring boards removed. They didn't know the difference, stuck their feet in the notches and cut it down.

The foreman asked how they did.

The newcomers said: "Pretty good. Pulling that dang saw ain't so bad, it's trying to hang on to the tree that's tough."