Jim Page, of Skullbone, Gives Logging Experience
by John David Dowland
Told by Page on Jan. 30, 1943

    Mr. Jim Page worked at logging for 18 years!  He drove steers and mules and loaded logs.  He lost his boat, although he "hollered" for help, though it was sinking.  He was loading a train car and a log car down and broke his arm.  In the summer they would "bank" logs, so when the water got out they would float them.  They slept in tents during cutting and "banking".  In driving steers he would go from one side to the other like driving a buggy.

    He hauled logs from Clinton, Kentucky to Bolivar, Tennessee.  One day he was driving and his boss "got on him" and made him "pull over", and an "off steer" fell on him, and he had the "lead" yoke pull the boss out.

    Mr. Page worked from Hart's Mill to Lynn Point.  He began at 45 cents a day and after 18 years, quit at $1.90 per day, from 4 in the morning till 8 at night, or 17 hours a day!  Start at 9 at night to beat some one to a bed in tent, otherwise, wait up all night and take turn.

    He had a steer that wasn't broke and got its head hung behind a tree.  But he broke it by putting it with the other yoke.  He whipped it until he "mite near" killed it before he could get it trained.

    Sometimes when the logs were floating, they would get jammed and they would have to break them.  They would start at the middle of the jam.  After he got his arm broke, the car showing how to load them.  They told him to "lay off", but he didn't, so they caught him and laid him off.  But he "drawed" until he said he would quit.  One time they sent him with a load of "charged" logs.  He had four barrels of it.  He unloaded two of them at Panther Springs, at Bearport, and they asked him where the other to barrels were and he told them that they were down in a deep muddy hole in the river, that they "got away" from him.