Memories of Growing Up
John Putnam remembers logging and driving oxen with his father, haying, cutting cordwood and working in a local sawmill in Pisgah at the turn of the twentieth century.

John, what did your dad do for a living?

John Putnam: He never done much of anything. In the winter time, he used to log…oxen, draw logs way in beyond Fullen Pond, one trip a day.

Your father hauled logs all the way from Chesterfield, Fullen Pond, all the way down to that mill? So, on a scoot, he'd have 3 or 4 logs?

Three or four? Probably a couple cord on double runner! Steel runners, ya know. Well, he got paid for drawing these logs. So much a cord, see. Dickerson's. He was working for the Dickerson's. Dickerson paid him for drawing these logs. And, he used to work his oxen around a lot in the summertime plowing different places. Course, he didn't have no horses, he used oxen. I use to drive his oxen for him when he was plowing. He'd hold the plow and I'd drive the oxen.

When you were a youngster?

Yup.

When you got older, what did you do?

Well, I had to start out myself when I was about 15 or 16 yrs old. I done anything I could. I went to work up on a farm here and just a little ways above here, for a dollar a day and my board, driving team. Think of that.

What did you think when you heard Henry Ford was paying $5.00 a day? (Laugh)

Well, I was working over to Marlborough on a farm. World War time (WW1 time) and I I heard that the armasist was signed and my boss, he had an old double barrel shot gun. It was a nice one too. I guess _________ gun. He got out that morning and I found out that the armasist was signed, he took that old gun out ya know and BANGed it. And go to the house and ________broke his finger. (Laughs) But I worked on that farm and I was never more pleased and so happy on a job as when I was there. Oh, one of the nicest men I ever worked for. He used me just the same as if I was his own son, he did. Anything I wanted, I could have. He built me a house to live in.

No, why that was…he had some daughters. (Laughs)

Well, I had six at the time myself. (Laughs) Worked for $12.00 a week, rent, wood, milk. In the wintertime…he had 2 pair of horses all the time, and come one winter, I drawed lumber way up in Roxbury, across the pond on ice. And, another winter, I drawed logs with him. One winter I cut wood. I cut a heck of a lot of wood. We cut it up and sawed it up and then we split it and put it in a big, he had a hell of a big shed… wire all around it, ya know. Cords of it in there, yup. Then come this time, he didn't have a lumber team to do and I had a chance to go to work in the saw mill up in Roxbury. Whitter Pond where the city water comes from. I was offered $7.00 a day and he was milking that night and well… I hadn't been working for him then for oh, quite awhile and I says to him, I says, "I just had an offer for $7.00 a day to go up in the wood to work". 𠇋y God" he says, "I'd take it if I was you". (Laughs) That's the words he said. Because, he says, "I've not a thing for the horses to do this winter". He says, "I'd take it" And that wound me up from there, on the farm.

Is that the first job in the saw mill you had?

Oh, heck no, no. I worked in the saw mill before I ever went there. I worked pretty hard all my life. Doing hard work. Saw mills and them woods, cutting logs, driving team.

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