After I had graduated from the eighth grade I decided I would go and get me a job on the railroad. It was a logging road that went from Wood and Iversons Mill to their logging operations on Tiger Mountain. They had about twenty five miles of track to keep up. The morning I told my folks that I was going to work, my father looked at me and said, “Don’t you think you ought to stay home this summer and try it next year?” I said, “No, I am going now”.

I think why he would rather I stay home was because I was quite small. I didn’t weigh over 130 lbs., but that didn’t deter me. I left early enough so I could see the foreman before the crew left the mill. His name was Andy Rooney. Everyone called him Andy. He was in his sixties, about 5 feet 6 inches tall but stockily built. He looked like he could have been a power house in his youth. He was still a husky man. I approached him and asked him if he had any work for another hand. He looked me up and down and said, “You’re pretty light, kid! You’re pretty light!” He and the crew were all sitting on a skeleton logging car ready to leave the mill for the woods. The lokie gave a toot and the logging cars began to move. I had hung around because he hadn’t said yes or no, but my hopes were pretty low when he said I was pretty light. However, as the car began to move he waved his arm and said, “Come on, kid”.

I don’t know if he felt sorry for me that I left home with only jeans and a shirt, no cap or hat, and a pair of white worn out tennis shoes. They both had holes in the toes.

The Gods of Fortune must have been with me that morning for the crew had to go load some logging supplies from the head of a mile long spur from the mill that connected with the Pacific Coast main line. It would take about a half hour to load the supplies. In the crew was a man by the name of Henry. I knew him well and his family. He was to become my father-in-law about twenty years later. His small farm was about a quarter of a mile from the spur head. He told me to go tell his wife to put me up a lunch, and find me a pair of loggers shoes and a hat. He said there are several pairs around and some old logger hats. He was like a right-hand man to Andy. So I left on the run, told Mrs. Hanga what I needed and that I only had little time. She got busy, found a lunch pail and sure did fill it. She found shoes, wool socks, and a hat. I was all set. I ran back to the spur where the crew was still loading and got in on the last of it. We left for the woods and rode all the way to the logging camp. That’s where the work was for the day. We had to repair the foundation and stop some leaks in a water tank which served to fill the water tanks on the locomotives of which there were two: a climax and a shay which were built to go up pretty heavy grades.

The tank was a wooden tank about eight feet in diameter, about eight to ten feet high. It had to be high enough on the foundation so that the water would flow by gravity into the water tanks on the locomotives. We used oakum to calk the seams that were leaking and jacked up the tank to level it, and timber and large blocks of timber to make a solid foundation. We also had to level the track alongside the tank so that the water tanks on the blocks would be level. The leaking tank had softened the track bed so it had sunk and was out of line. We had to divert the overflow from the tank away from the track so it wouldn’t happen again.

That was a long first day for me. We worked 12 hours to get the work done. After eight hours we had a break for dinner. We ate with the loggers at the cook shack and what a meal!! There was beef steak, mashed potatoes, brown gravy, and for vegetables there was corn, peas, carrots, and a combination salad. On the table was catsup, 2 or 3 different kinds of steak sauce, and a variety of pickles – also white and dark bread. For dessert there was apple, raisin, and blackberry pie. There was also coffee or tea to drink. There was two lady flunkies, loggers slang for waitresses who saw to it that anything empty was replaced. Most loggers are fast eaters- finished in about 15 to twenty minutes. We had an hour for dinner break. After eating I overheard a couple of loggers saying what lousy grub they had to put up with. I thought that was rather strange as I thought it was an elegant meal. I found out later though that if a logger didn’t complain about food or something he wasn’t much of a logger either. It was the nature of the beast. After our dinner break we went back to work. It took us four more hours to finish the job.

I wondered why they didn’t get some of the loggers to help as it was a long evening. I found out when I became more understanding of loggers, that they would rather be caught dead than caught working on the railroad. They had a certain pride of being what they were. They had held one lokie and a train loud of logs and one empty flat car back so we could ride back to the mill. On the way in I looked back on the day. It had been good…

I thought the money sure is rolling in. I had made six dollars for the day’s work. It did look big for a fourteen year old who had never worked for wages before. My folks had worried about me when I hadn’t come home somewhere near the quitting time, but I told them about my day and everyone was happy. The next day we worked on a section of track replacing ties and lining track. Andy was a man of few words and lots of grunts. Half words or half grunts, I would say. When we lined track we had iron bars which we inserted under the rails- spaced apart to pry with. Andy would get down on his knees and look down the rails, say something and grunt. When Andy grunted we heaved on the bars and the track would move. If Andy stayed down we would go through the same performance. When he got up we knew the track was lined to his satisfaction. Then we tamped the ties with dirt around them so they would stay in place.

One day I got quite a surprise. We were all working tamping ties and I thought everyone was doing his job except Andy. Maybe a bee stung him. He came along and started throwing all the tools over the railroad grade, even the ones we were working with. Henry managed to help him with the last few. After he got rid of the tools he walked up the grade and was gone about a half hour. When he came back he threw all the tools back on the track with a little help from Henry, he was the only one that could do that. When the tools were back on the grade we picked up what we had been working with and went to work, not a word or grunt from Andy. Henry told me that was Andy’s way of showing his displeasure with the work. I don’t know whether Andy liked me or felt sorry for me because I was only a kid, but I rather think he liked me. I didn’t shirk the work and held my own pretty well with the rest of the crew. Andy appointed me water boy. We had two canvas water bags. They held about a gallon each. Sometimes the water was close by, other times it could be a mile away. There were many small streams and springs along the right-of-way. I never really wasted much time on my trips. Sometimes I would sit a few minutes by a stream or spring and enjoy the coolness of the stream or spring and get my fill of cold refreshing water. When someone else would take the bags, Andy would stop them, point at me or tell them with a grunt added that the kid goes. When we were spiking rails he would hold the spike maul. He would let out a slight grunt. I didn’t know if it was for approval or just general emphasis. The great spirit must have been watching over me because I never got hit in the hand or head. I would say he had a lot of trust or was foolish. He never helped anyone else start their spikes, they had to start their own.

One day we were working on the tracks at a log dump, where the logs went into the mill pond. Someone noticed Andy was missing. We looked around and there was Andy floating in the pond. He had on a pair of logger’s pants and coat. They were called tin pants because they were heavy dark cloth. His hat was the same material. It too was floating on the water. He looked kind of odd in the water – his coat was rounded out like a balloon. He wasn’t struggling or trying to help himself. It seemed like the buoyancy of his clothes was holding him up. Henry was the first to reach him and started to haul him to shore. By that time some of us were able to help to get him on the bank and lay him down. He sputtered and spit some of the pond out, and we knew he was breathing so we let him alone. In a few minutes he got up and started down the track with a few grunts, and we knew that Andy was going to make it. He lived about a half mile from the log dump. He was gone about an hour, and then he was back on the job. When Andy was home the woods foreman came by and was told that Andy nearly drowned, but Henry pulled him out of the pond. He looked at Henry and said, “Why didn’t you push him under a little further and let the son-of-a-bitch drown?” and walked away. Why the bad understanding with him and Andy I never did quite find out, but it seems to have been over a certain section of track where the logging cars had derailed while loaded.

Andy must have had nine lives. About a month later we were working the tracks near the mill on a high trestle that crossed a creek and a canyon. It was about sixty feet from the rails to the bottom. Somehow or other Andy slipped and fell off the trestle. He never let out a grunt or a yell – just silence. For a little bit we hesitated to look over the edge. We were sure he was splattered all over the place. There were stumps and logs and timber at the bottom. He couldn’t possibly miss them, but he did. There was a small open space in the swamp, and that’s where he landed. It was soft gooey mud. When we looked over there was Andy pulling his feet out of the mud and kind of brushing his pants. Henry and I made our way to him. He was going to come back on the job, but Henry convinced him he should report to the office. We walked with him to the office to see that he got there. The bookkeeper said he had better go to the hospital. At that Andy put up a fuss but finally consented when told it was best because of the industrial insurance. The bookkeeper drove him to Renton to the hospital about sixteen miles away. They kept him overnight and checked him for injuries. They found nothing but a few bruises. The next day about noon Andy was back.

Meantime Henry had been in charge of the crew. When I got my first paycheck I paid my folks $30. A month for board and bought a pair of long pants, my first long pants that I had ever owned. My folks had bought me a nice suit but the pants were knickers so I was determined never to wear knickers again. That fall I bought myself a suit with long pants before entering high school. The knicker suit was given to a neighbor boy who could sorely use it. He was pleased to have it.

That summer I learned to replace ties, tamp ties, cut grass, and to spike ties to rails, learned what a dutchman was, fish plates, frogs, switches, and how to be a water boy. That ended my career as a gandy dancer, as section hands were called. The next summer I went to work in the sawmill. I enjoyed that summer as a section hand and the important lesson I learned was how to grunt.

The last day I worked Andy asked me if I was coming back next summer. I said I didn’t know. He said, “You got a job if you come back.” We shook hands and departed friends.