Transcript

Location: 1218 Copeland Park Dr.

Howard Fredricks (interviewer): What about the robbing of the logs by one to another?

William Koch: They, uh, you see, they had the river pirates, see, we had—they called the river pirates, and they were. They—they were river pirates—they didn’t do anything else! They were lazy bums, you know, that hover around the river and they’d steal logs! *laughter* And then they’d go and sell them. Any mill would buy a log that was—that was brought to them, you know. If the party said, “Well, I found this log and it was floating.” Any logs that were found floating were the property of the man that found ‘em! And you could sell it to anybody you wanted, any mill you wanted. If—if, uh, one of these pirates got a lotta logs—got some logs that he stole out of a brail and didn’t want to haul ‘em way down to John Paul, he’d take ‘em right there to Row’s or Trow’s. Many of ‘em were sold to Row’s and Trow’s, I remember, ‘cause they were centrally located, see. And they’d—they’d come up there and sell ‘em! And, uh, because—it was, uh, free for grabs! You know, anybody could find ‘em floatin’. Why, you’d be surprised how many logs were found floating! You know, and there were always floaters, there wasn’t anything else! *laughter*

But they’d go up into West—I remember one time in the—in East Channel, up in the East Channel, they stored a lot of logs. And there was a fellow—I’m going to mention his name because he’s dead and I think all his people are gone—uh, Ike Diamond. He was one of them. *laughter* He—and he, uh, and he was one of these crew that—they’d go up there, you know, and what they would do is get—and they had some pike poles, you know, and they’d—the night time! They’d go there in the night time! And they’d push logs down, you know, underneath the brail-log, you know, push it out so it would float! And then they’d go and hook ‘em and they’d tie ‘em in a string! They’d tie them in a string, you know, and—one behind the other, see? They’d have a metal peg with a short piece of rope about a foot long, between the two metal pegs, they would drive down in a log. They’d drive one in one end of the log, the other one in the other end of the log and they’d keep on—maybe they’d have eight, ten logs, one strung behind the other. And then they’d fasten it to the boat and then with a couple of pair of oars, they’d go down the river, go to the sawmill and peddle their floatin’ logs. The logs—they all floated! See? 

And that’s the way they did it! And there wasn’t anything much you could do about it. Except I remember, uh, there was an article in the paper where—where one of these steamboats, uh—one of these companies, they had somebody planted up there in—in East Channel and them fellows got a lot of buckshot! *laughter* They—they were out there shoving logs out! And that kind of put, uh—straightened things out for a little while. You know. And, uh, that was one instance—but oh yeah, there was a lot of logs storing like that! And then sometimes, uh, these fellows would really have a field-day when a brail broke! You know sometimes through bad weather, windy weather there’d be a peg that was defective, you know, one of those brail pegs, you know, that held the logs together to hold the logs all into a certain spot? Uh, it would break, and the goll doll brail would be comin’ down the river. And all them would be havin’ a field-day then, you know to get out there and they’d get all the logs they could get together and haul ‘em to a mill and it was theirs. That happened occasionally. Not too often though, because they were usually—they were pretty careful about how they made those brails because there was a lot of money involved, you know, there with the brail o’ logs!