A BRAG LOAD
by John Hyland

At one time I worked way up in the woods by Campbellton. I believe it was about 1926. It seemed that half the men from the Miramichi were working up there for a spell. I worked for Shrives Company. The railway traveled along the Restigouche River and we would jump on the train to buy cigarettes. It didn't go very fast there and you could jump on, buy some smokes and jump off again. Of course we were young and smart on our feet.One winter I had the job of loading logs on the sleds. The teamsters took the loads of logs out to the river and in the spring we drove them down stream to the mills. One day I put on a load of one hundred and three logs. When Ben Underhill, the boss, heard how big a load I built he came and asked me if it was true. I told him it was and he commented, "That's a mighty big load of logs and it's the nicest load I ever seen built."
A day or two later he came back and told me to build a really big load. He wanted me to get real serious and build a record load. I was to be head man. He gave me three men and we set to work. Two of the men were brothers from Barnaby River. One of the brothers was Ed Casey and the other was Pat Casey.
We took our time and picked our logs. We didn't use any big logs. We only picked out those that were about seven or eight inches across.
My uncle, Jerry Kalian, had built an extra heavy set of bob-sleds with fourteen foot rockers and we built our load on it. The big rockers allowed us to build an extra wide load. In order to get a lot of logs on the sled she had to be piled straight up and square as a die. We put the logs one on top of the other and made sure there were none resting between the two logs beneath them. After that we used cross chains on every third tier and made them as tight as we could.
When we were finished we had three hundred and fifty sticks of Timber on that sled! Up to that time Ontario had the record. They loaded three hundred and five logs. They said it was supposed to be a world record. We beat them by forty five logs! We had to bang the runners with our axes to help the horses get the sled
started.
The weight of the load bad the runners stuck to the ice. It only took one team of horses to pull it out to the river. We used the best team that Shrives owned and they pulled that sled over a mile out to the landing. They took a picture of that load with the teamster up on top. The picture was in the Campbellton newspaper. I had a copy of it but my sister cleaned out tile drawer one day and burnt it. I don't believe anyone ever beat us. I'm one hundred and one years old and up 'till
now I never beard of anyone doing so.

MEMORIES FROM MY PAST
by John Holland
( 101 years young)

LOST IN THE WOODS
I was seventeen years old maybe when I got lost in the woods. I was on the drive and decided to take a short cut through the woods. I thought I was heading for the Seville River but I came out on the Nor' West River. When I backtracked to where I started from I made another wrong turn somewhere's. Again I landed up at the Nor' West! At last I started whooping! There was two fellahs out on the Seville and they answered me. They brought me out. I wasn't really scared but I would have had a long way to go down around. I don't think I could get across the river. I made her out though!

THE DIRTY THIRTYS
The dirty thirty's were dirty all right. The depression was a terrible time. People in the country weren't so bad off. They could raise a little grub of their own. I don't know how the people in the cities lived. They had no ground at all. And if people needed the dole ••.••. they didn't want to give anyone the dole. You couldn't sell a cord of nothing. You couldn't even sell a load of logs. I used to cut some props but I couldn't sell a stick. I'd shave a cord of pulp with an old draw knife for eighty cents. You couldn't shave a cord in a day. It was almost a two day job. Forty cents a day is pretty small pay.

THE CARIBOU
I only saw a caribou the once. The boss brought it to the camp on a tether. I think he snared it or something. There was something wrong with it. I think it was sick. We kept it awhile and then set it free. That would be a long time ago. I was a young man •••.• maybe twenty or so. It was before the first war. That was
only caribou I ever saw.

MY ANCESTORS
My father was William and my mother was Lila Hallihan. He was born on the family homestead up Red Bank way and she came from in Renous River. The
Hylands were Irish. They landed in Chatham or Newcastle and poled up the river in a canoe. They pitched a tent for the night and when they looked the place
over in the morning ..... they liked what they saw and decided to stay right there. They just stopped for the night and it was a nice place on the bank of the river. They built their house on that spot!My father lived his life there and I lived there until I moved to town twenty four years ago.

A LONESOME JOB
I tended gate about ten miles up the Mullen Stream Road for seven or eight years. I was all alone on that job. I was on call fifteen hours a day. When people came I had to let them through. The gate belonged to Frasers Company. After 9:00 P.M. I could charge an)'one a dollar for opening the gate and keep the money for myself. I didn't get too many dollars! I could never leave the gate. They were afraid somebody would go in and break into the camps or steal the men's equipment. On Fridays all the woodsmen would go out for the weekend and then there would be no one in there but me. It was a terrible lonesome job.

THE SPANISH FLU
I was awful sick with that flu. Some others in my family took it but we didn't die from it. It was in the fall of the year. They didn't quarantine our house. We were lucky!People died from that flu everywhere. The next year I went up to Campbellton to work in the woods. Six men died in that camp the winter before.

MY FIRST CAR
I bought my first car in 1924 and I drove one until I was ninety three years old.

MARRIAGE
I didn't seem to want to get married ...... for whatever the reason. I waited too long ....... maybe.

NED TRAVIS' GHOST
by John Hyland
Well now, I think I did see a ghost one time. I was only about ten years old then but the memory has stayed with me all this time. Right now I'm a hundred and one years old. There was an old man below where I lived whose name was Ned Travis. He used to make axe handles and peavey stocks in his house. He had no family much but some relation of his, by the name of Sara Travis, stayed with him. He was an old man and he died. I used to go in and do odd jobs and stuff for him and when he died he left an axe handle for me. One spring of the year when all the men were on the drive I was down the road. When I came back up there was a short man walking ahead of me. I didn't go bandy him. He had a pair of coveralls on. I remember that the coveralls were scraping on the road as he walked. When I got up to my place he had disappeared! I couldn't find him! He might of gone down in the drean or hid on me or something. I never knew what become of him. H might have been the old fellow, ya know.

A FISH EATING DEER
by AI Irving
We had crown reserve waters up at The Depot one time. Danny McCormick, Peter Baldwin, Bobby Stymiest and myself. We were fishing there for three
days and the fishing was real good.
Everyone caught a grilse or two and we put them in a little pool of water surrounded with rocks and covered up with some ferns. Anyway, we kept on fishing and when we come back up to go to the truck there's this deer standing right over our fish. We continued walking on thinking the deer would run away but it didn't. When we got a bit closer we threw some rocks at it.
We hit it two or three times before it took off and even then it only went about twenty feet or so into the bushes. It just turned around and stood there looking at us. We looked at it a minute or two and talked about why it didn't seem to be afraid of us. Then we went and picked up the grilse and noticed these big chunks bitten right out of the sides of the fish. We thought it was pretty strange but it had to have been the deer! But whoever heard of a deer eating fish?
It had to be. There were no otters or anything around. There was no other explanation for it. Who would believe it? But why was the deer there by the fish? And why didn't it run away? Especially after we hit it with the rocks. Maybe the deer was after the ferns but there were lots of ferns growing all around the place. Maybe there was a salt taste on the fish. Deer love salt. But a deer eating fish! Hard to imagine, eh?
Later that day some wardens came into our camp. Stephen Savoy from Loggieville, an Adams lad from Newcastle and a couple of other fellers we didn't know. As we were sitting around talking I told Peter to tell them the story about the deer and the fish. After Peter filled them in on what took place with the deer eating the fish one of the lads, he was a warden from Blackville, said, "Boys oh boys, young feller, you're some lucky that wasn't a moose. If that had been a moose he would have et the whole fish." Then they laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
..
PERLEY'S GATES
We were paddling down the river
And we stopped at Perley's gates
For Black Douglas, as we know him
Said you were one of his mates

The day was spitting rain
But we didn't give a care
We were troutin' and a' talkin'
And a fillin' up our spare

Dougie cooked a mess of stew
That Flo would quite disown
But it went down rather nicely
In two boys that's overgrown

Then Dougie handed me this book
An' says, "You'd best get writin' "
For writing is me trade
Though I know that his is fightin'

So I'm filling up this page
With a verse or two for Perley
Cause there's saw blades on his walls
And some references to girlies

We had a beer or two
And will continue on our way
Where the salmon all come cheap
And men chop logs for pay

Where the Miramichi waters
Go a winding to the sea
Where a man can stop for lunch
Or just to do a pee

Here's looking at you Perley .•.

August 19,1975
John
A. Jones, Australia

THEY SPIKED HIS BOOTS TO A TREE
The legend goes that whenever a log driver was killed on The Drive his friends would nail his boots to a tree near the place where his body was recovered. These are the words of three old drivers who saw evidence of this type of a woodsman's memorial.
by Paul Kingston
He walked out on this landing in the early morning. It was a great big high landing. Just as he walked out on 'er she give way. The whole pile of logs give way and took him out into the river. They said no logs hit him. He must have struck a rock because he never came up. He drowned. They found his body without much trouble. He didn't go far down the river. They drug him ashore by a big spruce tree. They spiked his boots to the tree. His name and the date he was killed was carved into the tree. They left them there and they rotted....• rotted right off the tree. Nobody never touched them. No, I never seen them but I heard people talk about them. I believe it happened up at Mullen Stream. I believe he was working with Sinclair's crew. Hayden was his name, Clarence Hayden, ya. Or was it Billy Hayden?

by Elliot Dunnett
The place where Billy Hayden got drowned is now called Hayden Landing. It's about three or four miles above the mouth of Mullen Stream. But they didn't find him there nor did they find him right away. He probably drowned sometime in April but they never found his body until away on into the middle of the summer.
They had a lot of men looking for him. Every jam they picked off on that drive they expected to find him but he never come up. He drifted down Mullen Stream, passed by Square Forks, out the Sevogle, into the Nor West by Jim Matchet's and down past Johnston's bridge. Tyler Astles found him between the bridge and Sunny Corner.

by John
Godfrey•

I couldn't tell ya them men's names but I seen the boots. Ya, I seen them. There was several pair nailed up to the one tree. It was at what they called Deadman's Turn on the Little Sou' West. That's what they called it in my day. They got sluiced on a logjam. See, they couldn't get off her when she let go. Well, they weren't all drowned at the same time. They were drowned at different years. The uppers were all gone on one pair when I seen them. Ya know ... all wasted away. I never heard the names of the men.

by John Hyland
I seen where a man drowned and they hung his boots on a tree. It was at the foot of the North Pole Falls where he got drowned. The logs were coming over the falls and one come in behind him and took him right ont into the river. He didn't go far. He run into a jam of logs and stayed there. They found him without too much trouble. They buried him there in two pork barrels. They couldn't get him down at that time of year. They buried him and came back up later on and took him home for a proper burial. I wasn't there at the time of the accident but I seen the boots on the tree. They shifted the boots around. When the tree with the boots on them died somebody shifted them to another tree. There were three or four nice big tall spruce trees there and they were all dead. Every spring I drove that stream I saw those boots!