By RONALD LIVERSEDGE
Member Local 1-80, IWA

WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

WHISTLE-PUNK'S LAMENT

A hail, and a farewell, to that dying specie of the woods, “the Punk” — and a “skol” to the Stan-
field-enclosed rigging slinger, who now from falling hands takes up the (“radio”) bug, and who will cer-
tainly earn, the “hard way”, every cent of that extra buck a day which he will get for the taking up.

The old chap is well known in the
community, on his walks down town,
to do his bit of shopping, to pick up
his “micky” at the vendor’s, spry and
neatly dressed, he doesn’t look his
age, but then of course why should
he? He has a soft touch, he’s a
whistle punk—-sits with his rear end
anchored to a stump all day, send-
ing in the signals—the easiest job in
the woods!

It has always been a source of
deep amazement to me, the old punk,
who writes this little saga, that
people who should know better,
have this misconception about the
job of whistle punk. Almost to a
man, the non-workers in the village,
storekeepers, merchants, doctors, in-
surance, junior chamber boys, etc.,
all share this myopia, in re the punk.

On the village street, the pattern
of greeting is almost standard. I

The plunge down the sidehill was
literally a series of plunges, for on
this black, frozen morning (at this
time of the year it is about an hour
after starting time before even the
' grey dawn starts breaking) it was
necessary to step cautiously. The two
feet or more of new snow on top of
the recent old stuff was frozen suffi-
ciently to maintain the bodily weight
for two, three, or even four steps,
before the inevitable break-through,
the plunge ending with one foot at
the bottom of a three foot hole,
caught in a bunch of criss-cross
limbs, and the other leg caught way
up on a knot on the top of a two-
and-a-half foot fir log. Spreadeagled,
I think, is the term used to describe
this position.

The terrific physical effort to re-
gain equilibrium, and the fresh start
down. By this time the cotton mon-
keyfaced gloves, which were satur-

meet a white-aproned form in the
door of a store, or a business-suited
form on the street, and the cheerful,
sincere greeting is heartwarming, so
much so, that I end up with a guilt
complex, wondering why I am not
enthusiastic about my job.

“Ah there, old-timer, long time no
see, have you been working?” “Well,
yes, Bill, I managed to get a couple
of months on the whistles.” “Oh,
good, old chap, I’m sure glad to hear
it. It’s wonderful that there are easy
jobs like that for guys of your age.
Whistle punk eh? Good show, old
chap, b’seeing you.”

Laying here in bed, the night be-
fore Xmas, with a fever, and the flu,
nursing three frozen fingers gained
blowing whistles up on the mountain
last week, in two feet of very, very
cold snow, I wonder. Drinking rum
to kill the flu, rum bought with that

“FALLS, STUMBLES AND SWAN DIVES"

ated in the first half-minute of this
trip, are now frozen iron hard, and
have to be discarded. The rest of the
trip down is carried out in a series of
such falls, stumbles, swan dives, and
slides. Sometimes I am sliding down
on my back, trying to brake with my
heels, and sometimes I am sliding
on my belly, trying to brake with
my toes, and hoping that no obstacle
is sticking up to tear from my ana-
tomy certain parts which I still have
a regard for.

Eventually I arrive at the end of
the whistle wire, with the bug
attached, and then that incredible
trip back, up that almost perpendicu-
lar sidehill, commences, gathering up
the whistle wire on the way. The
whistle wire was solidly frozen into
the snow, and every ice-spangled
inch of the thousand feet had to be
wrenched from its frozen-in position
by bare hands, and draped in coils

easily earned dough up on the moun-
tain, on that soft touch, I wonder
some more.

The three frozen fingers, which
now merely tingle at the tips and
have left me with the inability to
pick up small objects, were acquired
on routine “punk” work. It was
necessary for me, one cold, black
morning recently, just before the
winter soltice, to plunge at starting
time from the landing, down the
sidehill, to pick up my whistle wire
(about a thousand feet of it), coil it
around my neck, up to the machine,
and then branch out in another di-
rection, laying down the wire, so as
to come out above, and closer to,
the rigging crew (two men), where I
would be able to see all, and hear all,
and send in the proper signals.
Everything safety first and snug, and
hunky dory.

around my neck. The trip back was
slow, as the weight of the accumu-
lated wire caused me to_ break
through the snow crust at every step.

I finally made the landing, pant-
ing and exhausted, with no feeling in
any of my fingers, but with the sweat
pouring down my chest and back, in-
side the Stanfields, thinking with
some anxiety about the reaction
when I finally got to where I was
heading, and would have to stand
for some hours in the freezing
weather with my body heated up and
lathered with sweat.

This is a problem of a whistle
punk’s job, which nobody has ever
been able to solve. How much
clothes to wear. The amount neces-
sary to wear when one is standing
in one place, sometimes for hours,
is too much when moving, especi-
ally under conditions as the ones
just described.

“HULLABALLOO ON IN THE RHUBARB"

The uninitiated will say, why not
discard some outer garments when
moving and resume them when in a
fixed position; but the uninitiated do
not say how to get back to where
the garments were discarded. A punk
is like a prisoner, in leg irons, his
movements are restricted. He is an-
chored to the bug at the end of the
whistle wire. He is not paid to wan-
der around the mountains picking up
discarded garments.

His job is to be at all times, there
at the end of the whistle wire, with
the bug in his hand, sending in sig-
nals to the engineer, which will keep
the rigging moving and logs moving
to the landing. Therein lies the profit;
nothing else is considered in the
woods except logs, and there is no
profit in logs laying out in the bush.
They have to be on the landing,
loaded on trucks, and on their way
to the dump.

While sneaking a short rest on the
landing to recover my breath and get
my second wind, so to speak, before
starting out on the second part of
my journey, and cogitating on my
luck in holding down such a sine-
cure—a soft touch—I become aware
of a bloody hullaballoo going on out
in the rhubarb, in the direction of
“fair lead”, the rigging slinger and
the chokerman becoming impatient.

I catch the words, merely because
I know them by heart, having heard
them with slight variations a thous-
and times or more. “Where the
h---’s the g-- d-- punk, let’s have the
rigging, let's have her, where’s the
bloody punk. Blow the shocking
whistle, Shock me, do we have to
wait here all day .. .” and so on,
ad infinitum. This doesn’t raise my
temperature, for, calmly and dis-
passionately I'm replying under my
breath, “Shock you too, you'll shock-

ing well wait until I shocking well
get there, now how do you like that.”
Now it’s axiomatic in the woods,
when the machine breaks down, or
when the landing is such that yard-
ing has to be suspended while load-
ing the truck, or that yarding opera-
tions are temporarily suspended for
any other technical reason, that the
rigging crew accept this situation
quite philosophically. They sit down
on a log or stump and start telling
yarns, tail yarns. Sex to you, for it
is also axiomatic that loggers do
their love making in the woods and
their logging in the beer parlors.
The exception to this philosophical
attitude towards a suspension of
Operations is when the suspension is
due to whistle trouble, and then
everybody on the claim deem it their
right and privilege to howl curses
and foul vituperation at the punk.

THE RANGITANGS

"You have excellent qualifications as a bull cook—P.F. man, whistle punk, mule

skinner and a donkey puncher for a steam pot, Mr. Grabowski—however .
—Courtesy Vancouver Sun and Len Whalen

“

culating towards evening. It’s an
occupational hazard. Anyhow I will
have to try and get a bit of fire go-
ing. Try to scoop out a place with
my feet until I get the snow moved,
probe around under the snow with
one hand to see if I can find any-
thing that will burn, try between
turns to whittle some kindling, for
the show must go on, and the boys
will need a bit of fire at noon to dry
out the gloves and toast the sand-
wiches.

There’s nothing to this whistle
punk job, it’s a pipe, a cinch, a sine-
cure. All you have to do is to know,
for every second of every minute,
every minute of every hour, the
whole long, long day, what’s going
on, on every square inch of the
whole operation. You never know

There used to be six of us out
there, and there used to be three
guys on the landing, in place of the
one today, but thank god for the
benefit of technical advancement.
Mechanization has emancipated
three guys from the rigging crew,
and at least two guys from the land-
ing. They are enjoying the benefits
of unemployment insurance, or, if
that has run out, they enjoy the bene-
fits of a life of ease, just looking for
a job.

And now it’s my turn to be eman-
cipated. Already the radio whistles
are in use on many operations, not
quite perfect yet, the rigging slinger
operating the thing for one hundred
cents a day extra. Sometimes work-
ing fine, sometimes, due to accident,

“THE END OF AN ERA”

when you might get a yo-yo from
the landing, from the back end, from
any place on the setting. Keep away
from the lines, for when they come
down they come down hard, the
whole ton, or tons of them. Watch
out for the crew’s safety, they’re hu-
man too, even if it’s sometimes hard
to visualize.

Anyhow, we’re logging, true, we
are cut down in numbers, because
we are suffering from the benefits of
mechanization. We now have the
tin tree (steel spar), the grapple tongs
(a mobile loader), so that there are
just three of us here in the rhubarb
getting the logs. There is a hook
tender somewhere out at the back
end, moving the spare haul back
block and strap, and looking for a
stump to hang the block on for the
next road.

sending in a premature go-ahead sig-
nal, and causing a desperate, mad
scramble for safety — but in the
main, doing a fairly good job. Now,
General Electric technicians have
finally produced a radio whistle
which is foolproof, and above all,
and most important, is cheap for this
kind of gadget. I believe about half
the price of the original radio whistle,
five hundred dollars. The original
was about fourteen hundred dollars.

This is the end of an era, the de-
mise of the punk in the woods. What
will take his place in the woods as a
chopping block, a safety valve, I
don’t know. I think that Paul Bun-
yan and his blue ox will be disturbed
enough to turn over and cause a
slight earth tremor. I hope so.

“UNEMPLOYED”

Walking, walking . . . anywhere.
Stop where our feet stop, stand and stare.
The cold is our underwear.

Fall never was and spring never comes.
Look out for cops looking out for “bums”.

BY LEN WHALEN

ww

Home is Vancouver slums.

“HARD TO

VISUALIZE CREW

Hope for a handout is happiness here.

This doesn’t mean much, except
hurt feelings to some overly-sensitive

i.

person. T have always thought that

a logging operation, the terrific
ysical demand on the men, the ten-

rigging, and runaway logs,
for a safety valve. This
to a great extent in my

whistle,” then the punk has to be a
very “hep” person in the business to
be genuinely and totally indifferent
to what is being said to him. At any
rate it is quite true that no sensitive
young man, whose dignity is easily
upset, ever lasted more than a day
or so as a punk,

We rest a moment, and then stag-
ger on, laying the wire down as we
g0, up On top of the rock cut, along
the top side of the road, until we
are out of the way of all traffic, and
then down across the road, until we
come out above the operation, and
the rigging crew, a perfect position,
everything under our sight, from the
Janding to the back end. ;

The greeting is effusive. “C-----,
here's the punk, where the shocking

yo-yo (the new signal as per com-
pensation board.) I comply, yo-yo —
yo-yo it is, and back comes the rig-
ging, the chokers for once not
snarled, or fouled up.

Whoa boy, hold her, Down, kid,
down, Prrrrrr. They're no good up
there. Haul back a bit, yo-yo —
Prrrrrr, hold her there, kid; just
right. They wrap them up, a three
log turn, a pause until they get in the
clear, and then go ahead on her, and
she's away, no hang ups, all the way
in, a home run. Oh happy time, we’re
logging, the boss has to eat too.

Back and forth, back and forth,
the round stuff going in to the Jand-
ing, we’ve got to get six loads, skin
her back, whoa, down kid, haul
back, ahead slow, hold her boy.
That's good. They get in the clear,
go ahead on the s-- of a b----!

We're logging. Frozen fingers,
H---, they're just a detail. If I keep
bashing my hand against my leg all

maybe the blood will start cir-

Why do they kick us so, year after year?
Our overcoat is fear.

We are a legion, what they think a list,
Never as lamblike as they would have wished:
Our hearts are a clenched fist.

We are men, what they think are mobs!
Our dreaded voice springs from justice’s sobs:

We Want Jobs!

—Johnny Canuck

Reverse Psychology

Poor attendance at the local union meetings was solved by one president
who used a little reverse psychology. He found that competition from TV,
sports and social activities was a little too much for his membership.

The next meeting notice was the shortest ever sent out by the local:

“Don’t attend. No need to bother. No entertainment, no sex, no drinks.
All we’re going to do is take a strike vote and raise dues.”

Result: the biggest turnout in the local’s history.
Canadian Labour