TALL TREES, TOUGH MEN

Despite its occasional rough language, or even because of it, younger readers also will enjoy this roaringly good history of the now vanished days of the Maine lumberjacks. In the epic days celebrated here, it was man and axe versus timber. And they were giant men, rather proud to do without women. A man cared for his axe like royal cutlery. Pike has a high time recounting tales of camp life, modes of falling trees, hauling timber by ox-team, riding the rivers, and the general strategy of working valleys or up near the timber line. Camps being communities unto themselves, he describes rough and ready medical treatment by camp bosses (some of it quite funny), and the deviltry and horseplay provoked by an hour's idleness. Nostalgia steams out of the chapters as loggers sweat off their morning chill and send up their first cry of ""Timber-r-r.!""... Hickory-smoked vignettes.