Harmon’s Histories: 98 years of classic backwoods tales from Jack Puckett

By Jim Harmon

My good friend Jack Puckett turned 98 years old last month. He is such a great storyteller.

Jack (given name, John V. Puckett) was born in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania on April 18, 1927, entered the U.S. Navy in 1945 (serving briefly on a destroyer in the South Pacific) and in 1950 graduated from Penn State with a degree in Forestry.

For the next 32 years, Jack worked for the U.S. Forest Service in north Idaho and Montana. Along the way he encountered, or heard about, a variety of backwoods characters like “The Norwegian,” “Swede John,” “Old George,” and “Rastus Reed.”

I included a couple of Jack’s stories in my book, The Sneaken’est Man That Ever Was about characters of the olden days.

Jack said of Old George, “He was cooking for the camp at Moose creek - in the nude. They told him to put something on. So, he donned a hat!”

Many of Jack’s stories involved characters called “cedar makers,” “cedar savages” or “cedar beasts.”

“To understand what a cedar maker is,” Jack said, “you have to understand what the character of the land is.”

“In north Idaho and a part of western Montana, particularly up around Libby, there are white pine forests, which contain cedar (the climax tree in a white pine forest). But cedar wasn't the desired lumber species at that time.”

“The cedar did have some value, though, because of one characteristic: it didn't rot very easily. Telephone poles and power poles were made from cedar at that time. Nowadays, they make them out of cement, even.”

“Back in the day,” said Jack, “those who worked in the woods were older men, probably in their fifties. And they didn't seem to have families. They were lone individuals.”

“In the Priest Lake Ranger district, in northern Idaho, there was a picture on the wall in the ranger station of men identified as ‘cedar savages’ or ‘cedar beasts,’ who cut posts. Each man lived in an individual shack or cabin - most of them, portable shacks.

“Pole companies would hire these fellas. There would be only one cedar maker on a timber sale, maybe sometimes two. But if there were two, they lived in separate cabins. Neither one liked the other one very well, until they got the town - then they were buddies.”

“They would work until they made enough money to go to town. Then they’d blow their pay and be back to work in a few days or week and then, go out again.”

“It was my job, at times, to go up and scale the logs, measure the poles, and count the posts. The pole company was charged accordingly and they, then, paid these guys whatever it took to get them to work.”

Now, the cedar beasts weren't the cleanest type of individuals that you might want to meet.

Jack recalled, “One guy's name was Mel Coolander. One of the first times I went up to talk to him and scale up his stuff, he had an old Hudson car he was trying to crank and get going. He says, get in there and pullout that throttle when I turn the crank.”

“After we had the car revved up and going, he says, ‘What you need is a cold drink. Now knowing him, I figured it was probably beer. So we go up to his shack and in the middle of the floor is a tub of beer.”

“But, he says, I have the best spring in the county and I'm going to make you a glass of Koolaid. So he fished around in the dish pan and he found this old greasy cup and he put some Koolaid in there with some of this great spring water and he handed it to me.”

“It almost slipped out of my hand. Now, do you make the guy mad by refusing to drink it? Not I. I swilled it down gravely. And I decided maybe I didn't need to count too many polls that day.

“Another time I went up to see him and count his cedar poles, as well as deliver his mail. That day it was snowing and it was a kind of cold. He had the door open. The stove was going full bore and he was washing his shirt.”

“Now, he had his sleeves rolled up and you could see how far he'd had his arm in the water on there. There's a watermark on his arm.

“He had hamburger cooking on top of a stove - literally on the stove top; no pan or anything. The juice were running off and down the side of the stove. I was afraid he was gonna ask me stay for lunch. And I decided maybe I just leave his mail and go.”

“One time, the district ranger became concerned about one of the cedar beasts, who hadn’t come out of the back country for some time. So the ranger and his assistant decided to snowshoe in, and see what was going on. They got to the cabin and it was all quiet around there.”

“They opened the door and the old cedar maker is there, sitting at the table, slumped over, dead! He'd apparently been there for some time. So the alternate ranger says to the ranger, ‘What are we going to do now?’”

The ranger, as Jack told the story, contemplated the question for a moment, then calmly drawled, “‘I don't know about you,” as he pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, but, ‘I'm going to eat my lunch!’

Thanks for those great stories, and happy 98th birthday, Jack.

We look forward to celebrating your 99th and 100th birthday, and more!