• Special to the Journal

He was born in Nashville, Arkansas, February 15 of 1912, to a father who worked for the railroad and moved around. Oscar Bookout, now aged 92 found himself in Winn parish when his father came to Tannehill to drive the train at the sawmill. They moved from mill to mill job. From that time, Bookout has been involved with the timber industry from driving trucks to a woodworking hobby, but mostly by working on big engines like his father did years before.

"I watched Dad work on those engines," he said. "It just came sort of natural."

He remembers one day about daylight, the foreman at the mill in Colfax came to his house.

"Dad drove a engine that was slow but very powerful," Bookout recalls. "The foreman told him there had been a bad wreck down the line. He wanted Dad to take that engine and pull any cars that could be moved out of the way."

By the time Bookout was 14 and living in Rockhill, most of the small sawmills had closed down, but he got a job at one of the remaining mills. By age 15 he was driving a truck.

"I had a chance to purchase some land when I was 15," Bookout said. He went to his foreman and asked about borrowing the money. The man made arrangements for Bookout to have the price of the land taken out of his check. He worked days hauling logs and evenings trucking lumber from one place to another.

"I worked at the sawmill for eight years without pay,' he said. "One day the foreman came up and asked if I wanted my pay. I got $13. That was a lot of money to me."

The land was paid for. Immediately Bookout married his wife who had been waiting all that time. They were married 62 years.

Later Bookout to Camp Claiborne where he worked in the shop.

"They had a machine torn down," Bookout recalls. There was no way to order the part.

Other mechanics had torn the machine to pieces and discovered a huge gear that had been worn down with teeth broken off.

"The boss said 'Go get Oscar,"' he said. "I don't know why but when everybody else was ready to quit, I was ready to keep trying. I've always been that way ."

The machine was used to pour coal into trucks at the plant, so the work was dead still until the machine could be repaired. Oscar managed to replace the gear and get it going. From then on they had him working on heavy equipment.

"One day the boss sent a man out on the dozer to clear a place filled with high weeds and lots of stumps. The man ran slap over a big stump and tore a hole in the oil pan. The boss said "go get Oscar,"' Bookout recalled.

When his boss moved to Winnfield, Bookout followed. He moved his house from there to Laurel Heights. At that time, there were only a few homes there.

One Saturday morning he made a mistake. His wife made a list of groceries she needed. Bookout would have had to walk into town and carry them back. The truck he drove wasn't in use.

"I took the truck to town and bought the groceries and drove them home, ' Bookout said.

Someone told the boss and Bookout lost his job. He moved his house to Campti and started again taking care of big trucks. Finally, he took a job in Alexandria working with Roy 0. Martin.

"Mr. Martin had bought a steam engine that nobody would fool with, "Bookout said.

"He asked me to convert it from steam to a gas engine." Bookout complied "I put a gas burning engine on it, rebuilt the cab and got it ready to run," he said.

Bookout later opened his own garage in Winnfield before finally retiring.

I was going fishing one day and stopped by Stanley Smith's auto shop," he said. The mechanics there had just rebuilt an engine but couldn't get it to run. Bookout changed a few things, told them to crank it up and listened to it roar.

"They wanted to know how I knew to do that," he recalled. "I just knew engines."

Smith offered Bookout a job of consulting. He asked him to come by and if they had a problem, Bookout would troubleshoot for them.

Between fishing and fixing motors, Bookout began a hobby that filled the remaining time. He built model cars, trucks and other wooden items for sale. He made contraptions for one of his friends so he could pick up cans off the road without bending over. He built jar openers for all different sizes of jars. Today, both those items have been patented and are for sale nationally -by other people.

"I built a model of an eight wheel wood wagon that stood in the old Ford place for years," he said. His model Conestoga wagons, complete with canvas and barrels on each side were very popular as well. Two churches in town ordered tables and chairs for their children's department and Bookout also built furniture for his home. In his room he sits in a leather-upholstered chair he built himself.

"I loved working with wood, whether I was driving a truck or making something with my hands. That's been my life," Bookout said.

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