By SHERRI TAYLOR
Journal News Editor

Once in a while, something one hears or reads revives those times when going to work meant walking for miles, hooking up a yoke of oxen (or mules) and then fighting the mosquitoes, heat and mud just to make a living. That's the way forestry as an industry existed in the early years of the twentieth century. One of the men who lived it as a young man is Loyd Barnett of the Brewton's Mill community in northwestern Winn Parish, Louisiana.

At that time, small towns sprang up overnight, the company bringing in the houses over the tracks they built themselves. Towns with names like Winona and Coldwater sprang up in Winn Parish, supplying trees to the lumber companies that moved in and out of the state.

"There were five or six camp houses right over there," said Barnett, of Ward Ten, indicating the area across the road from his home. His house stands first after crossing the Dugdemona bridges on Highway 126.

Barnett can remember those things today because in one more decade, he will be 100 years old. In other words, he is almost 90. Barnett is a reticent man, slow to tell his story, but ready to talk about his father and the hard work he did. A tall, almost slender man, Barnett has eyes that spark with interest in others and in what goes on in his own surroundings. While genial in nature, those who know him have seen another side, as well, the stern fatherly manner that could slow one of his seven kids with a glance when they did something wrong. On the other hand, great-grand-kids can do no wrong in the eyes of Grandpa Barnett.

Many years ago, Barnett and his parents lived in one of the camp house supplied by the Mansfield Lumber Company for its employees. That company mainly focused on hardwood for the lumber business, bringing down huge old oak trees among others, from the near-virgin forests.

"I remember one tree we cut down," said Barnett. "We cut it into three parts. The butt [portion] was 12 feet long and held 1,000 board feet of lumber. That one log was all the wagon could carry at a time."

After shipping the bottom-most part of this tree, the timber workers cut the middle portion to 14 feet in length and the top part into a 16 foot length. Each in its turn, was all the wagon used by these men working with oxen teams could haul at one time.

"We heard later that at the mill they had to split that butt part just to get it through the mill," Barnett stated.

Barnett started working in the log woods because his father, Ben Barnett, Sr. made his living walking behind a team of eight oxen, day after day for around $5 a day.

"After the Panic, the pay went down to $4 a day," Barnett remembers. The Panic is what some who lived through those days call the beginning of the Depression of the 1930s.

Mr. Ben, his wife, and their family of five sons and one daughter traveled with the lumber company while cutting down stands of old hardwoods all over this part of the state. Mr. Ben Barnett died in 1963 at the age of 72, one year after losing his wife. Most of his years, Mr. Ben spent working in one way or another with teams of animals hooked to yokes.

While working in the log woods, Mr. Ben's routine was to get up before daylight, walk to a large barn built, supplied, and managed by the lumber company, hitch up his own team, and march them to wherever stand the loggers were sawing down was for that particular day.

Remember that the men cutting down these enormous old-growth trees did not have power saws. There were various styles of saws used but every one of them was powered by the muscle of men bending their backs to the job at hand. While they had steam locomotives to haul their harvest to the mills, and oxen to pull the loads in the forest, only the men could cut down the majestic stands of ancient hardwood that flowered the woods of Louisiana's lowlands.

Mr. Ben would get to the big barn before daylight in order to get everything accomplished before the first light of day.

"There were four teams in the barn," recalls Barnett. "Also there was an extra oxen in case one took sick and couldn't work."

As a young teen-aged boy, Barnett's first job consisted of pumping water (by hand) to care for 33 oxen each night. The need to pump water came about around 1928 when the paper mill in Hodge, Louisiana began releasing waste water into Dugdemona. The blackness of the water caused fear among livestock owners whose animals routinely drank from the river's banks.

"We had an oxen die right after the mill began releasing that black water," Barnett recalls. Whether that was truly related to the chemicals in the water, the company didn't know. Just to be sure, the Mansfield Lumber Company went to the expense of drilling wells to water their stock and installed hand pumps. The job of daily watering the stock went to a young man still in school.

"I was 13 when I went to work for the company," Barnett said. "I'd get up early and go out to the barns. Then after school, I go out there and pump their water, often working until 10 p.m. or later." Thus, Barnett began his career in the log woods around 1926, just about the time the forests had been decimated.

On dry days, Mr. Ben would hook his team to a sort of wagon that hauled the trees to the loading ramp of the train spur. Barnett remembers they usually worked within a mile or two of the rail spur which could be extended or moved rather easily.

"The trains didn't travel very fast," Barnett remembers. "They didn't take as much care building the rail lines as they do today."

Hunters in the forests around old rail spurs usually give directions to a good hunting spot by speaking of old trams or humps of dirt that mark where the old railroad was built even today in the deepest part of the forest.

However, on wet days, the oxen skidded the wood through the forests to the rail line.

The oxen were so well trained that a command would send them turning to the right and traveling down the road where another would have them line up and go another direction. Barnett can remember that his dad had only to swing his whip in circles around the oxen's heads to get their attention. They reacted swiftly to his every spoken command.

"My dad said those oxen were so smart, they could 'read and write'." Barnett said.

The first job of the day was to yoke the team. The first two were called forward, and he placed the yoke over their necks with a pin that held them together. Then Mr. Ben would summon the other oxen with a call, they would respond by standing in line behind the first two where they also could be yoked into the team. Thus the job was made easier by the well trained animals who were probably ready to get out of their stalls where they were chained at night, two at a time to prevent them from causing damage to each other with their long horns. After all, the largest ox in the team weighed in at over 2000 pounds. The others were about 200 pounds lighter, still very large animals.

The men and their teams worked steadily until noon time, took a 30 minute break to eat whatever Mother had put into a pail and went back to work. They got home around 6 p.m on summer days. For that day, Barnett received the princely sum of $2.50 as a team driver helper.

When it became necessary for the crews to cross Dugdemona, as it often was, the men built bridges. First they would fell trees long enough to cross the creek, lay them over the water. Next they would cut trees, sometimes split them, and used those to floor the bridge. Barnett remembers building three of these bridges.

At times, Mr. Ben also worked mule teams, but he preferred the oxen.

"Those animals never gave him any trouble," Barnett said.

When the timber industry began using trucks, Mr. Ben began a new career and turned to farming, still walking behind an animal all day, but for an entirely different purpose.

Barnett began working for the CCC-Civilian Conservation Corps set up by the Roosevelt Administration. When World War II began, he soon found himself in the Navy and then as a part of the Marines, First Division invading the islands held by the Japanese.

Barnett arrived home in 1945 and went to work farming, like most of the others in his community. After just a few years, Barnett gained employment with the Winn Parish Police Jury, beginning as a heavy equipment operator and retiring after 34 years as road superintendent.

He lives with his wife in a little house where they raised seven children. The walls are plastered with photographs of handsome smiling grand children and great grand children. The rooms are filled with memories of days that went before when times were simpler in some ways and much more difficult than others.

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