Herb Ebarb is ‘Oldest Logger’

By Tom Kelly
Editor and Publisher

Momentarily cautious, I looked around, and in the shadow of the mid-morning sun I saw a man sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch, shaded by an enormous post oak tree, plus several smaller cedars, gardenia plants, and a row of rose bushes lining the walkway leading into the yard. I could see the gleam of his eye, and the trace of a smile on his face, making me suspect that the man behind the grin was enjoying the joke at my expense.

"Mr. Ebarb?" I called. "Herb!" he answered. "Come on in." As I approached and eyed the chair beside his, he asked, "You want to go sit in the front room?" Why would I, I thought, in this beautiful spring morning air. As we sat together on the front porch, I could see a squawking clutch of geese in the fenced back yard behind the house; a proud rooster strutted across the side yard, eyeing a hen inside the fence.

"They tell me you're the Oldest Logger for the Zwolle Loggers Festival next month," I said for openers. Wanda Ezernack had given the word, and passed me to Herbert (Chip) Ebarb, the oldest son, to get directions to the hideaway home that the Ebarb family has enjoyed since moving from the former home place when the Toledo Bend Lake was built.

Herbert (Herb) Ebarb was born and raised in the Ebarb community, a rural community in Sabine Parish, 85 years ago. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, with three years in the South Pacific theater, including Okinawa and other islands, followed by one year in China after the end of the war, disarming the Japanese and sending them home.

After the war, wages in the local area were low, so he went north, winding up in St. Joseph, Missouri where he met his future wife, Florence James McKernan. He spent 12 years in Missouri, working for Swift & Company in the meat packing business. Their first son, Herbert Joseph, was born in St. Joseph, and at birth received the nickname Chip, when the nurse brought him to his parents as a newborn with the remark, "He's a chip off the old block." The name stuck, and he remains Chip to this day.

Mrs. Ebarb loved the South, and they moved back to Sabine Parish, where their family grew to include six sons and three daughters. After Chip there came Patrick, William, Bradford, George, and Terry, and daughters Loretta, Cindy, and Susan.

In his working career, Herb Ebarb did some oil field roughnecking, and worked in the logging woods when power saws finally replaced the crosscut, and small tractors began to replace mules in the woods.

He is retired now and lives on a four-plus acre tract in the deep woods off Highway 191. He maintains a flock of poultry including geese, ducks, chickens, doves, and a few Angus and Brangus cows.

I asked if he used the flocks and the herd for meat at home. "Oh. no," he said. "I sell the calves. I could never eat one of my babies." He admitted, most of his table food, including meat, comes from the grocery in Zwolle.

He pointed with pride to an enormous gardenia bush which he said is over 100 years old--which he said he dug up and transplanted from the former home. He pointed also to a large cedar tree near the gardenia, which he transplanted from the woods while logging. He also takes pride in a small grove of smaller cedars, also transplants from the woods, and the huge post oak, which he said a forester has told him is around 200 years old. The area around the homestead is shaded by large pines and oaks, and the front yard walkway is marked by a row rose bushes and space between slabs of petrified wood chunks which he brought from the woods.

It is obvious that Herb Ebarb has the soul of a naturalist, who maintains his living space in communion with the environment.

The Ebarbs attended St. Catherine Catholic Church in nearby Noble until it closed, and now are regulars at St. Joseph's in Zwolle.

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