Grub for Giants

by Joni Sensel

HMMM, WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST? Flapjacks and fruit? Eggs, bacon, and toast? Oatmeal and fried ham and doughnuts?

If you were a logger in the late 1800s and early 1900s, more than 100 years ago, you might eat all of those foods for breakfast - and more. Back then, many Douglas fir trees stood in the forests of Washington that were almost as big around as a school bus. Cutting them down with two-man handsaws was incredibly hard work. The men who felled trees for 10 hours a day had to eat like giants, and logging camp meals were legendary. It's no Paul Bunyan exaggeration to say that baking supplies and produce came into the camps by the ton in full railcar loads.

How much did a logger gobble at every meal? A bowl of cornflakes with toast might give you 300 or 400 calories of energy. Loggers had to shovel in ten times that much at breakfast alone.

Juggling Acts

Anyone who needs to eat that much at once has to have help. Loggers had it. Most logging camp cooks were men, but many Pacific Northwest camps, especially in the years between 1915 and 1940, hired women as waitresses. These waitresses, affectionately called "flunkies," often found their jobs through employment offices in big towns like Seattle. Then they boarded a railcar that was towed into the woods by a steam locomotive.

The camp's cook and flunkies rose before the sun. They might ring the cookhouse triangle to awaken the rest of the camp and call the loggers to breakfast. As the men hurried in, flunkies delivered mounds of food, their arms stacked with five or six hot platters at a time. Each flunky was responsible for long tables seating 30 to 40 men, elbow to elbow. Juggling plates and bowls, dodging each other, and dashing between the tables and the kitchen, the flunkies could have qualified for the circus.

Fast Forks and Fast Feet

The loggers had to eat quickly, too, so they could start work. To speed the chewing, camps did not allow talking during meals. The men plowed through loaded tin platefuls in less than ten minutes. That meant the flunkies had to move fast. As soon as a plate cleared, a sharp-eyed waitress hauled it and several others back to the kitchen for second helpings. She might also snatch three or four coffee pots at a time to refill from the vat steaming on the kitchen's wood-burning stove.

In a flash, one meal was over and preparations began for the next. Squeezing in their own breakfasts, flunkies cleared and reset the tables, wiped down sugar bowls and ketchup bottles, and scrubbed the wood floor with soapy water and brooms. Then there were sacks and sacks of potatoes to peel. In many camps, cooks planned a pound of spuds a day for each logger. That meant each flunky had to peel as many as 100 potatoes a day - enough to overflow your oven at home.

Spud Toss

Having potatoes ready at hand could be useful, however, as a flunky named Pearl once discovered. When a logger snuck up behind her to yank on her apron strings, she flung the potato in her hand over her shoulder without a glance. Wham! It hit him right between the eyes. You might say that waitress served up a Swift Spud Surprise!

After they swept away a mountain of potato peelings, the flunkies spent their afternoons slicing fresh bread and preparing two or three sandwiches, along with wrapped pie, cake, or fruit, for each logger to take in his lunch bucket the next day. There might be time for a quick walk in the woods or a nap. Then came suppertime, when the frenzy played out again, this time with steak, stew, baked beans, vegetables, seafood, pickles - and potatoes and gravy, of course.

Sound like hard work? It was. But for women who enjoyed the forest, didn't mind sleeping in a rustic shack, and could balance plenty of plates with a smile, a flunky job was a great way to take part in a life known mostly to men. Long-time Northwest flunky Anna M. Lind once wrote, "The camp girls themselves felt the call of the brooding timber and belonged there. This way of life was rugged, but we accepted it as part of our job, for the woods had laid its claim on the girls who worked in the camps."

So the next time you set the family table for dinner, imagine doing it for a family of 40. But please, don't choke it all down in eight minutes. And if you decide to call your mother a flunky, you'd better be ready to explain fast - or dodge a flying potato.

Fun Fact: The term "flunkie" is said to come from the Scots word for servant or "flanker" meaning a helper who stood by your side.

__________________________________________________________________________

Author Joni Sensel was inspired to write about logging camp cooks by her work on the Weyerhaeuser Company's centennial book. She is also the author of two novels for children, The Humming of Numbers and Reality Leak.

©2008    Washington State Historical Society   |  Contact Us   |  Privacy Statement   |  Public Records Privacy Policy   |  Webmaster