Jack Bunyan
I went up with a couple of friends to see a sawmill up in the middle of the island. We’d heard it was a one man operation, but it could handle logs bigger than a baseball bat at least. Truth be told — and you know me by now, I always do — I expected some giant skilsaw on steroids, maybe a rusty old blade wobbling on a warped arbor, chewing up 2×4’s into pickets for fences. The days of sawmills on the island, I figured, are pretty much relegated to photos in the South End Historical Society.
But I needed a ‘playday’ so I tagged along. We drove up north, took one of those cross roads no commuter has ever visited, then cut back into the interior where it felt like when I first arrived here off the turnip truck. We drove down a winding drive and there, barely visible through a heavy fog or a dense dew, was a homemade 3 story house right of the hippie-dippie 60’s. Time had turned backwards.
Still, I figured okay, so we got an old hippie hiding out up here. Cool house and worth the drive, but we came to see the mill, man. And Jack came out to do just that….
Up above the house, overlooking the pond, sat the mill. Open sides, lumber ricked and stickered, machinery everywhere. Forget the 60’s. We’d turned the clock back further than that. Cables ran through pulleys, chains ran through gear teeth, belts ran through reducers, a slant 6 Dodge engine powered the whole she-bang. Jack fired her up and peaveyed up a 2 foot diameter log section on a moveable track, hit a lever and down the conveyor came the log through a 52 inch blade, snickerty-snack and a 2x section fell off to the side. Back came the trolley and another 2x piled beside the first. And a third and a fourth…. Until the log was lumber.
I stopped thinking Big Skilsaw. My jaw had dropped too far for thinking anyway. Up in the hills sits a sawmill assembled by one man, run by one man, that is so far beyond my meager capabilities, it was staggering. When I started writing these stories, I wanted to remember the places like this as they disappeared. Remind folks what it was like …. you know, Back When. It’s a joy, a total joy, to find that these places not only exist, they’re still running full bore. Hat’s off, Jack!
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