The GOLDSTON Family

of Chatham County, Goldston, N. C.

Memories of the Lumber Business

Pictured left to right:  Allan, Roland, Jimmy, Billy, Doris, and Alice Goldston, wife of Roland Goldston.  This photo was taken in the yard of Flynn's house in Wake County with the lumber yards across the street in the background.  This was taken  about 1940.

My family had moved from Jim Womble's Peach Orchard in Ashley Heights (near Aberdeen) to Uncle Flynn's house so my mother could look after my grandfather, Robert Lee "Bob" Goldston who passed away in 1941.  I started to school at Wake Forest when I was in the 5th grade. 

When R. L. Goldston died, he and two sons, Flynn and David, owned R. L. Goldston & Sons Lumber Company.  His other children, Roland (my father), Addie Mae, Eugene, Robert, Jr., and Jack Goldston apparently received some support of Bob's ownership in the company.   My dad started a portable saw mill operation in 1940 and began cutting timber and selling it to his brothers, Flynn and David.

Pictured left is my dad in later years, about 1960, standing in the "yard" of the mill that he and my brother Roland owned.

R. L. Goldston & Sons sold much of their finished lumber to a large dealer in Washington, DC, and they had to haul it up there by truck.  This was during the years of about 1933-1943 and the trucks were none too dependable.  It took 2 people to make the DC trip... one to drive and one to be the "chocker".  When the truck load of lumber could not make it all the way up a steep incline on the DC journey, the driver put on brakes and the chocker grabbed some blocks of wood to jam underneath the wheels.  In those days brakes were mechanical.  I remember Dad (the chocker) telling me he and Uncle David (the driver) were taking a load up a steep hill and couldn't make it.  Dad jumped out a little late and the truck started rolling backwards, jumping over the chocks and Uncle David backed it all the way down the hill without wrecking it.  They would unload part of the lumber, go up the hill, unload some more lumber, go back down the hill and pick up what they had unloaded, go back to the top of the hill and repeat the loading process, then continue on their way.  About 1938 or 39, the lumber company bought a gorilla, a Corbitt truck that was then being made in Henderson, NC.  It was a red diesel and had a might influence on us kids.

We had a cart with metal wheels which was our "Corbitt" and we pulled it many miles around the lumber yard and through the fields.

When I was 13 I began working in the summer as a water boy, one bucket for whites, one for blacks. When I was 15 I got promoted from water-boy to caterpillar driver.

After trees were cut down with cross-cut saws, the logs were assembled in piles separated from the ground by a stick to allow the log chain on the log trailer to be pulled underneath and hooked to the other side of the cart.  The wheels were blocked and I pulled a chain to unsnap the trailer tong.

The most interesting thing about logging was the "snaking".  The snaker horse operated by verbal commands from the snaker.  A man named Carvie Evans was our snaker and his commands were delivered almost as if he were singing: geeeee,  geeeup, hup, ayyyyyye. He would be maybe a hundred feet away from the horse and could make the horse move a step left, right, ahead, or back. The snaking horse was usually a large Percheon I believe and we built a pen and shed for him each time we moved the mill.  One of my jobs was to go feed the horse on week-ends.  At that time a 15 year-old could get a drivers license and I usually drove our truck.

Our sawmill was "portable", meaning that it was moved periodically to a different location because the timber had been cut all around the mill.  The mill site had to have a slight slope so the logs would roll easier to the saw carriage.

Most of our "hands" were black and frequently laid out from work on Monday.  The mill crew consisted of a sawyer, log turner, edger man, green end man (who sorted the cut planks after they came through the edger by sliding them down a skid pole to the proper pile), the slab boy (the sorriest job at the mill which I did when not carrying water) who carried the slabs to the back of the pile, the yard man who kept the logs rolled down to the log turner.

On Monday's I was usually sent in to Wake Forest to pick up some of our hands who were jailed over the weekend for public drunkenness.