Dick Turner
Dick Turner
Interview May 2012
Tape 1
Ken: There we go
Dick: Sold cedar posts. Lots of cedar posts went into South Dakota. Guy up there, you know, owned a lot of land, him and his wife together. She had some oil wells out here in West Texas and I reckon they had some money.
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: Anyhow, she’d give her children, I believe maybe grandchildren too, oil wells for Christmas or birthday or something. So she had a lot I guess
Ken: So you took it over from your dad in 1967? How old were you then?
Dick: Yeah. Well, let’s see, I’m 96 now, in ’67. Must of took it over in early ‘70s because he passed away in ’67. And we’ve been partners for years – good many years
Ken: How many years had you, uh, had you worked with him in the cedar yard?
Dick: I don’t know. Probably twenty, twenty-five years.
Ken: Well starting way back in, that would have been 19-
Dick: Yeah, way back there
Ken: 1950, oh even before that
Dick: Yeah
Ken: 1940
Dick: Probably. And we, you know, maybe even in the ‘30s
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: In one year, a good many years ago, we sold a lot of them old cedar stumps. You know – they’d cut the posts off of ‘em and they took them somewhere out West Texas. Talked like he get a lot of stuff out of cedar stumps that’s important
Ken: Yes
Dick: Uh, some kind of oil I think
Ken: Yes. They still do that in Junction.
Dick: They do?
Ken: When did your dad open that cedar yard, do you have any idea?
Dick: Yeah, me and him probably opened it together back there, I don’t know, forties, probably
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: Maybe earlier.
Ken: Were you the only cedar yard in Burnet at the time?
Dick: I think there’s another feller had one here. Ed Massey used to be here.
Ken: OK
Dick: In the cedar business. Course I had more places I guess – I’ve had ‘em in Oatmeal and Bertram, and Burnet, and I think I had one – I worked cedar out of the Goodrich Ranch for twenty something years. I guess you heard of it?
Ken: Yes. In Lampasas
Dick: Yeah, back in there from Lampasas, on the lake up there
Ken: Oh, uh-huh
Dick: Adjoined the lake. But it wasn’t nearly to Lampasas. I think the people that owned it then was the Garrett’s. People named Garrett
Ken: Is that going out toward the Colorado River? From Lampasas?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Uh-huh. I heard there was a big cedar brake down in there.
Dick: Yeah, there – old Goodrich had lots of what you call heart cedar too, you know it, long loose bark on it, it’s usually good heart.
Ken: How big does heart cedar have to be? Uh, how big a diameter is it?
Dick: Oh, it goes all the way up from 2 inches up to an inch or two, but, uh, I don’t know it, some of them old trees was that big around. A lot of inches in ‘em.
Ken: I see. So, when you have a heart cedar tree, it can be, even the small branches will be made of heart cedar too?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: I didn’t know that. They’re nothing like the cedar that we see growing out here in the
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Today, huh?
Dick: Usually if it’s good heart it’s got long loose bark.
Ken: I see. And you had, you had cedar yards in Bertram, you said, and in
Dick: Yeah, Bertram, Oatmeal, and oh, another place or two
Ken: Would you work all of them yourself, or, I mean, would you go around to them and supervise the
Dick: Well I had hired help, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Some old guys for, oh, down and around Kerrville come up here and worked some for me. Ike Pierce and some other guy. You may have never probably heard of them.
Ken: Well I knew some Pierces in Austin
Dick: Yeah
Ken: That were cedar choppers
Dick: These were over around Kerrville
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Big ‘ole fellers. They cut a big ‘ole post and, let it fall, they’d catch it and, in their arms, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Trim it – hold the saw in one hand. Trim off from it
Ken: Uh-huh. Well, you say a saw. When did they start using, uh, are you talking about a chainsaw?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: When did they start using chainsaws on the cedar?
Dick: Uh, I don’t remember. Way back then. You know a McCullough saw?
Ken: Yes
Dick: Two more I believe, I can’t think of their names right now, but, there’s two – three more, McCullough, and …
Ken: The new ones, there, I mean everybody is using Stihls and, that type thing
Dick: Yeah, they’s using ‘em choppin’ axes till they come in.
Ken: Double-bit axe
Dick: Yeah, mostly double-bits, yeah
Ken: Yeah. You don’t have one of those axes, do ya? I’ve been wanting to see one of those axes and I, nobody seems to have any of ‘em anymore
Dick: I may have one around somewhere
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: I think I’ve got a single-bit and a double-bit too somewhere
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I don’t know how long it will take me to find them.
Ken: (laugh) How did you, uh, how did you and your father get into the cedar business?
Dick: Oh, I guess it’s me mostly. He was mostly in cattle.
Ken: Um-hum. So, he had a ranch here in Burnet? Or outside of Burnet?
Dick: Well, the most of it is in the north end of Travis County, on Cow Creek.
Ken: Oh, I know Cow Creek real well.
Dick: Yeah, he had at one time, between five and six thousand acres. And some of ‘em were on Lake Travis, I believe.
Ken: Yeah
Dick: Sixteen hundred acres over there on Lake Travis.
Ken: And doesn’t the Turners still live there, on Cow Creek?
Dick: Yeah, I got two brothers and a sister or two lives around it. Two brothers live right down on Cow Creek.
Ken: ‘Cause I’ve heard about the Turner Ranch still being there, and, uh, the Palacios live there, don’t they, the, uh, you know Jose Palacios and the Mexican family?
Dick: Yeah, I’ve heard of ‘em
Ken: I think they lived there and cut cedar off, off of there still, to this day.
Dick: Yeah. Yeah, I think they do.
Ken: Do you want me to get your mail for you?
Dick: If you don’t mind.
Ken: I don’t mind at all. (getting mail) The Boatrights had a, had a cedar yard around Cedar Park?
Dick: Yes sir
Ken: Jim Boatright, does that ring a bell?
Dick: Uh, don’t know -- it’s been a while ago
Ken: Yeah Because I used to work with Ruth Boatright at the Leander Post Office
Dick: Yeah. Somebody still’s down there – can’t think of their name now.
Ken: Mr. King? He had one in Cedar Park.
Dick: Yeah. That’s right, he did.
Ken: I was talking to this woman that said it used to be here in Burnet. Where was your cedar yard in Burnet?
Dick: Back out here on the left, going towards the Lake about two, three miles.
Ken: OK
Dick: And I had one right down here too. Where this new school is down there.
Ken: OK.
Dick: Had one down there for a while
Ken: Did you have ‘em all at the same time? Several cedar yards at the same time?
Dick: Sometimes I did, yeah
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: You know, I’d have to, I’ve got, oh, a hun ____ boy that run one. A few of them ___
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And he worked for me a long time. I had to go to Brackenridge Hospital for eight weeks with a ruptured appendix and he run it while I was there. Run the cedar business
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: That was in ’75. I went out of the cedar business in the ‘90s, sometime. But they, got a whole lot more posts when they went to chainsaws.
Ken: Yeah. Did they run out of cedar?
Dick: No, they never did plumb run out, I don’t think, but ---but I sold, had some peop – customers up in oh, South Dakota that bought a lot of cedar. Sometimes they’d send after it and sometimes somebody’d truck it up there for them. You ever hear of Robert Adcocks?
Ken: No
Dick: He used to truck it up in there. He died here down there in the Bertram Hospital a year or two ago
Ken: Oh
Dick: But he used to take it all up in there.
Ken: And they’d use it for fence posts?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: What size would they use for the fence posts?
Dick: Oh, usually. Mostly regular fence, about a four inch top
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: That’s about the average.
Ken: a six foot post?
Dick: Yeah. Do you remember that rail fence going out of Johnson City towards
Ken: Stonewall?
Dick: Yeah, I believe it’s Stonewall.
Ken: Fredericksburg, yeah, I sure do.
Dick: I sold ‘em them posts.
Ken: Did you really? That’s a pretty fence.
Dick: Good many years ago
Ken: Those are long posts, aren’t they?
Dick: Yeah. And I sold some to the LB Johnson land over there in Cemetery. Sold some to them.
Ken: Do you know what all states your cedar went to? What, what different places beside South Dakota?
Dick: Oh, went to quite a few. Arizona and lots of it went to New Mexico. Oh, a lot of it went, the states down this away. You know they come from a little of everywhere and bought it, then we had those big trucks that, you know, peddled it.
Ken: And they would take those – where they’d take it up there and sell it up there to, to a lumber yard, or, how would the, how would the farmers
Dick: Lots of lumber yards bought it
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: a lot of ranchers, you know, bought it their selves.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I was trying to think of some pretty big ranch up here, Wagner Ranch, I believe. Is there a Wagner Ranch up that-a-way?
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Seems like I sold quite a bit to them.
Ken: What did a post go for back then?
Dick: Huh?
Ken: How much did a post cost back then?
Dick: Oh, I sold ‘em all the way, a four inch post, all the way from six cents to up to thirty, I think
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: They’s pretty cheap when I started.
Ken: So a thir – yeah –
Dick: Well, you know, it wadn’t much money.
Ken: Well, the men who cut it, uh, how much would they get for it? How, how, how did you work it with them? Did you buy it from them?
Dick: Yeah.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Yeah, and then I sold it, you know, at a profit
Ken: Right, of course. So if you were, if you were selling a post for twenty five cents, what would, how much would they make on it?
Dick: They’d probably get fifteen or twenty.
Ken: Uh-huh. How many, were they bringing in every day? How would that, how did that work?
Dick: Yes, mostly every day
Ken: Every day.
Dick: Yeah
Ken: So how many posts do you think a, a good man, a good axe man could cut in a day?
Dick: Uh, probably a hundred, you know, all ____ duces
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: You know I bought duces? two inch.
Ken: What were they used for?
Dick: Stays mostly
Ken: That’s right
Dick: Yeah. But there’s, there’s a fence that’s down here on Cow Creek, on, uh, Canyon Ridge Springs. Did you ever hear of it?
Ken: Is that a subdivision?
Dick Turner Tape 2 (6:41)
Dick: Yeah, it is now. My dad used to own it. My dad had between five and six thousand acres of land but he had nine kids.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And he had sixteen hundred I believe over on Lake Travis. Some of it in there right close to what they call Singleton Bend.
Ken: Yes, I know that well.
Dick: Yeah. Well, when you cross the creek on 1431, across Cow Creek bridge down there
Ken: Yes
Dick: It’s about five or six miles over there where I turned in and went down to the lake. When I was over there.
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: I never did really live over there but I was over there a lot.
Ken: Is that where you grew up as a kid?
Dick: I grew up as a kid right in north Travis County, down here in ‘ole Cow Creek.
Ken: Uh
Dick: South of Bertram, about sixteen miles
Ken: Uh-huh. So if a man could cut a hundred posts a day – four inch posts -
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Maybe make fifteen cents a post, that’d be fifteen dollars a day
Dick: Yeah
Ken: That’s not bad back then, was it?
Dick: No, that, uh, there’s uh, certain thing you call a four inch post, you know and a two inch – at one time a regular hundred percent price they called it, them four inch posts was six cents.
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: But they went way on up there. That land – I sold it – down on Cow Creek – it’s got them striped and painted posts
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: Canyon Ridge Springs, what they called it
Ken: OK
Dick: Then I’ve got two brothers. One of them lives on that ‘ole, let’s see, what’s that road that goes out of Bertram to Smithwick?
Ken: 1174?
Dick: Yep
Ken: Uh-huh. There’s two of them. 279 or something and 1174
Dick: Yeah
Ken: They meet out there
Dick: Yeah. You ever hear of the Hubbard Falls?
Ken: Yes
Dick: Well anyhow, where I’s at ‘ya go right by it. They claimed here in the Civil War, sometime or another. They killed, somebody killed a guy by the name of Hubbard and tied rocks on him and throwed him in.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I don’t know. Then it’d been two or three times that some people were pushed off the bridge down there and drowned. One put a from around Horseshoe Bay. Just a few years ago, he pulled in there and drowned out and got out to that bridge down there, you know, it crosses Cow Creek?
Ken: Yeah
Dick: Goes over to Smithwick and down, down Cow Creek. And, you know, he pulled out in the water and drowned his car out and he got out to do that, to try to do something about it and it washed him off the bridge and he washed over four miles down the creek.
Ken: Hum. Yeah, that’s crazy
Dick: His wife, somebody come along, got out in there and tied on to the car and got her out.
Ken: Oh, that’s good
Dick: But he washed down there. We got a bluff back there, it’s kind-of a suction in under it. They looked all up and down the creek for him and my brother happened to think about what they done there and he went down there and sure enough the feller was back in that ..
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: You know, logs would even
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Go back in there and stay
Ken: Yeah, yeah, yeah
Dick: He was right close to where the house, place I was raised on, my brother, one of them lives on it now.
Ken: That’s pretty country down there
Dick: There is a new house on it. A lot of them people, you know, put in these subdivisions, put up some sure enough good houses.
Ken: Yeah
Dick: Just to camp in once and a while
Ken: (laugh) Yeah.
Dick: One outfit down there on some of the land I had, there’s a three story house down there owned by somebody in London, England.
Ken: Huh
Dick: Well he’s from there I don’t know whether they moved here, or just come here once in a while.
Ken: Tell me about these folks who would bring you the cedar, uh, how many, how many people, how many, how many would you, people would come and sell you cedar every day? On one of your, one of your yards?
Dick: Yeah, I had several different ones of ‘em
Ken: Do you remember any of their names?
Dick: One of ‘em was Westbrooke, Calvin Westbrook. Ike Pierce and, oh, let’s see, there’s a lot of different people here. Some of ‘em I can’t think of
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Right off my head
Ken: Sure
Dick: Anyhow, they
Ken: Would they, uh, bring you in a, in a, little truck, or a big truck, or, how did they get it to you?
Dick: Most any way they could. Way back years ago I bought some off of a feller in a wagon.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: He used a wagon, Nathan Peacock
Ken: Nathan Peacock
Dick: Uh-huh
Dick Turner Tape 3 (15:00)
Dick: China tree there. A year or so ago I had a big ‘ole Cypress blowed on my house back there and then that big ‘ole China tree blowed into that Live Oak.
Ken: Uh-huh. So, you say that, that they would, they had pick-up trucks, they had wagons
Dick: Yes
Ken: Were there any in cars
Dick: Yeah, anything that
Ken: Anything they would
Dick: They’d go to work in cars quite a bit and they maybe wouldn’t haul a load of posts in every day.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: They’d bring ‘em on trucks, you know, they’d bring _____
Ken: Uh-huh. Would they own their own trucks, do you think?
Dick: Yes, some of ‘em, most of ‘em did
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: But there was lots of that cedar work goin on back then.
Ken: That was, was it just a, the men, and sometimes the boys would work too, wouldn’t they?
Dick: Yeah, um-hum
Ken: What time would they, I mean it’s a hot day, cedar’s – nothing hotter than a cedar brake, is there? I mean
Dick: It’s pretty hot
Ken: a cedar brake does not let any air in, does it?
Dick: No
Ken: so would they start real early in the day and
Dick: Yeah. Yeah, and maybe quit early.
Ken: Uh-huh. So they’d be bringing, they’d be bringing their loads in ..
Dick: Yeah
Ken: pretty early, maybe, what
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Three o’clock, two o’clock?
Dick: Um-hum. Some of ‘em didn’t come in every day
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: You know, cutting – truck to haul in
Ken: Well they’d have to, did they live on their cedar brake or, or would they, this would be some rancher I guess
Dick: Some of ‘em camped in the cedar brake
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Quite a few of ‘em
Ken: With their families too?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Yeah, there was a whole lot that went on in the cedar business for a good many years.
Ken: A whole lot went on?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: You mean, it was a big business for a lot of years
Dick: Yeah it was.
Ken: I want – like here in Burnet – so you had several cedar yards and that would probably be so the men would not have to haul that cedar too far, right
Dick: Yeah
Ken: to, to bring it to you
Dick: Some of them, you know, had certain places they wanted to go
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: But my biggest yard I had the most cedar on was right out here towards the lake
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: over that, you know where that bait shop is over there
Ken: Yeah, yeah
Dick: It’s right on this side of it
Ken: Ok, almost to Marble Falls?
Dick: No, to the lake
Ken: Oh, OK
Dick: Towards the lake
Ken: OK
Dick: Yep, and I told you though, I had one down here where this new school is.
Ken: Yes. Who were they cuttin’ – on who’s land were they cuttin’ this cedar?
Dick: Oh, just most everybodys’
Ken: Uh-huh. Did the rancher get a share of that money?
Dick: Yeah. Yeah, he’d get so much percent
Ken: Like, how, what percent, do you recall?
Dick: Uh, I don’t hardly know
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: forgot
Ken: I heard, maybe, some like ten percent? Is that
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Would that be about right?
Dick: pretty good, yeah
Ken: So how would the rancher, would the cedar, would the, would the cedar cutter take that money back to the rancher and give him his ten percent, or, how did that, did you have to give it to the rancher, or, how did that work out?
Dick: Yeah, you know, give ‘em a check every once in a while.
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: And there’s, uh, you know when they’re, they used to use axes.
Ken: Yeah
Dick: They cut quite a bit more cedar when they went to the chainsaw
Ken: Sure. But the axes, you were, you were in the cedar business when the axes
Dick: Yeah
Ken: For many, many years?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: When they were using axes
Dick: Um-hum
Ken: And, now those are, I’ve seen a double-bit cedar axe. They weren’t real big, were they? They were about maybe that long
Dick: About like that
Ken: Yeah.
Dick: A handle, maybe, uh, three feet long, something like that. Real light weight
Dick: Yeah
Ken: How would a man approach, do you recall, do you ever cut cedar? Yourself?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: How, how would you, you see a cedar tree there, how would you go about cutting it? I mean
Dick: With an axe?
Ken: Yeah, with an axe.
Dick: Well, you’d trim it all you could before you cut it down
Ken: OK
Dick: And then you’d go down as low as you could do it on it
Ken: How many hits would it take to, to cut a four inch, well I guess it wouldn’t be four inch at the base – it’d be a little bigger than that, wouldn’t it?
Dick: Yeah, it, I don’t know just how long, but, you know, if you had a good axe it didn’t’ take too long. Them guys that used axes a long time. I did have a single-bit and a double-bit too around here somewhere, but, I don’t know whether I know where they at now
Ken: (laugh) I’d like to see one if you had it. Uh
Dick: I’ve still got some of the cedar books that, uh, I bought and sold on
Ken: Oh, you do?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: I’d like to see them
Dick: Yeah
Ken: That’d be real good, yeah. I mean, and then, was it all trucked out of here or did any go out on the railroad? Do you recall? Did you ever
Dick: Yeah, some of ‘em loaded cedar on boxcar
Ken: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Dick: Most of them that isn’t going very far it’d go on one of them big trailer trucks
Ken: Uh-huh. Now the, the people who cut it there, uh, would they typically be families that, that would be like living here in Burnet, and, you know, kind-of local folk?
Dick: Yeah, could be, yeah.
Ken: Uh-huh. I heard the women sometimes helped, in the, with the work
Dick: Yeah. My sisters cut a little bit of cedar with an axe, some of em
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh. That’s pretty dangerous work, isn’t it? You could cut your foot off, couldn’t ya?
Dick: Yeah, some of ‘em cut theirselves pretty good too.
Ken: Damn, what would you do if you cut yourself?
Dick: I guess ‘ole, Alden Westbrook they called him, he’s dead now, he, he used to be, I guess, as good a cedar chopper as I had
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: He’s good at it too. And then there’s an old guy out of Bertram about ten or twelve miles, name of Peacock, that hauled it on a wagon.
Ken: Um-hum. What years was that? Was that back in the thirties or forties?
Dick: Yep, um-hum. An old guy I bought cedar from is selling from up the country. Peacock come in there one day with a mule and horse, a mare, you know, went up through that yard, you know, maybe went up a little ways to get to where he wanted to unload it at. Anyhow, that ole mule, you know, was dragging, and, uh, that old horse, or mule with a mare, she was really pulling it. That old guy made remarks, said “that ‘ole mare wants to pull that whole load, I expect that old mule don’t give a damn if she does.”
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: Kind-of made that old guy about half sore
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: I believe the only way he ever hauled me in the cedar was on a wagon. Peacock. Lincoln Peacock.
Ken: Huh. Did yall ever have any charcoal burning here, you know, where people would make charcoal out of cedar
Dick: Yeah, they made it. I never did do it
Ken: uh-huh
Dick: a lot of people made it. And we’d use ‘ole, lets see, what kind of tree was it we’d use to get, uh, wood, to smoke your meat with when you smoked out, let’s see. I had a certain kind. It wasn’t cedar. It was some other kind of tree, they called it, I can’t think of what it was, but
Ken: Yeah
Dick: they’d smoke it
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: meat, you’d have a smokehouse, hanging it in it.
Ken: It wasn’t oak, huh? It wasn’t live oak or red oak, Spanish oak?
Dick: uh-huh
Ken: Bodark (Bois d’arc)?
Dick: Bodark.
Ken: Was it Bodark?
Dick: Maybe that’s what
Ken: That’s a hard ... Uh. There’s not too many of them left around
Dick: Yeah, you know, we used to use Bodarks down here when my wife was living. Some Bodarks down here and I cut some up, down, and cut ‘em into wood and, you know, that stuff smoked and smelled so that it purty-near run her out of the house.
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: That ‘old Bodarks, sort of stinks when it’s fired
Ken: Yeah. Uh, so, so the people that was cutting it for you, did they, uh, were, were they living in town? Or do they live
Dick: Just everywhere
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Some of ‘em part of the time even camped out in the cedar brake.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: You know they had tents
Ken: Uh-huh. But they had, were they, did they also have a house in town, or did they just go from cedar brake to cedar brake?
Dick: Oh, most of them cedar choppers didn’t have much
Ken: Uh-huh. Before the cedar business took off, I’m guessing it took off in the, when the, the barbed wire came in, and, you know, fence posts
Dick: Yeah
Ken: There wouldn’t have been any cedar choppers. So, did they come in to Burnet and, from somewhere else, do have any idea?
Dick: Yeah, some of ‘em did
Ken: Any idea?
Dick: Yeah, two of, two of the guys come up here and cut some down around Kerrville.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And some of ‘em a lot of other different places. Excuse me a minute. Let me look and see if I can find some of (rustling of papers)That’s one of those ____ I used to be able to bank at ____, one over at Kingsland.
Ken: Now, some of these folks said that you knew that they were, uh, that cut cedar, um, you mentioned the guy with the wagon. What was his name?
Dick: Peacock
Ken: Peacock, uh-huh
Dick: Lincoln Peacock.
Ken: Lincoln Peacock. Where did he live?
Dick: He lived out of Bertram, down that, oh, 1174 abouts
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: oh, I’d say, well you know where that road out of Bertram and another one intersects?
Ken: Yeah
Dick: Anyhow, he lives right around in there.
Ken: OK. So he
Dick: No he lived on the main 1174
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: That’s right. He’s lived on the Main 74.
Ken: Did he raise a family there too? Have a family?
Dick: Uh, I believe he had a, I believe just a boy and a girl.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: The boy, he’s kind of off in a way. They took him into the service, but they turned him out in a little while
Ken: Huh. I wonder why.
Dick: He was kinda off.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Took him all the way to California
Ken: Huh. Did a lot of the, the boys, uh, during that period, the, uh, that were cutting cedar? Did they has to, did they serve in the Army during World War II?
Dick: Some of ‘em did, yeah. There’s some two or three boys I worked with that lost their lives.
Ken: Um
Dick: Whitehead, Richard Whitehead, and one or two more. There was a Travis boy out of Bertram, lost his. And, a, another one or two___ talked like not all of ‘em
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Went out the Rhine River when they was crossing it. But anyhow, I wasn’t in the service. They turned me down. I had three brothers that all went. One of my brothers was a M.P. over there in Manila
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And the youngest one, two youngest ones I believe, was in the Korean War.
Ken: Oh-OK
Dick: My oldest brother, and he’s about ten years younger than me, went to World War II.
Ken: So you’re the oldest of the, of the brothers?
Dick: Of the boys
Ken: Of the boys, uh-huh
Dick: I’ve got a sister in Bertram a little bit older than I am
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Do you know of any people around Bertram?
Ken: I know some of them, uh-huh
Dick: You know anybody by name of Macanally?
Ken: I don’t know ‘em
Dick: They drive around all the time
Ken: OK
Dick: She’ll be ninety-eight in November.
Ken: Hum. So this Mr. Peacock, uh, did he, he, did he, like, own, own, live out there on land he owned, do you know?
Dick: Yeah, he owned it
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Owned some of it
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick Turner Tape 4 (15:00)
Dick: And then there’s a guy I married a sister to. His wife – oh, I thought of the name then and forgotten it. Let’s see. There used to be a world of Heines in this country. That’s my dad’s – bought the whole place from the old man, Henry Heine. He’s an old German. Come over here from Germany.
Ken: The people who cut cedar. They, they weren’t for the most part Germans, were they? Uh-uh
Dick: A lot of them were Mexicans.
Ken: Oh, you had some Mexican cedar choppers, huh?
Dick: Yeah. You know Prentice Highland – he had a place back in there around the top of Doeskin there. You know what they called Doeskin down there?
Ken: Yes
Dick: You know, a big mountain
Ken: Yes
Dick: coming towards Bertram
Ken: Yes
Dick: That’s Doeskin Mountain.
Ken: And, who, who had a place there?
Dick: Oh, Peacocks had one right close. And it’s close to the road. It cuts across and goes to Liberty Hill too.
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: Old man, there used to be some pretty wealthy cedar men in places over – Bill Hall – he was in it, and, he, I reckon, was pretty wealthy.
Ken: He would buy it?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: But the cut…
Dick: He had a yard
Ken: Uh-huh. I’ve heard of that.
Dick: These here, people lived right there, they’re pretty wealthy I think, their relatives live here but they’ve been up in Pennsylvania and in there for years, selling, oh, rights, you know, oil rights
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Stuff like that. And I think they got pretty wealthy.
Ken: But the cedar cutters themselves, they were pretty poor, weren’t they?
Dick: Yeah. Yeah, they’re, I don’t know of any of them that ever got rich.
Ken: Yeah. Did, did the kids go to school?
Dick: Yeah, uh-huh
Ken: How ‘bout, how far would they get into, would they go up into school? They wouldn’t, would they go all the way to high school sometimes?
Dick: Yeah. Some of them little schools where they went didn’t have high school
Ken: Yeah
Dick: Where I went down there at Travis Peak # 1
Ken: Yeah
Dick: I just went to the seventh grade. That’s all they taught there.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I didn’t go off to any higher school. My dad, I guess, kept me there to work. (laughs)
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: He didn’t mind keeping you to work
Ken: No
Dick: He talked like as long as you worked you’d stay out of _____.
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: And I guess that’s, and he says “a workin’ boy is healthier than one that runs around and drinks, and dopes maybe nowadays.”
Ken: Yeah, yeah, well that’s, shows to be true. You’re, look like you’re in pretty good health for your age, that’s for sure.
Dick: Yeah, pretty fair, yeah
Ken: That’s real good.
Dick: I’m supposed to check with my heart doctor tomorrow. Dr. Levy, you ever hear of him?
Ken: No. Here in Burnet?
Dick: He is really in Austin
Ken: Oh
Dick: Two or three days of the week he comes to Burnet.
Ken: That’s nice. It’s nice they’re doing that now
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Sure is a long way into Austin.
Dick: It is ___
Ken: So did, you were, did you, when you grew up as a boy did you, uh, hang around with the kids whose parents were also cuttin’ cedar. So ya’ll were all friends and stuff like that?
Dick: yeah, uh-huh
Ken: I mean I, ‘cause I heard they were some pretty tough kids sometimes
Dick: Yeah, some of them was. Bully Preece I guess was one of ‘em.
Ken: Bully or Billy?
Dick: Bully
Ken: Bully
Dick: Yeah, that’s what we, we called him.
Ken: What was he like?
Dick: Oh, he just one of them tried to be a little tough
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I think he’d meet his match once in a while
Ken: Uh-huh (laugh) Did you ever get into any fights?
Dick: Oh, a few, not many
Ken: Good
Dick: I tried to stay away from fightin’ if I could. ‘Cause you didn’t gain nothing by it.
Ken: Yeah. Well they must have been – if you’re cuttin’ cedar you’re gonna be a tough … you’re gonna be pretty strong, aren’t you?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: So I guess that, that alone made ‘em pretty strong.
Dick: Yep. Yeah, they was. What day you reckon you could come back if I could hunt up some more of this
Ken: Oh, I, anytime, I’m pretty free
Dick: My granddaughter and great-granddaughter live with me and they moved in a lot of stuff. I’ve got stuff jammed up so much you can’t hardly get around.
Ken: Uh-huh. Well, yeah, I’ll just, uh, maybe I’ll call you, call your daughter or something, or I’ll call you and find, and see if you found it.
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Well, uh
Dick: Let’s see, you’ve got a, what’s your telephone?
Ken: Oh, I’ve got a telephone. You want it?
Break 6:23
Ken: So, David Whitt’s dad, what was his name? He would have been
Dick: Let’s see, it wasn’t Connie Whitt. It had to have been his granddad. David Whitt. Let’s see. Can’t think of him.
Ken: He hauled how many loads to the King Ranch? Did you say?
Dick: Oh, that was, uh, Zeke Bonnet. He was a brother-in-law to me.
Ken: I see
Dick: I believe it was forty-something loads one year. I knew a guy that got to be the, you know, boss over this part of it Rosco Bradshaw.
Ken: Bonnet. That’s a familiar name.
Dick: Yeah, there’s used to be a bunch of them. Zeke Bonnet, let’s see, he had a big ole’ bunch of kids.
Ken: Were they cedar cutters?
Dick: No, I don’t think. He was doing other things. Don’t think he cut much cedar. Well, I used to have another brother-in-law that lived over in there by name of Frank Maynard.
Ken: Yep
Dick: Yeah. He married my wife’s sister
Ken: Well, that’s right next door to us. We called it the Maynard place.
Dick: You do?
Ken: Uh-huh. There’s nobody living there now.
Dick: Uh-huh
Ken: So you’ve probably been, have you ever been there, to the, the Whitts and the Maynard’s place up there
Dick: Uh-huh
Ken: We, we call it
Dick: Years ago
Ken: Shinoak Ridge up there, way up high above Liberty Hill
Dick: Let’s see, there’s Nameless and Round Mountain.
Ken: That’s right. Yes. We’re, we’re on the road, the same road with the, uh, with the, uh, Round Mountain School
Dick: Yeah
Ken: We’re closer to Liberty Hill from out there
Dick: I believe my wife went to, Liberty, uh, what’s that thing you told?
Ken: Round Mountain School
Dick: I think she went to Round Mountain School
Ken: Uh-huh. She would have if she grew up there.
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Well I’ll be darned. Huh.
Dick: And David, David bought it. He, if it’s the one I know, well he’s my nephew. See he was Zeke Bonnet’s boy.
Ken: I see.
Dick: And Zeke married one of my wife’s sisters – Katie. Katie Bonnet. And two of my mother’s sisters, I believe, married Crumleys. You ever hear of Crumleys?
Ken: Yes. Sure did
Dick: Old man Audrey Crumley? He used to work at the Sunset Ranch. He’d ride across there where we lived and he lived over on Round Mountain or somewhere.
Ken: Yes
Dick: Wasn’t over seven or eight miles across.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Across the hills.
Ken: boy. Isn’t that somethin’. It’s a long way by road.
Dick: Yeah, There’s some big ‘ole wild Bramers growed up in that Sunset
Ken: Some wild what?
Dick: Bramer bulls
Ken: Oh, uh-huh
Dick: Sometimes them old Bramers would try to fight you when you went through there
Ken: Huh! Kind-of scary wasn’t it
Dick: Some of ‘em even, you know, tried to attack the buggy or something like that, or, with horses on the road.
Ken: I’ll be darned. What would you do?
Dick: Uh, they just, they’d do whatever we could
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: Run off from them, or, if they’s used to foolin’ with them maybe shoot at ‘em or something
Ken: Uh-huh. Huh.
Dick: Let’s see…but anyhow, that uncle of mine, Audrey Crumley, he worked at the Sunset for years.
Ken: So, did, did, uh, cedar choppers live back in that country too? Back in those hills?
Dick: Yeah, I think they had some that – see there it wasn’t too far from that Cedar Park country
Ken: Yeah
Dick: They always had a cedar yard or two around Cedar Park. And, maybe, had one back in there on that ___ road goes west by the cemetery the other side of Leander
Ken: Yes
Dick: Used to have one back down in there too.
Ken: Uh-huh. That’s where Cantwell, that’s, uh, has an auto parts thing back there
Dick: I used to know some Cantrells down there too.
Ken: Now the Cantrells lived near the Whitts, didn’t they?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: In fact, I think they’ve still got a place there.
Dick: Yeah. You know the - my dad-in-law was Connie Whitt.
Ken: Yes
Dick: But you know , I used to have lots of, uh, relatives around Smithwick. Do you know where it is?
Ken: Yes I do, uh-huh. Yeah. Yep.
Dick: There didn’t used to be much of a town to Smithwick.
Ken: There really isn’t much of a town there, even now.
Dick: No.
Ken: There’s a good, nice cemetery.
Dick: Yeah. There used to be an old house still stand there. In Smithwick, my dad was born in, in 1881.
Ken: I’ll be darned. So your dad probably knew Noah Smithwick then. The old original pioneer Noah, Texas Ranger
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Yeah
Dick: you know my grandpa Turner lives over there. They didn’t attack them, but some Indians stole some of their horses.
Ken: Uh-huh. Yeah, the Comanches.
Dick: Did you know the, I believe they say they had the last Indian pipe up here close to Llano, or, what’s that mountain?
Ken: Pack Saddle Mountain?
Dick: Yeah. Pack Saddle Mountain.
Ken: Yeah. I’ve heard that.
Dick: That’s what I’ve heard. That them Indians got over in there and tried to hide from ‘em but they finally run ‘em out I think. The Indians had this country first but they didn’t do much with it, did they.
Ken: No
Dick: My son’d go up to Oklahoma by an Indian reservation and do some paving. You know, he’s in the paving business.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And, them Indians get a break on everything
Ken: Oh, do they?
Dick: Yeah. They get gas and everything a little cheaper than you do.
Ken: So your son, does he live around here now?
Dick: Yeah, he lives back in there far end of town, off back in there
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: He used to live right over there.
Ken: Did he ever help you with the cedar business?
Dick: Yeah.
Ken: What is his name?
Dick: Daryl.
Ken: Daryl, OK
Dick: Daryl Gladden. He got my first name and got his middle name from my brother, of course a Turner, he got it. They call him Butch.
Ken: Butch, uh-huh. Did he ever cut any cedar?
Dick: I think some, not a whole lot.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick Turner Tape 5 (4:31)
Dick: But he’s. My sisters used to cut a little cedar, some of them, with an axe.
Ken: Did they really?
Dick: Yeah.
Ken: Are they still alive?
Dick: Yeah, she’d be ninety eight in November.
Ken: How’s she – how’s her health?
Dick: I don’t think it’s nothing extra. But her and her husband drive the roads and drive ‘em and drive ‘em. They’ve got a son got a place down there right below the Hubbard Falls and they drive down there and they’re drivin’ – just drive all the time.
Ken: Just to see the country?
Dick: Oh, no, they see it, I guess, a lot just like to be driving.
Ken: Oh
Dick: He does, you know, he used to couldn’t stay still. Earl Macanally.
Ken: I see. Huh. And you sister, would she, she cut cedar, huh?
Dick: Yeah. Cut a little, yeah. She had to cut one that split off one time – hit her on the chin and bit her tongue. Choppin’ on the side of a little holler
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Little steep and it split off and hit her
Ken: The axe hit her or the,
Dick: no, The tree did
Ken: The tree did
Dick: I’ve got a big toe that I cut with an axe years ago when I was a kid. It just left a scar there. That toe still gets a little sore once in a while.
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: anyhow.
Ken: I bet it does. I mean you, if you cut yourself deep with an axe and you’re in the middle of a brake you could bleed to death.
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Did you ever know of any, any cedar cutters that, that, did hurt themselves real bad?
Dick: Yeah, uh-huh. I forget who all of ‘em, who it was, but, there, see, I come along ___ a chain saw here, in later years, and I had a yard over here by the bait shop, and some way or another that chain saw got up and like to cut his throat.
Ken: Uh
Dick: You know, them things, if you’re cuttin’ a certain way with them will bounce up
Ken: Yep
Dick: And that one got him in all around the neck
Ken: Oh! They make ‘em now with a, with a guard, that if you – pops!
Dick: uh-huh
Ken: Stops that chain
Dick: Yeah. – McCullough, uh, two more saws – there’s a German saw
Ken: Stihl
Dick: Stihl, yeah. STIHL.
Dick: And, let’s see, there’s, uh, one more too, I can’t think of the name, and it was
Ken: I’ve been talking to a fella in Liberty Hill, name of Kerry Russell, and he was talking about, you know, the cedar choppers as being different from the people who lived in Liberty Hill. That they, they were a little wilder and, uh
Dick: Yeah
Ken: They didn’t run around, the town kids did not run around with them. Do you have any memories of that, that kind of thing?
Dick: Some places, some of ‘em thought they were better than they was.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I don’t know whether they was or not.
Ken: Right
Dick: But
Ken: Did the, did the kids, cedar chopper kids, did they resent that? They would resent that, wouldn’t they?
Dick: Probably would.
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: Do you know any of them Mathers around Liberty Hill?
Ken: yeah.
Dick: Hully Mathers, and Grady Mathers
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I used to be around with them quite a bit when we were playing ball, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And them Mathers, they’re pretty good ball players. One of the boys played on the team a little that I had when they wasn’t playing, and, you know, Pat Gridell here in Burnet?
Ken: No
Dick: yeah he played for me some too.
Ken: There we go
Dick: Sold cedar posts. Lots of cedar posts went into South Dakota. Guy up there, you know, owned a lot of land, him and his wife together. She had some oil wells out here in West Texas and I reckon they had some money.
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: Anyhow, she’d give her children, I believe maybe grandchildren too, oil wells for Christmas or birthday or something. So she had a lot I guess
Ken: So you took it over from your dad in 1967? How old were you then?
Dick: Yeah. Well, let’s see, I’m 96 now, in ’67. Must of took it over in early ‘70s because he passed away in ’67. And we’ve been partners for years – good many years
Ken: How many years had you, uh, had you worked with him in the cedar yard?
Dick: I don’t know. Probably twenty, twenty-five years.
Ken: Well starting way back in, that would have been 19-
Dick: Yeah, way back there
Ken: 1950, oh even before that
Dick: Yeah
Ken: 1940
Dick: Probably. And we, you know, maybe even in the ‘30s
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: In one year, a good many years ago, we sold a lot of them old cedar stumps. You know – they’d cut the posts off of ‘em and they took them somewhere out West Texas. Talked like he get a lot of stuff out of cedar stumps that’s important
Ken: Yes
Dick: Uh, some kind of oil I think
Ken: Yes. They still do that in Junction.
Dick: They do?
Ken: When did your dad open that cedar yard, do you have any idea?
Dick: Yeah, me and him probably opened it together back there, I don’t know, forties, probably
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: Maybe earlier.
Ken: Were you the only cedar yard in Burnet at the time?
Dick: I think there’s another feller had one here. Ed Massey used to be here.
Ken: OK
Dick: In the cedar business. Course I had more places I guess – I’ve had ‘em in Oatmeal and Bertram, and Burnet, and I think I had one – I worked cedar out of the Goodrich Ranch for twenty something years. I guess you heard of it?
Ken: Yes. In Lampasas
Dick: Yeah, back in there from Lampasas, on the lake up there
Ken: Oh, uh-huh
Dick: Adjoined the lake. But it wasn’t nearly to Lampasas. I think the people that owned it then was the Garrett’s. People named Garrett
Ken: Is that going out toward the Colorado River? From Lampasas?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Uh-huh. I heard there was a big cedar brake down in there.
Dick: Yeah, there – old Goodrich had lots of what you call heart cedar too, you know it, long loose bark on it, it’s usually good heart.
Ken: How big does heart cedar have to be? Uh, how big a diameter is it?
Dick: Oh, it goes all the way up from 2 inches up to an inch or two, but, uh, I don’t know it, some of them old trees was that big around. A lot of inches in ‘em.
Ken: I see. So, when you have a heart cedar tree, it can be, even the small branches will be made of heart cedar too?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: I didn’t know that. They’re nothing like the cedar that we see growing out here in the
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Today, huh?
Dick: Usually if it’s good heart it’s got long loose bark.
Ken: I see. And you had, you had cedar yards in Bertram, you said, and in
Dick: Yeah, Bertram, Oatmeal, and oh, another place or two
Ken: Would you work all of them yourself, or, I mean, would you go around to them and supervise the
Dick: Well I had hired help, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Some old guys for, oh, down and around Kerrville come up here and worked some for me. Ike Pierce and some other guy. You may have never probably heard of them.
Ken: Well I knew some Pierces in Austin
Dick: Yeah
Ken: That were cedar choppers
Dick: These were over around Kerrville
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Big ‘ole fellers. They cut a big ‘ole post and, let it fall, they’d catch it and, in their arms, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Trim it – hold the saw in one hand. Trim off from it
Ken: Uh-huh. Well, you say a saw. When did they start using, uh, are you talking about a chainsaw?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: When did they start using chainsaws on the cedar?
Dick: Uh, I don’t remember. Way back then. You know a McCullough saw?
Ken: Yes
Dick: Two more I believe, I can’t think of their names right now, but, there’s two – three more, McCullough, and …
Ken: The new ones, there, I mean everybody is using Stihls and, that type thing
Dick: Yeah, they’s using ‘em choppin’ axes till they come in.
Ken: Double-bit axe
Dick: Yeah, mostly double-bits, yeah
Ken: Yeah. You don’t have one of those axes, do ya? I’ve been wanting to see one of those axes and I, nobody seems to have any of ‘em anymore
Dick: I may have one around somewhere
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: I think I’ve got a single-bit and a double-bit too somewhere
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I don’t know how long it will take me to find them.
Ken: (laugh) How did you, uh, how did you and your father get into the cedar business?
Dick: Oh, I guess it’s me mostly. He was mostly in cattle.
Ken: Um-hum. So, he had a ranch here in Burnet? Or outside of Burnet?
Dick: Well, the most of it is in the north end of Travis County, on Cow Creek.
Ken: Oh, I know Cow Creek real well.
Dick: Yeah, he had at one time, between five and six thousand acres. And some of ‘em were on Lake Travis, I believe.
Ken: Yeah
Dick: Sixteen hundred acres over there on Lake Travis.
Ken: And doesn’t the Turners still live there, on Cow Creek?
Dick: Yeah, I got two brothers and a sister or two lives around it. Two brothers live right down on Cow Creek.
Ken: ‘Cause I’ve heard about the Turner Ranch still being there, and, uh, the Palacios live there, don’t they, the, uh, you know Jose Palacios and the Mexican family?
Dick: Yeah, I’ve heard of ‘em
Ken: I think they lived there and cut cedar off, off of there still, to this day.
Dick: Yeah. Yeah, I think they do.
Ken: Do you want me to get your mail for you?
Dick: If you don’t mind.
Ken: I don’t mind at all. (getting mail) The Boatrights had a, had a cedar yard around Cedar Park?
Dick: Yes sir
Ken: Jim Boatright, does that ring a bell?
Dick: Uh, don’t know -- it’s been a while ago
Ken: Yeah Because I used to work with Ruth Boatright at the Leander Post Office
Dick: Yeah. Somebody still’s down there – can’t think of their name now.
Ken: Mr. King? He had one in Cedar Park.
Dick: Yeah. That’s right, he did.
Ken: I was talking to this woman that said it used to be here in Burnet. Where was your cedar yard in Burnet?
Dick: Back out here on the left, going towards the Lake about two, three miles.
Ken: OK
Dick: And I had one right down here too. Where this new school is down there.
Ken: OK.
Dick: Had one down there for a while
Ken: Did you have ‘em all at the same time? Several cedar yards at the same time?
Dick: Sometimes I did, yeah
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: You know, I’d have to, I’ve got, oh, a hun ____ boy that run one. A few of them ___
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And he worked for me a long time. I had to go to Brackenridge Hospital for eight weeks with a ruptured appendix and he run it while I was there. Run the cedar business
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: That was in ’75. I went out of the cedar business in the ‘90s, sometime. But they, got a whole lot more posts when they went to chainsaws.
Ken: Yeah. Did they run out of cedar?
Dick: No, they never did plumb run out, I don’t think, but ---but I sold, had some peop – customers up in oh, South Dakota that bought a lot of cedar. Sometimes they’d send after it and sometimes somebody’d truck it up there for them. You ever hear of Robert Adcocks?
Ken: No
Dick: He used to truck it up in there. He died here down there in the Bertram Hospital a year or two ago
Ken: Oh
Dick: But he used to take it all up in there.
Ken: And they’d use it for fence posts?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: What size would they use for the fence posts?
Dick: Oh, usually. Mostly regular fence, about a four inch top
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: That’s about the average.
Ken: a six foot post?
Dick: Yeah. Do you remember that rail fence going out of Johnson City towards
Ken: Stonewall?
Dick: Yeah, I believe it’s Stonewall.
Ken: Fredericksburg, yeah, I sure do.
Dick: I sold ‘em them posts.
Ken: Did you really? That’s a pretty fence.
Dick: Good many years ago
Ken: Those are long posts, aren’t they?
Dick: Yeah. And I sold some to the LB Johnson land over there in Cemetery. Sold some to them.
Ken: Do you know what all states your cedar went to? What, what different places beside South Dakota?
Dick: Oh, went to quite a few. Arizona and lots of it went to New Mexico. Oh, a lot of it went, the states down this away. You know they come from a little of everywhere and bought it, then we had those big trucks that, you know, peddled it.
Ken: And they would take those – where they’d take it up there and sell it up there to, to a lumber yard, or, how would the, how would the farmers
Dick: Lots of lumber yards bought it
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: a lot of ranchers, you know, bought it their selves.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I was trying to think of some pretty big ranch up here, Wagner Ranch, I believe. Is there a Wagner Ranch up that-a-way?
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Seems like I sold quite a bit to them.
Ken: What did a post go for back then?
Dick: Huh?
Ken: How much did a post cost back then?
Dick: Oh, I sold ‘em all the way, a four inch post, all the way from six cents to up to thirty, I think
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: They’s pretty cheap when I started.
Ken: So a thir – yeah –
Dick: Well, you know, it wadn’t much money.
Ken: Well, the men who cut it, uh, how much would they get for it? How, how, how did you work it with them? Did you buy it from them?
Dick: Yeah.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Yeah, and then I sold it, you know, at a profit
Ken: Right, of course. So if you were, if you were selling a post for twenty five cents, what would, how much would they make on it?
Dick: They’d probably get fifteen or twenty.
Ken: Uh-huh. How many, were they bringing in every day? How would that, how did that work?
Dick: Yes, mostly every day
Ken: Every day.
Dick: Yeah
Ken: So how many posts do you think a, a good man, a good axe man could cut in a day?
Dick: Uh, probably a hundred, you know, all ____ duces
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: You know I bought duces? two inch.
Ken: What were they used for?
Dick: Stays mostly
Ken: That’s right
Dick: Yeah. But there’s, there’s a fence that’s down here on Cow Creek, on, uh, Canyon Ridge Springs. Did you ever hear of it?
Ken: Is that a subdivision?
Dick Turner Tape 2 (6:41)
Dick: Yeah, it is now. My dad used to own it. My dad had between five and six thousand acres of land but he had nine kids.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And he had sixteen hundred I believe over on Lake Travis. Some of it in there right close to what they call Singleton Bend.
Ken: Yes, I know that well.
Dick: Yeah. Well, when you cross the creek on 1431, across Cow Creek bridge down there
Ken: Yes
Dick: It’s about five or six miles over there where I turned in and went down to the lake. When I was over there.
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: I never did really live over there but I was over there a lot.
Ken: Is that where you grew up as a kid?
Dick: I grew up as a kid right in north Travis County, down here in ‘ole Cow Creek.
Ken: Uh
Dick: South of Bertram, about sixteen miles
Ken: Uh-huh. So if a man could cut a hundred posts a day – four inch posts -
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Maybe make fifteen cents a post, that’d be fifteen dollars a day
Dick: Yeah
Ken: That’s not bad back then, was it?
Dick: No, that, uh, there’s uh, certain thing you call a four inch post, you know and a two inch – at one time a regular hundred percent price they called it, them four inch posts was six cents.
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: But they went way on up there. That land – I sold it – down on Cow Creek – it’s got them striped and painted posts
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: Canyon Ridge Springs, what they called it
Ken: OK
Dick: Then I’ve got two brothers. One of them lives on that ‘ole, let’s see, what’s that road that goes out of Bertram to Smithwick?
Ken: 1174?
Dick: Yep
Ken: Uh-huh. There’s two of them. 279 or something and 1174
Dick: Yeah
Ken: They meet out there
Dick: Yeah. You ever hear of the Hubbard Falls?
Ken: Yes
Dick: Well anyhow, where I’s at ‘ya go right by it. They claimed here in the Civil War, sometime or another. They killed, somebody killed a guy by the name of Hubbard and tied rocks on him and throwed him in.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I don’t know. Then it’d been two or three times that some people were pushed off the bridge down there and drowned. One put a from around Horseshoe Bay. Just a few years ago, he pulled in there and drowned out and got out to that bridge down there, you know, it crosses Cow Creek?
Ken: Yeah
Dick: Goes over to Smithwick and down, down Cow Creek. And, you know, he pulled out in the water and drowned his car out and he got out to do that, to try to do something about it and it washed him off the bridge and he washed over four miles down the creek.
Ken: Hum. Yeah, that’s crazy
Dick: His wife, somebody come along, got out in there and tied on to the car and got her out.
Ken: Oh, that’s good
Dick: But he washed down there. We got a bluff back there, it’s kind-of a suction in under it. They looked all up and down the creek for him and my brother happened to think about what they done there and he went down there and sure enough the feller was back in that ..
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: You know, logs would even
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Go back in there and stay
Ken: Yeah, yeah, yeah
Dick: He was right close to where the house, place I was raised on, my brother, one of them lives on it now.
Ken: That’s pretty country down there
Dick: There is a new house on it. A lot of them people, you know, put in these subdivisions, put up some sure enough good houses.
Ken: Yeah
Dick: Just to camp in once and a while
Ken: (laugh) Yeah.
Dick: One outfit down there on some of the land I had, there’s a three story house down there owned by somebody in London, England.
Ken: Huh
Dick: Well he’s from there I don’t know whether they moved here, or just come here once in a while.
Ken: Tell me about these folks who would bring you the cedar, uh, how many, how many people, how many, how many would you, people would come and sell you cedar every day? On one of your, one of your yards?
Dick: Yeah, I had several different ones of ‘em
Ken: Do you remember any of their names?
Dick: One of ‘em was Westbrooke, Calvin Westbrook. Ike Pierce and, oh, let’s see, there’s a lot of different people here. Some of ‘em I can’t think of
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Right off my head
Ken: Sure
Dick: Anyhow, they
Ken: Would they, uh, bring you in a, in a, little truck, or a big truck, or, how did they get it to you?
Dick: Most any way they could. Way back years ago I bought some off of a feller in a wagon.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: He used a wagon, Nathan Peacock
Ken: Nathan Peacock
Dick: Uh-huh
Dick Turner Tape 3 (15:00)
Dick: China tree there. A year or so ago I had a big ‘ole Cypress blowed on my house back there and then that big ‘ole China tree blowed into that Live Oak.
Ken: Uh-huh. So, you say that, that they would, they had pick-up trucks, they had wagons
Dick: Yes
Ken: Were there any in cars
Dick: Yeah, anything that
Ken: Anything they would
Dick: They’d go to work in cars quite a bit and they maybe wouldn’t haul a load of posts in every day.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: They’d bring ‘em on trucks, you know, they’d bring _____
Ken: Uh-huh. Would they own their own trucks, do you think?
Dick: Yes, some of ‘em, most of ‘em did
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: But there was lots of that cedar work goin on back then.
Ken: That was, was it just a, the men, and sometimes the boys would work too, wouldn’t they?
Dick: Yeah, um-hum
Ken: What time would they, I mean it’s a hot day, cedar’s – nothing hotter than a cedar brake, is there? I mean
Dick: It’s pretty hot
Ken: a cedar brake does not let any air in, does it?
Dick: No
Ken: so would they start real early in the day and
Dick: Yeah. Yeah, and maybe quit early.
Ken: Uh-huh. So they’d be bringing, they’d be bringing their loads in ..
Dick: Yeah
Ken: pretty early, maybe, what
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Three o’clock, two o’clock?
Dick: Um-hum. Some of ‘em didn’t come in every day
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: You know, cutting – truck to haul in
Ken: Well they’d have to, did they live on their cedar brake or, or would they, this would be some rancher I guess
Dick: Some of ‘em camped in the cedar brake
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Quite a few of ‘em
Ken: With their families too?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Yeah, there was a whole lot that went on in the cedar business for a good many years.
Ken: A whole lot went on?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: You mean, it was a big business for a lot of years
Dick: Yeah it was.
Ken: I want – like here in Burnet – so you had several cedar yards and that would probably be so the men would not have to haul that cedar too far, right
Dick: Yeah
Ken: to, to bring it to you
Dick: Some of them, you know, had certain places they wanted to go
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: But my biggest yard I had the most cedar on was right out here towards the lake
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: over that, you know where that bait shop is over there
Ken: Yeah, yeah
Dick: It’s right on this side of it
Ken: Ok, almost to Marble Falls?
Dick: No, to the lake
Ken: Oh, OK
Dick: Towards the lake
Ken: OK
Dick: Yep, and I told you though, I had one down here where this new school is.
Ken: Yes. Who were they cuttin’ – on who’s land were they cuttin’ this cedar?
Dick: Oh, just most everybodys’
Ken: Uh-huh. Did the rancher get a share of that money?
Dick: Yeah. Yeah, he’d get so much percent
Ken: Like, how, what percent, do you recall?
Dick: Uh, I don’t hardly know
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: forgot
Ken: I heard, maybe, some like ten percent? Is that
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Would that be about right?
Dick: pretty good, yeah
Ken: So how would the rancher, would the cedar, would the, would the cedar cutter take that money back to the rancher and give him his ten percent, or, how did that, did you have to give it to the rancher, or, how did that work out?
Dick: Yeah, you know, give ‘em a check every once in a while.
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: And there’s, uh, you know when they’re, they used to use axes.
Ken: Yeah
Dick: They cut quite a bit more cedar when they went to the chainsaw
Ken: Sure. But the axes, you were, you were in the cedar business when the axes
Dick: Yeah
Ken: For many, many years?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: When they were using axes
Dick: Um-hum
Ken: And, now those are, I’ve seen a double-bit cedar axe. They weren’t real big, were they? They were about maybe that long
Dick: About like that
Ken: Yeah.
Dick: A handle, maybe, uh, three feet long, something like that. Real light weight
Dick: Yeah
Ken: How would a man approach, do you recall, do you ever cut cedar? Yourself?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: How, how would you, you see a cedar tree there, how would you go about cutting it? I mean
Dick: With an axe?
Ken: Yeah, with an axe.
Dick: Well, you’d trim it all you could before you cut it down
Ken: OK
Dick: And then you’d go down as low as you could do it on it
Ken: How many hits would it take to, to cut a four inch, well I guess it wouldn’t be four inch at the base – it’d be a little bigger than that, wouldn’t it?
Dick: Yeah, it, I don’t know just how long, but, you know, if you had a good axe it didn’t’ take too long. Them guys that used axes a long time. I did have a single-bit and a double-bit too around here somewhere, but, I don’t know whether I know where they at now
Ken: (laugh) I’d like to see one if you had it. Uh
Dick: I’ve still got some of the cedar books that, uh, I bought and sold on
Ken: Oh, you do?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: I’d like to see them
Dick: Yeah
Ken: That’d be real good, yeah. I mean, and then, was it all trucked out of here or did any go out on the railroad? Do you recall? Did you ever
Dick: Yeah, some of ‘em loaded cedar on boxcar
Ken: Uh-huh. Yeah.
Dick: Most of them that isn’t going very far it’d go on one of them big trailer trucks
Ken: Uh-huh. Now the, the people who cut it there, uh, would they typically be families that, that would be like living here in Burnet, and, you know, kind-of local folk?
Dick: Yeah, could be, yeah.
Ken: Uh-huh. I heard the women sometimes helped, in the, with the work
Dick: Yeah. My sisters cut a little bit of cedar with an axe, some of em
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh. That’s pretty dangerous work, isn’t it? You could cut your foot off, couldn’t ya?
Dick: Yeah, some of ‘em cut theirselves pretty good too.
Ken: Damn, what would you do if you cut yourself?
Dick: I guess ‘ole, Alden Westbrook they called him, he’s dead now, he, he used to be, I guess, as good a cedar chopper as I had
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: He’s good at it too. And then there’s an old guy out of Bertram about ten or twelve miles, name of Peacock, that hauled it on a wagon.
Ken: Um-hum. What years was that? Was that back in the thirties or forties?
Dick: Yep, um-hum. An old guy I bought cedar from is selling from up the country. Peacock come in there one day with a mule and horse, a mare, you know, went up through that yard, you know, maybe went up a little ways to get to where he wanted to unload it at. Anyhow, that ole mule, you know, was dragging, and, uh, that old horse, or mule with a mare, she was really pulling it. That old guy made remarks, said “that ‘ole mare wants to pull that whole load, I expect that old mule don’t give a damn if she does.”
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: Kind-of made that old guy about half sore
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: I believe the only way he ever hauled me in the cedar was on a wagon. Peacock. Lincoln Peacock.
Ken: Huh. Did yall ever have any charcoal burning here, you know, where people would make charcoal out of cedar
Dick: Yeah, they made it. I never did do it
Ken: uh-huh
Dick: a lot of people made it. And we’d use ‘ole, lets see, what kind of tree was it we’d use to get, uh, wood, to smoke your meat with when you smoked out, let’s see. I had a certain kind. It wasn’t cedar. It was some other kind of tree, they called it, I can’t think of what it was, but
Ken: Yeah
Dick: they’d smoke it
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: meat, you’d have a smokehouse, hanging it in it.
Ken: It wasn’t oak, huh? It wasn’t live oak or red oak, Spanish oak?
Dick: uh-huh
Ken: Bodark (Bois d’arc)?
Dick: Bodark.
Ken: Was it Bodark?
Dick: Maybe that’s what
Ken: That’s a hard ... Uh. There’s not too many of them left around
Dick: Yeah, you know, we used to use Bodarks down here when my wife was living. Some Bodarks down here and I cut some up, down, and cut ‘em into wood and, you know, that stuff smoked and smelled so that it purty-near run her out of the house.
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: That ‘old Bodarks, sort of stinks when it’s fired
Ken: Yeah. Uh, so, so the people that was cutting it for you, did they, uh, were, were they living in town? Or do they live
Dick: Just everywhere
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Some of ‘em part of the time even camped out in the cedar brake.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: You know they had tents
Ken: Uh-huh. But they had, were they, did they also have a house in town, or did they just go from cedar brake to cedar brake?
Dick: Oh, most of them cedar choppers didn’t have much
Ken: Uh-huh. Before the cedar business took off, I’m guessing it took off in the, when the, the barbed wire came in, and, you know, fence posts
Dick: Yeah
Ken: There wouldn’t have been any cedar choppers. So, did they come in to Burnet and, from somewhere else, do have any idea?
Dick: Yeah, some of ‘em did
Ken: Any idea?
Dick: Yeah, two of, two of the guys come up here and cut some down around Kerrville.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And some of ‘em a lot of other different places. Excuse me a minute. Let me look and see if I can find some of (rustling of papers)That’s one of those ____ I used to be able to bank at ____, one over at Kingsland.
Ken: Now, some of these folks said that you knew that they were, uh, that cut cedar, um, you mentioned the guy with the wagon. What was his name?
Dick: Peacock
Ken: Peacock, uh-huh
Dick: Lincoln Peacock.
Ken: Lincoln Peacock. Where did he live?
Dick: He lived out of Bertram, down that, oh, 1174 abouts
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: oh, I’d say, well you know where that road out of Bertram and another one intersects?
Ken: Yeah
Dick: Anyhow, he lives right around in there.
Ken: OK. So he
Dick: No he lived on the main 1174
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: That’s right. He’s lived on the Main 74.
Ken: Did he raise a family there too? Have a family?
Dick: Uh, I believe he had a, I believe just a boy and a girl.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: The boy, he’s kind of off in a way. They took him into the service, but they turned him out in a little while
Ken: Huh. I wonder why.
Dick: He was kinda off.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Took him all the way to California
Ken: Huh. Did a lot of the, the boys, uh, during that period, the, uh, that were cutting cedar? Did they has to, did they serve in the Army during World War II?
Dick: Some of ‘em did, yeah. There’s some two or three boys I worked with that lost their lives.
Ken: Um
Dick: Whitehead, Richard Whitehead, and one or two more. There was a Travis boy out of Bertram, lost his. And, a, another one or two___ talked like not all of ‘em
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Went out the Rhine River when they was crossing it. But anyhow, I wasn’t in the service. They turned me down. I had three brothers that all went. One of my brothers was a M.P. over there in Manila
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And the youngest one, two youngest ones I believe, was in the Korean War.
Ken: Oh-OK
Dick: My oldest brother, and he’s about ten years younger than me, went to World War II.
Ken: So you’re the oldest of the, of the brothers?
Dick: Of the boys
Ken: Of the boys, uh-huh
Dick: I’ve got a sister in Bertram a little bit older than I am
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Do you know of any people around Bertram?
Ken: I know some of them, uh-huh
Dick: You know anybody by name of Macanally?
Ken: I don’t know ‘em
Dick: They drive around all the time
Ken: OK
Dick: She’ll be ninety-eight in November.
Ken: Hum. So this Mr. Peacock, uh, did he, he, did he, like, own, own, live out there on land he owned, do you know?
Dick: Yeah, he owned it
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Owned some of it
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick Turner Tape 4 (15:00)
Dick: And then there’s a guy I married a sister to. His wife – oh, I thought of the name then and forgotten it. Let’s see. There used to be a world of Heines in this country. That’s my dad’s – bought the whole place from the old man, Henry Heine. He’s an old German. Come over here from Germany.
Ken: The people who cut cedar. They, they weren’t for the most part Germans, were they? Uh-uh
Dick: A lot of them were Mexicans.
Ken: Oh, you had some Mexican cedar choppers, huh?
Dick: Yeah. You know Prentice Highland – he had a place back in there around the top of Doeskin there. You know what they called Doeskin down there?
Ken: Yes
Dick: You know, a big mountain
Ken: Yes
Dick: coming towards Bertram
Ken: Yes
Dick: That’s Doeskin Mountain.
Ken: And, who, who had a place there?
Dick: Oh, Peacocks had one right close. And it’s close to the road. It cuts across and goes to Liberty Hill too.
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: Old man, there used to be some pretty wealthy cedar men in places over – Bill Hall – he was in it, and, he, I reckon, was pretty wealthy.
Ken: He would buy it?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: But the cut…
Dick: He had a yard
Ken: Uh-huh. I’ve heard of that.
Dick: These here, people lived right there, they’re pretty wealthy I think, their relatives live here but they’ve been up in Pennsylvania and in there for years, selling, oh, rights, you know, oil rights
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Stuff like that. And I think they got pretty wealthy.
Ken: But the cedar cutters themselves, they were pretty poor, weren’t they?
Dick: Yeah. Yeah, they’re, I don’t know of any of them that ever got rich.
Ken: Yeah. Did, did the kids go to school?
Dick: Yeah, uh-huh
Ken: How ‘bout, how far would they get into, would they go up into school? They wouldn’t, would they go all the way to high school sometimes?
Dick: Yeah. Some of them little schools where they went didn’t have high school
Ken: Yeah
Dick: Where I went down there at Travis Peak # 1
Ken: Yeah
Dick: I just went to the seventh grade. That’s all they taught there.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I didn’t go off to any higher school. My dad, I guess, kept me there to work. (laughs)
Ken: Um-hum
Dick: He didn’t mind keeping you to work
Ken: No
Dick: He talked like as long as you worked you’d stay out of _____.
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: And I guess that’s, and he says “a workin’ boy is healthier than one that runs around and drinks, and dopes maybe nowadays.”
Ken: Yeah, yeah, well that’s, shows to be true. You’re, look like you’re in pretty good health for your age, that’s for sure.
Dick: Yeah, pretty fair, yeah
Ken: That’s real good.
Dick: I’m supposed to check with my heart doctor tomorrow. Dr. Levy, you ever hear of him?
Ken: No. Here in Burnet?
Dick: He is really in Austin
Ken: Oh
Dick: Two or three days of the week he comes to Burnet.
Ken: That’s nice. It’s nice they’re doing that now
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Sure is a long way into Austin.
Dick: It is ___
Ken: So did, you were, did you, when you grew up as a boy did you, uh, hang around with the kids whose parents were also cuttin’ cedar. So ya’ll were all friends and stuff like that?
Dick: yeah, uh-huh
Ken: I mean I, ‘cause I heard they were some pretty tough kids sometimes
Dick: Yeah, some of them was. Bully Preece I guess was one of ‘em.
Ken: Bully or Billy?
Dick: Bully
Ken: Bully
Dick: Yeah, that’s what we, we called him.
Ken: What was he like?
Dick: Oh, he just one of them tried to be a little tough
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I think he’d meet his match once in a while
Ken: Uh-huh (laugh) Did you ever get into any fights?
Dick: Oh, a few, not many
Ken: Good
Dick: I tried to stay away from fightin’ if I could. ‘Cause you didn’t gain nothing by it.
Ken: Yeah. Well they must have been – if you’re cuttin’ cedar you’re gonna be a tough … you’re gonna be pretty strong, aren’t you?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: So I guess that, that alone made ‘em pretty strong.
Dick: Yep. Yeah, they was. What day you reckon you could come back if I could hunt up some more of this
Ken: Oh, I, anytime, I’m pretty free
Dick: My granddaughter and great-granddaughter live with me and they moved in a lot of stuff. I’ve got stuff jammed up so much you can’t hardly get around.
Ken: Uh-huh. Well, yeah, I’ll just, uh, maybe I’ll call you, call your daughter or something, or I’ll call you and find, and see if you found it.
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Well, uh
Dick: Let’s see, you’ve got a, what’s your telephone?
Ken: Oh, I’ve got a telephone. You want it?
Break 6:23
Ken: So, David Whitt’s dad, what was his name? He would have been
Dick: Let’s see, it wasn’t Connie Whitt. It had to have been his granddad. David Whitt. Let’s see. Can’t think of him.
Ken: He hauled how many loads to the King Ranch? Did you say?
Dick: Oh, that was, uh, Zeke Bonnet. He was a brother-in-law to me.
Ken: I see
Dick: I believe it was forty-something loads one year. I knew a guy that got to be the, you know, boss over this part of it Rosco Bradshaw.
Ken: Bonnet. That’s a familiar name.
Dick: Yeah, there’s used to be a bunch of them. Zeke Bonnet, let’s see, he had a big ole’ bunch of kids.
Ken: Were they cedar cutters?
Dick: No, I don’t think. He was doing other things. Don’t think he cut much cedar. Well, I used to have another brother-in-law that lived over in there by name of Frank Maynard.
Ken: Yep
Dick: Yeah. He married my wife’s sister
Ken: Well, that’s right next door to us. We called it the Maynard place.
Dick: You do?
Ken: Uh-huh. There’s nobody living there now.
Dick: Uh-huh
Ken: So you’ve probably been, have you ever been there, to the, the Whitts and the Maynard’s place up there
Dick: Uh-huh
Ken: We, we call it
Dick: Years ago
Ken: Shinoak Ridge up there, way up high above Liberty Hill
Dick: Let’s see, there’s Nameless and Round Mountain.
Ken: That’s right. Yes. We’re, we’re on the road, the same road with the, uh, with the, uh, Round Mountain School
Dick: Yeah
Ken: We’re closer to Liberty Hill from out there
Dick: I believe my wife went to, Liberty, uh, what’s that thing you told?
Ken: Round Mountain School
Dick: I think she went to Round Mountain School
Ken: Uh-huh. She would have if she grew up there.
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Well I’ll be darned. Huh.
Dick: And David, David bought it. He, if it’s the one I know, well he’s my nephew. See he was Zeke Bonnet’s boy.
Ken: I see.
Dick: And Zeke married one of my wife’s sisters – Katie. Katie Bonnet. And two of my mother’s sisters, I believe, married Crumleys. You ever hear of Crumleys?
Ken: Yes. Sure did
Dick: Old man Audrey Crumley? He used to work at the Sunset Ranch. He’d ride across there where we lived and he lived over on Round Mountain or somewhere.
Ken: Yes
Dick: Wasn’t over seven or eight miles across.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Across the hills.
Ken: boy. Isn’t that somethin’. It’s a long way by road.
Dick: Yeah, There’s some big ‘ole wild Bramers growed up in that Sunset
Ken: Some wild what?
Dick: Bramer bulls
Ken: Oh, uh-huh
Dick: Sometimes them old Bramers would try to fight you when you went through there
Ken: Huh! Kind-of scary wasn’t it
Dick: Some of ‘em even, you know, tried to attack the buggy or something like that, or, with horses on the road.
Ken: I’ll be darned. What would you do?
Dick: Uh, they just, they’d do whatever we could
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: Run off from them, or, if they’s used to foolin’ with them maybe shoot at ‘em or something
Ken: Uh-huh. Huh.
Dick: Let’s see…but anyhow, that uncle of mine, Audrey Crumley, he worked at the Sunset for years.
Ken: So, did, did, uh, cedar choppers live back in that country too? Back in those hills?
Dick: Yeah, I think they had some that – see there it wasn’t too far from that Cedar Park country
Ken: Yeah
Dick: They always had a cedar yard or two around Cedar Park. And, maybe, had one back in there on that ___ road goes west by the cemetery the other side of Leander
Ken: Yes
Dick: Used to have one back down in there too.
Ken: Uh-huh. That’s where Cantwell, that’s, uh, has an auto parts thing back there
Dick: I used to know some Cantrells down there too.
Ken: Now the Cantrells lived near the Whitts, didn’t they?
Dick: Yeah
Ken: In fact, I think they’ve still got a place there.
Dick: Yeah. You know the - my dad-in-law was Connie Whitt.
Ken: Yes
Dick: But you know , I used to have lots of, uh, relatives around Smithwick. Do you know where it is?
Ken: Yes I do, uh-huh. Yeah. Yep.
Dick: There didn’t used to be much of a town to Smithwick.
Ken: There really isn’t much of a town there, even now.
Dick: No.
Ken: There’s a good, nice cemetery.
Dick: Yeah. There used to be an old house still stand there. In Smithwick, my dad was born in, in 1881.
Ken: I’ll be darned. So your dad probably knew Noah Smithwick then. The old original pioneer Noah, Texas Ranger
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Yeah
Dick: you know my grandpa Turner lives over there. They didn’t attack them, but some Indians stole some of their horses.
Ken: Uh-huh. Yeah, the Comanches.
Dick: Did you know the, I believe they say they had the last Indian pipe up here close to Llano, or, what’s that mountain?
Ken: Pack Saddle Mountain?
Dick: Yeah. Pack Saddle Mountain.
Ken: Yeah. I’ve heard that.
Dick: That’s what I’ve heard. That them Indians got over in there and tried to hide from ‘em but they finally run ‘em out I think. The Indians had this country first but they didn’t do much with it, did they.
Ken: No
Dick: My son’d go up to Oklahoma by an Indian reservation and do some paving. You know, he’s in the paving business.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And, them Indians get a break on everything
Ken: Oh, do they?
Dick: Yeah. They get gas and everything a little cheaper than you do.
Ken: So your son, does he live around here now?
Dick: Yeah, he lives back in there far end of town, off back in there
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: He used to live right over there.
Ken: Did he ever help you with the cedar business?
Dick: Yeah.
Ken: What is his name?
Dick: Daryl.
Ken: Daryl, OK
Dick: Daryl Gladden. He got my first name and got his middle name from my brother, of course a Turner, he got it. They call him Butch.
Ken: Butch, uh-huh. Did he ever cut any cedar?
Dick: I think some, not a whole lot.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick Turner Tape 5 (4:31)
Dick: But he’s. My sisters used to cut a little cedar, some of them, with an axe.
Ken: Did they really?
Dick: Yeah.
Ken: Are they still alive?
Dick: Yeah, she’d be ninety eight in November.
Ken: How’s she – how’s her health?
Dick: I don’t think it’s nothing extra. But her and her husband drive the roads and drive ‘em and drive ‘em. They’ve got a son got a place down there right below the Hubbard Falls and they drive down there and they’re drivin’ – just drive all the time.
Ken: Just to see the country?
Dick: Oh, no, they see it, I guess, a lot just like to be driving.
Ken: Oh
Dick: He does, you know, he used to couldn’t stay still. Earl Macanally.
Ken: I see. Huh. And you sister, would she, she cut cedar, huh?
Dick: Yeah. Cut a little, yeah. She had to cut one that split off one time – hit her on the chin and bit her tongue. Choppin’ on the side of a little holler
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: Little steep and it split off and hit her
Ken: The axe hit her or the,
Dick: no, The tree did
Ken: The tree did
Dick: I’ve got a big toe that I cut with an axe years ago when I was a kid. It just left a scar there. That toe still gets a little sore once in a while.
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: anyhow.
Ken: I bet it does. I mean you, if you cut yourself deep with an axe and you’re in the middle of a brake you could bleed to death.
Dick: Yeah
Ken: Did you ever know of any, any cedar cutters that, that, did hurt themselves real bad?
Dick: Yeah, uh-huh. I forget who all of ‘em, who it was, but, there, see, I come along ___ a chain saw here, in later years, and I had a yard over here by the bait shop, and some way or another that chain saw got up and like to cut his throat.
Ken: Uh
Dick: You know, them things, if you’re cuttin’ a certain way with them will bounce up
Ken: Yep
Dick: And that one got him in all around the neck
Ken: Oh! They make ‘em now with a, with a guard, that if you – pops!
Dick: uh-huh
Ken: Stops that chain
Dick: Yeah. – McCullough, uh, two more saws – there’s a German saw
Ken: Stihl
Dick: Stihl, yeah. STIHL.
Dick: And, let’s see, there’s, uh, one more too, I can’t think of the name, and it was
Ken: I’ve been talking to a fella in Liberty Hill, name of Kerry Russell, and he was talking about, you know, the cedar choppers as being different from the people who lived in Liberty Hill. That they, they were a little wilder and, uh
Dick: Yeah
Ken: They didn’t run around, the town kids did not run around with them. Do you have any memories of that, that kind of thing?
Dick: Some places, some of ‘em thought they were better than they was.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I don’t know whether they was or not.
Ken: Right
Dick: But
Ken: Did the, did the kids, cedar chopper kids, did they resent that? They would resent that, wouldn’t they?
Dick: Probably would.
Ken: (laugh)
Dick: Do you know any of them Mathers around Liberty Hill?
Ken: yeah.
Dick: Hully Mathers, and Grady Mathers
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: I used to be around with them quite a bit when we were playing ball, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Dick: And them Mathers, they’re pretty good ball players. One of the boys played on the team a little that I had when they wasn’t playing, and, you know, Pat Gridell here in Burnet?
Ken: No
Dick: yeah he played for me some too.
