Stanley Allen
Stanley Allen
Interview January 2013
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Ken: OK. So, here I am sitting here in Stanley Allen’s truck and we’re going to talk about cedar. So, you’re saying you had a cedar yard, mama’s place right here
Stanley: Right down the road’s the old home place
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And, we had a big yard there for years
Ken: What years were, were those?
Stanley: Oh, back in the sixties
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Early sixties and, early fif, well, late fifties on in to, to probably about seventy-something
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And then I, um, I got the old house. It was down where we started out down there, and then, then my dad’s mother had this original old house and uh, and uh, so, then I, I moved the old house that was there up here. And, uh, we had people come in that picked up cedar from all over the country. I had, I even hauled cedar up to uh, up there to the Panhandle, up in there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And then down on the, down on 16, down there towards Corpus, and all off down there.
Ken: How did you sell it?
Stanley: By truckloads.
Ken: Just, just bought on the side of the road?
Stanley: Regular customers. People
Ken: OK
Stanley: come by and they’d see our yard, and then they’d, they’d get our number off of the yard, then they’d call.
Ken: OK
Stanley: And, uh, I sold three thousand threes to a guy up in Grapeland, up there, Crockett, one time.
Ken: Three thousand!
Stanley: Yeah. It was hard to imagine that many, but, they was all seven foot, straight, three-inch-top cedar posts.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: They drove ‘em up there with a driver.
Ken: Really!
Stanley: That old sandy land up there.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: They didn’t drill ‘em, they drove ‘em.
Ken: I’ll be darned.
Stanley: It was government land, you could lease it.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But, you couldn’t keep it over about five years, and then you had to move, you know, and then if somebody else had came you had to tear down the fences they built and somebody else had to come in and build ‘em back again. It don’t make sense.
Ken: It doesn’t make sense.
Stanley: Wasted, wasted time.
Ken: I can’t imagine building a fence
Stanley: But, um, I used to sell a lot of cedar to old CL Daughtery. They had, there was a whole bunch of cedar cutters years ago. When I was coming along they were cutting all over. And they had big ‘ole trucks. They’d haul, you know, posts all over, and, uh, they had a cedar yard down there at Clear Spring, they had a big yard down there. And then, uh, they moved around. They had another big yard down there going to Seguin, down there off of 123. And, uh, and then, CL moved on off, I don’t know why they did, they moved off down close to Victoria and off down that a way. They come through here and they’d, they’d come in, they’d see, they’d try to buy our cedar, you know, so they wouldn’t have to go cut a bunch (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: But years ago, these old, uh, they used to camp out, you can still find the old camps
Ken: Really!
Stanley: Every once in a while. They’d camp out there a week-or-two and cut and then they’d haul out
Ken: Is this cutting with axes back then?
Stanley: Yeah, um-hum. My dad cut with an axe until one day, I, uh, I got, I got started out on the highway out there, and, they had a garage sale at Wimberly. (laugh) And he didn’t even know what a chainsaw was. And I hadn’t fooled with one. I always cut with an axe. And I, I found a little ‘ole orange chainsaw, and that was the toughest little ‘ole damn saw I ever saw!
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: (laugh) I give ‘em twenty-five dollars for it.
Ken: Huh
Stanley: Came home, fired it up, and checked it out, and sharpened the chain on it, and I give it to my dad. And he looked at that like “what in the world is that damn thing!” He got to cutting with it and then you couldn’t get him out of the damn cedar brake.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: He’d stay out there seven days a week. He’d go cutting, you know, just like a kid with a toy.
Ken: What year, what year did you give him that chainsaw?
Stanley: Oh, that’s, it was probably forty years ago.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Seems like
Ken: In the sixties, I imagine.
Stanley: Yeah, it was the early sixties.
Ken: ‘cause that’s when they started
Stanley: Yeah, and, uh, I don’t remember what kind of saw it was, but that was the cuttingist, most powerful little saw I ever seen in my life!
Ken: Huh
Stanley: God almighty!
Ken: So, your dad cut cedar?
Stanley: Oh, he cut cedar all his life.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: He’s the one who started the yard.
Ken: OK
Stanley: And when I got big enough to start helping him, well, you know, I got in there and started helping him
Ken: You were probably pretty young
Stanley: I was. I was just barely big enough to crawl around and I was out there helping him.
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: Stacking posts, and stuff like that.
Ken: Did he start the yard back in the forties? Do you happen to know?
Stanley: It was probably early fifties
Ken: Uh-huh, u h-huh
Stanley: Forty-five, no, it was, it was later than that. It was probably like, um, um, well, when he was started out cuttin’ they had people that would come through, you’d cut ‘em and stack ‘em, and then these ole’ buyers would come through and buy ‘em and, and ‘cause they didn’t have a way to haul ‘em, like we do today.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Most of the old people that cut, they just had an old pick-up, they didn’t have a way to haul ‘em
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: Them posts are heavy when they’re green
Ken: You bet
Stanley: But, anyway, they, uh, I remember some of the old trailers that used to come in, some of them old trucks looked like they couldn’t make another mile.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: They, they’d leave out with a big load, you know.
Ken: Yeah. Big flat beds?
Stanley: yeah. Big ‘ole flat beds. And then, uh, we had, we cleared old Joe Cox’s place up here at the Backbone. And, uh, we got twenty-thousand five-foot cedar stays, like those in that stack.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: We had ‘em down there. One Sunday morning I head a pick-up coming by, you know. I’ve done, I’ve done moved up here, that old house, moved it up here. And, uh, so, anyway, I heard something go by and I heard the brakes squall, and “what the hell”, I thought he’d run over something. So I looked out and this truck is sitting out in the road, signal light on, and, uh, he was from the Twin Mountain Supply in San Angelo.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: He come by and he bought every, he bought the twenty-thousand stays from me.
Ken: How many could he get on in one load?
Stanley: They had three eighteen wheelers loads to come out of that yard.
Ken: Uh
Stanley: We loaded ‘em five-hundred to a row, and, uh, on the truck, and they, they, uh, they bundled ‘em five hundred per bundle. So, when they got up there, they’d take a forks
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Fork lift and lift ‘em off and set ‘em on the pallets, you know.
Ken: And did they have big posts too, or they using steel posts?
Stanley: Well, they, uh, they wanted, they, they were, uh, a big supplier of West Texas on the cedar stays.
Ken: I got you.
Stanley: There is a big demand out there right now for ‘em
Ken: Huh!
Stanley: But, um, you know, I, um, I, I cut cedar for long years, and then the boys, they got to cutting and we got busy building fence out of pipe, and everybody switched to pipe
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: And, it would last longer, so
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: We still do a few cedar post fences, but
Ken: When you cut out of that ranch up on the, uh, Backbone, do you, you got more than stays, didn’t you, you
Stanley: We got, we got corner posts
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: Line posts, some of the prettiest posts you’ve ever seen in your life. Man, I had a place, I cut at Fisher’s store, and, uh, that, well you can drive all over it. And, I mean, it was just like this, and I hauled loads of posts in, and that’s when we kind-of got modern, on our, on our work in cedar, then. We got our first tractor, was a, was an old, uh, Ford 8 or 9N with a front-end loader on it.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And I made a set of forks that bolted in the bucket. Instead of having to carry these posts out to the truck, we’d throw ‘em in stacks out where we cut ‘em
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And I’d take the tractor and move the brush over, and load ‘em on the fork and go dump ‘em on the trailer. And that really speeded up
Ken: I bet it did!
Stanley: You can move more cedar than you’ve ever seen, you know. But at that time, the cedar business was playing out.
Ken: When was this, when did it play out?
Stanley: Oh, probably about, probably about twenty years ago. Maybe not quite that long.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Everything slowed down, you know, and, you know, it just, a lot of people quit cutting, there was, uh, so many cutters, there was the Thomas’ out at San Marcos. And then the Colvey’s and the Billing’s, and, and, you know, it just goes on, you know.
Ken: A lot of these families, were they, were they, cedar-cutting families from way back?
Stanley: Oh, yeah. They, they, they were, kids were, were, the older generation cut, and then the kids took up cutting
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Some of ‘em are still cutting today.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Kenneth, and, and his uncle down there, uh, they, his uncle, there, they, they, uh, they cut a lot of cedar and a lot of firewood, and they’re still cutting today, somewhere. But, anyway, uh, I’ll just more-or-less let them have it. I got to where we were so busy cutting and, I mean
Ken: Building the fences
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: And I bought a, I bought a post-hole digger, hydraulic digger, and drill rock and whatever
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah, yeah
Stanley: Everybody found out I had that machine to drill and oh boy. I never advertised. I stayed busy all the time.
Ken: Yeah. Now, it’s, it’s the way to build a fence these day.
Stanley: Um-hum, oh, yeah. You can’t – time is money, you know.
Ken: And they just last good.
Stanley: Oh yeah
Ken: Last a long time
Stanley: Well, we cut, we do our own welding and stuff
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: You know, and then, another thing that slowed their cedar business down years back was the weather pattern kind-of changed. It, you used to could cut and burn all the time.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And now, years coming on, they got drier and people got scared for you to cut because the hazard of the brush laying there. You know, and
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: I just finally just started getting tired of the hassle of it, anyway
Ken: Yeah, Yeah.
Stanley: You know, and they expected, then they expected you to pile the brush and burn it.
Ken: Well, that costs ya
Stanley: Well, the thing of it is, is that your, the weather, it changed up. Like now we, we don’t have any real burning weather no more.
Ken: Huh, uh-huh
Stanley: And then there’s so many houses, so many people, you’d catch ‘em on fire.
Ken: That’s right. What gets me, I live in Travis County
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: It’s about as far north as you can get in Travis County
Stanley: I’ll be damned.
Ken: And they will, uh, by the time that they lift that burn ban it’s already, burning weather is over.
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: You know, so, like
Stanley: It’s amazing
Ken: Like right now, this county’s still under a burn ban from, from the past, you know
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: So, you’ve just got to, I just ignore it.
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: (laugh) I burn when I want to burn.
Stanley: Well, you know, what they gona do? It’s wet, and not going anywhere
Ken: I know, I know. The conditions
Stanley: I had ‘em come out here one time. I had burned some stuff. I mean it rained three or four inches of rain. Mud. Water. And I lit a little ‘ole brush pile right there and they, fire trucks come in here in two inches of rain pouring down, put it out.
Ken: Oh!
Stanley: And then they drove back there in the pasture and got stuck!
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: And then they asked me to pull them out. And I said “No, sonny boy.”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: And I said, “you need to learn the code of the country.”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: And I said, “I told you not to go back there.” And I said “if you ain’t man enough to listen to me” I said “you better get your tail out of here and do not come through that gate again.”
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: “You might be a fireman, but I’m gona tell you something. I’m a type of old man, I’m still the old school. I don’t put up with any bull-shit off of you, or anybody like that.”
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: I said “the law respects me because I, I’ve got common sense to know what I’m doing.”
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: You know. I said “I ain’t no damn quack.” I said “you, you get that truck out of here and don’t bring it back.”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: So, you know, he
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: I wouldn’t pull him out. I made him get a wrecker out here to pull him out.
Ken: Yeah, yeah. I’ve got a PEC truck stuck on my place like that
Stanley: Um-hum
Ken: Same thing. I said “don’t go down in that area there, you’re gona get stuck.”
Stanley: Oh, man
Ken: Pretty soon he was stuck down there, you know. There was no way I could pull him out. That’s a heavy truck, you know.
Stanley: Leave him there, you know.
Ken: Yeah. Would your daddy, uh, did he start out cutting cedar, or was he
Stanley: Yeah, he cut cedar all of his life.
Ken: When he was a kid, he was cutting cedar?
Stanley: Yeah, his whole family. There was twelve or thirteen kids in the family
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And they all cut cedar and, you know, they’d, even the women, would get out there and help stack posts and stuff.
Ken: When was he born, your daddy?
Stanley: Oh, he was eighty-eight years old when he died. So, he’s been gone about five years.
Ken: OK
Stanley: So. They come from Brownwood County and they were just, more-or-less kids, I guess
Ken: Uh-huh. And they came here, to this, bought this land here?
Stanley: Yeah. There was six-hundred and forty acres in this track
Ken: Section, uh-huh
Stanley: track of land. And, uh, they, uh, the old, his mama and them, they uh, they settled down in this country, and they cut wood, and, this used to be farm land back here in the back, and it’s all grown up with cedar and then I cleared it with a dozer back here in the back of the place over there.
Ken: Um-hum
Stanley: But there is still a lot of cedar to be cut.
Ken: (laugh) Do they farm down in that, in that bottom land?
Stanley: Yeah, they, they raised corn and maize, and stuff like that
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: For their feed their own livestock
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But then they got older and quit, and, you know, the younger generations, oh, we don’t want to work that hard, you know. My two boys, they work harder than any of ‘em I’ve ever seen. They get out there and work right beside of me. Cutting cedar, or hauling, or whatever
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But I’ve got two big ‘ole tractors there, and the trailers, you know, if I want to go cut something and haul it, well, I just jump in there and go (laugh).
Ken: Yeah.
Stanley: The old chainsaws years ago, used to be McCulloughs.
Ken: Yes
Stanley: Pro Mac 65’s
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And, them little ‘ole smaller, and then it got to where it just started fading out. People couldn’t get ‘em
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fixed anymore. No parts for ‘em
Ken: Huh
Stanley: So then they started going into Stihl and Echo, and
Ken: Uh-huh. What do you use now?
Stanley: Stihl. Echo and Stihl . They’re the top of the line. I’ll roll that winder down a little bit and get you some air.
Ken: Yeah, that’s good. I can’t believe it, the sun is out.
Stanley: Yeah, it, well, it’s gona clear off here.
Ken: You ever been up to Myers Cedar Yard there in Lampasas?
Stanley: I’ve been all over the country. I used to rope calves when I was younger. I had, I had three or four horses, you know, hell, I’d help Eddie Gumbert gather, and everybody around, I had some dogs and I, I had two horses, I’d match ‘em up on anybody.
Ken: How many cedar yards are, were in all of this area back in the old, back in the 1950s, 60s?
Stanley: Well, we had one here,
Ken: Purgatory Road, here?
Stanley: Um-hum.
Ken: Um-hum
Stanley: And then they had, uh, they had a big one over there at Clear Spring, over there.
Ken: OK
Stanley: And, uh, then they had one, uh, they had some in San Marcos. Out there on Craddock Lane, in there, but, that area was a congregation of most all of the old family cedar cutters lived in that one area.
Ken: Craddock Lane?
Stanley: Craddock Lane. Right going into San Marcos where the, where the, uh, right in the edge of town, that’s Craddock Lane. That used to be, all back in there was old houses
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: The old, but you know, those old guys, they dealt in cash. They’d pull out a wad of money like that.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And they’d laugh. “Where’d you get that?” Oh, I worked for it.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: You know. They paid everything in cash.
Ken: A whole bunch of ‘em lived right together there?
Stanley: Oh, yeah, they all, the Colveys, the Billings, and Thomas’s, they all originated, basic, in the same part of San Marcos, the west end is, I mean the south, I guess it’d be more south end, you know. And then one or two moved out west, Limekiln Road, you know, but, but most all of the yards were, were ,they didn’t really stock a lot of cedar because the buyers would come by and get it, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Now, we, we didn’t do that here, a lot, we sold it here. People would come in and, and, uh, my mother ran the cedar yard when we wasn’t around, we was out working. And the funny part of it was (laugh) she had a shotgun, and she’d chewed tobaccer, and so, she was comical, just, old country woman, you know. But we had a gate away from the house, so people thought they’d run in there and steal the posts. Well, she’d hear ‘em slamming posts on the trailer, or something. She’d sneak out up the road and stand in the gate with a shotgun.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: One old guy, he’d, he tried to pull out some money and tried to pay her. She said “Oh, no.” He turned that truck around, gona unload the posts, and he talked to the guys, and they, when you make arrangements to come get it, then you come and get it.” And, he’d seen me a week later in Wimberly over there, and he said “Stanley”, he said “you know, that old woman, I think, I think she might have shot me.” And I said “well, did her eyes twinkle a little?”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: He said “yeah.” I said “boy, you come this close to getting shot.”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: (laugh) I just scared him, you know.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: I was just kidding him you know, she wouldn’t shoot nobody
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: but, I’ll tell you one thing, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind she wouldn’t shoot close to ‘em.
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah (laugh)
Stanley: She was one ole woman you didn’t mess with. Well, most all the ole pioneer women were like that
Ken: Yeah, yeah. You said they were, they were helping, she was helping cut the cedar
Stanley: Oh, yeah, she’d go out there and help him haul it in, you know, and stuff like that. They had an old truck, an old. They had some real old flatbed trucks years ago, you know. We had one down there in the yard. I was gona hang onto it for relic purpose, but now I, hell, we finally decided to get rid of it.
Ken: Oh,
Stanley: It was sitting down there, an old truck, you know, but uh, daddy was an old Chevrolet man, he wouldn’t have nothing else but Chevrolet.
Ken: Uh-huh. So it’d be a Chevrolet, it’d be a flatbed
Stanley: Um-hum. Yeah, they all had flatbeds on ‘em, and stuff like that. And he had a little ‘ole gofer truck, little ‘ole Chevrolet half ton. He’d run around cutting and stuff and go into town and stuff like that. But, on the Backbone up here, I still, used to run into old camps where they would camp. They, ‘cause you’d find old cans, and old glasses, you know, stuff where they had camped, and old rock where they made their little fires. They camped for a week or two at a time.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Cutting cedar. And then they’d, they’d, they had these old buyers, they’d notify ‘em and they’d come pick ‘em up on trucks.
Ken: Oh, they’d drive in after ‘em.
Stanley: Yeah, they’d stack ‘em where they could get to ‘em, you know
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: They’d come in there, but, you know, the front, actually, there’s uh, there’s a real big yard right now up on 35 going toward Belton out that way somewhere, that I’ve been hearing about. And down in Victoria there’s a big yard down there. In Gonzales, also. That’s the only yards that I know of right now. There used to be an old boy started one over here at, at the, uh, Canyon Lake, but they didn’t last long. They forgot, they forgot it takes work. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) Well, there probably was one in Wimberly, wasn’t there?
Stanley: Oh, they was yards all over, you know, but that, but they was nothing that, uh, like us, like we did. We sold it here, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And that way we didn’t, we was out, no hauling or nothing. And then I’d haul, like a, I hauled, uh, I forgot, I think there’s four hundred seven-fours one time down, down to, uh, Den, Texas, down 16 going towards, towards the Valley, off back down that-a-way
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: I left out of here at five o’clock one morning and got down there at about two or three o’clock, and, uh, got unloaded, and I got back here way after dark (laugh)
Ken: I imagine
Stanley: It was. And I hauled to Grapeland, way up, to Crockett – way out that-a-way.
Ken: You know, when you were sometime, like cuttin’ on the Backbone, this is, I mean, I would imagine, it’s very hard to get that cedar out of some of those canyons.
Stanley: Yeah, we had to, we had to basically carry ‘em out, you know, and, and, uh, and, uh, they would get, that’s how come a lot of ‘em, they had two, a couple of guys cuttin’ and two or three kept packin’ ‘em out.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And there, and that’s basically the way that the most of these old people worked, you know. They didn’t have machines like we do today.
Ken: Right, right.
Stanley: I, most ever’ place in this part of the country has been cut over one time or another.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Because you can go in there and you find the old stumps. And you find the old brush rotted, laying there
Ken: Um-hum
Stanley: And the, and, that had been years ago because where that post was big, the ones they left are big now. you know, so that tells ‘ya that, they, when they cut, they were little, back then, you know.
Ken: Did that cedar play out around here, kind-of?
Stanley: Aww, you’ve got acres, miles of it.
Ken: You’ve still got good cedar, huh?
Stanley: Oh, my God, yes! I mean, that’s, there’s places back, um, a real good combination is towards Blanco and, and Henley, and back in there. That’s, God, some good cedar country back in there. Now, going back towards the other side of 281, Condea, and, and, uh, Boerne, and back there, they still a lot of good cedar back in there
Ken: Um-hum, um-hum
Stanley: They’ve got some cutters up there somewhere because there’s a guy from Gonzalez, he comes up and picks ‘em up. They, they cut ‘em and load ‘em. They’ve got some old people cutting, and then they, they stack ‘em, and he comes and they load ‘em.
Ken: OK
Stanley: He’s got some of the prettiest posts you ever saw.
Ken: Really?
Stanley: Oh, God. Now the cedar, today, too, you’ve got to watch because the, the good cedar is got no white bark on it. Then, but, but, back then it was mostly all virgin cedar. But it’s been cut over and the stuff that’s came back is white bark with spots on it
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: It doesn’t have any heart to it.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: There’s big, you’ve got to watch what you’re getting into, you know.
Ken: So, I was looking at a piece of cedar I cut the other day
Stanley: Um, hum
Ken: It was probably about, what, eight-inches in diameter
Stanley: Uh-huh
Ken: And it probably has got a heart that’s five inches
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: just a little bit of ring around it
Stanley: Yeah, that’s good cedar there
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: I’ll tell you what. When you find them that’s white bark on ‘em, forget ‘em
Ken: Uh-huh. And that just means there all pulpy wood.
Stanley: They won’t last no time
Ken: Exactly. I’ve got some like that
Stanley: yeah
Ken: I’m just using to stack hay on
Stanley: Yeah, well, that’s a good place for it. (laugh)
Ken: Yeah!
Stanley: That’s a good place for it.
Ken: It will rot out.
Stanley: (laugh) I don’t have many years I’m gona be able to keep going. I’ve got a bad foot on the left side and every time I turn around I stone bruise the damn thing
Ken: Ut-oh.
Stanley: So I, I got it right now, got a little ‘ole stone bruise going on.
Ken: Hum
Stanley: I can’t get out there and, and fight it like I used to. You know, I’m still go-do a hell of a day’s work, but I can’t cut them ole’ big posts and throw ‘em on my back and carry ‘em out like we did years ago, you know.
Ken: I have a picture, actually, it’s in my car. Uh, you probably don’t know these folks, but, this man’s daddy – his granddaddy had a cedar yard in, uh, Oak Hill.
Stanley: Yeah, I bet’cha I remember him.
Ken: His name was, uh, Roberts
Stanley: Yeah, yes sir
Ken: Cecil Roberts and Ollie Roberts
Stanley: Yeah, I remember them ‘old people up there
Ken: Yeah, and, uh, he apparently had a yard for a long time.
Stanley: Um-hum
Ken: I’ve got a picture of Simons boy named Rex Simons.
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: He’s got a cedar log on his shoulder. It must be fifteen inches in diameter and the dad-gum thing is, is as long as this pick-up
Stanley: (whistle) God Almighty
Ken: He’s a big man. He’s standing up with that. How, how does a man do that? That must weigh several hundred pounds
Stanley: Well, you balance it. You get the end of it up and you walk into it
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: then you let it roll up on your shoulder, you balance it and then just walk out
Ken: Man!
Stanley: but I did that so many years off and on, and then, when I got that equipment, boy, I …No more carrying this stuff!
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: you just put them forks on and, and load up your stuff and dump it. The only time you work is when you come in and you sort out in your threes and the fours and fives and sixes
Ken: Um-hum
Stanley: and the corner posts, and stays, deuces, and rails
Ken: Um-hum. What do you use a deuce for?
Stanley: They make the prettiest coyote fence, the shorter one, you ever saw.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: Put ‘em up like that, and that one at Wimberley up there, if you could see that one you’d see what I’m talking about. But this one I did is eight foot tall. And it’s just as pretty, the whole country over there raving up that fence.
Ken: I’ve got a, I’ve got to get a map of that thing. You told me about it, but I don’t know exactly where it
Stanley: Well, when you go into Wimberley
Ken: All right
Stanley: You go through the square
Ken: Go to the square, alright
Stanley: and, and when you turn from the square and go down across that creek there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And you go up to the light and you turn to the right, right at the light. And you see that thrift store to the right
Ken: OK
Stanley: OK, you go back in there all the way back and that’s the uh, the uh, Senior Citizens on the left, and in the back you see a red pipe fence. Well, we built all of that years ago, several years ago. And we, we, uh, a hundred and eighty five foot off of that fence that we built we attached that to that one, and that’s where we put that cedar. It’s so pretty. I admire it myself
Ken: Did you all strip the cedar bark off of it?
Stanley: We didn’t strip it. Now, that would ruin it.
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: That’d ruin the looks of it. But that old Mayor of Wimberley over there, God damn, he’s just tickled to death. He said “Boy, ya’ll nailed that fence! It is so beautiful!”
Ken: (laugh) We’ll I’ve got to go back and take a picture of it.
Stanley: It’s beautiful. You will
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: When you’re going into Wimberley you’ll see fences along. I built all of them.
Ken: Uh-huh. I’ve been talking pictures of cedar fences. All over the Hill Country
Stanley: Uhm, well, that’s one there you, That’s a blue-ribbon fence right there. Beautiful fence
Ken: All right. Good. I was talking – there’s a, you ever, you’ll know this – what I’m talking about. Johnson City
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: That rail fence that they built, right there – isn’t that nice?
Stanley: Beautiful!
Ken: Yeah.
Stanley: I saw one over here going toward – we was working on 46 over there, and they did, uh, it’s right there, you go into Gruene on 306, you know, you hit the light then you turn right and you go into Gruene’s Hall
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Across the river
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: And you take that little road across the track and you hit 337
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Well it starts right there somewhere and it goes around, boy that son of a bitch is in line – it’s beautiful!
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: They took their time! You’ve got to take your time building a fence like that.
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: You can’t
Ken: You know, once you get a tuned to it
Stanley: Yeah, you get an eye for it
Ken: Yeah, yeah, you do!
Stanley: That’s like us – we hardly ever used a level because we, we’d used to eyeballing everything and you put a level on it and it’s level!
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: We had a guy one time, building a fence for him, and he had a level with him. Boy, and he’d jump up and, and, uh, “Well, that doesn’t look level.” And I said “Well, put your level on it.”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: He’d put his level – he’d jerk my boy’s level off there and throw it on the ground. He almost got bell collared the second time. That big boy of mine, he’s, he’s a monster. His hands are three times bigger than me.
Ken: Huh
Stanley: He, that kid, God – he got big! And my youngest boy, of course they worked every day of their lives, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: They all muscle. They ain’t no lean, no fat to these boys
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: But, uh, they’d cut cedar all day long just a-flying. They’ll stack it out, you know, work, whatever they’re doing, they love to work, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh. How many cedar posts do you think they can cut in a day?
Stanley: Oh, my God. There ain’t no telling.
Ken: Uh-huh
SA003
Stanley: I know I cut several one-ton loads in a day, by myself
Ken: Huh!
Stanley: You know, they’re, they’re, um, when I’ve got ‘em in an area, they ain’t nothing to cut a whole…you can cut a flatbed load quicker than you can turn around.
Ken: How high is that stacked?
Stanley: Stacked up to the top of the, um, of your side board, your front rack on the truck
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: Almost up to that. A little bit below it so you can strap it down
Ken: Yep
Stanley: But, that’s a lot of posts.
Ken: That is a lot of posts! Back in the old days with an axe
Stanley: OH, God!
Ken: What do you think a man could cut then?
Stanley: Oh, my God. I’ll tell you
Ken: About a hundred?
Stanley: I’ll tell you a – this old Polack down there, he always cut with an axe. And it got to where he couldn’t find the axe handle. So he goes in there, and the old guy, he wanted to sell him a chain saw anyway. So he told that ‘ole Polack, he said “I don’t have any axe handles, you know. Can’t get ‘em.” And he said “well, take this chain saw and you can cut a cord and a half a day, easily, and, and, save your back.” Well, a week later that Polack come in there and he throwed it down in the floor, said “that thing isn’t worth a damn!” He said “I can’t, I can’t cut but a half a cord a day with that thing!” (laugh) He was using it for a cross cut saw. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) I’ve heard that, I’ve heard that joke, Aggies, and all sorts of, all sorts of people.
Stanley: Yeah! (laugh) “what’s that noise?”
Ken: “What’s that noise!” Right! (laugh)
Stanley: (laugh) Crazy devil, I’ll tell you what.
Ken: Yeah, yes – speaking of axe handles, thought, I’ve heard people, stories about a man having, you know, the axe handle, they would never use a knife on it
Stanley: Um-hum
Ken: They would use glass
Stanley: Yeah, oh, yeah
Ken: Have you ever done that kind-of thing, where you
Stanley: No. I used to, um, watch them old guys. They were just wood carving devils, I’ll tell you what.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: They’d take an old piece of cedar out there and make it shine, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Anything like that, or, cabinets, anything like that, you know. But, I’ll tell you what, I, I never had the time to, we always had cows and goats and I still do. And, with the equipment I’ve got and the work we’ve got going, I stay busy most all the time.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: You know, you can rarely catch me at home unless it’s bad weather. And then we’re working on equipment down there, down there now, working on stuff. But, um, anyway, um, we’ve got our own welders and stuff, you know, and, uh, we have people, sometimes they want some cedar posts, if we can get ‘em we’ll cut ‘em, but
Ken: You still use the stays when you’re building a fence for someone? Will you put a stay in between
Stanley: It depends on what kind of, we do a lot of repairing
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And that’s where we use ‘em, repairing a lot of ‘em.
Ken: The man that built my fence, he’s got the, got the iron posts
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: the steel t-posts, and then he’s, I mean, the pipes, then he, he puts in a steel t-post, I’m guessing every twelve foot and then between every one of them he’d put a stay
Stanley: That makes a fence!
Ken: It makes a nice fence.
Stanley: Yep. It tightens that fence up to where if something hits it, It’s just like “bam”
Ken: Well, I know
Stanley: Like gone down! Yeah, I’ve got a few posts down here, not many. We, uh, we can’t hardly keep a lot of stuff if we have it cut. I mean, I wished I had time to go back to cuttin’ again ‘cause I’ve got customers from the Panhandle to the coast and East Texas and West Texas is my stay market, out there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But those stays, there, are supposed to go to West Texas, but, you know, the guy is – sheep ranchers out there and all – cattle ranchers, and they use a lot of them in their fences because they won’t rot out there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: That dry climate, or whatever
Ken: Yeah, yeah
Stanley: And, uh, they use ‘em in there, they save a lot of posts and all that-a-way. But, anyway, um, it, it works out pretty good down there.
Ken: I started paying attention to where cedar posts is and
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: I was out there by Brownwood and there’s axe cut cedar posts
Stanley: Uh-huh
Ken: way out there . Not Brownwood, Brownfield.
Stanley: Yeah, right
Ken: Big Springs
Stanley: Yeah, Big Springs, out there.
Ken: I mean, they’re axe cut, they’ve been out there fifty years
Stanley: Yeah, exactly, I tell you what. It makes a difference in ‘em, right there, I’ll tell you what.
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: Mighty good! Yeah, we, we’re pretty well, you know, the, the country is getting away from. Now they use a lot of this, the smaller posts don’t hardly sell much anymore. What they’re after is the big blocking posts like that one, where the gate is. They’re using them in buildings.
Ken: Um-hum
Stanley: Support posts in the buildings, you know. That’s the market. They’re thirty-five, forty bucks apiece.
Ken: You talking like those corners?
Stanley: Yeah, the big ones.
Ken: Those three corners?
Stanley: Yeah, right there, that big one.
Ken: This tree here.
Stanley: Yeah, where the board is nailed to
Ken: Uh-huh, OK, yeah.
Stanley: That’s the size they’re going after right now.
Ken: OK. That’s thirty-five or forty dollars? Wow!
Stanley: Oh, yeah, some of ‘em fifty dollars.
Ken: Man!
Stanley: But that’s what you see going down the road anymore.
Ken: So if you were to take this tree here, that’s probably what, a twelve inch post?
Stanley: A twelve inch post right there
Ken: Cut that one -- what would that post be worth? It’d be a ten foot, twelve-inch posts.
Stanley: It’d probably be about fifty bucks
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Something like that.
Ken: That’s something. Would that be good, would that be good hard cedar?
Stanley: Oh, yeah. Them old things – it’s that old, it’d be good cedar for years
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: in there, I’ve got some old cedar posts on that place where my cows are . Boy, they’re just as hard, you can’t drive a staple in ‘em. They “bam” – God damn!
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: Take a stay wire tight, there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But, uh, yeah, I have old customers that come by that I hadn’t sold posts to in fifteen, twenty years, come by and hunt me up. “You still cutting posts?” and “Not really, not a whole lot.”
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: I was down for, well, when I was cutting Dorothy and Eddie’s old place back in there Dorothy came out. She’s cutting, cutting with a chain saw (laugh). That old woman out-cut most anybody (laugh).
Ken: Huh
Stanley: We, uh, I’ve done a lot of clearing for ‘em, a lot of fence building and stuff. But, you know, you get busy, and then the word of mouth, I, I don’t ever advertise. That’s the advertising I’ve got, right there.
Ken: Uh-huh Yeah.
Stanley: Everybody, they see the work we’ve done and they want a fence like what we did.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But that, that cedar rail fence in Wimberley, I
Ken: I want to go by there
Stanley: they wanted me to put my name on it and number, but, hell, I’d never get, I can’t find enough cedar like that
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: See, it takes a lot of acres to find a thousand-some-odd rails like that
Ken: How tall are they?
Stanley: They’re, they’re eight, eight-and-a-half foot long
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: We stair-staggered ‘em. They’re not all the same length, you know.
Ken: right
Stanley: And now the different sizes. Boy, people saw that and they just went fricking God-damn crazy!
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: Man! I want to – give me your name and number. I said, “no, I’m just doing this because I wanted to.” (laugh) But we got paid to do it, but, I mean
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: the City of Wimberley, I want to do a good job for them. And they’re estatic, boy, they’ just
Ken: That’s cool
Stanley: That, that guy, he, boy, I tell you what (laugh) every time I see him somewhere he comes over and complements me on that damn fence over there!
Ken: That’s great!
Stanley: (laugh) But where my cows are – right across from the Cypress Creek Church, and that big field down there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: That’s a lot of good ce- I’ve cut cedar over there sometime. I go in there and cut it and pile it and burn it and then plant some more grass seed down there
Ken: So you worked for the State for a long time, you said.
Stanley: I worked there thirty-two years.
Ken: What’d you do for them?
Stanley: Oh, maintenance on roads or on equipment
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: work recs, and all that kind of stuff. I’d sand the roads at night in the Hill Country and the younger guys wouldn’t go – they’d stay, they didn’t want to get up in the hills. They scared of it.
Ken: Huh
Stanley: I’d laugh at ‘em. I’d say “hell, get in the damn truck, let’s go.” (laugh) Had my sander box over here and control box
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: and the old truck then, you had to raise the bed to jump it. Keep jerking the bed and the sand come down.
Ken: Yeah, yeah.
Stanley: Well one night about three o’clock in the morning, there was ice on the Wimberley hill. I started down that thing, had that old truck in first gear. And I’d been dogging it forever. Keeping it coming down. And, uh, broke the universal joint about half-way down that hill. I didn’t even have time to lower the bed. I got down 1492 before I got the truck stopped.
Ken: Um!
Stanley: And I called the warehouse. This was barely daylight when it happened. And, uh, I, I got the bed down and I rolled into the driveway. There wasn’t nobody in or out. So they, uh, they come and told me “well, we’ll bring you another truck. Just be still.” So I had to get out of that truck and crawl in another one and keep going.
Ken: Hum!
Stanley: (laugh) Naw, It didn’t bother me none! Hell, you know, it’s a challenge to me, you know.
Ken: Yeah. So, when did you retire from that job?
Stanley: I’ve been off there about eight or nine years.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Off of there, you know, I miss it a lot. You know, the comraderie of the old guys, you know.
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: But, um, you know, I, I’m happy doing what I’m doing. If I want to go cut cedar – I go cut. If I want to get in the truck and go see somebody or look at something, I get in the ole’ truck and crawl out there and look at it.
Ken: Uh-huh. When, so, you, I was here, there was a time when a man could make awful good money cutting cedar.
Stanley: Oh! Yes. Well, now-a-days you can make more now than you could back then, but, but the conditions are all different, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: You’ve got people now that want you to cut it, but you’ve got to, you’ve got to, you can’t, you can’t, you’ve got to be careful how you cut, and, you know, it’s, it’s a different ball game
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And they want you to burn the brush, pile it, and burn it.
Ken: If you do that kind of clear cutting you do it by the acre, don’t you, and most people use dozers for that, don’t’ they?
Stanley: Well, some people do and some flat cut it.
Ken: There is still flat cutting going on?
Stanley: Oh, yeah. Yeah, there’s, I, I do some of that once in a while. Small little tracks, where they’re
Ken: What do you charge an acre for that?
Stanley: It’s usually about five an acre
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Something like that. It depends on what I have to do. You know, if I have to pile the brush in there. We did five acres for an old woman over there, but it was little cedar. It wasn’t nothing big.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And we went in there and, and, uh, I had two tractors over there, the big one and the midget, the little one, the smaller one, and, we had them forks in there and it’s so easy to pick that brush up with them ‘cause you, the brush is just cut it, leave it fall, and you come in there with that tractor and you see a tree, like that, and you run that brush toward that tree, just scoop it up,
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Back up, and go to the next one. Come back and do the same around these, then you work what you’ve got left and another one, and you know, you don’t never get off the tractor, except maybe a little limb or two
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh. And finally you’ve got a big pile of brush
Stanley: Yeah, oh, yeah. You take it out there and far out yonder and dump it, you know, down there.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But, yeah, this used to be cedar country, cutting country, you know
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: And, a lot of the old places I’ve cut on, they’ve grown up again
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: People don’t ever keep it clean, you know
Ken: yeah, I know. It doesn’t take that long to do it. Twenty-thirty years
Stanley: I found a place over on the, on the river over there, that, uh, oh, that’s some of the prettiest cedar I’ve seen in my life. Good Lord amighty! But you couldn’t – it’d be hard to have got it out
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Golly. I walked that thing, eyes watering, boy! Good God almighty!
Ken: Um! Um!
Stanley: It’s some of the prettiest
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: ten and twelve foot
Ken: Just straight ___
Stanley: Blocking you ever saw! Oh, My God!
Ken: Yeah, I’ve seen it like that
Stanley: If I was able to cut and carry it out to the truck, I’d have done it.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But I was having trouble with my damn foot and, uh, it really wasn’t that rough of land, but it just rough enough that you, you had to more or less crawl around with a dozer, you know.
Ken: Yeah. Maybe a little ‘ole, what do you call those little things?
Stanley: Little crawlers
Ken: Bobcat, or something like that, could get in there
Stanley: Yeah, well, it’d have to be careful because you could tip one of ‘em pretty easy
Ken: Uh-huh, y eah, I imagine.
Stanley: You know, some of it’s like little ledges, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Like that, but, you know, wasn’t any real big rock, but, but it was, you know, it’s just bad enough that
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: You had to be careful, That ole’ big cedar, man! It (laugh) I cut a lot of cedar out of this place. You can see where the stumps – we’ve cut cedar out of here. I cut most of this place and I burned a lot of it. I was more interested in, in clearing my place and getting my grass going.
Ken: Right
Stanley: That way I could run my goats and I’m gona bring the cows home before too long
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But I’m gona replant that winter rye again. It’s gona come up here before long. It’s all, sowed in planted with it, then the drought, you know
Ken: Oh, I know. How’d your cows do the last drought?
Stanley: They done good. I, I feed ‘em calf feed from the Co-Op in New Braunfels over there. A little bit of hay, but this calf feed is good.
Ken: Huh!
Stanley: Some of the best stuff you ever saw.
Ken: Yeah? Is it
Stanley: Cottonseed hulls, ground corn, and, crushed corn, and, molasses in it, and all that.
Ken: You buy by the ton?
Stanley: I buy it by, it’s, it’s, uh, eight-ninety-four for fifty pounds.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: I buy fifteen, twenty bags at a time. That’s all I need.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: You know, I can’t store that much at one time because the damn coons and squirrels get into it.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: They love it!
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah
Stanley: That molasses in there
Ken: Oh, yeah
Stanley: God damn, they go fricking crazy
Ken: Is it pretty much protein in it?
Stanley: Oh, forty-one percent
End
Ken: OK. So, here I am sitting here in Stanley Allen’s truck and we’re going to talk about cedar. So, you’re saying you had a cedar yard, mama’s place right here
Stanley: Right down the road’s the old home place
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And, we had a big yard there for years
Ken: What years were, were those?
Stanley: Oh, back in the sixties
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Early sixties and, early fif, well, late fifties on in to, to probably about seventy-something
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And then I, um, I got the old house. It was down where we started out down there, and then, then my dad’s mother had this original old house and uh, and uh, so, then I, I moved the old house that was there up here. And, uh, we had people come in that picked up cedar from all over the country. I had, I even hauled cedar up to uh, up there to the Panhandle, up in there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And then down on the, down on 16, down there towards Corpus, and all off down there.
Ken: How did you sell it?
Stanley: By truckloads.
Ken: Just, just bought on the side of the road?
Stanley: Regular customers. People
Ken: OK
Stanley: come by and they’d see our yard, and then they’d, they’d get our number off of the yard, then they’d call.
Ken: OK
Stanley: And, uh, I sold three thousand threes to a guy up in Grapeland, up there, Crockett, one time.
Ken: Three thousand!
Stanley: Yeah. It was hard to imagine that many, but, they was all seven foot, straight, three-inch-top cedar posts.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: They drove ‘em up there with a driver.
Ken: Really!
Stanley: That old sandy land up there.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: They didn’t drill ‘em, they drove ‘em.
Ken: I’ll be darned.
Stanley: It was government land, you could lease it.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But, you couldn’t keep it over about five years, and then you had to move, you know, and then if somebody else had came you had to tear down the fences they built and somebody else had to come in and build ‘em back again. It don’t make sense.
Ken: It doesn’t make sense.
Stanley: Wasted, wasted time.
Ken: I can’t imagine building a fence
Stanley: But, um, I used to sell a lot of cedar to old CL Daughtery. They had, there was a whole bunch of cedar cutters years ago. When I was coming along they were cutting all over. And they had big ‘ole trucks. They’d haul, you know, posts all over, and, uh, they had a cedar yard down there at Clear Spring, they had a big yard down there. And then, uh, they moved around. They had another big yard down there going to Seguin, down there off of 123. And, uh, and then, CL moved on off, I don’t know why they did, they moved off down close to Victoria and off down that a way. They come through here and they’d, they’d come in, they’d see, they’d try to buy our cedar, you know, so they wouldn’t have to go cut a bunch (laugh)
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: But years ago, these old, uh, they used to camp out, you can still find the old camps
Ken: Really!
Stanley: Every once in a while. They’d camp out there a week-or-two and cut and then they’d haul out
Ken: Is this cutting with axes back then?
Stanley: Yeah, um-hum. My dad cut with an axe until one day, I, uh, I got, I got started out on the highway out there, and, they had a garage sale at Wimberly. (laugh) And he didn’t even know what a chainsaw was. And I hadn’t fooled with one. I always cut with an axe. And I, I found a little ‘ole orange chainsaw, and that was the toughest little ‘ole damn saw I ever saw!
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: (laugh) I give ‘em twenty-five dollars for it.
Ken: Huh
Stanley: Came home, fired it up, and checked it out, and sharpened the chain on it, and I give it to my dad. And he looked at that like “what in the world is that damn thing!” He got to cutting with it and then you couldn’t get him out of the damn cedar brake.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: He’d stay out there seven days a week. He’d go cutting, you know, just like a kid with a toy.
Ken: What year, what year did you give him that chainsaw?
Stanley: Oh, that’s, it was probably forty years ago.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Seems like
Ken: In the sixties, I imagine.
Stanley: Yeah, it was the early sixties.
Ken: ‘cause that’s when they started
Stanley: Yeah, and, uh, I don’t remember what kind of saw it was, but that was the cuttingist, most powerful little saw I ever seen in my life!
Ken: Huh
Stanley: God almighty!
Ken: So, your dad cut cedar?
Stanley: Oh, he cut cedar all his life.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: He’s the one who started the yard.
Ken: OK
Stanley: And when I got big enough to start helping him, well, you know, I got in there and started helping him
Ken: You were probably pretty young
Stanley: I was. I was just barely big enough to crawl around and I was out there helping him.
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: Stacking posts, and stuff like that.
Ken: Did he start the yard back in the forties? Do you happen to know?
Stanley: It was probably early fifties
Ken: Uh-huh, u h-huh
Stanley: Forty-five, no, it was, it was later than that. It was probably like, um, um, well, when he was started out cuttin’ they had people that would come through, you’d cut ‘em and stack ‘em, and then these ole’ buyers would come through and buy ‘em and, and ‘cause they didn’t have a way to haul ‘em, like we do today.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Most of the old people that cut, they just had an old pick-up, they didn’t have a way to haul ‘em
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: Them posts are heavy when they’re green
Ken: You bet
Stanley: But, anyway, they, uh, I remember some of the old trailers that used to come in, some of them old trucks looked like they couldn’t make another mile.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: They, they’d leave out with a big load, you know.
Ken: Yeah. Big flat beds?
Stanley: yeah. Big ‘ole flat beds. And then, uh, we had, we cleared old Joe Cox’s place up here at the Backbone. And, uh, we got twenty-thousand five-foot cedar stays, like those in that stack.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: We had ‘em down there. One Sunday morning I head a pick-up coming by, you know. I’ve done, I’ve done moved up here, that old house, moved it up here. And, uh, so, anyway, I heard something go by and I heard the brakes squall, and “what the hell”, I thought he’d run over something. So I looked out and this truck is sitting out in the road, signal light on, and, uh, he was from the Twin Mountain Supply in San Angelo.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: He come by and he bought every, he bought the twenty-thousand stays from me.
Ken: How many could he get on in one load?
Stanley: They had three eighteen wheelers loads to come out of that yard.
Ken: Uh
Stanley: We loaded ‘em five-hundred to a row, and, uh, on the truck, and they, they, uh, they bundled ‘em five hundred per bundle. So, when they got up there, they’d take a forks
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Fork lift and lift ‘em off and set ‘em on the pallets, you know.
Ken: And did they have big posts too, or they using steel posts?
Stanley: Well, they, uh, they wanted, they, they were, uh, a big supplier of West Texas on the cedar stays.
Ken: I got you.
Stanley: There is a big demand out there right now for ‘em
Ken: Huh!
Stanley: But, um, you know, I, um, I, I cut cedar for long years, and then the boys, they got to cutting and we got busy building fence out of pipe, and everybody switched to pipe
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: And, it would last longer, so
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: We still do a few cedar post fences, but
Ken: When you cut out of that ranch up on the, uh, Backbone, do you, you got more than stays, didn’t you, you
Stanley: We got, we got corner posts
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: Line posts, some of the prettiest posts you’ve ever seen in your life. Man, I had a place, I cut at Fisher’s store, and, uh, that, well you can drive all over it. And, I mean, it was just like this, and I hauled loads of posts in, and that’s when we kind-of got modern, on our, on our work in cedar, then. We got our first tractor, was a, was an old, uh, Ford 8 or 9N with a front-end loader on it.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And I made a set of forks that bolted in the bucket. Instead of having to carry these posts out to the truck, we’d throw ‘em in stacks out where we cut ‘em
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And I’d take the tractor and move the brush over, and load ‘em on the fork and go dump ‘em on the trailer. And that really speeded up
Ken: I bet it did!
Stanley: You can move more cedar than you’ve ever seen, you know. But at that time, the cedar business was playing out.
Ken: When was this, when did it play out?
Stanley: Oh, probably about, probably about twenty years ago. Maybe not quite that long.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Everything slowed down, you know, and, you know, it just, a lot of people quit cutting, there was, uh, so many cutters, there was the Thomas’ out at San Marcos. And then the Colvey’s and the Billing’s, and, and, you know, it just goes on, you know.
Ken: A lot of these families, were they, were they, cedar-cutting families from way back?
Stanley: Oh, yeah. They, they, they were, kids were, were, the older generation cut, and then the kids took up cutting
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Some of ‘em are still cutting today.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Kenneth, and, and his uncle down there, uh, they, his uncle, there, they, they, uh, they cut a lot of cedar and a lot of firewood, and they’re still cutting today, somewhere. But, anyway, uh, I’ll just more-or-less let them have it. I got to where we were so busy cutting and, I mean
Ken: Building the fences
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: And I bought a, I bought a post-hole digger, hydraulic digger, and drill rock and whatever
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah, yeah
Stanley: Everybody found out I had that machine to drill and oh boy. I never advertised. I stayed busy all the time.
Ken: Yeah. Now, it’s, it’s the way to build a fence these day.
Stanley: Um-hum, oh, yeah. You can’t – time is money, you know.
Ken: And they just last good.
Stanley: Oh yeah
Ken: Last a long time
Stanley: Well, we cut, we do our own welding and stuff
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: You know, and then, another thing that slowed their cedar business down years back was the weather pattern kind-of changed. It, you used to could cut and burn all the time.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And now, years coming on, they got drier and people got scared for you to cut because the hazard of the brush laying there. You know, and
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: I just finally just started getting tired of the hassle of it, anyway
Ken: Yeah, Yeah.
Stanley: You know, and they expected, then they expected you to pile the brush and burn it.
Ken: Well, that costs ya
Stanley: Well, the thing of it is, is that your, the weather, it changed up. Like now we, we don’t have any real burning weather no more.
Ken: Huh, uh-huh
Stanley: And then there’s so many houses, so many people, you’d catch ‘em on fire.
Ken: That’s right. What gets me, I live in Travis County
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: It’s about as far north as you can get in Travis County
Stanley: I’ll be damned.
Ken: And they will, uh, by the time that they lift that burn ban it’s already, burning weather is over.
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: You know, so, like
Stanley: It’s amazing
Ken: Like right now, this county’s still under a burn ban from, from the past, you know
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: So, you’ve just got to, I just ignore it.
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: (laugh) I burn when I want to burn.
Stanley: Well, you know, what they gona do? It’s wet, and not going anywhere
Ken: I know, I know. The conditions
Stanley: I had ‘em come out here one time. I had burned some stuff. I mean it rained three or four inches of rain. Mud. Water. And I lit a little ‘ole brush pile right there and they, fire trucks come in here in two inches of rain pouring down, put it out.
Ken: Oh!
Stanley: And then they drove back there in the pasture and got stuck!
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: And then they asked me to pull them out. And I said “No, sonny boy.”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: And I said, “you need to learn the code of the country.”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: And I said, “I told you not to go back there.” And I said “if you ain’t man enough to listen to me” I said “you better get your tail out of here and do not come through that gate again.”
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: “You might be a fireman, but I’m gona tell you something. I’m a type of old man, I’m still the old school. I don’t put up with any bull-shit off of you, or anybody like that.”
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: I said “the law respects me because I, I’ve got common sense to know what I’m doing.”
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: You know. I said “I ain’t no damn quack.” I said “you, you get that truck out of here and don’t bring it back.”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: So, you know, he
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: I wouldn’t pull him out. I made him get a wrecker out here to pull him out.
Ken: Yeah, yeah. I’ve got a PEC truck stuck on my place like that
Stanley: Um-hum
Ken: Same thing. I said “don’t go down in that area there, you’re gona get stuck.”
Stanley: Oh, man
Ken: Pretty soon he was stuck down there, you know. There was no way I could pull him out. That’s a heavy truck, you know.
Stanley: Leave him there, you know.
Ken: Yeah. Would your daddy, uh, did he start out cutting cedar, or was he
Stanley: Yeah, he cut cedar all of his life.
Ken: When he was a kid, he was cutting cedar?
Stanley: Yeah, his whole family. There was twelve or thirteen kids in the family
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And they all cut cedar and, you know, they’d, even the women, would get out there and help stack posts and stuff.
Ken: When was he born, your daddy?
Stanley: Oh, he was eighty-eight years old when he died. So, he’s been gone about five years.
Ken: OK
Stanley: So. They come from Brownwood County and they were just, more-or-less kids, I guess
Ken: Uh-huh. And they came here, to this, bought this land here?
Stanley: Yeah. There was six-hundred and forty acres in this track
Ken: Section, uh-huh
Stanley: track of land. And, uh, they, uh, the old, his mama and them, they uh, they settled down in this country, and they cut wood, and, this used to be farm land back here in the back, and it’s all grown up with cedar and then I cleared it with a dozer back here in the back of the place over there.
Ken: Um-hum
Stanley: But there is still a lot of cedar to be cut.
Ken: (laugh) Do they farm down in that, in that bottom land?
Stanley: Yeah, they, they raised corn and maize, and stuff like that
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: For their feed their own livestock
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But then they got older and quit, and, you know, the younger generations, oh, we don’t want to work that hard, you know. My two boys, they work harder than any of ‘em I’ve ever seen. They get out there and work right beside of me. Cutting cedar, or hauling, or whatever
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But I’ve got two big ‘ole tractors there, and the trailers, you know, if I want to go cut something and haul it, well, I just jump in there and go (laugh).
Ken: Yeah.
Stanley: The old chainsaws years ago, used to be McCulloughs.
Ken: Yes
Stanley: Pro Mac 65’s
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And, them little ‘ole smaller, and then it got to where it just started fading out. People couldn’t get ‘em
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fixed anymore. No parts for ‘em
Ken: Huh
Stanley: So then they started going into Stihl and Echo, and
Ken: Uh-huh. What do you use now?
Stanley: Stihl. Echo and Stihl . They’re the top of the line. I’ll roll that winder down a little bit and get you some air.
Ken: Yeah, that’s good. I can’t believe it, the sun is out.
Stanley: Yeah, it, well, it’s gona clear off here.
Ken: You ever been up to Myers Cedar Yard there in Lampasas?
Stanley: I’ve been all over the country. I used to rope calves when I was younger. I had, I had three or four horses, you know, hell, I’d help Eddie Gumbert gather, and everybody around, I had some dogs and I, I had two horses, I’d match ‘em up on anybody.
Ken: How many cedar yards are, were in all of this area back in the old, back in the 1950s, 60s?
Stanley: Well, we had one here,
Ken: Purgatory Road, here?
Stanley: Um-hum.
Ken: Um-hum
Stanley: And then they had, uh, they had a big one over there at Clear Spring, over there.
Ken: OK
Stanley: And, uh, then they had one, uh, they had some in San Marcos. Out there on Craddock Lane, in there, but, that area was a congregation of most all of the old family cedar cutters lived in that one area.
Ken: Craddock Lane?
Stanley: Craddock Lane. Right going into San Marcos where the, where the, uh, right in the edge of town, that’s Craddock Lane. That used to be, all back in there was old houses
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: The old, but you know, those old guys, they dealt in cash. They’d pull out a wad of money like that.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And they’d laugh. “Where’d you get that?” Oh, I worked for it.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: You know. They paid everything in cash.
Ken: A whole bunch of ‘em lived right together there?
Stanley: Oh, yeah, they all, the Colveys, the Billings, and Thomas’s, they all originated, basic, in the same part of San Marcos, the west end is, I mean the south, I guess it’d be more south end, you know. And then one or two moved out west, Limekiln Road, you know, but, but most all of the yards were, were ,they didn’t really stock a lot of cedar because the buyers would come by and get it, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Now, we, we didn’t do that here, a lot, we sold it here. People would come in and, and, uh, my mother ran the cedar yard when we wasn’t around, we was out working. And the funny part of it was (laugh) she had a shotgun, and she’d chewed tobaccer, and so, she was comical, just, old country woman, you know. But we had a gate away from the house, so people thought they’d run in there and steal the posts. Well, she’d hear ‘em slamming posts on the trailer, or something. She’d sneak out up the road and stand in the gate with a shotgun.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: One old guy, he’d, he tried to pull out some money and tried to pay her. She said “Oh, no.” He turned that truck around, gona unload the posts, and he talked to the guys, and they, when you make arrangements to come get it, then you come and get it.” And, he’d seen me a week later in Wimberly over there, and he said “Stanley”, he said “you know, that old woman, I think, I think she might have shot me.” And I said “well, did her eyes twinkle a little?”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: He said “yeah.” I said “boy, you come this close to getting shot.”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: (laugh) I just scared him, you know.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: I was just kidding him you know, she wouldn’t shoot nobody
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: but, I’ll tell you one thing, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind she wouldn’t shoot close to ‘em.
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah (laugh)
Stanley: She was one ole woman you didn’t mess with. Well, most all the ole pioneer women were like that
Ken: Yeah, yeah. You said they were, they were helping, she was helping cut the cedar
Stanley: Oh, yeah, she’d go out there and help him haul it in, you know, and stuff like that. They had an old truck, an old. They had some real old flatbed trucks years ago, you know. We had one down there in the yard. I was gona hang onto it for relic purpose, but now I, hell, we finally decided to get rid of it.
Ken: Oh,
Stanley: It was sitting down there, an old truck, you know, but uh, daddy was an old Chevrolet man, he wouldn’t have nothing else but Chevrolet.
Ken: Uh-huh. So it’d be a Chevrolet, it’d be a flatbed
Stanley: Um-hum. Yeah, they all had flatbeds on ‘em, and stuff like that. And he had a little ‘ole gofer truck, little ‘ole Chevrolet half ton. He’d run around cutting and stuff and go into town and stuff like that. But, on the Backbone up here, I still, used to run into old camps where they would camp. They, ‘cause you’d find old cans, and old glasses, you know, stuff where they had camped, and old rock where they made their little fires. They camped for a week or two at a time.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Cutting cedar. And then they’d, they’d, they had these old buyers, they’d notify ‘em and they’d come pick ‘em up on trucks.
Ken: Oh, they’d drive in after ‘em.
Stanley: Yeah, they’d stack ‘em where they could get to ‘em, you know
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: They’d come in there, but, you know, the front, actually, there’s uh, there’s a real big yard right now up on 35 going toward Belton out that way somewhere, that I’ve been hearing about. And down in Victoria there’s a big yard down there. In Gonzales, also. That’s the only yards that I know of right now. There used to be an old boy started one over here at, at the, uh, Canyon Lake, but they didn’t last long. They forgot, they forgot it takes work. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) Well, there probably was one in Wimberly, wasn’t there?
Stanley: Oh, they was yards all over, you know, but that, but they was nothing that, uh, like us, like we did. We sold it here, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And that way we didn’t, we was out, no hauling or nothing. And then I’d haul, like a, I hauled, uh, I forgot, I think there’s four hundred seven-fours one time down, down to, uh, Den, Texas, down 16 going towards, towards the Valley, off back down that-a-way
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: I left out of here at five o’clock one morning and got down there at about two or three o’clock, and, uh, got unloaded, and I got back here way after dark (laugh)
Ken: I imagine
Stanley: It was. And I hauled to Grapeland, way up, to Crockett – way out that-a-way.
Ken: You know, when you were sometime, like cuttin’ on the Backbone, this is, I mean, I would imagine, it’s very hard to get that cedar out of some of those canyons.
Stanley: Yeah, we had to, we had to basically carry ‘em out, you know, and, and, uh, and, uh, they would get, that’s how come a lot of ‘em, they had two, a couple of guys cuttin’ and two or three kept packin’ ‘em out.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And there, and that’s basically the way that the most of these old people worked, you know. They didn’t have machines like we do today.
Ken: Right, right.
Stanley: I, most ever’ place in this part of the country has been cut over one time or another.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Because you can go in there and you find the old stumps. And you find the old brush rotted, laying there
Ken: Um-hum
Stanley: And the, and, that had been years ago because where that post was big, the ones they left are big now. you know, so that tells ‘ya that, they, when they cut, they were little, back then, you know.
Ken: Did that cedar play out around here, kind-of?
Stanley: Aww, you’ve got acres, miles of it.
Ken: You’ve still got good cedar, huh?
Stanley: Oh, my God, yes! I mean, that’s, there’s places back, um, a real good combination is towards Blanco and, and Henley, and back in there. That’s, God, some good cedar country back in there. Now, going back towards the other side of 281, Condea, and, and, uh, Boerne, and back there, they still a lot of good cedar back in there
Ken: Um-hum, um-hum
Stanley: They’ve got some cutters up there somewhere because there’s a guy from Gonzalez, he comes up and picks ‘em up. They, they cut ‘em and load ‘em. They’ve got some old people cutting, and then they, they stack ‘em, and he comes and they load ‘em.
Ken: OK
Stanley: He’s got some of the prettiest posts you ever saw.
Ken: Really?
Stanley: Oh, God. Now the cedar, today, too, you’ve got to watch because the, the good cedar is got no white bark on it. Then, but, but, back then it was mostly all virgin cedar. But it’s been cut over and the stuff that’s came back is white bark with spots on it
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: It doesn’t have any heart to it.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: There’s big, you’ve got to watch what you’re getting into, you know.
Ken: So, I was looking at a piece of cedar I cut the other day
Stanley: Um, hum
Ken: It was probably about, what, eight-inches in diameter
Stanley: Uh-huh
Ken: And it probably has got a heart that’s five inches
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: just a little bit of ring around it
Stanley: Yeah, that’s good cedar there
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: I’ll tell you what. When you find them that’s white bark on ‘em, forget ‘em
Ken: Uh-huh. And that just means there all pulpy wood.
Stanley: They won’t last no time
Ken: Exactly. I’ve got some like that
Stanley: yeah
Ken: I’m just using to stack hay on
Stanley: Yeah, well, that’s a good place for it. (laugh)
Ken: Yeah!
Stanley: That’s a good place for it.
Ken: It will rot out.
Stanley: (laugh) I don’t have many years I’m gona be able to keep going. I’ve got a bad foot on the left side and every time I turn around I stone bruise the damn thing
Ken: Ut-oh.
Stanley: So I, I got it right now, got a little ‘ole stone bruise going on.
Ken: Hum
Stanley: I can’t get out there and, and fight it like I used to. You know, I’m still go-do a hell of a day’s work, but I can’t cut them ole’ big posts and throw ‘em on my back and carry ‘em out like we did years ago, you know.
Ken: I have a picture, actually, it’s in my car. Uh, you probably don’t know these folks, but, this man’s daddy – his granddaddy had a cedar yard in, uh, Oak Hill.
Stanley: Yeah, I bet’cha I remember him.
Ken: His name was, uh, Roberts
Stanley: Yeah, yes sir
Ken: Cecil Roberts and Ollie Roberts
Stanley: Yeah, I remember them ‘old people up there
Ken: Yeah, and, uh, he apparently had a yard for a long time.
Stanley: Um-hum
Ken: I’ve got a picture of Simons boy named Rex Simons.
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: He’s got a cedar log on his shoulder. It must be fifteen inches in diameter and the dad-gum thing is, is as long as this pick-up
Stanley: (whistle) God Almighty
Ken: He’s a big man. He’s standing up with that. How, how does a man do that? That must weigh several hundred pounds
Stanley: Well, you balance it. You get the end of it up and you walk into it
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: then you let it roll up on your shoulder, you balance it and then just walk out
Ken: Man!
Stanley: but I did that so many years off and on, and then, when I got that equipment, boy, I …No more carrying this stuff!
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: you just put them forks on and, and load up your stuff and dump it. The only time you work is when you come in and you sort out in your threes and the fours and fives and sixes
Ken: Um-hum
Stanley: and the corner posts, and stays, deuces, and rails
Ken: Um-hum. What do you use a deuce for?
Stanley: They make the prettiest coyote fence, the shorter one, you ever saw.
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: Put ‘em up like that, and that one at Wimberley up there, if you could see that one you’d see what I’m talking about. But this one I did is eight foot tall. And it’s just as pretty, the whole country over there raving up that fence.
Ken: I’ve got a, I’ve got to get a map of that thing. You told me about it, but I don’t know exactly where it
Stanley: Well, when you go into Wimberley
Ken: All right
Stanley: You go through the square
Ken: Go to the square, alright
Stanley: and, and when you turn from the square and go down across that creek there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And you go up to the light and you turn to the right, right at the light. And you see that thrift store to the right
Ken: OK
Stanley: OK, you go back in there all the way back and that’s the uh, the uh, Senior Citizens on the left, and in the back you see a red pipe fence. Well, we built all of that years ago, several years ago. And we, we, uh, a hundred and eighty five foot off of that fence that we built we attached that to that one, and that’s where we put that cedar. It’s so pretty. I admire it myself
Ken: Did you all strip the cedar bark off of it?
Stanley: We didn’t strip it. Now, that would ruin it.
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: That’d ruin the looks of it. But that old Mayor of Wimberley over there, God damn, he’s just tickled to death. He said “Boy, ya’ll nailed that fence! It is so beautiful!”
Ken: (laugh) We’ll I’ve got to go back and take a picture of it.
Stanley: It’s beautiful. You will
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: When you’re going into Wimberley you’ll see fences along. I built all of them.
Ken: Uh-huh. I’ve been talking pictures of cedar fences. All over the Hill Country
Stanley: Uhm, well, that’s one there you, That’s a blue-ribbon fence right there. Beautiful fence
Ken: All right. Good. I was talking – there’s a, you ever, you’ll know this – what I’m talking about. Johnson City
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: That rail fence that they built, right there – isn’t that nice?
Stanley: Beautiful!
Ken: Yeah.
Stanley: I saw one over here going toward – we was working on 46 over there, and they did, uh, it’s right there, you go into Gruene on 306, you know, you hit the light then you turn right and you go into Gruene’s Hall
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Across the river
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: And you take that little road across the track and you hit 337
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Well it starts right there somewhere and it goes around, boy that son of a bitch is in line – it’s beautiful!
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: They took their time! You’ve got to take your time building a fence like that.
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: You can’t
Ken: You know, once you get a tuned to it
Stanley: Yeah, you get an eye for it
Ken: Yeah, yeah, you do!
Stanley: That’s like us – we hardly ever used a level because we, we’d used to eyeballing everything and you put a level on it and it’s level!
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: We had a guy one time, building a fence for him, and he had a level with him. Boy, and he’d jump up and, and, uh, “Well, that doesn’t look level.” And I said “Well, put your level on it.”
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: He’d put his level – he’d jerk my boy’s level off there and throw it on the ground. He almost got bell collared the second time. That big boy of mine, he’s, he’s a monster. His hands are three times bigger than me.
Ken: Huh
Stanley: He, that kid, God – he got big! And my youngest boy, of course they worked every day of their lives, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: They all muscle. They ain’t no lean, no fat to these boys
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: But, uh, they’d cut cedar all day long just a-flying. They’ll stack it out, you know, work, whatever they’re doing, they love to work, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh. How many cedar posts do you think they can cut in a day?
Stanley: Oh, my God. There ain’t no telling.
Ken: Uh-huh
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Stanley: I know I cut several one-ton loads in a day, by myself
Ken: Huh!
Stanley: You know, they’re, they’re, um, when I’ve got ‘em in an area, they ain’t nothing to cut a whole…you can cut a flatbed load quicker than you can turn around.
Ken: How high is that stacked?
Stanley: Stacked up to the top of the, um, of your side board, your front rack on the truck
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: Almost up to that. A little bit below it so you can strap it down
Ken: Yep
Stanley: But, that’s a lot of posts.
Ken: That is a lot of posts! Back in the old days with an axe
Stanley: OH, God!
Ken: What do you think a man could cut then?
Stanley: Oh, my God. I’ll tell you
Ken: About a hundred?
Stanley: I’ll tell you a – this old Polack down there, he always cut with an axe. And it got to where he couldn’t find the axe handle. So he goes in there, and the old guy, he wanted to sell him a chain saw anyway. So he told that ‘ole Polack, he said “I don’t have any axe handles, you know. Can’t get ‘em.” And he said “well, take this chain saw and you can cut a cord and a half a day, easily, and, and, save your back.” Well, a week later that Polack come in there and he throwed it down in the floor, said “that thing isn’t worth a damn!” He said “I can’t, I can’t cut but a half a cord a day with that thing!” (laugh) He was using it for a cross cut saw. (laugh)
Ken: (laugh) I’ve heard that, I’ve heard that joke, Aggies, and all sorts of, all sorts of people.
Stanley: Yeah! (laugh) “what’s that noise?”
Ken: “What’s that noise!” Right! (laugh)
Stanley: (laugh) Crazy devil, I’ll tell you what.
Ken: Yeah, yes – speaking of axe handles, thought, I’ve heard people, stories about a man having, you know, the axe handle, they would never use a knife on it
Stanley: Um-hum
Ken: They would use glass
Stanley: Yeah, oh, yeah
Ken: Have you ever done that kind-of thing, where you
Stanley: No. I used to, um, watch them old guys. They were just wood carving devils, I’ll tell you what.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: They’d take an old piece of cedar out there and make it shine, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Anything like that, or, cabinets, anything like that, you know. But, I’ll tell you what, I, I never had the time to, we always had cows and goats and I still do. And, with the equipment I’ve got and the work we’ve got going, I stay busy most all the time.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: You know, you can rarely catch me at home unless it’s bad weather. And then we’re working on equipment down there, down there now, working on stuff. But, um, anyway, um, we’ve got our own welders and stuff, you know, and, uh, we have people, sometimes they want some cedar posts, if we can get ‘em we’ll cut ‘em, but
Ken: You still use the stays when you’re building a fence for someone? Will you put a stay in between
Stanley: It depends on what kind of, we do a lot of repairing
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And that’s where we use ‘em, repairing a lot of ‘em.
Ken: The man that built my fence, he’s got the, got the iron posts
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: the steel t-posts, and then he’s, I mean, the pipes, then he, he puts in a steel t-post, I’m guessing every twelve foot and then between every one of them he’d put a stay
Stanley: That makes a fence!
Ken: It makes a nice fence.
Stanley: Yep. It tightens that fence up to where if something hits it, It’s just like “bam”
Ken: Well, I know
Stanley: Like gone down! Yeah, I’ve got a few posts down here, not many. We, uh, we can’t hardly keep a lot of stuff if we have it cut. I mean, I wished I had time to go back to cuttin’ again ‘cause I’ve got customers from the Panhandle to the coast and East Texas and West Texas is my stay market, out there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But those stays, there, are supposed to go to West Texas, but, you know, the guy is – sheep ranchers out there and all – cattle ranchers, and they use a lot of them in their fences because they won’t rot out there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: That dry climate, or whatever
Ken: Yeah, yeah
Stanley: And, uh, they use ‘em in there, they save a lot of posts and all that-a-way. But, anyway, um, it, it works out pretty good down there.
Ken: I started paying attention to where cedar posts is and
Stanley: Yeah
Ken: I was out there by Brownwood and there’s axe cut cedar posts
Stanley: Uh-huh
Ken: way out there . Not Brownwood, Brownfield.
Stanley: Yeah, right
Ken: Big Springs
Stanley: Yeah, Big Springs, out there.
Ken: I mean, they’re axe cut, they’ve been out there fifty years
Stanley: Yeah, exactly, I tell you what. It makes a difference in ‘em, right there, I’ll tell you what.
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: Mighty good! Yeah, we, we’re pretty well, you know, the, the country is getting away from. Now they use a lot of this, the smaller posts don’t hardly sell much anymore. What they’re after is the big blocking posts like that one, where the gate is. They’re using them in buildings.
Ken: Um-hum
Stanley: Support posts in the buildings, you know. That’s the market. They’re thirty-five, forty bucks apiece.
Ken: You talking like those corners?
Stanley: Yeah, the big ones.
Ken: Those three corners?
Stanley: Yeah, right there, that big one.
Ken: This tree here.
Stanley: Yeah, where the board is nailed to
Ken: Uh-huh, OK, yeah.
Stanley: That’s the size they’re going after right now.
Ken: OK. That’s thirty-five or forty dollars? Wow!
Stanley: Oh, yeah, some of ‘em fifty dollars.
Ken: Man!
Stanley: But that’s what you see going down the road anymore.
Ken: So if you were to take this tree here, that’s probably what, a twelve inch post?
Stanley: A twelve inch post right there
Ken: Cut that one -- what would that post be worth? It’d be a ten foot, twelve-inch posts.
Stanley: It’d probably be about fifty bucks
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Something like that.
Ken: That’s something. Would that be good, would that be good hard cedar?
Stanley: Oh, yeah. Them old things – it’s that old, it’d be good cedar for years
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh
Stanley: in there, I’ve got some old cedar posts on that place where my cows are . Boy, they’re just as hard, you can’t drive a staple in ‘em. They “bam” – God damn!
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: Take a stay wire tight, there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But, uh, yeah, I have old customers that come by that I hadn’t sold posts to in fifteen, twenty years, come by and hunt me up. “You still cutting posts?” and “Not really, not a whole lot.”
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: I was down for, well, when I was cutting Dorothy and Eddie’s old place back in there Dorothy came out. She’s cutting, cutting with a chain saw (laugh). That old woman out-cut most anybody (laugh).
Ken: Huh
Stanley: We, uh, I’ve done a lot of clearing for ‘em, a lot of fence building and stuff. But, you know, you get busy, and then the word of mouth, I, I don’t ever advertise. That’s the advertising I’ve got, right there.
Ken: Uh-huh Yeah.
Stanley: Everybody, they see the work we’ve done and they want a fence like what we did.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But that, that cedar rail fence in Wimberley, I
Ken: I want to go by there
Stanley: they wanted me to put my name on it and number, but, hell, I’d never get, I can’t find enough cedar like that
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: See, it takes a lot of acres to find a thousand-some-odd rails like that
Ken: How tall are they?
Stanley: They’re, they’re eight, eight-and-a-half foot long
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: We stair-staggered ‘em. They’re not all the same length, you know.
Ken: right
Stanley: And now the different sizes. Boy, people saw that and they just went fricking God-damn crazy!
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: Man! I want to – give me your name and number. I said, “no, I’m just doing this because I wanted to.” (laugh) But we got paid to do it, but, I mean
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: the City of Wimberley, I want to do a good job for them. And they’re estatic, boy, they’ just
Ken: That’s cool
Stanley: That, that guy, he, boy, I tell you what (laugh) every time I see him somewhere he comes over and complements me on that damn fence over there!
Ken: That’s great!
Stanley: (laugh) But where my cows are – right across from the Cypress Creek Church, and that big field down there
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: That’s a lot of good ce- I’ve cut cedar over there sometime. I go in there and cut it and pile it and burn it and then plant some more grass seed down there
Ken: So you worked for the State for a long time, you said.
Stanley: I worked there thirty-two years.
Ken: What’d you do for them?
Stanley: Oh, maintenance on roads or on equipment
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: work recs, and all that kind of stuff. I’d sand the roads at night in the Hill Country and the younger guys wouldn’t go – they’d stay, they didn’t want to get up in the hills. They scared of it.
Ken: Huh
Stanley: I’d laugh at ‘em. I’d say “hell, get in the damn truck, let’s go.” (laugh) Had my sander box over here and control box
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: and the old truck then, you had to raise the bed to jump it. Keep jerking the bed and the sand come down.
Ken: Yeah, yeah.
Stanley: Well one night about three o’clock in the morning, there was ice on the Wimberley hill. I started down that thing, had that old truck in first gear. And I’d been dogging it forever. Keeping it coming down. And, uh, broke the universal joint about half-way down that hill. I didn’t even have time to lower the bed. I got down 1492 before I got the truck stopped.
Ken: Um!
Stanley: And I called the warehouse. This was barely daylight when it happened. And, uh, I, I got the bed down and I rolled into the driveway. There wasn’t nobody in or out. So they, uh, they come and told me “well, we’ll bring you another truck. Just be still.” So I had to get out of that truck and crawl in another one and keep going.
Ken: Hum!
Stanley: (laugh) Naw, It didn’t bother me none! Hell, you know, it’s a challenge to me, you know.
Ken: Yeah. So, when did you retire from that job?
Stanley: I’ve been off there about eight or nine years.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Off of there, you know, I miss it a lot. You know, the comraderie of the old guys, you know.
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: But, um, you know, I, I’m happy doing what I’m doing. If I want to go cut cedar – I go cut. If I want to get in the truck and go see somebody or look at something, I get in the ole’ truck and crawl out there and look at it.
Ken: Uh-huh. When, so, you, I was here, there was a time when a man could make awful good money cutting cedar.
Stanley: Oh! Yes. Well, now-a-days you can make more now than you could back then, but, but the conditions are all different, you know.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: You’ve got people now that want you to cut it, but you’ve got to, you’ve got to, you can’t, you can’t, you’ve got to be careful how you cut, and, you know, it’s, it’s a different ball game
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And they want you to burn the brush, pile it, and burn it.
Ken: If you do that kind of clear cutting you do it by the acre, don’t you, and most people use dozers for that, don’t’ they?
Stanley: Well, some people do and some flat cut it.
Ken: There is still flat cutting going on?
Stanley: Oh, yeah. Yeah, there’s, I, I do some of that once in a while. Small little tracks, where they’re
Ken: What do you charge an acre for that?
Stanley: It’s usually about five an acre
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Something like that. It depends on what I have to do. You know, if I have to pile the brush in there. We did five acres for an old woman over there, but it was little cedar. It wasn’t nothing big.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: And we went in there and, and, uh, I had two tractors over there, the big one and the midget, the little one, the smaller one, and, we had them forks in there and it’s so easy to pick that brush up with them ‘cause you, the brush is just cut it, leave it fall, and you come in there with that tractor and you see a tree, like that, and you run that brush toward that tree, just scoop it up,
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Back up, and go to the next one. Come back and do the same around these, then you work what you’ve got left and another one, and you know, you don’t never get off the tractor, except maybe a little limb or two
Ken: Uh-huh, uh-huh. And finally you’ve got a big pile of brush
Stanley: Yeah, oh, yeah. You take it out there and far out yonder and dump it, you know, down there.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But, yeah, this used to be cedar country, cutting country, you know
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: And, a lot of the old places I’ve cut on, they’ve grown up again
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: People don’t ever keep it clean, you know
Ken: yeah, I know. It doesn’t take that long to do it. Twenty-thirty years
Stanley: I found a place over on the, on the river over there, that, uh, oh, that’s some of the prettiest cedar I’ve seen in my life. Good Lord amighty! But you couldn’t – it’d be hard to have got it out
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Golly. I walked that thing, eyes watering, boy! Good God almighty!
Ken: Um! Um!
Stanley: It’s some of the prettiest
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: ten and twelve foot
Ken: Just straight ___
Stanley: Blocking you ever saw! Oh, My God!
Ken: Yeah, I’ve seen it like that
Stanley: If I was able to cut and carry it out to the truck, I’d have done it.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But I was having trouble with my damn foot and, uh, it really wasn’t that rough of land, but it just rough enough that you, you had to more or less crawl around with a dozer, you know.
Ken: Yeah. Maybe a little ‘ole, what do you call those little things?
Stanley: Little crawlers
Ken: Bobcat, or something like that, could get in there
Stanley: Yeah, well, it’d have to be careful because you could tip one of ‘em pretty easy
Ken: Uh-huh, y eah, I imagine.
Stanley: You know, some of it’s like little ledges, you know
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: Like that, but, you know, wasn’t any real big rock, but, but it was, you know, it’s just bad enough that
Ken: Yeah
Stanley: You had to be careful, That ole’ big cedar, man! It (laugh) I cut a lot of cedar out of this place. You can see where the stumps – we’ve cut cedar out of here. I cut most of this place and I burned a lot of it. I was more interested in, in clearing my place and getting my grass going.
Ken: Right
Stanley: That way I could run my goats and I’m gona bring the cows home before too long
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: But I’m gona replant that winter rye again. It’s gona come up here before long. It’s all, sowed in planted with it, then the drought, you know
Ken: Oh, I know. How’d your cows do the last drought?
Stanley: They done good. I, I feed ‘em calf feed from the Co-Op in New Braunfels over there. A little bit of hay, but this calf feed is good.
Ken: Huh!
Stanley: Some of the best stuff you ever saw.
Ken: Yeah? Is it
Stanley: Cottonseed hulls, ground corn, and, crushed corn, and, molasses in it, and all that.
Ken: You buy by the ton?
Stanley: I buy it by, it’s, it’s, uh, eight-ninety-four for fifty pounds.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: I buy fifteen, twenty bags at a time. That’s all I need.
Ken: Uh-huh
Stanley: You know, I can’t store that much at one time because the damn coons and squirrels get into it.
Ken: (laugh)
Stanley: They love it!
Ken: Uh-huh, yeah
Stanley: That molasses in there
Ken: Oh, yeah
Stanley: God damn, they go fricking crazy
Ken: Is it pretty much protein in it?
Stanley: Oh, forty-one percent
End
