When the river would get up, you would haul your logs to the river all during this weather like this and let them lay there and dry out if it was gum log because some timber will sink if it's green when you roll it in the river.
And you would wait for what you call a fresh would come in the river, a lot of wet weather you know, up ahead and make the river rise up about back and back.
And when you caught that river or storm to rise, you'd start to build your rafts so you would have it ready by the time the river got up and get on that high water.
And man, when that river began to rise, my daddy would get me young and down there and more than that, I'd fall in a time or two out there on them logs, driving pens in them logs and all.
And you'd start the raft just away from the bank in ways and then as you got enough logs, you'd turn it up and down the river and roll it into your logs and bring them under your tie poles with a gig pole.
Throw that gig into it with a long pole, pull him under there and bore a hole in the tie pole and you bored the hole in the tie pole with a bigger auger than you did in the log to make it wedge type.
See, so the pen would hold.
And he made wooden pens out of ash timber, made tapering.
And when you bored the hole in the tie pole, you bored another hole in the log and you drove that pen in there with the ax on each end.
And you'd fix a raft, say, maybe 100 feet, 100 or 150 feet long a lot of times.
Probably be 200 feet.
Oh yeah.
Be going down this river.
And if you got your raft built before the man did up above you or below you, naturally you'd get your oar up and everything and your oar would be something like 25, 30 foot long.
You didn't try to carry, the current of the water carried the raft down the river.
You just put the oar on each end on a bench, wooden bench made out of pegs and a big piece of timber across there, drove on that.
And what you done was guide the raft the best you could down the river.
And we were going down there.
And every time he would get a raft built and pull that, untie, get his augers and we'd get us some food and all ready to eat going down the river.
You would, when he'd untie that raft, it was just a thing that people done in that day and time.
He'd say, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.
He'd pull down in the current of the river and start to float.
And you'd hear Mr. So-and-so, Mr. Bill Lawhorn or Mr. John Adkisson up the river.
My dad say, well, he's turned loose, I hear him.
And that was a thing that was going on up and down the river.
And if your raft was in front and you'd run in down there on the river and run on a snag and got hung up, you had to holler the man back down or behind you down and tell him what to do.
So he'd come in there on top of you and sink your raft.
And you too, you couldn't swim out.
So you'd holler this distress holler to him, just like you would for something, it was the same thing.
Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.
Tie your net up, pull in.
So he'd tie his net up and pull in to the bank, begin to scrub the logs up in the bank,
go to slowing it down, throw a rope around the limb there and slow it down.
You couldn't tie it all at one time, break the rope.
It was so heavy going down the river.
And he'd tie his net up and if it weren't too bad, he'd come down the river, maybe walk in and come over to you.
If it was hot weather, swim over there to you and get help that way.
And when you were hollering up and down the river, there were people who lived close to the river.
They'd come to the river and look at you go by on that raft.
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