Cruiser Was a Logger's Dog

[Bob Smalser]

“Cruiser” was undoubtedly a logger’s dog, and a tough-looking Bulldog at that.

His grave marker was painstakingly hand-carved from a 4/4 plank of old growth, 25 rings-to-the-inch quartersawn Western Red Cedar. Originally whitewashed and with pine tar on back and bottom, we found it on our Back 40 some years ago next to a rotting, old-growth Douglas Fir stump, set neatly in the ground at the head of a small depression in the forest floor. For a logger of that era, that marker must have taken a literal “month of Sundays” to carve.

We don’t know who Cruiser’s master was. He likely worked for the McCormick Logging Company who logged this virgin land from 1928 to 1936, based out of nearby Camp Union. He was probably a Scandinavian who moved West with McCormick and other men of his trade from Wisconsin. I suspect he was a faller....and a faller from the days of long-handled, light falling axes, springboards, ”misery whips” and steam donkeys. We can still see the marks in the ground and cable damage where the donkey was positioned next to the long-gone Shay-locomotive railway roadbed about 300 yards NNE from Cruiser’s grave.

I hope that we would have been friends, and that my friend doesn’t mind that I cleaned off the whitewash and tar, and applied the finest Tung varnish I could obtain. I hope that when this gentleman looks down from heaven that he approves of the simple, rough-cut stand I made to keep his craftsmanship out of the weather. After all, I made sure it went back in the exact spot he placed it in 1936…

…where our faller buried his beloved Cruiser next to the tree that killed him.



How do I know he’s in heaven? Well, anybody who could be so loyal and love so deeply…

Copyright 2003, Sprague Pond Environmental Services.