September 9, 2021 • 48 mins
Life was tough for lumberjacks in the 1800s. Stuck in the middle of nowhere, often in brutal living conditions, the men of Minnesota's logging camps often had little relief from the dangerous, daily grind of logging season. Frank Higgins spent decades traveling to these isolated camps, bringing sermons, hymns and inspiration. In today's episode, the guys dive into the story of the world's first sky pilot.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in over there on the zoom.
That's the one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams.
Give him a hand, folks. Uh, they call me Ben.
And oh and who's that clapping? Is that? You KNOWL? Yeah?
That was my patented slow clap for max Um trademark. Yeah,
(00:51):
it's as I KNOWL. And today we're we're talking about
the underappreciated Angelina Jolie hybrid animation and live action film
of the early two thousand Sky Captain in the World
of Tomorrow. Right close, close, close there, dang it. It's
always always a bridesmaid, never a bride. What are we
(01:13):
talking about today, Ben, We we are talking about lumberjacks.
We're talking about religion in a way. We're also well,
in a very on the nose way. We're also talking
about something called sky pilots. Have you ever heard this
phrase before? No, clearly I confused it deeply with Sky Captain.
(01:35):
I thought it was a good film. It was fine, Yeah,
it was, it was he was just once he was
just the sky Captain. He was not one of many
sky captains that was like his name, right, he was
sky captain. You know, he certainly wasn't a sky pilot. No,
he wasn't, because it turns out a sky pilot was
a name given by lumberjacks to like traveling clergy who
(01:59):
sought to convey vert them from their burly and intensely
manly and potentially sinful ways. Yes, yes, it's a true story.
So you might be familiar, folks with the idea of
circuit judges or circuit preachers, people who traveled routinely throughout
(02:19):
a given region or territory for one purpose or another.
In those two examples I just named judges, and the
clergy there would be you know, they'd be traveling for
legal purposes or in this case, for spiritual purposes. These folks,
these traveling holy figures, were called sky pilots. And it
(02:43):
turns out the original sky pilot, as far as lumberjacks
are concerned, is a man named Frank Higgins who worked
across northern Minnesota for decades in the US see, I know,
I was confused because Jude Law also portrayed him and
the slightly less known and even more underappreciated film Frank
(03:04):
Higgins and the Lumberjack sky Pilots of Minnesota. Yes, and
there is a type of very popular pen called a
sky pilot. I think it's a point oh seven, I
can't remember. Oh yeah, this is my dad's favorite pens,
the black ones, like with the nice little point point
e jabby tips yep. And Jude Law is also set
(03:25):
to play the main character in a Pixar film based
on those pins. So he is nailing just the sky
stuff and the pilot stuff in general. We're having a
real judaisance. Yes, yes, yes, Jude direction if you know,
cut that part. Where are we leaving it in? Okay,
We're leaving it in Max. Okay, Max is on the fence.
(03:46):
So travel with us if you would. Back to the
late eighteen hundreds, there are an estimated five hundred different
lumber camps in the rural woods of northern Minnesota, and
this one guy, this Frank Higgins, is their sky pilot. So,
(04:09):
like you said, Noel, the life of a lumberjack Monty
python a side is a pretty demanding and at times
hazardous existence. How did we how did we get here? What? What?
Why did all these guys end up being lumberjacks in
northern Minnesota. Yeah. I mean, you know, if anyone's seen
the film Fargo, which takes place in North Dakota, and
(04:31):
yet everyone sounds like they're from Minnesota, I think, to me,
it's what it's demonstrating is much more of that kind
of Minnesota tradition of logging and the fur trade. You
got that big Paul Bunyan statue and all of that.
Not to say this Fargo doesn't have a place in
this story, but it really is centered and began in
(04:52):
Minnesota as the fur trade in fact, was beginning to
become less of a viable industry. And this is around
the middle of an eighteenth century. You start to see
these commercial sawmills around eighteen thirty nine, and this led
to a real booming industry over the next um, you know,
(05:12):
twenty or thirty years. Uh, we started to see big
logging operations in places like still Water and St. Anthony.
By around the very very late eighteen hundreds, Uh, it
was beginning to move into other parts of the state
as well, up north and even out west in Minnesota,
and you start to see this lumber industry really start
(05:33):
to boom. Yeah. Part of it is due to this
thing called the DAWs Act and some associated legislation. Here's
what these laws did. They allowed lumber companies to buy
land that originally belonged to Indigenous people. And this DAWs
Act divided up Indian reservations in the area, giving the
(05:57):
families living there individual a lot of land. We're getting
a lot of this, by the way, from our ELK.
Cartwright writing over at m n O Pedia Minnesota Pedia.
It's like a encyclopedia Minnesota. You get it. So this
opens up what is euphemistically referred to at the time
(06:18):
as quote unquote surplus land, largely for white settlers. And
in Minnesota, this benefits the lumber industry, particularly near the
reservations Red Lake and White Earth. So another big piece
of this is that railroads have been built in this area,
(06:39):
so if you're a logging company, it's super easy to
transport this timber across the continent. And that's what drew
people a lot of loggers at this time. A lot
of lumberjacks were just going where the jobs were, from
one state to the next, right, right, Yeah, Ben, do
you think that the term timber come from the thing
(07:02):
that people yell when the trees fall, or is it
the other way around. I think it's I think it's
the other way around. I think they were just yelling
timber the way that you know, if they were if
they were throwing pianos in the woods, they would have
yelled piano. I guess you're right, Ben, I guess you're right.
It's a fun thing to do. That's probably the most
(07:24):
fun part of being a log logsman, uh of woodsman,
lumberjack is to yell timber. You gotta hold it out
all the way until the thing hits uh, And if
you're not there, it definitely doesn't make a sound. That's proven.
Doesn't Kesha have a song where she yells timber? You know, Ben,
it's certainly possible. It sounds like something she might say.
(07:45):
You know, Noel, I believe it's actually a pit Bull
song featuring Kesha. Yes, back in her dollar signed days,
but she has pivoted from But Kesha and Pipoli side,
there was some problematic treatment of these these First Nations
people and this kind of division, and we started to
see these logging camps popping up and loggers were essentially,
(08:10):
you know what you would call itinerant workers. Like you said, Ben,
they would follow the job, you know, from place to place. Uh.
Some came from as far as Maine, where there was
a logging boom uh and bust before Minnesota started to
see it's boom um. And then you had folks coming
down from Michigan or even Wisconsin. Um. And a lot
of lumberjacks came from other countries. We started to see
(08:33):
people of Norwegian, Irish, French, Canadian, English, Canadian, Finnish or
Swedish descent coming. We also started to see members of
the Ojibwe tribe of the First Nations people. And at
this point it was kind of the peak of logging
in Minnesota. Uh. They essentially cut down enough trees to
(08:55):
produce more than two billion feet of boards. I guess
this would be like two by four type situation or
whatever the kind of standardized measurement was for the time. Yes,
And into this bustling industry come the sky pilots. It's
a it's a cool term. It describes, as we mentioned earlier,
(09:19):
clergyman who would travel through these often isolated timber towns
or really just lumberjack camps. They would also visit miners.
They would speak with members of the armed forces, and
they would also visit prisoners. The thing is that we
(09:40):
know the original sky pilot is this guy Frank Higgins,
Francis E. Higgins if he's in trouble, but people still
don't agree on the etymology or the origin of the term.
For his part, Frank Higgins claims that the Lumberjacks themselves
(10:00):
started calling him the sky Pilot because they would yeah,
they would be living this brutal existence and he would
come through with religious services, and then lumberjacks would say, well,
come on, man, life is tough for us. Wait, wait,
what are you doing here? Why why are you coming
all the way out here? And then Higgins said, I
(10:22):
want to pilot your souls to the sky. And so
they were like, oh, okay, sky pilot over here, sky
pilot over here. And then somebody yelled timber and everyone
to the left like and then they kept going with
a bit yeah, safety first, yeah, and honestly, you definitely
want to save soul if you're gonna get pancake by
a giant pine you know there. Oh yeah, it's a
(10:44):
dangerous existence for sure, super dangerous and like you said,
been super stressful and exhausting, which I guess accounts for
a lot of the the hard living afterwards, you know,
just to kind of like maybe not not not to
say that lumberjacks were miserable all the time, but I
mean I can imagine the stress and anxiety and just
hard work of that day would certainly lead to wanting
(11:06):
to unwind in a big way. And these ways were
considered kind of counter to the teachings of Jesus, and
so Higgins really was there traveling along with these itinerant
folks from place to place, trying to save their soul.
It's a pretty admirable goal, honestly, I mean, I gotta
respect the guy for sticking to it in such harsh conditions.
(11:35):
So let's let's kind of explore this a little bit.
Why do you think that these, uh, these preachers felt
lumberjacks in particular were in need of soul saving aside
from the you know, constant threat of being crushed by trees.
In eighteen ninety three, uh, Frederick Jackson Turner, who's an historian,
(11:56):
gave a speech that kind of summed up, uh, this
notion that the West might become a godless place, you know,
because it was so far removed from the rest of
the country, and there was a concern that, like the
morals and ideals of America would perhaps kind of vanish.
So he quoted this eighteen fifty editorial from a home
(12:19):
Missions periodical. Uh and would you like to read that? Ben? Oh? Yes,
of course, So Turner says, we scarcely know whether to
rejoice or more and over this extension of our settlements.
While we sympathize in whatever tends to increase the physical
resources and prosperity of our country, we cannot forget that
(12:40):
with all these dispersions into remote and still remoter corners
of the land, the supply of the means of grace
interesting phrase, there is becoming relatively less and less remote
and still remoter corners of the land. So while you know,
I mean, Minnesota isn't exactly the West, it's the Midwest, right,
(13:05):
but it's certainly on that path to manifest destiny. Um,
it would would have fallen into this category of being
remote and wild in the sense of, like you know,
being a godless land where men could lose themselves in
that frontier life. So in particular we saw itinerant preachers
all over in the days of the Old West of
(13:27):
the frontier days. In particular, we see followers of Wesleyan
Christianity that was the I guess, the flavor of Christianity
that was founded by John Wesley. We would see them
start to pop up around early nineteenth century in the Midwest.
And it's interesting because Midwesterners it was such a common
site that Midwesterners actually had almost a little saying that
(13:49):
on bad wintry weather days there was something to see
outside but quote crows and Methodist preachers. Yeah. Yeah. The
British slang for this, by the way, would be a
god botherer, someone who's persistently trying to uh to, to proselytize,
to evangelize, to convert you to their religious beliefs. And
(14:10):
this is where Frank Higgins really comes in. This is
the context in which he occurs. He's born in Canada,
in Toronto in eighteen sixty. His father passes away when
he's quite young. His mother remarries and they moved to
Ontario and their their idea this new family is to
(14:31):
homestead this area. It's remote, it's the middle of nowhere
in Duffering County in the woods. His stepfather is quite
religious and Frank as a result of this. Pretty early
on in childhood, he decides that he feels called to
become a preacher. And there's a cute moment here. According
(14:54):
to the story, he's walking around as a kid again
in the woods, middle of nowhere, and he's practicing sermons
on trees and tree stumps. He's telling some nearby cattle
about the Joy everlasting. Doesn't this sound something like a
mother would say that boys so into Jesus he'd give
a sermon to a tree stump. Yes, yes, his mom's
(15:18):
largely supportive of it. Uh. He you know, back in
this time, rural Canada, there's not a ton of opportunity
for formal schooling, right, So he goes to Toronto when
he's about twenty years old and just by the way, folks,
so you can get a sense of his physicality. He's
not a small dude. He's maybe what you would call
(15:39):
burly today, Like he wouldn't he wouldn't look out of
place in a lumberjack camp. Well, that suits him fits
right in until he gets his hooks in. You is
Jesus looks But no, you're right. After around three years
in public grade school and then two years in high school,
he left Canada and went to Minnesota, and he was
(16:03):
twenty five at the time. And after a few years
walking around as a an un i guess anointed minister,
a lay preacher in Annandale, he went to seminary. He
went to Hamlin University and in officially was ordained and
um started service at the Presbyterian Church in Barnum, Minnesota.
(16:25):
And that's where he first that's where he first kind
of ran into this community of loggers. Yeah, because he's
he's ministering to this church and one of the church
members says, hey, Frank, come visit this logging camp. I
operate a lumberjack concern and let me tell you, these
people need one thing God, seriously, they're going they're going
(16:48):
wild out there. Uh, Frankie, gotta help me out. And
so Frank goes with this church member and these loggers
on what's called a log drive. That's where they go
and find and harvest timber. And they have a day
of pretty dangerous work and Frank's there the whole time.
(17:08):
It's kind of like he's going on a ride along,
if you want to think of it that way. And
then he gets training kind of scenario. Yeah, yeah, pretty
pretty much. Yeah, with a little bit less of a
sinister crime vibe. God, nobody made him smoke PC or anything, right, right, right,
And he's hanging out with these guys after doing this
(17:30):
right along, and he grabs dinner with him, and he
was surprised because while he's eating, one of the slumberjacks says,
you know, hey, preach, uh, you know what, will you
provide us the good word? You know, will you have
a service for us? Will you minister to us? And Higgins,
(17:52):
you know, in no small part flattered, I'm sure, says Okay, yeah,
I'll do it, and they hold an impromptu church service.
He's leading the group and singing some hymns everybody knows,
and he talks with them about faith and about spirituality
and Christianity right as the evening is beginning in the afternoon,
(18:14):
leans lazily into sunset, and it works. These guys are moved.
You know, maybe it's because it's something that breaks the routine.
Maybe it speaks to them on a deeper spiritual level.
But the next morning he spends the night there by
the way. The next morning, several of these lumberjacks, who
are also by the way, ridiculous historians known as river
(18:37):
pigs in fight Frank to return River pigs. Did that
stick out to you know? It definitely did. I just
want to point out really quick too, that I think
they were also just kind of floored by how quickly,
uh and off the cuff he was able to deliver
this sermon like it was they were just impressed, you know,
like it was, Oh, this guy means business. And he
did mean business because he followed them around out on many,
(19:01):
many more of these logging expeditions and in which you know,
he was putting himself in harm's way alongside the people
that he was trying to minister to. So he was
certainly putting his money where his mouth of of God was.
That's a thing. But a river pig, Yeah, it's totally
a thing. Um. There's in fact a competition, the Lumberjack
World Championship, which I believe it still goes on today. Um.
(19:22):
And And in that there is a competition called a
boom run um. And it is where loggers display studying
feats of speed and endurance and focus and balance, most importantly,
when they run across a small lake by bounding from
one floating log to another. UM. He may have seen this.
(19:45):
It's almost like kind of a cliche of like lumberjack life. Well,
around a hundred years ago, there are these men um
who were known as river pigs that actually did this
as a functional part of the logging trip um there
us referred to as river rats, river hogs, or caddyman,
but they actually drove logs down the river to the
(20:09):
sawmill and sometimes the logs would jam up, and that's
when these guys would would swoop in and save the day, right, yeah,
and well they would try to save the day. This
was a super dangerous job. We have some arborists in
the audience. We may have some loggers in the audience
as well. And if you if you have experienced professional logging,
(20:34):
timber harvesting, etcetera, then you know that even with today's
technological advancements, it is an incredibly dangerous gig, so much
so that back in the eighteen hundreds when this story
takes place, everyone was disappointed when they heard a river
rat or a river boy, a river hog passed away.
(20:57):
But they weren't really surprised and they didn't stop the
operation because one passed away. No, they're basically like cannon
fodder in the lumber industry. And just just to reiterate,
they did do essentially what is done as a fun
little competition in the Lumberjack World Championship, but they would
(21:19):
do it for real as they were driving these logs
down the river. A picture like just you know, back
to back logs rolling down the river, downstream towards the sawmill.
And occasionally one of the logs would get caught up
in a bank or whatever would cause the whole thing
to jam, hence log Jam or the amazing film within
(21:40):
a film log Jam in in the Big Lebowski. But yeah,
these river rats or hogs or pigs would literally run
across the logs and use this pike or like giant
kind of stick to poke them free. And you know,
think about it, if that happened too quickly, if they
became just lodged, become unstable, they'd get thrown off or
(22:02):
maybe like crushed between these massive pieces of timber. Right, yes,
And unfortunately in some cases their bodies wouldn't turn up
for days and days after they disappeared. So there's a
poetic part of a mental Floss article by Terse O'Neill
called seven jobs were glad or obsolete, and in this
(22:26):
article O'Neill notes that sometimes the only marker for a
river pigs grave would be his boots tossed over a
tree limb that was hanging somewhere near the part of
the river where they disappeared. So life here was difficult.
People needed inspiration. You know, you're you're you're literally waking
(22:48):
up with a coworker who may not be there at
the end of the day. And this means that life
on an emotional level as well as a physical level,
is quite difficult. We should also mention that logging operations
mainly took place in the winter, so logs could be
(23:08):
loaded on frozen rivers and then they could be sent
downstream when the water thought. These people were miserable. They're
huddled together in these like cold bunk rooms, and of
course there's not a modern heating system, so it's cold.
Let's add in you know what, No, let's just laundry
list all the miserable things. Another thing, people are pretty dirty, right,
(23:32):
there's lice everywhere. I don't know, Max Noel, you guys
probably had to get checked for lice, maybe in grade
school something like that. Yeah, Well, I mean as as
a dad that's a big thing um with kids. Like
when kid gets that, they hoped literally from head to
head and we had a life scare or we had
to we had to get that special shampoo and get
(23:54):
rid of some clothes. It was not fun. But yeah,
I definitely remember being checked. And I as a kid,
don't the guy ever got it until I was an adult. Yeah, next,
did you did you have the life experience where they
like check every kid's head in your school? Oh? Yeah,
I mean I had life when I was like seven,
maybe eight. Alex and I both had life that like
summer camp. It was not the cleanest place that we
(24:16):
went to. But yeah, like you know, I remember like
an elementary school, like, oh, I kid had lice. We
all have doing and Alex and I generally always rocked
her hair really long, so it was not fun to
having out our heads completely shaved down, and I was
like pretty tragic for me. That's Alex Williams, by the way,
not fun fact not only Max's brother, actual facts biological brother,
(24:37):
but also the creator of both this show's soundtrack and
the excellent puer podcast of Femeral In fact, Noll, I
think spoiler alert. If we make it through our own
logging camp of podcasts. We might have Alex join us
on an upcoming episode we had Disgusted. I think we're
(24:57):
getting that locked in. I really look forward to it.
That'll be fun. It'll be like a family reunion because
you guys haven't see each other in years, right, Max, Yeah,
we we totally don't work on a femeral together. Strange
now just just strange. And they definitely definitely do work
on a femeral. Max is an integral part of that show. Yes,
he is ours, so it totally is a family A
(25:18):
fair to look forward to that episode. But let's get
back to the sky Pigs, well, the River Pigs, River Pigs,
Sky Pilots. It's cold. People are dying left and right.
Everybody's got lice. Uh, tons of people have injuries. They
might be missing fingers. This is brutal. Everybody is sick too,
(25:40):
by the way, because you know you're in a cold area,
so you have to huddle together, right, for warmth, for shelter,
which means an illness like lice, gets transmitted more easily
from one person to the next due to proximity. And
you know, again, these people are moving around, they're traveling
where the work takes them and they're away from their families.
(26:01):
These are men who are trying to provide for their families,
so they're constantly missing their wives and their kids, who,
by the way, most of them were not allowed to
bring to the logging camps. I think there was an
exception made occasionally for the foreman and the cook who
were allowed to bring their wives for visits. Like that's
very very very specific. But regular old loggers, including those
(26:25):
river pigs, who are putting their life in serious risk
every single day, we're not allowed to have access to
their wives or families. And there was even concern because
of this from the sky pilots that perhaps there would
be some unholy uh sexual relationships forged between these big
(26:46):
burly men, which is a very specific type of porn.
Oh heaven forefend. So that's what the one thing the
sky pilots are worried about. Not amputation, not not crushing
mental mamma, or the very real danger of death. They're
worried some people might be sleeping together hot burley lumberjack sex. Um.
(27:08):
It's a it's a concern of the church. It's like
on their list of top concerns. Um they have a
prioritized list and that is weirdly at the top. And
they're also the sky pilots are also keeping their eyes
on other forms of sin. So if you are familiar
with an industry, like working in an oil field, you
(27:32):
know that there can be boom towns that pop up
around these sorts of activities. And when lumberjacks are done
with the logging season at this time, they often end
up in nearby towns were cities, and they're kind of
whiling out there on leave. You know, they haven't really
(27:53):
been spending their money on anything. They're out in the
middle of nowhere. They haven't really been talking to anybody
except their colleagues who have survived that season. So they're
often saloons. They're off rolling hot dice, they're visiting brothels,
of course, and according to Higgins, the original sky pilot
saloons are the only like social situation around. There's not
(28:18):
there's not an alternative, you know, there's not really a
community center or something like that. There's not an Internet cafe,
so they naturally wash up at the local bar. That's right.
They even get their haircut there. Oftentimes. You know, if
you've seen the show Deadwood. Uh. That is also where
brothels would would be as well. Like in some of
(28:38):
these saloons there would be lodging that often would come
with company, and you know, any of the other needs
that they had met in terms of washing, getting haircuts,
and obviously gambling and drinking. Um. So, Higgins tried to
address the men in in terms that they could understand
(28:59):
without walking down to them. Fellow kids, Hello, fellow kids,
it is I Frank Higgins. I know your pain. I
know the plight of the lumberman, and I know that
it seems like an easy fix to turn to the
drink and and and the gambling and the loose women
of the evening. But it's not so good fellas. Think
(29:20):
of your everlasting souls, think about your the reward that
lies for you in the great beyond. Don't get your
pleasure now, my friends, suffer now so you can have
your pleasure later. It reminds me a little bit of
that song you Got Trouble, you know, right here in
River City over they're like, look, guys, I'm gonna be
(29:41):
honest with you. It's me, your buddy, Frank. Now I've
been tempted before, I've walked by a deck of cards.
I knew what a jack of diamonds is. And I
know that some of you are maybe making out, whether
in a rothel or in a lonely night at the
(30:02):
bunk house, and that's a big deal to be let me.
Let me tell you I've been through similar things. My
mom watches me leave home to come here and hang
out with you in this miserable environment. But her prayers,
he says, have followed me throughout my life. And my
(30:23):
story is just like yours. It's just a mad lib.
He didn't say mad lib. That wasn't invented yet, but
he's like, my story is just like yours. All you
have to do is change the names. I know we're
in a crazy situation, but I guarantee you that somebody
out there away from this camp still wants to know
that you're alive. So write him a letter. You know.
(30:45):
It makes me think of like Tracy Morgan, the comedian
and actor from Dirty Rock and and all that I
love him. You know, he was in a very bad accident,
uh that he survived. But I saw him due the
speech or I think is on a radio show or
something like that, but he said something to the effect
of true happiness is having something to look forward to.
(31:07):
True happiness is knowing that you have someone that cares
whether you live or die. And I think he was trying.
Higgins was trying to appeal to that sense where he
was saying, somebody out there cares about you, somebody out
there loves you. Go home right now and reconnect with
that part of your soul, with that part of why
are you living in the first place, Why are you
out here, you know, doing this work, putting in all
(31:29):
this hard work, if you're just going to gamble and
drink yourself into an early grave. And he's referring to
I think friends and family says, go home, write a
letter tonight. Yeah. Yeah, So that's that's what's happening. This
guy is saying, Hey, don't get don't get lost in
the timber game. Don't feel hopeless. People do care about you,
you know, even if you can't talk to them right now.
(31:52):
You can write a letter. You can be connected to
the larger world and to the people you care about
most because they care about you too. That seems like
a pretty easy thing to agree to, but it might
surprise some of us to know that these sky pilots
(32:14):
didn't always get unanimous acclaim. True, some big lumber interests
loved them and supported them. People like Thomas B. Walker
thought these ministers were not just good for the camp,
but so important to the camp that they should be paid.
So in some cases it was not just a labor
(32:35):
of love or spiritual duty. It was their job. And
they thought, you know, if these workers have religion, they'll
also conform and they'll they'll work more predictably, they'll be
more efficient, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And surprisingly, labor unions or
(32:56):
labor activists at least who wanted to unionize logging camps.
I thought this was a BS diversionary tactic for management.
They said, you know what's really going to improve worker
morale if we have better employment conditions, if these people
can go out and know that they are not going
(33:17):
to die between two logs on a swift moving river,
which is a fair point, right right. There was a
group called the Industrial Workers of the World i w W,
or Wobblies. They were super against the sky pilots for
that same exact reason. Um The Wobblies were one of
the only early unions that wanted to organize lumberjacks, and
(33:40):
they used the term skypilot as kind of a disc
as a day on these folks. They believe that the
working conditions of lubbage Dave could only be changed by
improving conditions. Not with this whole again, suffer now get
your kicks in the afterlife mentality, because it's the counterproductive
(34:01):
not gonna lie. Yeah, I see, I see where they're
coming from. Right, right, exactly. I think we're all on
the same page. There still some lumberjacks found solace in
the sky pilots, and a few even went on to
become preachers or sky pilots themselves. One of the most
famous examples of this is a guy named John Sornberger
(34:25):
who was a murderer. It was it was a rude dude,
a wanted killer, who with the help of Frank Higgins,
turned his life around. Uh there's another guy. Andrew Stenstrom
is also mentioned that min opedia article. Andrew Stenstrom was
a lumberjack who converted to Christianity in seven he became
(34:49):
super super devout. He left the logging game entirely, but
a number of years later he came back, not as
lumberjack but as a preacher. Uh think if you look
into his biography, he's better known nowadays as a painter.
But if you met him while he was alive, he
(35:09):
was a lumberjack and then a sky pilot, not just
any kind of painter, been a primitive painter, which would
have referred to kind of that more rustic approach to
UM creating kind of scenes at the lumber camps, which
is an important way of documenting that stuff around the
Minnesota's uh on the Pacific coast from you know, Oregon
and all that, and uh in the dakotas of course.
(35:31):
But what's interesting is where we focused a lot on
maybe what could have been considered a bit of a
cloying aspect of the sky pilots and the I'm just
kind of saying, hey, you know, uh, cast off your
sinful ways so that you can, you know, guard your
soul against damn nation, but without actually addressing the problem.
But they in fact did address the problem as well.
(35:55):
A lot of these sky pilots provided more than just um,
you know, absolute Lucian uh and and religion. There's certainly
worse than lumberjacks that did not care for the presence
of the sky pilots and that treated them like interlopers.
But most of the people that lived in these camps
lived the north in these camps appreciated the kind of
i don't know, community building that the that the ministers
(36:18):
did the sky pilots coming into town certainly broke up
the kind of humdrum day to day of of the
logging camps. And they would often bring you know, musical instruments, uh,
and they would you know, lead uh the lumberjacks in
singalongs of course, you know, gospel hymns and the like. Um.
But it definitely was something that felt festive, you know.
(36:40):
And the ministers would also bring a lot of books
and magazines and things for them to read. I mean
because again, you know, with the conditions and the close quarters,
I mean, this is not that far off from a
prison type situation. So you know, the library is is
a really important part of any prison if you've seen
like OZ or any TV show based in prison. But yeah,
(37:00):
so they appreciate they were really appreciated for that, for
bringing them stuff to entertain themselves and break up them anony. Heck, yeah,
it's a show I mean for for a terrible comparison,
if you've been to grade school, you remember those milestone
exciting days. There was field day, there were field trips.
You know, you might have career day. It breaks the
(37:21):
two teachers. Always was was a big deal. Oh yeah,
it might be um. You know, it's like you said,
it's a relief from monotony. It's a break from routine.
And sky pilots also provided some social services, the things
that logging companies didn't really bother with because of labor
(37:42):
laws at the time or lack thereof. So, for instance,
let's say lumberjack is injured but they're not dying. It
would fall on the sky pilot often to take this
person to the hospital, and Frank Higgins established this precedent
using a dog sled. The dog sled became an ambulance
(38:03):
functionally when people were hurt, or when they were sick,
or in the rare case where a woman in the
area was pregnant and needed to be rushed to a hospital,
it would be a sky pilot with the dog sled.
I didn't mean to make that sound like a turn
in the board game Clue. It was the sky pilot
in northern Minnesota with the dog sled with the dogs slab.
(38:26):
You could definitely beat some of the death front of those,
but that's not what they were doing at all. Then
they were doing the opposite of beating people to death.
They were saving their lives. Uh. And it's certainly admirable,
and it's something that you see in ministerial outreach, you know,
throughout history oftentimes. You know, a lot of times you
could argue that it's a way of getting people trust
(38:46):
and earning people's trust in the community and saying, you know,
getting being more likely to make conversions, which just an
inherently a bad thing, I don't think. But it's certainly
not like all altruistic, right, But it is their job
to help people, and I think help people. They absolutely
did h both you know, in this earth and maybe
(39:08):
the next, depending on what you believe. Um, So what
happened to Frank Higgins? And why have we never heard
the term sky pilots before? Uh? It seems to have
faded out of of the history books to a large extent. Yeah, yeah,
I first heard the term sky pilots in a song
by the group called The Animals, which features Frank Burton
(39:31):
I believe as the leader singer. Uh, They're they're most
famous for covers of songs like Please Don't let Me
Be Misunderstood or House of the Rising Sun. But yes,
sky Pilot confused me because without knowing this background, it
sounds like a very redundant title, does it not sky Pilot? Like?
(39:51):
What what do you? What is there lands pilot? This
necessitates the existence of a pilot for every kind of known,
conceived of all thing. What is it? Is there a
plateau pilot? That's that's that's a good point, Ben, And
it's it's it's less, it's it's much more irritating than
sky Captain. Again, not to not to harp too much
(40:12):
on this, but you know he's the captain of the skies.
Is this guy the pilot of the skies? He's piloting
the whole thing? Come on, man, I don't understand. It
doesn't make anything. But although it would be hard to
captain an entire you know, where does the sky? Where
does his jurisdiction end? Right? At what point space? Exactly? What?
(40:35):
We need more specifics I think we need. Yes, we
need more specifics. We need some more stats on this
before we can make a determination. Sky Captain, Cloud Commander. Yeah, okay,
So here's what happens with Frank. Frank is uh, Frank
is living his best life in the spring of eighteen
nine when he and his spouse Ever go to work
(40:58):
at the Presbyterian church in a town called the Midge,
which Noel I believe fellow Fargo fans will recognize. It's
the first, specifically pioneer church in the town. And while
Frank is getting ready for this, he still makes time
to go speak and as I would say, share the
(41:19):
good word with the lumberjacks. Sometimes his wife even comes
with him and provides music. Again, this is a show
for a lot of people, you know, whether regardless of
their own spiritual beliefs, this is something they enjoy doing
on a social level. Yeah, they had a cool little
portable organ that's always seen described as but I gotta
wonder if that means it's like a harmonium kind of
(41:40):
situation where you pump it by hand while you're playing
chords with the other hand, Because I mean, a true
organ in these days there would be nothing portable about it,
so it has to be something really clever. Um. I'm
interested to do a little more digging on that, And
you know, Higgins spent a good bit of time there
in the Midgey Um. After he initially rely was denied ordination. Uh,
(42:03):
he finally got his stripes or his what do you
call it? What's that collar thing. There's a name for it,
the caller. I think he's just called the collar anyway,
that's more for a priest. He was a Presbyterian minister.
I don't think they would have worn the collar. But
he leads this effort to remodel the first Presbyterian church building.
They want to make it bigger because he's like attracting
(42:23):
more congregants. And in doing this he did it not
by getting donations, not only rather by getting donations for
you know, the stuff that would be required to build it. Um.
He actually once again put his money where his mouth
was and and participated in the work himself. This guy
was was the real deal. And he would travel around
(42:45):
all the while. He'd go and visit all these other
lumber camps, nine in total. He'd visit three each week
and then come back to his home base where he'd
continue the work of renovating the church. Yeah, exactly. And
this hard work pays off. By the early twenty century,
nineteen o nine or so, Higgins has earned a reputation
(43:08):
beyond the borders of Minnesota. Harper's Magazine writes about him,
people are seeking him out for speaking engagements. Unfortunately, time
takes its toll on us all. In nineteen fourteen, Higgins
is diagnosed with cancer and he dies in January of
the next year. And he's only forty nine years old
(43:30):
at this point, but still he's had a profound influence
on thousands and thousands of people. In fact, The New
York Times in their obituary on Frank Higgins said he
had quote taken the Gospel to more than thirty thousand
of the roughest men in the world, and with that
the legacy ends. So no, we went on a journey
(43:52):
to figure out the origin of a term that I
think really stuck out to both of us, and we
found this amazing story within that. It is inspiring, I
would say, whether regardless of anybody's own particular spiritual beliefs
or lack thereof, it's it's a very human story, it is,
(44:13):
And I think Higgins comes out looking kind of like
an awesome dude through all of this, especially since he actually,
you know, labored physically. He put himself in harm's way
constantly for the benefit at least in his mind of
of these loggers, and he and the folks that came
after him or that he inspired, did things to try
(44:33):
to help improve conditions in the logging camps, if not
conditions in the logging industry. But I mean, what were
they gonna do. I mean, that really is kind of
best left to unions and in the government. There's only
so much you can do, and the workers have to
demand that. Um And eventually, uh they did technolog technology
kind of caught up, and you know, Uh, it's still
(44:55):
dangerous work, but I don't think we have nearly as
many deaths as we once did. Yeah, agreed, And we
wanted to end on some uh who want to end
on a on a on a lighter note, right, So
we found some lumberjack jokes. I think we'll share a
few of those. No, Max Nolan, I were chatting offline
(45:16):
and there is one lumberjack joke I love, but it
is not safe for work. No, you and Max asked
me to tell the joke, but we it would take
so much editing and be being I'm really I don't
want to hype it up. I just I think because
of the premise, it's maybe not the best for this show.
(45:37):
So here are some short jokes we can we can
share together if you want to. If you want to
hear the full dirty lumberjack joke just right to us
on Ridiculous Historians or at our email. Is it the
one about the lemon and the glass in the bar? No, No,
that's a good one. That was filthy to um, what
do we guys, Let's see? Uh oh, let's see. Lumberjack
(45:59):
wants old me he's cut down two trees. I asked,
how do you how do you know exactly how many? Uh?
And then he says, easy, I keep a log. Or
a lumberjack went into a magic forest in Canada to
cut a tree. Bought arrival, he started to swing at
(46:20):
the tree and it shouted, wait, I'm a talking tree.
And the lumberjack said, and you will dialogue. Oh oh boy,
a lumberjack says. One lumberjack says to another, you know
I can cut a log just by looking at it.
(46:40):
The other lumberjack says, that's not possible. The lumberjack then says,
it may seem impossible, but I saw it with my
own two eyes. Bum bump bump. So we're going to
with much appreciation, called it a day. We would love
to hear you were jokes about lumberjacks. We would love
(47:02):
to hear your experience. If you have worked in a
logging camp, or if you had someone in your family
who worked in the logging industry, we can't wait to
hear from you. We always like to round out the
show by thanking our own logging camp of ridiculous historians,
Uh super producer, Max Williams, Casey Pegram, Gabe Bluesier, our
(47:25):
research associate. And let's see who else do we have
on the docket today? No oh Man even in the family,
Alex Williams, who composed our theme research or Extraordinaire Gabe Louisier.
I only pronounce it that way because it rhymes with extraordinaire.
And of course Jonathan Strickland a k. The quister nol
wet better way to end today's episode with a hearty
(47:47):
yell of Timber, I took the first one. You want
to take us home, Timber. We'll see a nice time
books m HM. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
(48:08):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in over there on the zoom.
That's the one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams.
Give him a hand, folks. Uh, they call me Ben.
And oh and who's that clapping? Is that? You KNOWL? Yeah?
That was my patented slow clap for max Um trademark. Yeah,
(00:51):
it's as I KNOWL. And today we're we're talking about
the underappreciated Angelina Jolie hybrid animation and live action film
of the early two thousand Sky Captain in the World
of Tomorrow. Right close, close, close there, dang it. It's
always always a bridesmaid, never a bride. What are we
(01:13):
talking about today, Ben, We we are talking about lumberjacks.
We're talking about religion in a way. We're also well,
in a very on the nose way. We're also talking
about something called sky pilots. Have you ever heard this
phrase before? No, clearly I confused it deeply with Sky Captain.
(01:35):
I thought it was a good film. It was fine, Yeah,
it was, it was he was just once he was
just the sky Captain. He was not one of many
sky captains that was like his name, right, he was
sky captain. You know, he certainly wasn't a sky pilot. No,
he wasn't, because it turns out a sky pilot was
a name given by lumberjacks to like traveling clergy who
(01:59):
sought to convey vert them from their burly and intensely
manly and potentially sinful ways. Yes, yes, it's a true story.
So you might be familiar, folks with the idea of
circuit judges or circuit preachers, people who traveled routinely throughout
(02:19):
a given region or territory for one purpose or another.
In those two examples I just named judges, and the
clergy there would be you know, they'd be traveling for
legal purposes or in this case, for spiritual purposes. These folks,
these traveling holy figures, were called sky pilots. And it
(02:43):
turns out the original sky pilot, as far as lumberjacks
are concerned, is a man named Frank Higgins who worked
across northern Minnesota for decades in the US see, I know,
I was confused because Jude Law also portrayed him and
the slightly less known and even more underappreciated film Frank
(03:04):
Higgins and the Lumberjack sky Pilots of Minnesota. Yes, and
there is a type of very popular pen called a
sky pilot. I think it's a point oh seven, I
can't remember. Oh yeah, this is my dad's favorite pens,
the black ones, like with the nice little point point
e jabby tips yep. And Jude Law is also set
(03:25):
to play the main character in a Pixar film based
on those pins. So he is nailing just the sky
stuff and the pilot stuff in general. We're having a
real judaisance. Yes, yes, yes, Jude direction if you know,
cut that part. Where are we leaving it in? Okay,
We're leaving it in Max. Okay, Max is on the fence.
(03:46):
So travel with us if you would. Back to the
late eighteen hundreds, there are an estimated five hundred different
lumber camps in the rural woods of northern Minnesota, and
this one guy, this Frank Higgins, is their sky pilot. So,
(04:09):
like you said, Noel, the life of a lumberjack Monty
python a side is a pretty demanding and at times
hazardous existence. How did we how did we get here? What? What?
Why did all these guys end up being lumberjacks in
northern Minnesota. Yeah. I mean, you know, if anyone's seen
the film Fargo, which takes place in North Dakota, and
(04:31):
yet everyone sounds like they're from Minnesota, I think, to me,
it's what it's demonstrating is much more of that kind
of Minnesota tradition of logging and the fur trade. You
got that big Paul Bunyan statue and all of that.
Not to say this Fargo doesn't have a place in
this story, but it really is centered and began in
(04:52):
Minnesota as the fur trade in fact, was beginning to
become less of a viable industry. And this is around
the middle of an eighteenth century. You start to see
these commercial sawmills around eighteen thirty nine, and this led
to a real booming industry over the next um, you know,
(05:12):
twenty or thirty years. Uh, we started to see big
logging operations in places like still Water and St. Anthony.
By around the very very late eighteen hundreds, Uh, it
was beginning to move into other parts of the state
as well, up north and even out west in Minnesota,
and you start to see this lumber industry really start
(05:33):
to boom. Yeah. Part of it is due to this
thing called the DAWs Act and some associated legislation. Here's
what these laws did. They allowed lumber companies to buy
land that originally belonged to Indigenous people. And this DAWs
Act divided up Indian reservations in the area, giving the
(05:57):
families living there individual a lot of land. We're getting
a lot of this, by the way, from our ELK.
Cartwright writing over at m n O Pedia Minnesota Pedia.
It's like a encyclopedia Minnesota. You get it. So this
opens up what is euphemistically referred to at the time
(06:18):
as quote unquote surplus land, largely for white settlers. And
in Minnesota, this benefits the lumber industry, particularly near the
reservations Red Lake and White Earth. So another big piece
of this is that railroads have been built in this area,
(06:39):
so if you're a logging company, it's super easy to
transport this timber across the continent. And that's what drew
people a lot of loggers at this time. A lot
of lumberjacks were just going where the jobs were, from
one state to the next, right, right, Yeah, Ben, do
you think that the term timber come from the thing
(07:02):
that people yell when the trees fall, or is it
the other way around. I think it's I think it's
the other way around. I think they were just yelling
timber the way that you know, if they were if
they were throwing pianos in the woods, they would have
yelled piano. I guess you're right, Ben, I guess you're right.
It's a fun thing to do. That's probably the most
(07:24):
fun part of being a log logsman, uh of woodsman,
lumberjack is to yell timber. You gotta hold it out
all the way until the thing hits uh, And if
you're not there, it definitely doesn't make a sound. That's proven.
Doesn't Kesha have a song where she yells timber? You know, Ben,
it's certainly possible. It sounds like something she might say.
(07:45):
You know, Noel, I believe it's actually a pit Bull
song featuring Kesha. Yes, back in her dollar signed days,
but she has pivoted from But Kesha and Pipoli side,
there was some problematic treatment of these these First Nations
people and this kind of division, and we started to
see these logging camps popping up and loggers were essentially,
(08:10):
you know what you would call itinerant workers. Like you said, Ben,
they would follow the job, you know, from place to place. Uh.
Some came from as far as Maine, where there was
a logging boom uh and bust before Minnesota started to
see it's boom um. And then you had folks coming
down from Michigan or even Wisconsin. Um. And a lot
of lumberjacks came from other countries. We started to see
(08:33):
people of Norwegian, Irish, French, Canadian, English, Canadian, Finnish or
Swedish descent coming. We also started to see members of
the Ojibwe tribe of the First Nations people. And at
this point it was kind of the peak of logging
in Minnesota. Uh. They essentially cut down enough trees to
(08:55):
produce more than two billion feet of boards. I guess
this would be like two by four type situation or
whatever the kind of standardized measurement was for the time. Yes,
And into this bustling industry come the sky pilots. It's
a it's a cool term. It describes, as we mentioned earlier,
(09:19):
clergyman who would travel through these often isolated timber towns
or really just lumberjack camps. They would also visit miners.
They would speak with members of the armed forces, and
they would also visit prisoners. The thing is that we
(09:40):
know the original sky pilot is this guy Frank Higgins,
Francis E. Higgins if he's in trouble, but people still
don't agree on the etymology or the origin of the term.
For his part, Frank Higgins claims that the Lumberjacks themselves
(10:00):
started calling him the sky Pilot because they would yeah,
they would be living this brutal existence and he would
come through with religious services, and then lumberjacks would say, well,
come on, man, life is tough for us. Wait, wait,
what are you doing here? Why why are you coming
all the way out here? And then Higgins said, I
(10:22):
want to pilot your souls to the sky. And so
they were like, oh, okay, sky pilot over here, sky
pilot over here. And then somebody yelled timber and everyone
to the left like and then they kept going with
a bit yeah, safety first, yeah, and honestly, you definitely
want to save soul if you're gonna get pancake by
a giant pine you know there. Oh yeah, it's a
(10:44):
dangerous existence for sure, super dangerous and like you said,
been super stressful and exhausting, which I guess accounts for
a lot of the the hard living afterwards, you know,
just to kind of like maybe not not not to
say that lumberjacks were miserable all the time, but I
mean I can imagine the stress and anxiety and just
hard work of that day would certainly lead to wanting
(11:06):
to unwind in a big way. And these ways were
considered kind of counter to the teachings of Jesus, and
so Higgins really was there traveling along with these itinerant
folks from place to place, trying to save their soul.
It's a pretty admirable goal, honestly, I mean, I gotta
respect the guy for sticking to it in such harsh conditions.
(11:35):
So let's let's kind of explore this a little bit.
Why do you think that these, uh, these preachers felt
lumberjacks in particular were in need of soul saving aside
from the you know, constant threat of being crushed by trees.
In eighteen ninety three, uh, Frederick Jackson Turner, who's an historian,
(11:56):
gave a speech that kind of summed up, uh, this
notion that the West might become a godless place, you know,
because it was so far removed from the rest of
the country, and there was a concern that, like the
morals and ideals of America would perhaps kind of vanish.
So he quoted this eighteen fifty editorial from a home
(12:19):
Missions periodical. Uh and would you like to read that? Ben? Oh? Yes,
of course, So Turner says, we scarcely know whether to
rejoice or more and over this extension of our settlements.
While we sympathize in whatever tends to increase the physical
resources and prosperity of our country, we cannot forget that
(12:40):
with all these dispersions into remote and still remoter corners
of the land, the supply of the means of grace
interesting phrase, there is becoming relatively less and less remote
and still remoter corners of the land. So while you know,
I mean, Minnesota isn't exactly the West, it's the Midwest, right,
(13:05):
but it's certainly on that path to manifest destiny. Um,
it would would have fallen into this category of being
remote and wild in the sense of, like you know,
being a godless land where men could lose themselves in
that frontier life. So in particular we saw itinerant preachers
all over in the days of the Old West of
(13:27):
the frontier days. In particular, we see followers of Wesleyan
Christianity that was the I guess, the flavor of Christianity
that was founded by John Wesley. We would see them
start to pop up around early nineteenth century in the Midwest.
And it's interesting because Midwesterners it was such a common
site that Midwesterners actually had almost a little saying that
(13:49):
on bad wintry weather days there was something to see
outside but quote crows and Methodist preachers. Yeah. Yeah. The
British slang for this, by the way, would be a
god botherer, someone who's persistently trying to uh to, to proselytize,
to evangelize, to convert you to their religious beliefs. And
(14:10):
this is where Frank Higgins really comes in. This is
the context in which he occurs. He's born in Canada,
in Toronto in eighteen sixty. His father passes away when
he's quite young. His mother remarries and they moved to
Ontario and their their idea this new family is to
(14:31):
homestead this area. It's remote, it's the middle of nowhere
in Duffering County in the woods. His stepfather is quite
religious and Frank as a result of this. Pretty early
on in childhood, he decides that he feels called to
become a preacher. And there's a cute moment here. According
(14:54):
to the story, he's walking around as a kid again
in the woods, middle of nowhere, and he's practicing sermons
on trees and tree stumps. He's telling some nearby cattle
about the Joy everlasting. Doesn't this sound something like a
mother would say that boys so into Jesus he'd give
a sermon to a tree stump. Yes, yes, his mom's
(15:18):
largely supportive of it. Uh. He you know, back in
this time, rural Canada, there's not a ton of opportunity
for formal schooling, right, So he goes to Toronto when
he's about twenty years old and just by the way, folks,
so you can get a sense of his physicality. He's
not a small dude. He's maybe what you would call
(15:39):
burly today, Like he wouldn't he wouldn't look out of
place in a lumberjack camp. Well, that suits him fits
right in until he gets his hooks in. You is
Jesus looks But no, you're right. After around three years
in public grade school and then two years in high school,
he left Canada and went to Minnesota, and he was
(16:03):
twenty five at the time. And after a few years
walking around as a an un i guess anointed minister,
a lay preacher in Annandale, he went to seminary. He
went to Hamlin University and in officially was ordained and
um started service at the Presbyterian Church in Barnum, Minnesota.
(16:25):
And that's where he first that's where he first kind
of ran into this community of loggers. Yeah, because he's
he's ministering to this church and one of the church
members says, hey, Frank, come visit this logging camp. I
operate a lumberjack concern and let me tell you, these
people need one thing God, seriously, they're going they're going
(16:48):
wild out there. Uh, Frankie, gotta help me out. And
so Frank goes with this church member and these loggers
on what's called a log drive. That's where they go
and find and harvest timber. And they have a day
of pretty dangerous work and Frank's there the whole time.
(17:08):
It's kind of like he's going on a ride along,
if you want to think of it that way. And
then he gets training kind of scenario. Yeah, yeah, pretty
pretty much. Yeah, with a little bit less of a
sinister crime vibe. God, nobody made him smoke PC or anything, right, right, right,
And he's hanging out with these guys after doing this
(17:30):
right along, and he grabs dinner with him, and he
was surprised because while he's eating, one of the slumberjacks says,
you know, hey, preach, uh, you know what, will you
provide us the good word? You know, will you have
a service for us? Will you minister to us? And Higgins,
(17:52):
you know, in no small part flattered, I'm sure, says Okay, yeah,
I'll do it, and they hold an impromptu church service.
He's leading the group and singing some hymns everybody knows,
and he talks with them about faith and about spirituality
and Christianity right as the evening is beginning in the afternoon,
(18:14):
leans lazily into sunset, and it works. These guys are moved.
You know, maybe it's because it's something that breaks the routine.
Maybe it speaks to them on a deeper spiritual level.
But the next morning he spends the night there by
the way. The next morning, several of these lumberjacks, who
are also by the way, ridiculous historians known as river
(18:37):
pigs in fight Frank to return River pigs. Did that
stick out to you know? It definitely did. I just
want to point out really quick too, that I think
they were also just kind of floored by how quickly,
uh and off the cuff he was able to deliver
this sermon like it was they were just impressed, you know,
like it was, Oh, this guy means business. And he
did mean business because he followed them around out on many,
(19:01):
many more of these logging expeditions and in which you know,
he was putting himself in harm's way alongside the people
that he was trying to minister to. So he was
certainly putting his money where his mouth of of God was.
That's a thing. But a river pig, Yeah, it's totally
a thing. Um. There's in fact a competition, the Lumberjack
World Championship, which I believe it still goes on today. Um.
(19:22):
And And in that there is a competition called a
boom run um. And it is where loggers display studying
feats of speed and endurance and focus and balance, most importantly,
when they run across a small lake by bounding from
one floating log to another. UM. He may have seen this.
(19:45):
It's almost like kind of a cliche of like lumberjack life. Well,
around a hundred years ago, there are these men um
who were known as river pigs that actually did this
as a functional part of the logging trip um there
us referred to as river rats, river hogs, or caddyman,
but they actually drove logs down the river to the
(20:09):
sawmill and sometimes the logs would jam up, and that's
when these guys would would swoop in and save the day, right, yeah,
and well they would try to save the day. This
was a super dangerous job. We have some arborists in
the audience. We may have some loggers in the audience
as well. And if you if you have experienced professional logging,
(20:34):
timber harvesting, etcetera, then you know that even with today's
technological advancements, it is an incredibly dangerous gig, so much
so that back in the eighteen hundreds when this story
takes place, everyone was disappointed when they heard a river
rat or a river boy, a river hog passed away.
(20:57):
But they weren't really surprised and they didn't stop the
operation because one passed away. No, they're basically like cannon
fodder in the lumber industry. And just just to reiterate,
they did do essentially what is done as a fun
little competition in the Lumberjack World Championship, but they would
(21:19):
do it for real as they were driving these logs
down the river. A picture like just you know, back
to back logs rolling down the river, downstream towards the sawmill.
And occasionally one of the logs would get caught up
in a bank or whatever would cause the whole thing
to jam, hence log Jam or the amazing film within
(21:40):
a film log Jam in in the Big Lebowski. But yeah,
these river rats or hogs or pigs would literally run
across the logs and use this pike or like giant
kind of stick to poke them free. And you know,
think about it, if that happened too quickly, if they
became just lodged, become unstable, they'd get thrown off or
(22:02):
maybe like crushed between these massive pieces of timber. Right, yes,
And unfortunately in some cases their bodies wouldn't turn up
for days and days after they disappeared. So there's a
poetic part of a mental Floss article by Terse O'Neill
called seven jobs were glad or obsolete, and in this
(22:26):
article O'Neill notes that sometimes the only marker for a
river pigs grave would be his boots tossed over a
tree limb that was hanging somewhere near the part of
the river where they disappeared. So life here was difficult.
People needed inspiration. You know, you're you're you're literally waking
(22:48):
up with a coworker who may not be there at
the end of the day. And this means that life
on an emotional level as well as a physical level,
is quite difficult. We should also mention that logging operations
mainly took place in the winter, so logs could be
(23:08):
loaded on frozen rivers and then they could be sent
downstream when the water thought. These people were miserable. They're
huddled together in these like cold bunk rooms, and of
course there's not a modern heating system, so it's cold.
Let's add in you know what, No, let's just laundry
list all the miserable things. Another thing, people are pretty dirty, right,
(23:32):
there's lice everywhere. I don't know, Max Noel, you guys
probably had to get checked for lice, maybe in grade
school something like that. Yeah, Well, I mean as as
a dad that's a big thing um with kids. Like
when kid gets that, they hoped literally from head to
head and we had a life scare or we had
to we had to get that special shampoo and get
(23:54):
rid of some clothes. It was not fun. But yeah,
I definitely remember being checked. And I as a kid,
don't the guy ever got it until I was an adult. Yeah, next,
did you did you have the life experience where they
like check every kid's head in your school? Oh? Yeah,
I mean I had life when I was like seven,
maybe eight. Alex and I both had life that like
summer camp. It was not the cleanest place that we
(24:16):
went to. But yeah, like you know, I remember like
an elementary school, like, oh, I kid had lice. We
all have doing and Alex and I generally always rocked
her hair really long, so it was not fun to
having out our heads completely shaved down, and I was
like pretty tragic for me. That's Alex Williams, by the way,
not fun fact not only Max's brother, actual facts biological brother,
(24:37):
but also the creator of both this show's soundtrack and
the excellent puer podcast of Femeral In fact, Noll, I
think spoiler alert. If we make it through our own
logging camp of podcasts. We might have Alex join us
on an upcoming episode we had Disgusted. I think we're
(24:57):
getting that locked in. I really look forward to it.
That'll be fun. It'll be like a family reunion because
you guys haven't see each other in years, right, Max, Yeah,
we we totally don't work on a femeral together. Strange
now just just strange. And they definitely definitely do work
on a femeral. Max is an integral part of that show. Yes,
he is ours, so it totally is a family A
(25:18):
fair to look forward to that episode. But let's get
back to the sky Pigs, well, the River Pigs, River Pigs,
Sky Pilots. It's cold. People are dying left and right.
Everybody's got lice. Uh, tons of people have injuries. They
might be missing fingers. This is brutal. Everybody is sick too,
(25:40):
by the way, because you know you're in a cold area,
so you have to huddle together, right, for warmth, for shelter,
which means an illness like lice, gets transmitted more easily
from one person to the next due to proximity. And
you know, again, these people are moving around, they're traveling
where the work takes them and they're away from their families.
(26:01):
These are men who are trying to provide for their families,
so they're constantly missing their wives and their kids, who,
by the way, most of them were not allowed to
bring to the logging camps. I think there was an
exception made occasionally for the foreman and the cook who
were allowed to bring their wives for visits. Like that's
very very very specific. But regular old loggers, including those
(26:25):
river pigs, who are putting their life in serious risk
every single day, we're not allowed to have access to
their wives or families. And there was even concern because
of this from the sky pilots that perhaps there would
be some unholy uh sexual relationships forged between these big
(26:46):
burly men, which is a very specific type of porn.
Oh heaven forefend. So that's what the one thing the
sky pilots are worried about. Not amputation, not not crushing
mental mamma, or the very real danger of death. They're
worried some people might be sleeping together hot burley lumberjack sex. Um.
(27:08):
It's a it's a concern of the church. It's like
on their list of top concerns. Um they have a
prioritized list and that is weirdly at the top. And
they're also the sky pilots are also keeping their eyes
on other forms of sin. So if you are familiar
with an industry, like working in an oil field, you
(27:32):
know that there can be boom towns that pop up
around these sorts of activities. And when lumberjacks are done
with the logging season at this time, they often end
up in nearby towns were cities, and they're kind of
whiling out there on leave. You know, they haven't really
(27:53):
been spending their money on anything. They're out in the
middle of nowhere. They haven't really been talking to anybody
except their colleagues who have survived that season. So they're
often saloons. They're off rolling hot dice, they're visiting brothels,
of course, and according to Higgins, the original sky pilot
saloons are the only like social situation around. There's not
(28:18):
there's not an alternative, you know, there's not really a
community center or something like that. There's not an Internet cafe,
so they naturally wash up at the local bar. That's right.
They even get their haircut there. Oftentimes. You know, if
you've seen the show Deadwood. Uh. That is also where
brothels would would be as well. Like in some of
(28:38):
these saloons there would be lodging that often would come
with company, and you know, any of the other needs
that they had met in terms of washing, getting haircuts,
and obviously gambling and drinking. Um. So, Higgins tried to
address the men in in terms that they could understand
(28:59):
without walking down to them. Fellow kids, Hello, fellow kids,
it is I Frank Higgins. I know your pain. I
know the plight of the lumberman, and I know that
it seems like an easy fix to turn to the
drink and and and the gambling and the loose women
of the evening. But it's not so good fellas. Think
(29:20):
of your everlasting souls, think about your the reward that
lies for you in the great beyond. Don't get your
pleasure now, my friends, suffer now so you can have
your pleasure later. It reminds me a little bit of
that song you Got Trouble, you know, right here in
River City over they're like, look, guys, I'm gonna be
(29:41):
honest with you. It's me, your buddy, Frank. Now I've
been tempted before, I've walked by a deck of cards.
I knew what a jack of diamonds is. And I
know that some of you are maybe making out, whether
in a rothel or in a lonely night at the
(30:02):
bunk house, and that's a big deal to be let me.
Let me tell you I've been through similar things. My
mom watches me leave home to come here and hang
out with you in this miserable environment. But her prayers,
he says, have followed me throughout my life. And my
(30:23):
story is just like yours. It's just a mad lib.
He didn't say mad lib. That wasn't invented yet, but
he's like, my story is just like yours. All you
have to do is change the names. I know we're
in a crazy situation, but I guarantee you that somebody
out there away from this camp still wants to know
that you're alive. So write him a letter. You know.
(30:45):
It makes me think of like Tracy Morgan, the comedian
and actor from Dirty Rock and and all that I
love him. You know, he was in a very bad accident,
uh that he survived. But I saw him due the
speech or I think is on a radio show or
something like that, but he said something to the effect
of true happiness is having something to look forward to.
(31:07):
True happiness is knowing that you have someone that cares
whether you live or die. And I think he was trying.
Higgins was trying to appeal to that sense where he
was saying, somebody out there cares about you, somebody out
there loves you. Go home right now and reconnect with
that part of your soul, with that part of why
are you living in the first place, Why are you
out here, you know, doing this work, putting in all
(31:29):
this hard work, if you're just going to gamble and
drink yourself into an early grave. And he's referring to
I think friends and family says, go home, write a
letter tonight. Yeah. Yeah, So that's that's what's happening. This
guy is saying, Hey, don't get don't get lost in
the timber game. Don't feel hopeless. People do care about you,
you know, even if you can't talk to them right now.
(31:52):
You can write a letter. You can be connected to
the larger world and to the people you care about
most because they care about you too. That seems like
a pretty easy thing to agree to, but it might
surprise some of us to know that these sky pilots
(32:14):
didn't always get unanimous acclaim. True, some big lumber interests
loved them and supported them. People like Thomas B. Walker
thought these ministers were not just good for the camp,
but so important to the camp that they should be paid.
So in some cases it was not just a labor
(32:35):
of love or spiritual duty. It was their job. And
they thought, you know, if these workers have religion, they'll
also conform and they'll they'll work more predictably, they'll be
more efficient, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And surprisingly, labor unions or
(32:56):
labor activists at least who wanted to unionize logging camps.
I thought this was a BS diversionary tactic for management.
They said, you know what's really going to improve worker
morale if we have better employment conditions, if these people
can go out and know that they are not going
(33:17):
to die between two logs on a swift moving river,
which is a fair point, right right. There was a
group called the Industrial Workers of the World i w W,
or Wobblies. They were super against the sky pilots for
that same exact reason. Um The Wobblies were one of
the only early unions that wanted to organize lumberjacks, and
(33:40):
they used the term skypilot as kind of a disc
as a day on these folks. They believe that the
working conditions of lubbage Dave could only be changed by
improving conditions. Not with this whole again, suffer now get
your kicks in the afterlife mentality, because it's the counterproductive
(34:01):
not gonna lie. Yeah, I see, I see where they're
coming from. Right, right, exactly. I think we're all on
the same page. There still some lumberjacks found solace in
the sky pilots, and a few even went on to
become preachers or sky pilots themselves. One of the most
famous examples of this is a guy named John Sornberger
(34:25):
who was a murderer. It was it was a rude dude,
a wanted killer, who with the help of Frank Higgins,
turned his life around. Uh there's another guy. Andrew Stenstrom
is also mentioned that min opedia article. Andrew Stenstrom was
a lumberjack who converted to Christianity in seven he became
(34:49):
super super devout. He left the logging game entirely, but
a number of years later he came back, not as
lumberjack but as a preacher. Uh think if you look
into his biography, he's better known nowadays as a painter.
But if you met him while he was alive, he
(35:09):
was a lumberjack and then a sky pilot, not just
any kind of painter, been a primitive painter, which would
have referred to kind of that more rustic approach to
UM creating kind of scenes at the lumber camps, which
is an important way of documenting that stuff around the
Minnesota's uh on the Pacific coast from you know, Oregon
and all that, and uh in the dakotas of course.
(35:31):
But what's interesting is where we focused a lot on
maybe what could have been considered a bit of a
cloying aspect of the sky pilots and the I'm just
kind of saying, hey, you know, uh, cast off your
sinful ways so that you can, you know, guard your
soul against damn nation, but without actually addressing the problem.
But they in fact did address the problem as well.
(35:55):
A lot of these sky pilots provided more than just um,
you know, absolute Lucian uh and and religion. There's certainly
worse than lumberjacks that did not care for the presence
of the sky pilots and that treated them like interlopers.
But most of the people that lived in these camps
lived the north in these camps appreciated the kind of
i don't know, community building that the that the ministers
(36:18):
did the sky pilots coming into town certainly broke up
the kind of humdrum day to day of of the
logging camps. And they would often bring you know, musical instruments, uh,
and they would you know, lead uh the lumberjacks in
singalongs of course, you know, gospel hymns and the like. Um.
But it definitely was something that felt festive, you know.
(36:40):
And the ministers would also bring a lot of books
and magazines and things for them to read. I mean
because again, you know, with the conditions and the close quarters,
I mean, this is not that far off from a
prison type situation. So you know, the library is is
a really important part of any prison if you've seen
like OZ or any TV show based in prison. But yeah,
(37:00):
so they appreciate they were really appreciated for that, for
bringing them stuff to entertain themselves and break up them anony. Heck, yeah,
it's a show I mean for for a terrible comparison,
if you've been to grade school, you remember those milestone
exciting days. There was field day, there were field trips.
You know, you might have career day. It breaks the
(37:21):
two teachers. Always was was a big deal. Oh yeah,
it might be um. You know, it's like you said,
it's a relief from monotony. It's a break from routine.
And sky pilots also provided some social services, the things
that logging companies didn't really bother with because of labor
(37:42):
laws at the time or lack thereof. So, for instance,
let's say lumberjack is injured but they're not dying. It
would fall on the sky pilot often to take this
person to the hospital, and Frank Higgins established this precedent
using a dog sled. The dog sled became an ambulance
(38:03):
functionally when people were hurt, or when they were sick,
or in the rare case where a woman in the
area was pregnant and needed to be rushed to a hospital,
it would be a sky pilot with the dog sled.
I didn't mean to make that sound like a turn
in the board game Clue. It was the sky pilot
in northern Minnesota with the dog sled with the dogs slab.
(38:26):
You could definitely beat some of the death front of those,
but that's not what they were doing at all. Then
they were doing the opposite of beating people to death.
They were saving their lives. Uh. And it's certainly admirable,
and it's something that you see in ministerial outreach, you know,
throughout history oftentimes. You know, a lot of times you
could argue that it's a way of getting people trust
(38:46):
and earning people's trust in the community and saying, you know,
getting being more likely to make conversions, which just an
inherently a bad thing, I don't think. But it's certainly
not like all altruistic, right, But it is their job
to help people, and I think help people. They absolutely
did h both you know, in this earth and maybe
(39:08):
the next, depending on what you believe. Um, So what
happened to Frank Higgins? And why have we never heard
the term sky pilots before? Uh? It seems to have
faded out of of the history books to a large extent. Yeah, yeah,
I first heard the term sky pilots in a song
by the group called The Animals, which features Frank Burton
(39:31):
I believe as the leader singer. Uh, They're they're most
famous for covers of songs like Please Don't let Me
Be Misunderstood or House of the Rising Sun. But yes,
sky Pilot confused me because without knowing this background, it
sounds like a very redundant title, does it not sky Pilot? Like?
(39:51):
What what do you? What is there lands pilot? This
necessitates the existence of a pilot for every kind of known,
conceived of all thing. What is it? Is there a
plateau pilot? That's that's that's a good point, Ben, And
it's it's it's less, it's it's much more irritating than
sky Captain. Again, not to not to harp too much
(40:12):
on this, but you know he's the captain of the skies.
Is this guy the pilot of the skies? He's piloting
the whole thing? Come on, man, I don't understand. It
doesn't make anything. But although it would be hard to
captain an entire you know, where does the sky? Where
does his jurisdiction end? Right? At what point space? Exactly? What?
(40:35):
We need more specifics I think we need. Yes, we
need more specifics. We need some more stats on this
before we can make a determination. Sky Captain, Cloud Commander. Yeah, okay,
So here's what happens with Frank. Frank is uh, Frank
is living his best life in the spring of eighteen
nine when he and his spouse Ever go to work
(40:58):
at the Presbyterian church in a town called the Midge,
which Noel I believe fellow Fargo fans will recognize. It's
the first, specifically pioneer church in the town. And while
Frank is getting ready for this, he still makes time
to go speak and as I would say, share the
(41:19):
good word with the lumberjacks. Sometimes his wife even comes
with him and provides music. Again, this is a show
for a lot of people, you know, whether regardless of
their own spiritual beliefs, this is something they enjoy doing
on a social level. Yeah, they had a cool little
portable organ that's always seen described as but I gotta
wonder if that means it's like a harmonium kind of
(41:40):
situation where you pump it by hand while you're playing
chords with the other hand, Because I mean, a true
organ in these days there would be nothing portable about it,
so it has to be something really clever. Um. I'm
interested to do a little more digging on that, And
you know, Higgins spent a good bit of time there
in the Midgey Um. After he initially rely was denied ordination. Uh,
(42:03):
he finally got his stripes or his what do you
call it? What's that collar thing. There's a name for it,
the caller. I think he's just called the collar anyway,
that's more for a priest. He was a Presbyterian minister.
I don't think they would have worn the collar. But
he leads this effort to remodel the first Presbyterian church building.
They want to make it bigger because he's like attracting
(42:23):
more congregants. And in doing this he did it not
by getting donations, not only rather by getting donations for
you know, the stuff that would be required to build it. Um.
He actually once again put his money where his mouth
was and and participated in the work himself. This guy
was was the real deal. And he would travel around
(42:45):
all the while. He'd go and visit all these other
lumber camps, nine in total. He'd visit three each week
and then come back to his home base where he'd
continue the work of renovating the church. Yeah, exactly. And
this hard work pays off. By the early twenty century,
nineteen o nine or so, Higgins has earned a reputation
(43:08):
beyond the borders of Minnesota. Harper's Magazine writes about him,
people are seeking him out for speaking engagements. Unfortunately, time
takes its toll on us all. In nineteen fourteen, Higgins
is diagnosed with cancer and he dies in January of
the next year. And he's only forty nine years old
(43:30):
at this point, but still he's had a profound influence
on thousands and thousands of people. In fact, The New
York Times in their obituary on Frank Higgins said he
had quote taken the Gospel to more than thirty thousand
of the roughest men in the world, and with that
the legacy ends. So no, we went on a journey
(43:52):
to figure out the origin of a term that I
think really stuck out to both of us, and we
found this amazing story within that. It is inspiring, I
would say, whether regardless of anybody's own particular spiritual beliefs
or lack thereof, it's it's a very human story, it is,
(44:13):
And I think Higgins comes out looking kind of like
an awesome dude through all of this, especially since he actually,
you know, labored physically. He put himself in harm's way
constantly for the benefit at least in his mind of
of these loggers, and he and the folks that came
after him or that he inspired, did things to try
(44:33):
to help improve conditions in the logging camps, if not
conditions in the logging industry. But I mean, what were
they gonna do. I mean, that really is kind of
best left to unions and in the government. There's only
so much you can do, and the workers have to
demand that. Um And eventually, uh they did technolog technology
kind of caught up, and you know, Uh, it's still
(44:55):
dangerous work, but I don't think we have nearly as
many deaths as we once did. Yeah, agreed, And we
wanted to end on some uh who want to end
on a on a on a lighter note, right, So
we found some lumberjack jokes. I think we'll share a
few of those. No, Max Nolan, I were chatting offline
(45:16):
and there is one lumberjack joke I love, but it
is not safe for work. No, you and Max asked
me to tell the joke, but we it would take
so much editing and be being I'm really I don't
want to hype it up. I just I think because
of the premise, it's maybe not the best for this show.
(45:37):
So here are some short jokes we can we can
share together if you want to. If you want to
hear the full dirty lumberjack joke just right to us
on Ridiculous Historians or at our email. Is it the
one about the lemon and the glass in the bar? No, No,
that's a good one. That was filthy to um, what
do we guys, Let's see? Uh oh, let's see. Lumberjack
(45:59):
wants old me he's cut down two trees. I asked,
how do you how do you know exactly how many? Uh?
And then he says, easy, I keep a log. Or
a lumberjack went into a magic forest in Canada to
cut a tree. Bought arrival, he started to swing at
(46:20):
the tree and it shouted, wait, I'm a talking tree.
And the lumberjack said, and you will dialogue. Oh oh boy,
a lumberjack says. One lumberjack says to another, you know
I can cut a log just by looking at it.
(46:40):
The other lumberjack says, that's not possible. The lumberjack then says,
it may seem impossible, but I saw it with my
own two eyes. Bum bump bump. So we're going to
with much appreciation, called it a day. We would love
to hear you were jokes about lumberjacks. We would love
(47:02):
to hear your experience. If you have worked in a
logging camp, or if you had someone in your family
who worked in the logging industry, we can't wait to
hear from you. We always like to round out the
show by thanking our own logging camp of ridiculous historians,
Uh super producer, Max Williams, Casey Pegram, Gabe Bluesier, our
(47:25):
research associate. And let's see who else do we have
on the docket today? No oh Man even in the family,
Alex Williams, who composed our theme research or Extraordinaire Gabe Louisier.
I only pronounce it that way because it rhymes with extraordinaire.
And of course Jonathan Strickland a k. The quister nol
wet better way to end today's episode with a hearty
(47:47):
yell of Timber, I took the first one. You want
to take us home, Timber. We'll see a nice time
books m HM. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
(48:08):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
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