We begin our story here

My story opens here 

At the De Kalb, Il County Fair of 1873, Henry M. Rose, a local farmer, presented a curious contraption of fencing which consisted of a normal wooden rail "equipped with short wire points extending out in "sharp projections".  

 Joseph Glidden, Isaac Ellwood, and Jacob Haish had taken special notice of Rose's contraption, and they would use his basic idea to stimulate their invention of barbed wire fencing. 

The sales skills of John "Bet a Million" Gates took it from there where he sold more wire than the manufacturer could produce. Between 1874 and 1877, the production and sale of barbed wire had increased from 10,000 pounds to 12, 863,000 pounds. By 1880, this number had reached 80,500,000.  Clearly the promotion of barbed wire had been a success, and consequently, it spread throughout the West, fencing in the land from Texas all the way up to North Dakota.  

  Draw this

 Dispite a few setbacks, barbed wire sales remained brisk.

By the late 1870s, disgruntled Texans were taking matters into their own hands. They began carrying fence-cutting pliers and simply snipping stretches of barbed wire that were in their way. As their numbers grew, fence cutters organized clandestine groups with official and unofficial names, such as the owls and the javelinas, and began cutting miles of fencing at night. If fence lines reappeared, the fence cutters nipped them again. With no small amount of public support, the fence-cutting crusade evolved into what became known as the fence-cutters war. In many cases, fence-cutting activities were well-organized, including the use of disguises and armed lookouts to protect participants.

Cattle search for grass along a barbed-wire fence in the midst of a winter storm. Cattle were vulnerable to powerful, fast-moving winter storms known as blue northers in the barren Texas Panhandle. In 1882, ranchers built a drift fence across the width of the Panhandle that in the winter of 1885-86 killed thousands of cattle trapped behind it during a devastating blue norther.

Advertisement for Silver Pine Healing Oil, ca. 1880-1890. Animal injury constituted a major element in the early debates around barbed wire.

Adaptation was the only way 
through barbed wire. 

But the demand did create work, 
and a lot of it too! 

Specifically for the miles of ash juniper or "cedar" posts that were needed to stick in the ground every ten feet or so 
and nail barbed wire to. 

And that that job could only be performed by independent minded, hard working folks who were willing..  and that'd be them hillbillies from Appalachia.

So bills got posted looking for good men to do the job.

Okay, maybe they don't read so good, but I tell you what, these fellers can sure cut the fool out'a trees! 

So they loaded up whatever means possible and headed west to Texas - the new promised land..

 Awh heck, another blow out!

It was hard traveling. Too many folks stuck inside them greedy "pay ride" tent trucks would wreak havoc on them tires.

So a lot of times the loner types who'd travel  without a wife or family; they'd hop the west bound trains;  hookin' up with the Katy line. That'd get them fellers on down into Travis county pretty quick.

 

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The Barger Boys kept on keepin on till they made it to the Colorado River, but they didn't know that was THE river that they was 'sposed to be looking for...  

They was just east of Travis County. That's when Thadius spotted a bunch a logs floatin' downstream towards some kind a mill. 

All of a sudden, 

Grandpa starts up with a sneezin' fit.

Low and behold, many made it.. "New Cedar choppers" were arriving in the Austin area ready, willing and able . It was damn hard work, but as they would say about that "Ain't no hill fer a stepper!" The going was looking good until they ran up against Central Texas' dirty little secret....

CEDAR FEVER!

Dang!.. I'm sneezin' like a fool 

an' oh man, I feels like hammered dawg sheeeit!

Welcome to Austin,Texas

It's once upon a time around 1930, give or take a decade or two - here in the "Peninsula", a sparsely-settled, hilly, cedar-choked area located just across the Colorado River west of Austin, Texas. 

The Cedar choppers have been working around here for about twenty years now. Some came here from as far away as Scotland, but most of them hail from the Smokies and Blue Ridge of Appalachia. Either way, they all came here looking for the promise of work, which they have found no shortage of. That is cutting endless cedar breaks into logs that either get burned down in kilns into charcoal that gets sold for use in kitchen stoves or to the nigger ladies over in East Austin and Clarksville for their "smokeless irons" used in their hand laundry business. 

Back in the 1980's I heard ol' Emmett Shelton tell about these people living around his home in the Westlake Hills and lost Canyon area of Austin Texas. 

He said: “You get a little bit of a feeling when you live in the area where you talk about the people. I call these folks cedar choppers, of course they don't do any chopin’ anymore because they all use chainsaws, but they could be called the charcoal burners or the hillbillies or what have you. 

But my first experience with some of these people was through my father and goes back as far as the early teens. It so happens that my father, my brothers and I had been the lawyers for these people In that area for well over 50 years, mostly about 70 years as a matter of fact; and some of these tales I tell go back that far. 

And the only reason that I can tell them with any degree of authenticity is because I was one of them. They came to me in confidence and told me these things, and of course I just feel like I’m kin to them. In theory I certainly am. They love and respect me, and I'm honored by that, and I love and respect them; although a lot of them were felons. I don’t know of anything that happened except murder (we call them homicides instead of murder…) and under the circumstances most of them were justified.

The area where these people live and I have lived for the last 50 years is between Zilker Park on the east and Commons Ford road and the old Nike site to the west, up and down the Bee Cave Road. 

And this land was rugged, it was a fierce land to try and make a living on, you couldn't make a living really, with anything but your hands. Many of these people never had more than one or two days of education or went to school any longer than that - their education came in the woods.  

 On the West End of this area is where the Teague family lived. The irony of this is that this where the first educational institution in this area was located. It was way back in the early days and called the Bruton Springs school. It was a little box shaped thing about 15' x 10' feet, just big enough to get in out of the wind. They called it the snuff box school. They called it the snuffbox school, not just because of the shape of the thing, but because the kids that went there dipped snuff.

These folks knew more about lawyers than doctors, and they needed lawyers more than they needed doctors because very few of them ever died a natural death. If they were shot, well, they died immediately and they didn't need a doctor. 

Most of them were kinfolks.

Charcoal burners pile up cedar logs high and tight for the long slow burn down that must be watched for days.

But the Choppers mostly sold logs to be used for everything from building piers to fence posts for barbed wire that was once invented just to restrain "breachy"cattle, but by now thanks to good ol' John "Bet a Million" Gates and his shameless sales promotions, its pretty much dividing almost all the territories of rural USA. 

Draw these

They say that the first wave of folks who moved here to central Texas settled (if "nomad livin' off the land" is what you want to call "settlin'") in the Ingram area, close to Kerrville. These characters here just mind their own business and work their tails off from sun up to sun down for an honest buck. That is is if you want to include  Moonshinin' as "honest".. These folks got stills all over the place around these hills and valleys.... I hear ol' Deputy Covey has it out for them "shiners". I hear tell he sits up top of Mt Bonnell with a telescope glass looking to spot smoke comin' from their stills.. Then he goes down and makes a raid on the camp. 

Deputy Covey up on Mt. Bonnell with a telescope spotting a wisp of smoke coming from the hills.

I also hear that they got wise to him and lit little smokey fires all over the hills that pert-near ran ol' Covey ragged. 

Then ol Covey went snoopin' around the wrong camp.. You know what they say about cats and curiosity...

I guess that boy was pretty smart to get his dollar up front... 

That boy

John Beck, reporter for the Statesman and son of the infamous Harold Beck finds Dan Covey's head impaled on a jagged fence post while investigating the "peninsula"  for his first article; a puff piece about Emmett Shelton and the new low water bridge project...

What has he gotten himself into?

What has he gotten himself into?!  (son of the infamous Harold Beck) finds Dan Covey 

!

At night, these folks are no stranger to lettin off steam of a hard day's cuttin' with a little "shine and dancin'".

 
Fiddlin' round at the Hootnanny.

Sara Johnson is dancing with her daddy's young friend, Tom Fugett.. Willy Barger don't like it one bit.

That feller over there by the fire - Danny, he's perty dang good on the fiddle and once a jar of "shine" breathes a second wind onto your feet - dancin' is the next thing that's bound to happen. Especially if Elroy Johnson's pretty little daughter - Sara is there... Every young feller wants a go with that gal, and it gets her boyfriend: Will Barger spittin' mad... You can bet your bottom dollar that a fight'll break out many a night because of it. And if that bully Will takes on a feller his own size, (which is a rare occassion) - that's when the bettin' starts up. Hell, ain't no since a man gettin' his ass whupped without somebody to be winnin' something. 

 

Next morning, as usual, it's quiet in the breaks. All you can hear are a few brittle and dried, grey cedar sticks crack under chopper's feet. You might also hear an occasional groan from a moonshine hangover or broken rib from last night's fight as troops walk out into the break for another day's haul.... 

But Elroy Johnson is always out there about an hour or two earlier - in the dark. That way, he can get a sense of the night air and feel the shift from night time into day break, before the others come and break the spell. 

Elroy is scouting for signs that lead him to the best trees to cut... Other fellers will watch him, trying to learn how he goes about his "Tree spotting" technique. Elroy's special gift was learned from Indians when he was a boy. It seems akin to dowsing for water (he's good at that too..) and comes with years of being quiet and listening with all his senses to the sounds of the forest that he has come to know as "the cedar's voices that whisper with sweet aroma" in the direction of the cedar tree breaks that have the most red heartwood. And it's the posts with the most heartwood that last the longest and bring the most money.  

ELROY JOHNSON
"He's a quiet and gentle man. He's Sara's beloved daddy, who's known as 
"King of the Cedar Spotters" 

THADIUS BARGER

 Will's youngest brother

 "He's kinna differnt, cause all he ever does is just looks at shit all the time. Momma says he's sorta stupid and real smart all at the same time".

For now, here's more of my cast of characters and their beginning bios.

OPENING SCENE INTRODUCED BY DUNG BEETLES AND LEAF CUTTER ANTS, CUTTING TO CHOPPERS WORKING BY THE CREEK WHERE A  P.O.V. RIFLE SHOT RINGS OUT    DROPPING WILL BARGER TO THE GROUND.

Journalists often wrote about the violence, using stereotypes that "city folks" had developed about Appalachian Cedar Choppers; they interpreted feuds as the natural products of profound ignorance, poverty, isolation, and inbreeding.