Spiked Boots: From New England's North Country, True Stories of Yesteryear, When Men Were Rugged and Rivers Wild (Yankee Classic)

By Robert E. Pike

Book Overview

In the days of log drives on the rivers of New England, whenever a riverman was killed on the drive, his comrades hung his spiked boots on a tree to mark the spot. As a youth, Robert Pike spotted such a pair of boots, and from that moment was born his lifelong fascination with the colorful history of the New England logging industry. The dozens of tales he collected are narrated here by Old Vern, a cantankerous backwoods character. Here are legends and wild anecdotes of the loggers and rivermen who worked in the woods and on the Connecticut and Androscoggin Rivers, plying their romantic, dangerous trade in the early part of this century. Others tell of quaint characters and unusual specimens of God's carelessness--people like Ginseng Willard, who slept in a coffin for two years just to get used to it, or Ervin Palmer, a hermit who dreamed of making a violin that would duplicate the sounds of the natural world. Although Pike was a respected scholar and historian and the author of many books, Spiked Boots is the one he wanted to be remembered by. We are proud to restore to print this important piece of New England folk history. Illustrated with never-before-published photographs from the author's private collection, and a new foreword by Helen-Chantal Pike, who grew up hearing her father's tales as bedtime stories.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 088150436X
• ISBN13: 9780881504361
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: Countryman Press
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

The real story of Northern New England

A story of the real Northern New England and the people who lived there. When men were men and the rivers ran wild. A story of when lumber was king and a man's word was as good as gold.