My name is Cassandra Harper of Small Creek, Wisconsin. Small Creek is a small northwestern area of the state. It was densely wooded country and becoming very crowded now because of the ever growing demand for lumber in the rest of the country.
I lived in a small cabin with my Momma, and two younger brothers or rather, I did until yesterday when I left my home and my momma to earn money as a house maid. However, far into my journey to my new vocation, I learned I was not to be a house maid after all but a kitchen hand and wash girl in a lumber camp filled with men. I was still grappling with my newly understood circumstances when my new step father, Mr. Hernsh attached the reins to his gray, stocky work horse and we continued onwards in the rickety wagon to the camp and my new life.
I could smell the camp before I saw any trace of its existence. I smelled wood burning and food cooking. I also smelled something else that I could not identify but came to learn it was the smell of a large number of men living and sleeping in close proximity to each other in one space; it was the smell of perspiration and well worn clothes in need of laundering and pipes and cigars, leather boots and mud. Then I could hear the camp, all the voices blended into one large noise that got louder as I got closer to camp.
I could also hear the roar of water running over rocks, we must be near a river, though which one, I could not say.
My eyes widened as the camp suddenly revealed itself. It was so much larger than I had envisioned, there must be hundreds of men here! Tents and very crude cabin-like structures were in one area, a few better made cabins were in another area, the areas were separated by a river of mud.
Mr. Hernsh did not attempt to drive his wagon onto the mud roadway, even he knew his wheels would sink in and render him impossibly stuck. He clipped his reins and we both hopped down and walked, and carefully stepped between the mud puddles and debris.
Men stopped and stared in my direction. I felt like they could see right through me, knew why I was here and what I allowed Mr. Hernsh to do to me last night and again this morning. I allowed him to teach me how to handle all these camp men. How exactly they would handle me, I did not know.
We came upon a crude cabin where a great many men seemed to be just standing around, some talking to friends, others just smoking their pipes.
"Where's the wash woman?" Mr. Hernsh asked a lone man.
He hooked his thumb to indicate inside the cabin but he didn't bother to talk. We walked inside, even though it was a bright sunny day outside, it was dark inside the cabin.
There were several roughly built long tables and benches where several men sat and ate brown stew. There was only one woman in the cabin, she was a medium sized lady of about thirty five years old. She had very black hair and a large bosom. She looked formidable, her face was practically set in a snarl, her black eyes were hard.
She looked at Mr. Hernsh with a some recognition and then me. She did not seem happy to see me.
"This your girl?" She asked. Her voice sounded loud and angry.
Even Mr. Hernsh seemed cowered in her presence. "Yes, Ma'am" he politely answered holding his own hat in his hands.
She looked me over, her snarl only becoming more prominent. "You said she was an older girl!" She barked at Mr. Hernsh.
"She's eighteen, like I told you. She's small but after some hard work, she'll get sturdy, I believe," he promised.
The black haired lady continued to look at me, doubtful and not happy.
"Hmph!" Was her only reply. She turned and went back to serving brown stew to other men who recently sat down at a long table.
Mr. Hernsh and I stood there rather awkwardly. She didn't seem to want me, so, what now? I wondered. Would we just turn around and go back home to Momma?
After awhile Mr. Hernsh became impatient, he spoke over to the women, "You want her or no?" He asked.
"Yeah, I'll take her. What choice do I have?" She answered.
I watched as she stood facing a corner and carefully extracted a pocket hanging inside her skirts. It was her money purse. She gave Mr. Hernsh money and he happily put it into his coat interior pocket. I didn't understand what was happening here, I was told I would be earning wages and I would bring my earnings back to Momma. Why was Hernsh getting paid?
Very quickly, Mr. Hernsh said good bye to me, he told me to listen to Miss. Nell here, she was my owner now. Owner? I wondered feeling confused.
"All right, don't just stand there like a post! Start washing these bowls!" Miss. Nell hollered at me.
I pulled my long work apron from my bag and got to work. The work, I realized was never ending. I worked from before sun up to past sun down every day. I washed dishes and spoons constantly, hauled in fresh water and sacks of onions and potatoes, and served hungry men stew day after day, made loaves of bread, and when there was a break in the day, I went out to the back of the cabin and helped two Indian girls wash laundry. I slept on a mat on the floor near the fireplace but it was hard to fall asleep, my entire body ached terribly and the skin on my hands was rubbed raw and red.
When I finally did drift to sleep I dreamed of never ending piles of dirty clothes, stacks of dirty bowls, brown stew, and mud.
One thing that did not happen was what Mr. Hernsh taught me on the night we camped in his small wagon. No lumberjack came to me demanding I passively lay on my back and spread my legs open for him to push his cock inside my soft cunny. I really did start to wonder if he tricked me. Did he make all that up and nice people don't actually do such rude things to each other? I felt angry that I had been tricked.
Every man, either young, old, or somewhere in between, was nice and respectful towards me. No one ever grabbed or pinched me. Some of the younger gents seemed to flirt with me but Miss. Nell had already told me, don't flirt with the men. She didn't even want me to smile at them which was sometimes difficult as they often joked and told each other funny stories about their lives and their kin back home.
Even though I was constantly surrounded by people each and every day, I felt very lonely and homesick for my Momma and brothers. I wondered where they were and what they were doing right now. My only friends were the two Indian washer girls who worked in the back. They were not allowed to be inside the cabin due to their Indian-ness even though they were both kind, mild mannered young ladies. Sue was about my age, and her sister Fran was two years younger. Those weren't their real names but Miss. Nell hated any kind of Indian name so that's what she called them. Miss. Nell told me she needed a white girl to help serve the lumberjacks because white men don't want to served food from "dirty Indians". I also learned, I was not earning any wages; I was an indentured servant for the next seven years, Miss. Nell paid Mr. Hernsh a good sum of money for my servitude. I would probably have been very angry about this if I had time in the day to consider it but Miss. Nell kept me so busy, I barely had a minute to think about anything, including my unfortunate circumstances.
The nice thing about winter was the mud froze so my boots no longer sank in it and many of the lumberjacks returned to their homes for the winter months making my work marginally lighter. The bad thing was the cold. Even though I slept as close to the fire as I could, I was never not cold. I even slept wearing my boots in effort to stay warm.
Miss. Nell slept on a cot, also in the cabin. One cold night, in the wee small hours, I awoke to unfamiliar noises. I looked up and in the dim light from the fire, I saw Miss. Nell kissing passionately on the mouth with a lumberjack who I recognized as Ed Lawton. Both were sitting up on her cot with their arms in a tight embrace. They weren't just kissing, as they were holding onto one another, their bodies seemed to slowly rock back and forth as if they were trying to mimic the dance of the flames in the fireplace.
