Gone to the Swamp: Raw Materials for the Good Life in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta

by Robert Leslie Smith

Overview

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To make a living here, one had to be capable, confident, clever and inventive, know a lot about survival, be able to fashion and repair tools, navigate a boat, fell a tree, treat a snakebite, make a meal from whatever was handy without asking too many questions about it, and get along with folks.
 
This fascinating and instructive book is the careful and unpretentious account of a man who was artful in all the skills needed to survive and raise a family in an area where most people would be lost or helpless. Smith’s story is an important record of a way of life beginning to disappear, a loss not fully yet realized. We are lucky to have a work that is both instructive and warm-hearted and that preserves so much hard-won knowledge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817380694
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	09/21/2008
Series:	Alabama Fire Ant
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	273
File size:	23 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Robert Leslie Smith is descended from loggers, hunters, fishermen, and entrepreneurs.  Now retired, he still lives near the swamp at the head of Mobile Bay, where the Mobile and Tensaw Rivers join.  He served as a Naval Officer in WW-II, and then returned to his teaching profession, nurturing students at Foley High School and finally moving up to Superintendent of Baldwin County, Alabama Schools.
 

Table of Contents

bracketed numbers are for reference only and should not be typeset. Contents Preface 000 Acknowledgments 000 Introduction 000 Gone to the Swamp 000 The Skin Game 000 The Public Timber Inspector 000 Oxen and the Men Who Drove Them 000 High Water Logging 000 Rafting and Loading Gunboats 000 Work of the Blacksmith 000 A Personal Note 000 Work of the Sawyer 000 Camp Life 000 Night Rafting 000 Kingfisher 000 The Yupon 000 Aunt Violet Boston 000 River Tale 000 Wildcats 000 Lost in the Swamp 000 Fear Strikes the Bend 000 Swamp Tale 000 The Kennedy Mills 000 Sawmill Tales 000 Sawmill Tales Continued 000 Logging in Blakeley Battleground 000 Mechanized Logging 000 Flatboats 000 Stockton Boat Ways 000 Latter Day Watermen 000 Latter Day Pullboating 000 The Last Watermen 000 Other Swamp Stories 000 Recovery of a Union Mortar in the Delta 000 Famous Trees 000 Oil in the Delta 000 Hubbard Landing 000 An Alabama State Treasure 000 The Old Ways 000 County Surveyor 000 Hunting Camp Life 000 The McGowan Compass 000 Dixie Landing 000 The Art and Practice of Hollering 000 United States Reserve Fleet 000 Delta Elementary School 000 How to Build a Double Ender 000 Construction of a Flatboat 000 Glossary 000