Son of Henry and Vina Boxx
LUTHER SAYS:
"You can talk about your work an' the different things that you can do, but if you want to really know what manual labor is, jist get in an' swing a twelve-pound broad ax for ten hours, hewin' ol', bumpy, knotty logs with it, an' I'll be dod-gast if you don't feel like eatin' up ever' thing you can get your hands on when you go in at night, like corn bread, beans, taters, cabbage, an' even the petticoat off ov your ol' womern, then I'll treat! Now, boy, you can really lay away the groceries after you hang on to the end ov this ax handle all day!
"I don't reckon there's any work much harder than makin' railroad ties, but I have made 'em ever since I was old enough to lift an ax; an' now I have a fifteen-year-old boy that goes with me to the hills an' makes five an' six ties a day.
"He's never had a chance to go to school yet, 'cause I need 'im to help me so bad. I have a wife an' five 'kids', an' I don't know what we'd do if we didn't have a little garden, an' get a litle relief aid.
"I guess I've made enough railroad ties in my life to lay a string ov track from here to Chicago, and' never got enough money out ov the whole business to buy enough beans an' fat back to last my family twelve months.
"We only git twenty cents a tie an' we are workin' in timber where the best has been taken out, leavin' nothin' but the old knotty cull trees for us to work into ties; an I have to work extra hard to make nine a day.
"Well, it's a funny old world, an' it looks like one side was intended to suck the life blood from the other.
"The durned railroad companies could afford to give me a free pass for all my family to ride over the United States, an' give us free meals in their dining cars, an' still be away ahead, for the work I've done for 'em; an' there'd scarcely be a place we could go that we wouldn't run over some ties I've made.
"I've carried my crosscut saw an' ol' broad ax on my shoulder so long I'm humpbacked, an' I've sucked water out of a jug until my mouth looks almost like the muzzle end of a jug, an' still I've never got rich makin' ties.'
......................from "The Pioneers of the Ozarks" by Lennis Leonard Broadfoot