Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Flint Quotes: Brawling From Tavern to Tavern

“The bearded lumberman with their coonskin caps, red sashes, and hobnailed boots brawled from tavern to tavern,” explains Carl Crow in a sometimes flamboyantly written history of Flint commissioned by General Motors in 1945. “Lumbering was rough business and lumberman were rough men. They worked hard, played hard, and usually drank quantities of hard liquor. There was a story throughout the logging camps that some of the lumberjacks would cheerfully eat pine chips or sawdust if generously moistened with whiskey.”

1 comment:

  1. Oh Yah, Beecher Gardens, Club Mayfair, and Columbiaville.....wait, wait, that was the forties after the war and another bar brawling era. My mistake. Sorry

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.