Page 28 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

“The Best Laid Plans of Mules and
Men...” - Chapter 6
Diagram showing method of lifting logs.
While George was building the cabin on my Dad’s claim, he was joined by Tom Blake as helper. They had the walls up about halfway, and then it became too difficult to lift the logs to the right height. They wanted to borrow Ed’s mules, Alex and Toby, to help roll the logs up to the top of the walls.
They did this by leaning two logs against the top of the wall and driving a stake in the ground to hold each one in place. The new log was laid across the foot of the ramp, a rope was then fastened to the top log, run down underneath the loose log, and across the other wall. The ends of the ropes were tied to the mules’ harness, and as they moved slowly forward, the loose log was rolled up the ramp to rest on the top of the wall. This had to be done on all four sides, notching the logs at the corners as they went, and continuing until the walls were of the proper height.
George, Sally, and Tom came over to Ed’s in Tom’s coupe on a Thursday evening and left Sally to spend the night with me. The plan was for Sally and me to bring the wagon and mules to the cabin on Friday after school. The men were to go to the sawmill in George’s Model T truck and return with lumber for the roof and door, and be there to greet us when we arrived. They would use the mules all day Saturday, and Sunday morning, and then we would return the mules — and me! — on Sunday afternoon. Thus I would be back in time for school on Monday morning.
But — to paraphrase Robert Burns—“The best laid plans of mules and men gang aft agley.”
When Sally and I reached the camp Friday about dusk, not a soul was there. We decided to use Tom’s car and go out to look for them, or at least to meet them. Upon investigation we discovered that the gas tank was empty, so we had to fill it from the fifty-five gallon drum. The only way we had to get it out was to siphon it out with a small rubber hose, and the only way I knew to do that was to suck it up, trusting to luck that I could get the hose out before the gas reached my mouth.
After three or four unsuccessful attempts, I finally had the gas running into a can to be poured into the tank, but I remember yelling at Sally because she was turning the