For nearly all of his working life, Andy was a sawmill man.  A sawyer.  He worked at and eventually ran sawmills in eastern North Carolina, taking the timber logs that were brought in and turning them into lumber which was then trucked out.  It was hard, hot, back-breaking labor, but Andy was never afraid of work and I remember how solid and strong he was, like a man chiseled out of rock, even in his later years when I was a child.

Andy's growing family moved with him as the sawmills moved and much of Mama's childhood was spend living in little sawmill shanties.  In this video, Mama shares some of her earliest memories as the daughter of a sawyer.

 

 

 

This second video I threw in, just to give you a feel for what a sawmill was like.  Taken in 1962, of course the machinery was much more sophisticated than what Grandpa Andy had used 30 years before that, but the method was much the same.

It's old home movie quality (with no sound...it seems strange to watch a movie without sound these days...) that Mama took when our family visited Grandpa's sawmill and watched him work.  I know it's difficult to see, but Andy is in the dark clothes and cap running the saw.  Later in the clip you will see my dad Bud holding my infant sister Maria, Grandma Hazel holding my 2-year-old sister Barbara, my uncle Jeff who was 5 years old, and at the very end a glimpse of blonde-headed 5-year-old me.