May 27, 2010 - One of the ironic consequences of the rapid proliferation of Ashe juniper -- almost always called cedar -- is that the fabled character type, known to generations as the cedar chopper, has all but disappeared. Cedar has prospered and multiplied, but the cedar chopper -- not so much.
Cedar choppers were, as their tag suggests, people who chopped cedar for a living. People accustomed to making some kind of living from the land, which included nearly everybody, cast an enterprising eye toward all that cedar and they found ways to exploit it.
First came the charcoal burners. They figured out a way to turn cedar into charcoal, which was used to heat stoves and flatirons of the day. The charcoal burners chopped green cedars, stripped the bark away and stacked the poles pyramid style in a pit or kiln. They left a hole in the top, tepee style, for the smoke to escape and then covered the wood with dirt. A fire was lit at the bottom of the kiln and then closed as the cedar smoldered for three or four days, until it was charred to perfection. The charcoal was then loaded onto wagons and sold in towns. It was slow, tedious work and the market was variable, but if the cotton or corn crops failed, charcoal was always money in the pocket.
A number of factors crippled the charcoal market. People quit heating irons and stoves with charcoal and the Model T truck made it possible to haul cedar posts to town. The introduction of barbed wire created an always-booming demand for cedar posts. Besides, ranchers even then were battling to clear cedar from their land. Into this environment and market stepped the cedar chopper.
A Palo Pinto County historian, writing in 1946, noted: "The chopper who cuts today and lives in the cedar is as true a mountaineer as his forefathers, who perhaps hailed from the Ozarks or the Blue Ridge Mountains in pioneer days. He has not been noticeably touched by what is known as present day civilization."
While calling someone a cedar chopper is sometimes used as a slur, like calling them a hillbilly, hick or rube, it is hard not to admire the independence that so marked their lives. They did a day's work and got a day's pay, usually on the same day. The chopper could work all day, half a day or not at all, depending on his preference and how much money was needed.
Those who perhaps envied the cedar chopper's freedom from convention were also apt to call him lazy. It's a safe bet that most of the people who cast those aspersions never spent a summer afternoon in the cedar brake with an axe.
Walter J. Cartwright, writing the November 1966 issue of the Southwest Historical Quarterly, noted that snakes and runaway trucks were the most common hazards facing cedar choppers. "To remove the big posts, a chopper frequently must drive an old truck over sizable hills and gullies along a lane cleared by the axe and chain saw. If its brakes fail, nothing stops the truck until it reaches the bottom of the hill."
Texas naturalist Roy Bedichek wrote eloquently in "Adventures With A Texas Naturalist" of encountering a cedar chopper along the banks of the Pedernales River. Bedichek admired the old man's skill with the axe and stopped to chat with him a moment. The man told Bedichek that he was cutting cedar because he was 86 years old and that was all he had ever done since he was 10 years old. He kept chopping away because a neighbor of his had put away his axe and been bedridden ever since.
"He thought he might die soon anyway and that it was better to keep doing something," Bedichek wrote. "This is the pioneer philosophy of being up and doing, of marching on to the end of the row, of never quitting. It is the gospel of salvation by work."
Cedar choppers have all but vanished from the modern scene, but the ubiquitous tree that gave them their life's calling is still very much with us.
