Spiked Boots [Paperback]

Robert E. Pike (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 30, 2008

In the days of log drives on the rivers of New England, whenever a riverman was killed in the drive, his comrades hung his spiked boots on a tree to mark the spot. As a youth, Robert Pike spotted such a pair of bookts, and from that moment was born his lifelong fascination with the history of the New England logging industry. The tales collected are narrated here by "Old Vern," a cantankerous back woods character. Here are legends and wild anecdotes of the loggers and rivermen who worked in the woods and on the Connecticut and Androscoggin Rivers, plying their romantic, dangerous trade in the early part of the 20th century. Others tell of "quaint characters" and "unusual specimens of God's carelessness" - people like Ginseng Willard, who slept in a coffin for two years just to get used to it, or Ervin Palmer, a hermit who dreamed of making a violin that would duplicate the sounds of the natural world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

For salty characters, ribald humor, ghosts, tall tales, and just plain old-fashioned story-telling, there's no better book about New England than "Spiked Boots." -- Lawrence Millman, author of "An Evening Among Headhunters"

No one ever wrote better than Robert Pike about the lumberers, river drivers, teamsters, two-fisted brawlers, rum runners, and all-purpose rapscallions of northern New England. "Spiked Boots" is a sheer delight to read and re-read--a North Country classic. -- Howard Frank Mosher

About the Author

Robert E. Pike was born in Hamden, Connecticut in 1905 and grew up in Waterford, Vermont. After a youth spent in the fields, rivers, and forests of New England, he earned degrees from Dartmouth College, the University of Minnesota, and Harvard University, mastering seven languages along the way. He is also the author of Tall Trees, Tough Men. Robert Pike died in 1997.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Countryman; 1st Countryman Press paperback ed edition (July 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 088150436X
• ISBN-13: 978-0881504361
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #740,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spiked Boots-Building Character in Northern New England, January 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Spiked Boots (Paperback)

This book is aptly titled as it concerns those hard-working, hard-living souls who were all but born wearing spiked boots and is a continuing saga of this section of New England known as the "north country". These true accounts of activity in the wood and lumber industry are well detailed from early in the 1800's until the last drive in 1915. Interspersed in these narrations are related stories of heroic deeds, impossible feats of skill, strength and daring; folk lore, superstition and camp fire tales all of which are skillfully described by Pike. These are so well presented that at times it is not easy to separate fact from fiction. Only after years of traveling in the north country, re-living the camp life and winning the confidence and respect of the woodsman was Robert Pike able to put together this story of a by-gone era. He tells it in true vernacular-a peavey is a peavey that was the the everyday tool of the woodsman. The bridal chain was the brake that held back the sled load of logs going down the mountain. His description of the lumber baron-good or not so good- is true to life. No artist could paint a better picture of those spiked boots living in that ice water for days, and weeks, on end. Hardy souls that respected their fellow workers is the tribute describing the strong men of the north country. Spiked Boots is one segment of our culture worth knowing and re-reading.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Want to be taken to another time and place?, July 14, 2000

By 

Christopher Flynn - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spiked Boots (Paperback)

Spiked Boots is among a rare breed of books, either fiction or fact, that can take the reader directly into the minds of the characters and places the author is talking about. Robert Pike approaches the tales of Vern Davison, Jack Haley, and a host of others with such clarity you are transported directly back 100 years to the logging industry of the "north country." You sit in your chair reading the book and the words slowly turn into the wind rushing by your face as you are transported into the horse drawn carriage with Vern Davison and Robert Pike, and you find yourself slowly engulfed in another era.

Not to be overlooked in the new Countryman Press edition is the foreword added by Helen-Chantal Pike, Robert Pike's daughter. The foreword adds a look into Robert Pike's life that only a daughter could bring into the book, from the tales of the original "peddling" trips, to the meaning of his writings to himself, to the intimate detail of Robert Pike reading a well worn copy of Spiked Boots over and over again during his last years of life.

Also added to the new edition are several photographs culled from the Pike Archives featuring a rare photographic glimpse of the scenery and people that the tales of Spiked Boots originates from. One can fully appreciate the men spoken of as they gaze at the picture of Ginseng Willard next to the coffin he slept in for two years to, "get used to it."

For fans of America, for fans of history, for fans of self-reliance, the new edition of Robert E. Pike's Spiked Boots is not one to be missing from the shelves of the library. It offers a rare glimpse at a by-gone era, of men and women that no longer exist in this form of ruggedness that made America what it is today.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars North Country Tales at their finest, August 9, 2000

By 

Cathleen Crandall (Ocean Grove NJ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spiked Boots (Paperback)

Robert Pike's <i> Spiked Boots<i> is a rare sort of history book, one that a reader loves to come across in the arid sea of historical work out that chokes the shelves of book stores. Presented as a series of vignettes on subjects ranging from haunted hunting camps to Ginseng Willard and his homemade coffin, Pike provides an important insight into the history and society of the northern reaches of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. It is a presentation of a world that is now gone, pushed through the chutes in the style of the great logging rushes that Old Vern, the cagey ex walking boss and Pike's guide through this world, once worked. The presentation of this world is not of a Hesiodic Golden Age, when men were men and trees were more plentiful. It is a presentation of a world where some men worked hard, some women harder, and some not at all. It is a memoir of hard working lumbermen and guides -- how they worked, how they played, and for some of them, the mistakes that they made that took their lives. Pike was a fortunate man to have encountered Vern, for the history that was handed to him is beyond value as a vision into a bygone age and an area that is sometimes forgotten. And the characters are unforgetable also.