Title The cedar choppers : life on the edge of nothing / Ken Roberts ; foreword by M. Hunter Hayes

Edition First edition Published College Station : Texas A & M University Press, [2018]

Click on the following:
EBSCO eBooks

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xiii, 259 pages) Series Sam Rayburn series on rural life ; number twenty-four Sam Rayburn series on rural life ; no. 24. Contents Introduction: The Balcones Fault -- Who are these people? -- The migration -- The clans in the hills -- The early twentieth century -- Cedar and survival -- Fencing the West -- The life of a cedar chopper -- So close, yet so far away -- The demise of the cedar choppers -- Epilogue: Three questions -- Appendix 1: Voices Summary At the low-water bridge below Tom Miller Dam, west of downtown Austin, during the summer of his tenth or eleventh year, Ken Roberts had his first encounter with cedar choppers. On his way to the bridge for a leisurely afternoon of fishing, he suddenly found himself facing a group of boys who clearly came from a different place and culture than the middle-class, suburban community he was accustomed to. Rather, ". . . they looked hard?tanned, skinny, dirty. These were not kids you would see in Austin." When Roberts?s fishing companion curtly refused the strangers? offer to sell them a stringer of bluegills, the three boys went away, only to reappear moments later, one of them carrying a club. Roberts and his friend made a hasty retreat. This encounter provoked in the author the question, "Who are these people?" The Cedar Choppers: Life on the Edge of Nothing is his thoughtful, entertaining, and informative answer. Based on oral history interviews with several generations of cedar choppers and those who knew them, this book weaves together the lively, gritty story of these largely Scots-Irish migrants with roots in Appalachia who settled on the west side of the Balcones Fault during the mid-nineteenth century, subsisting mainly on hunting, trapping, moonshining, and, by the early twentieth century, cutting, transporting, and selling cedar fence posts and charcoal. The emergence of Austin as a major metropolitan area, especially after the 1950s, soon brought the cedar choppers and their hillbilly lifestyle into direct confrontation with the gentrified urban population east of the Balcones Fault. This clash of cultures, which provided the setting for Roberts?s encounter as a young boy, propels this first book-length treatment of the cedar choppers, their clans, their culture and mores, and their longing for a way of life that is rapidly disappearing Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on May 14, 2018) Subject Loggers -- Texas -- Texas Hill Country -- Social life and customs Loggers -- Texas -- Texas Hill Country -- Economic conditions Charcoal burners -- Texas -- Texas Hill Country -- Social life and customs Charcoal burners -- Texas -- Texas Hill Country -- Economic conditions Cedar -- Texas -- Texas Hill Country Self-reliant living -- Texas -- Texas Hill Country SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Discrimination & Race Relations. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Minority Studies. Cedar Self-reliant living SUBJECT Texas Hill Country (Tex.) -- History Texas Hill Country (Tex.) -- Biography Subject Texas -- Texas Hill Country Genre/Form Electronic books Biographies History Form Electronic book LC no. 2017038250 ISBN 9781623496081 162349608X 1623496071 9781623496074

  Permalink