Book Review

Sound Wormy: Memoir of Andrew Gennett, Lumberman. Edited by Nicole Hayler. Athens: University of Georgia, 2002. xix + 218 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. Cloth $34.95.

These two books provide very different perspectives, from two different time periods, on the logging and timber trade industries in the Pacific Northwest and the southeastern United States.	1
Margaret Elley Felt's Gyppo Logger paints a picture of an American family in the 1940s and 1950s; however, this is not the middle-of-the-twentieth-century America we know so well from television. Felt's family captures the sweat, grit, and undying determination to realize the dream of surviving and succeeding as a small, independent business. Felt and her husband were equal partners in an independent contract outfit in the Pacific Northwest. Felt came reluctantly into the business but over the course of her tenure as equal business partner she reached a peace or truce with logging that so challenged her family physically, mentally, and fiscally.	2
The Felts's foray into independent contract work began in road building and land clearing in 1945. While both were thrilled to be in business for themselves, it was no easy go and times were tough. Felt points out the particular dangers involved in clearing stumps by the use of dynamite, as well as the toll it took on their equipment. They stayed with land clearing for about two years before switching to the logging business, but that proved to be even more challenging than land clearing. It required more equipment, which meant bigger loans and deeper debt, more manpower, greater skill, and more planning. The Felt family faced these challenges head-on.	3
Their first independent logging effort was a timber salvage job with a large company. Through a multitude of colorful and interesting anecdotes, Felt describes the challenges associated with starting and running a logging job. Though the logging seasons were often short because of inclement weather or high fire hazard, there was little time for leisure. Much of their free time was spent readying equipment for the next season, working to improve their living conditions, or taking care of other endeavors.	4
Gyppo Logger is a pleasant, entertaining, and engaging book. It is not written in strictly chronological order, although Felt does guide the reader in a subtle way from the mid-1940s through 1953. She writes about her life using an abundance of anecdotes and organizing the book topically. Some of the topics include struggles with labor unions, the difficulties of being a small player contracted with a large company, and the attitudes Felt faced and conquered being a woman working as a full partner in the logging business— a business overwhelmingly dominated by men. These issues are deftly placed within the overall context of her life. Her anecdotes brim and bubble with enthusiasm for her work and her love of and devotion to her husband and family. At the same time, her cutting criticism is important for understanding her attitudes regarding such issues as labor unions, tax collectors, and big company representatives. In this case, it works very well.	5
There is something for everyone in Gyppo Logger. For the historian, the book provides revealing glimpses into the struggles small companies faced following World War II as well as the trials Felt endured as a woman surviving, succeeding, and gaining respect in the male-dominated logging industry. For the general reader, it is a well-written, entertaining, enlightening journal of a delightful writer's observations and experiences as the wife and partner of a logger.	6
Sound Wormy: Memoir of Andrew Gennett, Lumberman, details the life of Andrew Gennett from his youth in Nashville, Tennessee, through his establishment of a logging and sawmill business in South Carolina to his endeavors later on as a successful land speculator, trader, and lumberman throughout the southeastern United States. It documents the difficult and tumultuous logging and lumbering industry in the region in the early twentieth century. And it provides an abundance of anecdotes, many humorous, which provide insight into the human landscape surrounding the southeastern forest.	7
Perhaps the greatest value of Sound Wormy, however, is Gennett's descriptions of his legal dealings and court battles. The Gennetts were routinely involved in legal disputes and Gennett's legal mind provides insight into an environment fraught with legal challenges arising from contract disputes. He also provides his reflections on legal theory and constitutional doctrine, particularly with respect to the Weeks Act and the New Deal administration of Franklin Roosevelt. These discussions provide legal historians with a unique insight and point of view held by a participant in the lumber industry.	8
Sound Wormy is a more thorough, meticulously written, and detailed book than Gyppo Logger and as such is perhaps not as easily read. However, it is still a fascinating book filled with amusing and sometimes touching anecdotes. Further, it is Mr. Gennett's attention to detail, both of actions and of environment, which imparts such a great degree of information to the reader. Both are good books in different ways and each contributes significantly to the contemporary reader's understanding of the attempt by earlier generations to conquer and profit from the forest wildernesses of the United States in the early and mid-twentieth century. And though wilderness and nature are perhaps never conquered, it is the experiences imparted by those that made such attempts that make for enjoyable and enlightening reading.	9
Reviewed by Michael Dunn, associate professor of economics and program leader of the Extension Natural Resources Program at the School of Renewable Natural Resources at the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center. His research interests include the study of the development of wood supply and procurement systems in the southern United States.

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