William Grant Goble
1873-1969
William Grant Goble
1873-1969
William Grant Goble and his twin brother, James Sheridan Goble, like to recall their logging days when they were "timber running", rafting poplar, oak and walnut logs cut from virgin forests. They would lash the logs into rafts up on Johns Creek, wait for a "tide" and off they would go, floating with the river's current down to Cattlettsburg. It would take about three days to make the trip. Their wages were a dollar a day and "found".
They tied up the rafts at night and stayed there until daylight. There was no telling what they might run into at night on the river. Sometimes, maybe 100 rafters would spend the night at the same place. They were too tired to raise much of a ruckus on the way down, but their appetites never failed them. "It wasn't nothing," William recalled, "for the woman where we stayed to use up a whole barrel of flour just cooking supper and breakfast for one of those gangs."
They got paid off at Cattlettsburg
and they stocked up on store liquor before taking passage on a steamboat to carry them
back upstream. They remembered many of those old stern-wheelers. The Cricket was one and
the Andy Hatcher was another. The steamboat puffed and groaned against the current while
the loggers drowned out the noise with their singing, shouting and fighting. Donald Griffin - published Courier-Journal 1953