CYNTHIA D. BERTELSEN

Unlike cowboy lingo, lumberjack lingo did not add many words to the pantheon of American spoken English.  Nevertheless, this fascinating list of terms — used by lumberjacks to describe food and items associated with food and cooking — proves highly entertaining. Notice the meaning of “pregnant woman pie,” for one.

Axle Grease: butter

Bait Can: lunch bucket

Bean Burner: a bad cook

Bull cook (also derogatorily called  the crumb boss): a boy who performed chores around camp, such as sweeping up the bunkhouse, cutting wood for fuel, filling wood boxes, and feeding the livestock

Boiler: a bum cook – one who generally boiled his food

Devil’s Cup: a tin cup without a handle which would become extremely hot when filled with coffee or tea

Flunkey: the person who served the meals in the logging camp

Fly Bread: raisin bread

Hardtack outfit: a company running a logging camp which provides substandard food (derived from the cheap and long-lasting cracker or bread of the same name)

Hashhouse: the cookhouse

Hash Rassler: a flunkey or cookee

Kitchen Mechanic: the dishwasher

Monkey Blankets: pancakes

Mud: coffee

Mug Up: having a cup of coffee

Mulligan Mixer: cook

Nose Bag: cold lunch eaten in the woods

Nosebag show: a camp where the midday meal is taken to the woods in lunch buckets

Overland Trout: bacon

Pass the 44’s: pass the beans

Pregnant woman pie: a dried-apple pie – named because the apples swell up when cooked

Shoepack pie:  a vinegar-lemon pie (like lemon meringue pie without the meringue), named because it looked like the bottom of the rubber boots worn by some of the lumberjacks

Skid Grease: butter

Sow belly: salt pork

Sweat pads: pancakes – because they looked like the pads placed between a horse’s neck/shoulder and collar to keep the horse from getting sore and to soak up sweat

Tar: really bad coffee

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