Skookum blocks


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Posted by David Sherman on Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 17:31:37 :

In Reply to: Re: Ball vs bushing posted by Jerry in Idaho on Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 15:58:22 :

Those are the kind all the loggers used to use on their high leads in the days of Skagit yarders and even with the steam donkeys. You know you're in logging country when you see an old snatch block as a mailbox post and it's plenty high enough. To hoist them up to the top of a spar tree, the high climber would first pull up a small block by hand and rig it with a line that was heavy enough to hoist up the big block. Back when they had big timber, they had big snatch blocks.

"Skookum" by the way, for the easterners is the general purpose Chinook jargon expletive meaning anything along the lines of "good" , "strong", or "fast". "Skookum" was used for quit a few brand names in the old days. The word is finally dying out, but I remember old timers using it regularly to refer to anything they thought was pretty good. A dozen or so other Chinook jargon words stuck around almost to the end of the 20th century, but they're pretty well gone now except for place names. The only one that seems to have made it solidly into the English language is "mucky-muck", "muckety-muck", or "high muckymuck", all of which come from "hiu muckamuck" which means "plenty to eat" -- sort of like we would say "fat cat".

Anyway, yes, if you see a Skookum snatch block at a yard sale or second hand store, snap it up.



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