Logging camps: Trucks, Clothes Line, Pulley, and Patents

A previous post in “From the logging camps” shared a front view of a logging truck, circa 1943, in Port Renfrew at the Hemmingsen-Cameron operation. This is the same truck, side view, showing my big brother, myself, my father, and grandfather.¹

And, something else.

Heeding the warning “don’t air your dirty laundry”, only clean whites are displayed in the picture where grandfather is alone. ¹ As to the clothes line, the black dot that appears beyond the branch tip, suggests that a pulley is affixed to the spindly conifer. The scene rather recalls the fate of Lambsy Divey and her crew.  (If you don’t know her story, she will show up using the blog’s internal search box, top right of this page, under the menu)

Anyway, only an inventive person would rig the drying line way up there in the branches, such as not to tug the bough forward. Clothes would then have drooped to touch whatever lay below, spoiling the wash.  No clothes pegs visible; they were probably acting as pretend people, by the children.

Matt Hemmingsen (1876-1967) was one such inventor. He was an entrepreneur; a logger, a sometime gold miner, a gold mining failure and, a patent holder. ² Here is a patent that was among our family papers, that was filed in 1923.^{2, 3} It appears to be a US filing for a Canadian venture. Enough said, how it worked it explained in the application.

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Of course, it is entirely possible that my father put the clothes line up, or someone else.

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COPYRIGHT and NOTES AND SOURCES

1. ^{From Marilee Wein scrapbook, authored by John Oliver Hemmingsen (1913-2008). All postings and pictures are © 2018 The Hemmingsen Family Collection. Posthumously published at this blog under its copyright, below. All rights reserved.}
2. ^{The Hemmingsen Family Collection including “John O Hemmingsen/Mary Margaret (Dickson) Hemmingsen Family” authored in 1999 by John Oliver Hemmingsen. All materials posthumously published at this blog are protected by © copyright 2018. All rights reserved.}
3. ^{Original would have been filed at United States Patent Office, now United States Patent and Trademark Office https://www.uspto.gov/.}