The Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 13, number 2, December 1929

              178 the life of a lumberman their wet stinking socks and hang them on the drying racks around and above the stove where they steamed away and emitted an indescribably atrocious odor which permeated the bunkhouse atmosphere for several hours the jacks enjoyed themselves to the best of their various abilities a few perhaps read but there was little to read aside from a few old newspapers and the police gazette which was always very popular in all my experience in logging camps i remember only one man who ever had a bible he was a young fellow spending his first winter in the woods who came of pious parents they had given him the bible when he left home and told him to read it faithfully every sunday his intentions were good and he tried it the fjrst sunday he was in camp but after watching the lumberjacks enjoy themselves doing the stag dance the jig dance and playing games he put the bible aside and said i'll read it in the spring wherever and whenever men's work is strenuous their recreation is the same reading the bible wasn't generally considered the sort of thing with which to prepare one's self for another week of hard labor shuffle the brogue was a typical lumberjack game and was often played in the evenings and on sundays it was plain horseplay but it appealed to the lumberjacks and was always productive of a great deal of merriment a bunch of the jacks would sit on the floor in a ring in the center of the ring was another jack who was it the men in the ring sat close together and passed a rubber around behind their backs at the same time yelling shove shove shove when it was convenient one of them would hit the man who was it in the back with the rubber and then quickly pass it behind him again and shove it to his neighbor when it caught one of the jacks with the rubber the