This same cook prepared hot cakes one morning but had the griddle upside down. All the hot cakes were black with soot. The men looked at them and decided to throw them out rather than try to eat the blackened disks.

Charlie said the hot cakes didn’t go to waste, though. Packrats collected them, soot and all, and stacked them for future use. “...just like people would have done,” he comments.

During his time in camps, Charlie met a few interesting characters. One of them, a man named Blackie, liked to challenge men to fight after he’d had a few drinks.
“I’ll clean your clock,” Blackie would say but he’d change his tune once the other man accepted the challenge. “Listen...” he’d say in an aggrieved tone to his would-be opponent, “...we’ve been friends for years.”

Another man arrived at camp looking for work, claiming to be a professional millwright. He was asked to melt a metal called babbit, which formed the saw's bearings. First he put the babbit into an empty coffee can and melted everything, can and babbit, into the forge. Then, when he tried to use the proper smelting cup, he somehow got water into the hot metal which caused the whole thing to blow up. He didn’t stay long after that.

For some of the men, alcohol was a problem both in and out of the camps. Jean said it was quite common for some of them to go out to town, intending to buy clothing and other supplies. Once there, they’d end up in a bar instead and drink their wages, returning to camp in the same worn clothing they’d left in. “They’d have to borrow a needle and thread to mend their clothes,” Jean says, shaking her head.

Charlie continued to work in camps until 1949. He and a partner had a sawmill and went to Quesnel and then on to Williams Lake with it the following year. Charlie sold out his share of the mill, bought a D6 Caterpillar and returned to the Lakes District. He went skidding on Boo Mountain -- the mountain in behind Decker Lake Forest Products.
“More 'Cats' came into the country then...” he says. “...so horses were used less and less.”