Big Thicket Legacy

The Slavonian Stave Makers

Introducing the Slavonian Stave Makers We first heard of the Siavonian stave makers when Dolph Fillingim told of taking refuge in one of their abandoned camps one night during a storm that prevented his crossing a swollen stream to get home. It seemed odd that Yugoslavians had found their way into this remote wilderness , and our curiosity grew as we continued to hear occasional references to them. Extensive inquiry led us to three of the Original Siavonians who came to America to cut staves and remained . One is Pete Mihelich, who now lives with his daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. L. S. Shrader, near Cleveland, Texas. He was in the stave business for many years. The two stave makers whose stories follow are Pete Racki and Anton Knause. Pete Racki, who is well known and still lives in the area, has an immaculate homestead just north of Rye. He has been in the lumber business there for years. Anton Knause, eighty-seven years old, lives with Mr. and Mrs. Paul E. Lombardino, his daughter and son-in-law, near Beaumont When Icalled at the house in midafternoon, he was alone, and he made his way to the door slowly. "Mr. Knause," I said, "I would like to talk to you about making staves." "Oh, my Gott," he said, ''I'm too old for that!" We did, however, have a rewarding visit with him. Everyone who mentioned the Siavonians said they were good workers and hard drinkers. We were also told, as Mr. Racki surmised, that they put whiskey in their drinking water, but he tells us differently. In any case, they drank a lot of liquor and made a lot of staves. THE SLAVONIAN STAVE MAKERS As Told by Peter Racki The Slavonians came from the state of Croatia before Austria and Hungary busted up after World War I. It included Austria and what is now Yugoslavia. The part where the stave makers came from is Yugoslavia. My daddy's name was Matthew ("Matt"), and he came from the old country around 1900. Me and my mother didn't come to America till three or four years after my daddy. He worked for the other fellow about four years and then lit out on his own, and at one time he had just a little short of a hundred on the payroll, Slavonians. The Slavonians didn't come as groups, just come as individuals . Some of them work a year or two, go home and spend the summer with the folks, and come back again. It wasn't very hard to come and go then, just slow travel was all. They left over there 'cause they couldn't make a living. Five acres was a devil of a big farm, and I've seen five crops on one acre, little patch, just little old valleys between the mountains. Most of them had a wife and family in Europe. They loved their eatin' and drinkin'. There was one thing they didn't do, which you've probably been told, was carry their liquor to the stump, tree, where they's workin'. Them little kegs they had was water kegs, and I've drunk out of 'em a million times, and they didn't put liquor in their drinking water. When they was workin' they wouldn't get drunk, unless it was on a weekend. When they got up in the morning, they had a big slug of whiskey, come in at dinner they had one, come in at night they had one, and sometimes, before they went to bed. Every once in a while they'd pull a drunk; they did a lot of drinking. Before prohibition one of them had a birthday and he went down to Beaumont and got him a suitcase full of liquor and brought it back there. They started celebratin', and he heard another crew working not far away and he took two quarts and went over there. I followed him just to see what the devil was goin' to happen, and when he got in sight of them, he said, "Look what I got." One old man throwed down his tools and Pete Mihelich started; the rest of them followed and went to the camp and 113 proceeded to get drunk. The Slavonian They made no effort to...