Ludvipol: A Modern Shtetl
The Family Business
naces. A whole row of workers chopped the pieces to size, and fed the furnaces that powered the steam engines. Extra scrap was sold for kindling. All the heating in our town was done with wood, and Ludvipol had many poor people who could not afford prop - erly dried wood. They had to use “green” wood, which did not light easily, and stoves required pieces of kindling of about a foot long. All day another row of workers stood with hatchets and as the edges fell down from squaring off the boards, they chopped them up and laid the pieces out by sizes for kindling. Since the lumber was brought in during the winter and cut all summer, the kindling would dry by the time it was sold. In the process of cutting boards, tons of sawdust accumulated and had to be removed so it would not clog up the works. My fa- ther and his mechanic, Masik, dug a basement with an exit ramp under the cutting floor so that the sawdust could be removed. When lumber was cut, the sawdust fell down into this basement by the truckload. They designed a metal container that they attached to the steam engines, and burned the sawdust for fuel for our furnaces. Sawdust was also sold for use in storing ice. There were quite a few icehouses in town, dug deep in the ground with a structure put up on top. During the winter, the farmers went to the river and cut huge blocks of ice and brought them into the icehouses. When the ice was insulated with sawdust, it would not melt for a whole year, even during the summer. Ice was used to bring down fevers, to make ice cream, to keep food chilled, and for many other things. The ice vendors needed a lot of sawdust. So everything had its use; even the sawdust could be sold. My father had many employees and was a very progressive em- ployer. He provided a medical plan for all his workers, similar to Blue Cross, called Kasa Chora (sick fund in Polish). Occasionally, while chopping wood, a worker would chop off a finger or have some other mishap. The employee’s medical treatment was cov- ered at no cost to him by the insurance plan. One of my uncles, Alter Tiktin, owned a floating toll bridge, which he put in place over the Slusch River from April to October.
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