To celebrate Eau Claire’s 150th birthday, Volume One’s Local Lit invites you on a journey back to the logging era. When Eau Claire became a city in 1872, the lumber industry required workers to cut timber during the winter and run the logs downriver in the spring. All these jobs were dangerous, and workers regularly lost limbs or life. According to Tim Hirsch, professor emeritus at UW-Eau Claire, “Pinery Boy” was sung by Mrs. M.A. Olin from Eau Claire for folklorist Franz Rickaby in the 1920s. Mrs. Olin says she learned the song from a neighbor boy in 1867. Veteran Eau Claire musician Billy Kraus performed his version of this historic tune for us.