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Bv BONNIE PRICE LOFTON
Rappahannock New* Contributtaf Writer
It looks like a decrepit shed that $omeone might tear down one of these days. But it’s really an old man’s life and a son’s love for his daddy.
It’s the oldest sawmill in Rappahannock County, and it’s not for sale, if you should ask. It’s Charlie Hitt’s sawmill on Route 626, three and a halfmiles northeast of Scrabble. He bought it second-hand in 1948 and worked it until his health gave out in the 1970s.
But Mr. Hitt’s sawmill still runs. Not every week. Not fast. Not like the modem factories that chum out tens of thousands of board feet of lumber every day.
It runs when Jim Hitt, Charlie’s 50-year-old son, cranks it up and carefully saws the wood he has harvested off his land. He knows the tree he has cut. He knows the person he cut it for. This log will be fence posts on a friend’s land. That log will be rafters in a bam down the road. ! i The crashing sounds, the flying sawdust, have never been something that Jim Hitt liked. He just tolerates it. What he does like is keeping up the family tradition. The senior Hitt has been bedridden the past six years, cared for at home by
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