Volunteers

Lorna Grabe: into the school house, you looked in from the outside and because if you take hundreds of people walking through all the time, bit by bit it will just ... the floor will just be ground to bits. And I thought so far ... I mentioned this at several board meeting ... so far we're letting people walk through it, we were wondering if we would need to restrict the number of people in there at a time particularly like if you have this large group that comes out maybe just ten to twelve in there at a time and then have them go through and then another group, because we may someday have to be at the point where we can just let people look in the door, you know, not walk through it. Maybe it will be so disintegrated these Oregon rains, you know. Things don't last forever.

Bob Zybach: I know ... covered bridges and that's the problem we have here is the weather. It's a problem everywhere. Cultural resource management ... everything has an end at some point. Seems like a lot of what we're doing is to delay that end as much as possible. I know that you've made detailed drawings of the rafter and the different structural elements and you're trying to recreate the paint, has there been any discussion perhaps of having school group such as the Oregon State College that study management to make recommendations or to work with the Foundation in developing management funds?

Lorna Grabe: No, we haven't tried that, everybody's kind of do-it- yourselfers so they always say "we can do it, we don't need them. We can do it." So, a lot of people are inexperienced

Lorna Grabe: but they're willing to volunteer and so we haven't really tried any long philosophical plans with what are we going to do ten or twenty years from now. We just say, well, "can you paint next Saturday" you know, or "can you come down and help clean" and we called a bunch of people we know to help come and clean. It's kind of a basic do-it-yourself er thing. You do ... things don't move as fast, I think, when you have volunteers like we have to wait for Louise's husband to get better so she can type this. Louise Hollister, she's got to have a cataract operation so we have to wait a few weeks until she can help, you know. So you kind of move a little slower, I think.

Bob Zybach: Maybe that's one of the better things after volunteers, is that people are putting out what they can and there's not the pressure.

Lorna Grabe: Yeah, and they care about it. Things aren't as structured, you know, as in the bigger more organized museums probably. Maybe we should be getting more professional. Bill Lewis says the more professional you get, you know, the better we don't have a training, like up at Aurora they train their hostesses that show people through, training social ... we just have a neighbor who comes down there, you know, you just kind of pour the punch or something and we're not polished professional people, we just kind of ... neighbors just kind of doing it because nobody else has done it. We think it's a beautiful spot and we want to save it and so we just do it.

Bob Zybach: I guess that's the last question I can think of ... When you moved in, it was mostly people from Oregon State, most of them and then Hewelett-Packard came in and there was an influx of people, professionals from Hewelett-Packard. Have you notice any other trends of population, would that still pretty much characterize the background of the present population, high educated, well educated people from campus or Hewelett-Packard?

Lorna Grabe: Well, there aren't a lot of campus ... well, there are a few campus people but there are a lot of like high school teachers and I'm not so sure Deardorffs are with the Bureau of Mines in Albany and

Bob Zybach: Fish and Wildlife?

Lorna Grabe: Fish and Wildlife, and Woodcock is a sales ... works in office for an oil company, his wife is an insurance person.

Bob Zybach: Lot of government, a lot of educators, a lot of well educated people?

Lorna Grabe: I would say most of them are pretty well educated. I would say we've seen fewer like old rancher types.

Bob Zybach: Are there any operating ranches?

Lorna Grabe: No.

Bob Zybach: So this valley we from an agricultural background to then a military base and a large share of it is now a lot of rural, well