3. BERRY CREEK NEIGHBORS

Donald M. Dickey: No, it never did pile up 3 feet of snow, but it must have been 25 inches or so. I don't know whether you'll put this in or not. But people didn't have inside facilities then, so every day we had to shovel the snow to get to the little house out back and it got piled up so along the path that I couldn't see over it. I would have only been about 5 years old at the time. I used to go out and help shovel the snow. We've had that kind, and we know we'll have it again.

3. BERRY CREEK NEIGHBORS

Bob Zybach: When you moved to Berry Creek then was 1928?

Donald M. Dickey: April 1928.

Bob Zybach: And the reason was just to get closer to the school?

Donald M. Dickey: Well, that's the main reason. We also had traded 50 acres for 160 acres. We had more land, had some timber on it and stuff. We cut posts and timber and stuff and wood to sell, and then we would add logs for Coote and Cornutt. Several years.

Bob Zybach: So, your family traded 50 acres. Was that part of the donation land claim?

Donald M. Dickey: No, no this was the new deal that they bought after they left Buell.

Bob Zybach: The family that stayed back in the donation land claim, were they sorry to see your dad leave or do you remember any stories about that?

Donald M. Dickey: I think they'd all left. Or about all left.

Bob Zybach: Oh I see. Okay. And then, your family moved to Berry Creek. Was there a home there at that time?

Donald M. Dickey: No. We lived there until the [U.S.] Army took over in '42.

Bob Zybach: Did you build the house there or was there already a house?

Donald M. Dickey: No, there was a house already there.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember any of the families that lived in Berry Creek in 1928?

Donald M. Dickey: Uh, when we moved up there where Neil [Vanderburg] lived and his folks, people by the name of Perkins lived there.

Bob Zybach: Perkins?

Donald M. Dickey: Um hmm.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember anything about them?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah. Perkins was one of these guys that didn't always watch his language to close. So over the hill from Perkins . . . Perkins had 120 acres, that's right isn't it Neil?

Neil Vanderburg: 128.

Donald M. Dickey: And was Walter Brinkley. He was a bachelor, or he was widower I guess. His wife had died. So Walter had me trap the gophers for him, out in the hay field, and he had some pretty big gophers, quite a lot of them. One Sunday morning I rode down to check my traps, came back and I had a pretty big one I brought back up to show him. And old Perkins, he looked at him, said "Boy he's ugly. That ugly son-of-a- bitch is uglier than I am!" Then after Perkins left there, people by the name of Keller lived there, I think.

Bob Zybach: Keller?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah. Did you buy it from Keller?

Neil Vanderburg: Rapher lived there when we moved there. He was renting the place.

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, well I guess he came after Keller.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. That's the first one I knew.

Bob Zybach: Okay, on Brinkley, that hill by Brinkley's place, did you call that Brinkley's Hill, do you recall?

Donald M. Dickey: No, it was just a hill there that we went over to go to town.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember anything in particular about Brinkley?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah, he was a real nice fellow. He had a lost son, and he had a daughter that lived with his brother-in-law, I think. He'd lost his wife. He farmed there for three or four years, then he moved up by Corvallis. On the Wiles place, I think. Or part of it. And married a nice lady. Maxine and I used to stop in and see them now and then. He was a real nice gentleman.

Bob Zybach: Who moved into Brinkley's place after he left?

Donald M. Dickey: I think that a livestock dealer over in Monmouth rented it from him. And I don't know whether they sold it or what happened after that. It was a good place for livestock there, and sheep and stuff on it. Good place to hunt pheasants, too.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember, were there always pheasants there when . .

Donald M. Dickey: There was when we moved there untill '42 when we moved away, there were still pheasants there.

Bob Zybach: Do you know how long Brinkley had lived there?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, I suspect three or four or five years before we were there, I'm not sure.

Bob Zybach: So there were just a, in the 1920's a fair number of families had moved in about that time?

Maxine Dickey: When did the Hauges, your parents' good friend Carl Hauge, when did they move in?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, Carl Hauge is another, he rented about 500 acres just west of our place, and actually the place belonged to a brother or cousin; I think it belonged to a cousin. Carl and his wife raised sheep, they were real nice people. And somehow or another Carl got the idea that they were going to do something to the place besides rent it, so he and his wife moved up to Sauvies Island with their sheep. Then they moved back down to Beaver Creek, this side [south] of Corvallis, with their sheep. I don't know whether his wife had

Donald M. Dickey: we find ow about these people will be all we know about them. So we were on the

Bob Zybach: Hauges and they had just moved from Sauvie's Island down to Beaver Creek. And I think you said his wife had died of cancer.

Donald M. Dickey: She died while there and Carl sold his sheep and moved to Alaska for fishing and various things up there. He was as old as my dad was.

Bob Zybach: When did his family move to the Berry Creek area?

Donald M. Dickey: Carl Hauge?

Bob Zybach: Yes.

Donald M. Dickey: I don't know for sure, but Carl and his wife Lucy were from Switzerland.

Bob Zybach: They were Swiss?

Donald M. Dickey: Um hmm. And he could talk six or seven different languages. He was a real sharp guy, a real nice guy.

Bob Zybach: And he raised sheep mostly?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah, that's what he did when we were there.

Bob Zybach: Now, you say that was to the west of your place. Would that have been.

Donald M. Dickey: Just the first place west of our place.

Bob Zybach: So that was before the Hanish's lived there.

Donald M. Dickey: Well, Hanish lived on 40 acres to the left. This place that Carl Hauge lived on is the place that Cooper Brothers built the sawmill on.

Bob Zybach: Oh, Cooper Brothers?

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Bob Zybach: Where the road is now, was that road in at Tampico at that time? Was there a road up over the hill?

Donald M. Dickey: You mean the Tampico Road, was it in at that time?

Bob Zybach: Yes.

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah, they improved it a lot about 1930 [1938: NV] or something.

Bob Zybach: Prior to that time could you take wagons over it?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh yeah, you could take cars over it.

Neil Vanderburg: in the summertime.

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, I suspect in the winter too. Summer would have been a better bet.

Bob Zybach: What can you remember about Joe Smith?

Donald M. Dickey: Joe Smith? Joe was a hard worker, and so was his son John. And Joe had a hankering to win himself a little bit of money playing poker. So one story I remember about Joe, he won enough to buy a Hudson car one night in Corvallis. There was several of those guys around in Corvallis that got together and played poker once a week or whatever. I remember one other story about Joe, I worked in the harvest field for him two or three summers. We came in one day and it had been particularly dusty. We'd worked hard from 7:00 to noon, come in to. . . Mrs. Smith always cooked dinner for us. She was a good cook, too. So we'd washed up, Joe was the last one to wash up. He came in with a white towel and he looked at his wife, I forget her first name, and he says "See you got my picture on here [the towel]." You should have seen her. His face really was dirty!

Bob Zybach: Do you recall any stories about Greenberry Smith? Or did they ever talk about him?

Donald M. Dickey: Greenberry Smith was south of Corvallis, and I don't really know, there were stories but I don't remember any of them particularly.

Bob Zybach: Do you recall any stories about any Indians in the neighborhood?

Donald M. Dickey: There weren't any Indians when we got there.

Bob Zybach: And there's no stories about them?

Donald M. Dickey: I never heard any.

Bob Zybach: How about black people?

Donald M. Dickey: Black people?