4. WILDLIFE

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Donald M. Dickey: No black people either.

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

Donald M. Dickey: No Chinese.

Bob Zybach: So by the time you were there, there were no stories about any other groups and there was mostly sustenance farmers.

Donald M. Dickey: This was just a farm community and I don't think there was any Chinese or any black people, or any Indians around. Well, the exception old Bud Bass might have been part Indian, but I would not say yes.

Bob Zybach: Now, when your family moved there, had they started doing any mill work by that time, was anybody logging in that neighborhood?

Donald M. Dickey: They started in the next year building sawmills.

Bob Zybach: So there weren't any sawmills at the first?

Donald M. Dickey: The first was 1929 or '30 I think. Then along about '35 Bennett Brothers built a sawmill up there.

Bob Zybach: So the first mill that caine in, who built that?

Donald M. Dickey: I think Cooper Brothers built the first one, and Coote and Cornutt right away afterwards.

Bob Zybach: On the Cooper Brothers, did they live in the neighborhood?

Donald M. Dickey: They lived out at Airlie.

Bob Zybach: And where did they build their mill at?

Donald M. Dickey: Up on Carl Hauge's place, just west of our place, about 3/4 of a mile up in the woods west of where Carl Hauge lived.

Bob Zybach: Okay. What kind of mill was that?

Donald M. Dickey: It was a little second growth mill. They sawed ties and stuff like that.

4. WILDLIFE

Bob Zybach: Do you recall any old growth timber in the neighborhood?

Donald M. Dickey: The old growth timber was too big for those little mills. There wasn't enough old growth timber to shake your fist at anyway. The only stuff that might have been called old growth was this patch that I mentioned that belonged to Silver Falls

Donald M. Dickey: Logging Co. And some of it might have been considered old growth, although my dad referred to it as bastard growth.

Bob Zybach: Bastard growth. Do you remember any difference between yellow fir and red fir?

Donald M. Dickey: Up there, I don't, I heard of yellow fir and red fir both, but it was all just Doug fir.

Bob Zybach: Can you recall anybody call the larger trees "grandfather trees?"

Donald M. Dickey: Say it again?

Bob Zybach: Can you recall them being called "grandfather trees," the larger trees?

Donald M. Dickey: Grandfather trees? No, there wasn't, oh, maybe 40 or 50 of those big old growth trees out by the creek anyway. A fellow from Silverton cut them for 16" wood for Sam Yates from Salem. That's all the old growth. I do recall though that there were three kinds of owls there. There was a screech owl, and an old hoot owl or a horned owl. Then there was the one in between. I always thought the one in between was another screech owl, and I looked him up recently. It undoubtedly was a spotted owl. And it lived out in the second growth timber, oak, and maple, and second growth fir. And I never did see one in the old growth fir. Seen a coon or two parked up the old growth fir. No spotted owls. So I have a big question or two about spotted owls in my mind.

Bob Zybach: Seeing as how your background is in Fish and Wildlife, and you've identified this owl, in second growth in that area, can you recall how common they were?

Donald M. Dickey: The owls?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, we'd see them every few nights in the summertime. Not so often in the wintertime.

Bob Zybach: I wanted to ask you some questions about the fish and wildlife in the area, this might be a good time and then we can go back to the families. Can you recall beaver in the neighborhood?

Donald M. Dickey: No beaver on Berry Creek, there might have been on Soap Creek, but I don't know. No beaver on Berry Creek.

Bob Zybach: How about bears?

Donald M. Dickey: Bears? I mentioned a prune orchard back in one of those homesteads? We went back there deer hunting one fall and an old bear had been back there feasting on prunes. But I never did see one.

Bob Zybach: So the bears weren't real common?

Donald M. Dickey: No they weren't real common.

Bob Zybach: On the prune orchard, do you know when that was planted or who planted it?

Donald M. Dickey: No, I don't, if I could remember the name of the homestead it might be right, but my guess was the trees were 10-15 years old when we moved up there. That's purely a guess, but I think it'd be pretty close.

Bob Zybach: Were there any stories about Mennonites in the area?

Donald M. Dickey: The Kilmers were Mennonites.

Bob Zybach: Oh the Kilmers were? Okay, can you tell me anything about the Kilmer family?

Donald M. Dickey: Well, Kilmers, one bunch of them lived back there where Hanish bought that 40 acres, another bunch lived out there at the old Joe Smith place, then there was a house or two across the road on the south side of Berry Creek, which probably belonged to Kilmers. But I'm not sure.

Bob Zybach: Were there Kilmers still living there when your family moved there?

Donald M. Dickey: No, they were gone. Well, with one exception. One of the Kilmers worked for Joe Smith, and he lived out there on Joe's place in a little tenant house, a real nice

Donald M. Dickey: fellow.

Bob Zybach: Why did the Kilmers move?

Donald M. Dickey: No idea.

Bob Zybach: You were saying that the graveyard next to your house was a Kilmer graveyard?

Donald M. Dickey: It wasn't next to our house, it was out on the Smith place next to the road. And I don't know, I suppose there was what half a dozen or a dozen graves, Neil?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, probably nine or ten.

Donald M. Dickey: I never did count them. But part of those were Kilmers I think.

Neil Vanderburg: There's a couple of babies buried there.

Donald M. Dickey: I don't remember specifics because I wasn't particularly interested in cemeteries then. I have to be now because my wife does genealogy.

Bob Zybach: But at that time was that the only cemetery in the neighborhood?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Now, the school that your wife taught at. Was that called the Berry Creek School?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Did you ever hear it called the Savage Creek School?

Donald M. Dickey: Well, that would have been earlier. I don't think. . . they called it Berry Creek after we were up there.

Bob Zybach: We were kind of going over the Kilmer's prune orchard. But we were going over some of the fish and wildlife. Can you remember geese and ducks through that area?

Donald M. Dickey: It wasn't Kilmer's prune orchard.

Bob Zybach: Oh okay, let's back up to that then.

Donald M. Dickey: No there wasn't. . . you know, occasionally a goose or duck flew over, geese flew over in the spring and the fall, oh some of the other birds migrated south and north in the fall and spring. I remember the first time I ever saw a buzzard migration, along about the first of October. I looked up in the sky to the north. Here come a buzzard. Here come another buzzard. Here come another buzzard, and I'll bet those buzzards flew over there for two hours, one at a time.

Bob Zybach: Other than the migrating birds, you said there were pheasant in the neighborhood?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah, there was pheasants. Most of the pheasants were down further east, down on Joe Smith's place and Neil's place and down in there. There were pheasants and valley quail and bob white quail. And then also up in our part there was ruffed grouse, and there was some ruffed grouse down in Joe Smith's place down in the swamp down there.

Bob Zybach: Joe Smith had kind of a lake next to his place didn't he?

Donald M. Dickey: Not when we were there. I notice there's one there now.

Bob Zybach: It was a swamp?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Did it have a name to it?

Donald M. Dickey: No, just a swamp. It was a good place to run jackrabbits.

Bob Zybach: The field, you had gophers, jackrabbits, four or five types of birds. Did that snow in 1937 affect any of those animal populations?

Donald M. Dickey: I don't think so.