5. FARMING AND MILLING

Bob Zybach: It didn't seem to have had an impact? How about the deer?

Donald M. Dickey: Well the deer were up in the woods. There weren't too many deer then, like there were later. I don't think the deer had any trouble, I mean there was plenty of feed up there and not that many deer.

Bob Zybach: Can you recall any elk in the neighborhood?

Donald M. Dickey: No I don't think there were any elk. There were coyotes and bobcats occasionally.

Bob Zybach: How about a cougar? Did you ever recall a cougar?

Donald M. Dickey: Well this fellow from Salem that was cutting the wood from old growth into 16" or four-foot cord wood for Sam Yates was up there in the snow one winter, and he found a cat track that was about so big, that he figured was a cougar, and I think that he found it and he had trailed it one night when he had been down to our place. In fact, he was a little nervous about it. But that's the only time I remember cougar. There were bobcats in there, they killed some of our neighbor's sheep. Cougar probably, I mean likely. Bear occasionally through there. Mainly those were pretty scarce. They had hounds in there. A fellow by the name of Wilson lived over by Airlie had sheep and he had hounds and he ran bear and cougar and that sort of stuff, to protect his sheep. Not so much over there, but he ran sheep over, east of Kings Valley, and I think he ran bear over there with his dogs to protect the sheep.

5. FARMING AND MILLING

Bob Zybach: Did your family have sheep?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, we had a dozen or so.

Bob Zybach: What other kinds of animals did you raise?

Donald M. Dickey: We had goats for a while to get rid of poison oak and brush. Otherwise we had 10 or 12 head of cattle.

Bob Zybach: Did you have a orchard?

Donald M. Dickey: A team. Two horses.

Bob Zybach: Orchards?

Donald M. Dickey: Orchards? We had four acres of prunes and about an acre of apples.

Bob Zybach: Did you plant the prunes yourselves?

Donald M. Dickey: No they were there when we got there.

Bob Zybach: Do you know who put those orchards in?

Donald M. Dickey: No I don't know.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember who you bought your place from?

Donald M. Dickey: Do I remember who we bought the place from? Bass. But he was too lazy to put in an orchard.

Bob Zybach: So it was somebody before him maybe.

Donald M. Dickey: It had to be.

Bob Zybach: When did. . . Okay, the Coopers put a mill in about 1930.

Donald M. Dickey: Well, '29 or '30.

Bob Zybach: Okay, what time did Coote move into the neighborhood?

Donald M. Dickey: About the same time. I may be off a year, but I think they both had them in about 1930.

Bob Zybach: Then, when Coote put his first mill in, with a pond?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah, he had a little pond in Savage Creek, and then his second mill he built up on the side of the hill around to the left. And he didn't have a pond there. Or I don't think he did, did he Neil?

Neil Vanderburg: Is that the one he had the flume on? That he brought the logs down the side of the hill?

Donald M. Dickey: I don't think so. I worked up there one summer. I don't remember any flume.

Neil Vanderburg: Well there was a flume came down into Savage Creek there up around the corner from the mill that was still there when I got there. 1935.

Donald M. Dickey: I don't know. I don't remember that.

Neil Vanderburg: They used to pull logs up with teams of horses and then roll it onto the flume and slide it down into the. . . I thought there was a pond in there.

Donald M. Dickey: Well, there was a pond down at Coote's first mill. He might have had a flume I don't remember.

Neil Vanderburg: I think that's where it was, that first mill. I climbed up that flume. Steep.

Donald M. Dickey: I remember my dad logging down that steep hill there. He'd get started down the hill and he'd throw the line and holler "Giyyap!" Those teams Got, too.

Bob Zybach: Was that your dad's horses, that he logged with?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah. Well he farmed with them and logged with them. The best team I ever saw.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember their names?

Donald M. Dickey: Cap and Bill.

Bob Zybach: Cap and Bill, huh. What kind of horses were they?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, work horses I guess. I don't remember what, which was which. Bill, old Bill was a bay horse, white feet, and Cap was a brown horse. Dad said they were a willing team. Cap was willing to do all the work, and Bill was willing to let him. But they'd. . . I remember one day we was trying to clear a log out of Berry Creek down there so that it wouldn't block things up and got it twisted around, and it wasn't coming out, and they both got mad, and boy that lo flew out of there. It wasn't a very big log either. When they decided to move something it moved.

Maxine Dickey: Is that the same team you had when I was there?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah.

Maxine Dickey: Okay. I got a picture of that. While I was putting hay or something in the barn or something after his father'd had his stroke just about the time we got married.

Donald M. Dickey: We were driving the team with a hay fork.

Maxine Dickey: Yeah.

Neil Vanderburg: That's the same team you drove on the bundle wagon isn't it?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, I remember that team.

Bob Zybach: How old were you when you first moved to Berry Creek?

Donald M. Dickey: How old were the horses?

Bob Zybach: How old were you?

Donald M. Dickey: 14.

Bob Zybach: What did you do for fun in your time off?

Donald M. Dickey: We didn't have much time off. Hoed the garden, fished occasionally, hunted a little. Mostly you worked.

Bob Zybach: Did you do any reading or play cards?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh yeah, we played cards in the wintertime. We played pinochle and I don't know two or three other games, my brothers and my dad and I and . .

Maxine Dickey: You were always visiting with the Hauges.

Donald M. Dickey: Well, we visited with the Hauges quite a bit. He was always, they always had some interesting stories to tell.

Bob Zybach: The Hauges? Can you recall any of those stories?

Maxine Dickey: We must still have those letters he used to write us from up in Alaska.

Donald M. Dickey: Well, I remember one of them, they's telling about this one family member that had a big dinner, well she ate and ate and ate. I don't remember the rest of the story. You'd sit there and laugh till you thought you was gonna bust

Donald M. Dickey: No, I don't. . . I was gone by that time, going to college.

Neil Vanderburg: We've been trying to figure out where they lived. There was a dairy down there north of you. You turned in just before the Y at Airlie and then came back towards Airlie. Do you know who had that? We hauled some hay in there one time.

Donald M. Dickey: Are you talking about the place beyond the Brinkley place?

Neil Vanderburg: I think probably so.

Donald M. Dickey: Goodwin's owned the property and I can't remember who else owned that now. Then there was, oh, what was Kenneth Dodson's granddad's name?

Maxine Dickey: Dodson, I suppose

Donald M. Dickey: No, it wasn't Dodson. Anyway, he was a little short old guy about 80 years old.

Maxine Dickey: Abercrombie?

Donald M. Dickey: No, Abercrombies lived back there . . . Cox, Cox, old man Cox they called him.

Bob Zybach: Cox? Where did he live?

Donald M. Dickey: He lived north of our place. His place would have been in Polk County. At least most of it. And he was quite an old character. And then there was a place that belonged to Green that was up north and west from Hauge's place. And I think part of that may have been in Benton County.

Bob Zybach: So the. Hauges lived to the northwest, lets see, to the north and west of your property. That would have been off Staats Creek?

Donald M. Dickey: Mostly west.

Bob Zybach: Okay. So the west ones were up kind of towards the hills up in there.

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Were there quite a few families that lived in that area?