6. AIRLIE NEIGHBORS

Donald M. Dickey: Just Greens and Hauges is all I remember.

Bob Zybach: Greens and Hauges? How about the Chaffens?

Donald M. Dickey: Chaffens? They lived up on the Savage [at the head of it. NV], or close to Savage Creek.

Bob Zybach: What did those families do for a living?

Donald M. Dickey: Greens raised livestock. And Carl Hauge raised livestock. And I don't know what Chaffen did for a living. I guess he milked a few cows and took out some cream or something to sell occasionally.

Bob Zybach: But there was no logging up in that area prior to the.

Donald M. Dickey: Not from his place anyway.

Bob Zybach: So there is basically just those three families to the west of you then.

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah.

6. AIRLIE NEIGHBORS

Bob Zybach: Then how about to the north, towards, what did you say, Staats or Stotts Creek?

Donald M. Dickey: North of us would be in Polk County.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Part of that is the School Forest now, and so, I'm interested in from your place most of the way to Airlie.

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah, well, there was a fellow by the name of Doc Williams that owned a place up there, and the next one was Ace Staats, and the next one was a fellow by the name Moore. And then there was young Bill Williams and old Uncle Bill Williams. Old Uncle Bill weighed about 400 pounds I think. He had a little old pool hall down at Airlie.

Bob Zybach: He had a pool hall in Airlie?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah. He'd let us kids go down and play pool at noon, now and then anyway. He was quite an old character. He'd lived there for a long time. I remember one day we was down there and he was talking about a deer had came down. He says, "Forgot to go back."

Bob Zybach: The deer forgot to go back! [Laughs] Would. . . when you said that you did things for fun it was mostly hunting and fishing or visiting with the neighbors, that was during prohibition. Was there any dancing or drinking or anything of that sort happening?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, nothing unusual. Anyway, I don't think. . . they didn't have a problem like they had up around Yamhill and like they was taking stuff into Portland. There probably was a little hooch made. A little hooch drank. No big problem though.

Bob Zybach: Where would. . . was there ever dancing in the neighborhood? Would they have dances or picnics?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh yeah, they had a high school gym [Airlie] and some other buildings. And they had dances, and they had picnics in the summertime, played a little baseball, stuff like that, that you did out in the country when you didn't have anything else to do. Couldn't afford to run around in cars very much.

Bob Zybach: Would you ever go to Sulphur Springs?

Donald M. Dickey: I never was at Sulphur Springs.

Bob Zybach: Never? How about Tampico. Would you ever go over to Tampico to visit, or.

Donald M. Dickey: Well, Tampico was just a schoolhouse. Oh, yeah, we would visit some people over there. I don't remember their names now.

Bob Zybach: How about the, did you know the Glenders? Or the Marcks? Or the Wiles?

Donald M. Dickey: The Wiles had a pretty good sized place. Didn't know them. The Glenders and what was the other name?

Bob Zybach: Goviers? Dobrinins?

Donald M. Dickey: No.

Bob Zybach: Browns?

Neil Vanderburg: How about Stanbaugh? Did you know them?

Donald M. Dickey: Are you talking about the Browns that owned the Forest Hill [Forest Peak]?

Bob Zybach: Yeah, I think so. I think it would be the same.

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah, well we used to see them occasionally and visit with him out on the range or someplace. He eventually moved, sold out and moved down by Corvallis, I think.

Maxine Dickey: You never have discussed that place that was. . . well, when I was teaching school there, the Whites. Now what place was that?

Neil Vanderburg: The Cornutts lived there when I first moved here.

Maxine Dickey: Is that the old Cornutt place?

Donald M. Dickey: Way out where Cornutts lived. Forest Tandy lived down the creek. Forest kept a few cows along. He and I hunted and fished together quite a bit.

Bob Zybach: What kind offish would you catch?

Donald M. Dickey: Cutthroats. All the creeks there.

Bob Zybach: Was it all cutthroats?

Donald M. Dickey: That's all I ever saw.

Bob Zybach: So you don't ever recall seeing any rainbow in there.

Donald M. Dickey: No. Oh, they were strictly native, they weren't planted. And they were darned good eating fish too.

Bob Zybach: How big would they get?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, you'd catch them 7-8 inches up to a foot long. Mostly 10 or 11 inches is as big as they got. An 11" cutthroat and three or four of them makes you a pretty good meal.

Bob Zybach: How many could you catch in a day?

Donald M. Dickey: Well, the limit was 30 when we went up there. I never caught more than 22. I probably could have come up with 30 if I'd have kept fishing. We were kind of conservationists, it went through our place, we'd go down and catch enough for a mess to eat. Maybe a few days later we'd catch another mess. We weren't trying to harvest all of them. And another thing about fish in them days, if you went down there and somebody that you didn't know would come along fishing, and you got up to him and visited with him a little and left him four or five holes to fish in and went on and fished down below. It's not that way these days.

Bob Zybach: Would you fish in any creeks besides Berry Creek?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, I used to fish Soap Creek once in a while. Soap Creek was a little bit harder to fish, but it had bigger fish in it. If you got 'em to bite we had some nice fish.

Bob Zybach: How about Staats or Savage Creek?

Donald M. Dickey: Savage Creek I never was able to catch many fish out of.

Neil Vanderburg: There was always the story about that great big fish that you had in the pond there behind your dam that you irrigated out of

Donald M. Dickey: Behind our dam?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah in that little pond that you had that you irrigated out of

Donald M. Dickey: For irrigation? Oh, we used to catch a few.

Neil Vanderburg: There was always a story about a great big one in there that nobody could catch.

Donald M. Dickey: I don't remember who told that. We used to catch three or four that was a foot long out of there later in the summer.

Bob Zybach: When you went to school, was that nine months a year?

Donald M. Dickey: I think it was 8 months and a half, wasn't it?

Bob Zybach: And then you went to grade school right there at the Berry Creek School?

Donald M. Dickey: The end of the 7th grade and the 8th grade. Then I went to Airlie to high school.

Bob Zybach: So the local high school was at Airlie then.

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: And then, do you know how long that high school had been at Airlie?

Donald M. Dickey: A long time, but I don't know how long.

Bob Zybach: Was that the main town for the Berry Creek community?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: And you had...

Maxine Dickey: I taught school there, too. After I left Berry Creek. Yes, I taught there for two years. I was teaching there when we got back.

Donald M. Dickey: Post Office was at Suver to start with.

Bob Zybach: The Post Office was at Suver? And then, the pool hall and the high school were at Airlie.

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah. And there was a little country store down there that belonged to Johnny Weinert.

Bob Zybach: Weinert had the store at Airlie?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah. Post Office was in it.

Bob Zybach: So they did move the Post Office from Suver to Airlie.

Donald M. Dickey: No, there was a post office at Airlie and one at Suver. The one at Suver, though, was where they carried the mail from to deliver to your box. Then they moved it to Monmouth later.

Bob Zybach: What other businesses were there at Airlie?

Donald M. Dickey: That's all the business I recall in particular. Over at Lewisburg . . . which is that Lewisville or Lewisburg over . . .? Levisville, I guess over by the Luckiamute River? There was a blacksmith's shop over there. Oh, I said there wasn't anything else. Johnny Weinert sold gas. And they sold gas over at Lewisville.

Bob Zybach: Now, Weinert ended up with Coote's, what, third mill?

Donald M. Dickey: Weinert took over Coote's second mill when Coote and Cornutt got so badly in debt. All they had to do was to take over, I guess.

Bob Zybach: So when did Coote form a partnership with Cornutt?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, that would have been 1929 or sometime like that.

Bob Zybach: Oh, right from the very start.

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah. They were brother-in-laws.

Bob Zybach: Who did the logging '

Donald M. Dickey: You mean out in the woods?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, a fellow by the name of Burbank. My dad. And Forest Tandy. And, I don't know, maybe somebody else, but they were the main ones that I can remember.

Bob Zybach: So, Tandy, and Dickey, and who was the other person?

Donald M. Dickey: Burbank.

Bob Zybach: Burbank? Those were all local people, so the local fai.t were logging for the mill?

Donald M. Dickey: Well, Burbank wasn't a local farmer, he was a logger. There were two Burbanks, there was Pete Burbank which was the son, and I don't remember the old man's

Donald M. Dickey: d there. Yoncalla, I think. Was Yoncalla where Tandy from?

Maxine Dickey: That's where he went to I think. I don't know whether.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, he came from there and went back to Yoncalla.

Donald M. Dickey: And I think that he logged down there, but I'm not sure. He may have run sheep.

Neil Vanderburg: And Burbanks, there's a great big tribe of them over at Pedee right now and they're all descended from the Burbank he's talking about.

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah. Pete, and was Pete's brother named Chip?

Neil Vanderburg: I couldn't tell you the names of the older generation. I know the younger generation, but.

Bob Zybach: But the Burbanks came in pretty much as contract loggers, to log?

Donald M. Dickey: He just came in to log, yeah.

Neil Vanderburg: He died pretty young, didn't he the one that was logging?

Donald M. Dickey: Beg your pardon?

Neil Vanderburg: Didn't the Burbank that was logging die pretty young?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah, they had logging teams. They just logged.