12. BERRY CREEK STORIES

Donald M. Dickey: used cyanide on them. I used it another year, and they didn't have any more complaints. I don't know whether I thinned them out or whether they just give up on it. They were on the south side of Spencers Butte. Well, and interesting story on that. The first summer I was out of college this other kid and I got a job and were working on young pheasants, 6 to, no 8-12 weeks when they released they wanted to know which ones age class was surviving the best. I was posted on a little island up in the Columbia River named McGuire's Island, about the north end of Government Island. Rather nice place to work. Hank Snyder, the other guy, was stationed down here in Eugene. He worked down here on Christiansen's farm. And that Spencer Butte out there is further on the northwest corner, I guess. Anyway, Hank went down one morning and Christiansen brothers were running this rodeo and stuff, and had some of these brahma bulls and stuff in there, and they were always giving Hank a bad time about being tackled by a brahma bull or something. And Hank couldn't tell whether they were kidding him or not. And anyway, this one morning, they said to Hank "Say, are you running around in that tall grass over by the Creek, looking for dead birds and stuff'?" Hank said, "Yeah, why?" They said, "You want to be careful doing that at this time of the year, the rattlesnakes move down off of Spencers Butte." Well Hank was raised in Kansas, he hadn't seen any rattlesnakes. He thought they were pulling his leg again. And that afternoon he darned near stepped on one. And he and the boss were down on McGuire Island a day or two later and telling about it. Boss says, "You ought to see old Hank now. He steps about 4 feet high and about 4 feet long."

12. BERRY CREEK STORIES

Bob Zybach: Do you remember Bob Wilt? Or the Dobrinins?

Donald M. Dickey: How do you spell that?

Bob Zybach: W-I-L-T?

Donald M. Dickey: Whereabouts? Berry Creek, or. .

Bob Zybach: How about the Parkers? Do you remember the Parkers?

Donald M. Dickey: They lived over by the sawmill.

Bob Zybach: In one of the mill shacks there?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah. Bob Wilt, I don't remember.

Bob Zybach: What do you remember about the Parkers?

Donald M. Dickey: Well, they had a family, three or four or five kids, he was another one of these mill workers, and worked enough to make a living if he had to. And the kids had sort of a rough time. They went to school, didn't one of the Parker girls go to school to you?

Maxine Dickey: Yes, Emma Parker went to school to me and her two younger brothers. Henry, who was called Buck, and Amel, who was about 2nd grade.

Donald M. Dickey: [Unintelligible] another mill shack family that went to school there and worked when he had to, when the mill was working. He wasn't known for a huge amount of ambition.

Bob Zybach: What would the local farm families think about having mills in there and having these mill worker families in there?

Donald M. Dickey: Didn't bother them. They knew that well this was in the '30's. And everybody . . .

Donald M. Dickey: was having a rough time. Didn't make any difference whether you were a farm family or. . . even Joe Smith was having a rough time with his 1000 acres of good soil.

Bob Zybach: How about McAlpine? Where did you meet him?

Donald M. Dickey: McAlpine?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Donald M. Dickey: Les was in the same grade in high school as I was. He had been over at Airlie, and his dad got a tree fell on him up there in the woods. This is something that I wouldn't want to go in a story, but supposedly .

Bob Zybach: Should I shut this off?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: So we can say he was killed by a falling tree, though?

Donald M. Dickey: Beg your pardon?

Bob Zybach: He was killed in a logging accident. Les McAlpine.

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah, he was a logger.

Bob Zybach: How old was he?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, he was around 60 I guess, when it happened.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember a place called Kozy Nook Egg Farm? On Statts Creek?

Donald M. Dickey: Say it again?

Bob Zybach: Kozy Nook Egg Farm.

Donald M. Dickey: Cozy.

Bob Zybach: Nook. Egg Farm.

Donald M. Dickey: Farm?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Neil Vanderburg: Egg Farm.

Donald M. Dickey: Where was it supposed to be?

Bob Zybach: Well, it was down Statts Creek about 2 miles north of your place, on the west side of Statts Creek, kind of up in the hills there a little bit.

Donald M. Dickey: I don't think anybody called that Statts Creek. Do you know where Statts Creek is?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Donald M. Dickey: It's just a creek down through the brush and reeds and stuff.

Bob Zybach: Well, it would start draining off the back side of your house there. That was the kind of headwaters of it, wasn't it?

Donald M. Dickey: Well. . . yeah I suppose so. In fact, we lived up in the middle of the farm and there was a ditch. A ditch ran down through there and emptied in to what was Statt's Creek, I guess. Kozy Nook Farm -- Well, Cox's lived down there and they didn't call it Kozy Nook Farm. And it was the only ranch down there, really. I mean there was Carl Hauge's ranch, and this Green's place, but I don't think either one of them called the place Kozy Nook.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Do you remember any stories from Tampico? Any stories about what kind of community that was, or anything at all about it?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh, it was just another farm community, I don't remember any particular stories. When they closed the school at Berry Creek my brother hauled the kids from Berry Creek over to Tampico to go to school for a couple of years.

Bob Zybach: Do you recall any stories about the ghost town that used to be there?

Donald M. Dickey: I didn't even know there was a town there untill today.

Bob Zybach: Oh, okay. Do you recall any stories about any gold mines, or stolen gold, or buried gold in the Berry Creek or Soap Creek area?

Donald M. Dickey: Never heard of any.

Neil Vanderburg: If there was anything my dad would've known about it because he sure had a nose for gold.

Donald M. Dickey: I don't think anybody had enough money to bury dollar gold pieces.

Bob Zybach: I think this goes back to the gold rush in 1850's when the stages used to run through the area. Jim Hanish mentioned, and maybe you don't want this on the tape, but he mentioned something that between your families living next door there was kind of a feud between the two of them.

Donald M. Dickey: There was no feud. [Text Deleted]

***

Donald M. Dickey: He'd [Hanish] get in trouble with everybody.

Neil Vanderburg: I'll have to tell you a little bit about that. I was over at Hanish's when the Dickeys were cutting the logs for their barn, and anyway, they were over there and they'd fall a tree and they'd holler "TIMBER". And old man Hanish he says, "They ought to say 'BRUSH'." Did you ever work for Hanish?

Donald M. Dickey: Huh?

Bob Zybach: Did you ever work for Hanish?

Donald M. Dickey: I wouldn't work for him if I was starving to death.

Bob Zybach: Oh. There was three mills that we've talked about. Coote had three mills, and the Cooper brothers, and Bennett brothers. Do you recall any other mills in the neighborhood?

Donald M. Dickey: Well, in the neighborhood was Cooper's and Coote and Cornutt and Bennett Brothers.

Bob Zybach: Was that called Coote and Cornutt, is that how they called the mill?

Donald M. Dickey: Coote and Cornutt, yeah.

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Donald M. Dickey: And Coote and Cornutt and Cooper came in about the same time, and Bennett Brothers about the mid '30's. And they had just a little mill, that mostly they ran, these two brothers, mostly I think they ran by themselves with one other man.

Bob Zybach: How did they power those mills? What kind of power did they use on them?

Donald M. Dickey: Steam, I guess.

Bob Zybach: All three of them?

Neil Vanderburg: Bennett's had an Allis Chalmers motor on his.

Donald M. Dickey: Oh yeah, Bennett's probably didn't have steam. I'm not sure that.

Neil Vanderburg: I worked for Bennett Brothers.

Donald M. Dickey: Oh did you? I'm not sure that Cooper's had steam, I think that.

Neil Vanderburg: There was a lot of whistles blowing at 5.00.

Donald M. Dickey: Cornutt and Coote had steam.

Bob Zybach: What kind of person was Coote?

Donald M. Dickey: Coote?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Donald M. Dickey: Oh Bill was a nice guy. Had quite a bit of ambition, but I don't think he was the best manager in the world. But he did develop, after he got out of the mill there, he did develop a little portable mill wasn't it?

Neil Vanderburg: I lost track of Bill Coote after that.

Donald M. Dickey: Well, he moved down to California and I think he was building and selling portable mills and doing pretty good.

Bob Zybach: Ah hah. How about Cornutt?

Donald M. Dickey: I don't know what.

Neil Vanderburg: He went to a prune farm over by Monmouth?

Donald M. Dickey: Oh did he?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Donald M. Dickey: Oh. I didn't know what happened to him. He had four sons, I think. And I never

Donald M. Dickey: I lost track of them. His mother lived to be 100 years old.

Bob Zybach: Cornutt's?

Donald M. Dickey: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Wow.

Donald M. Dickey: She lived with her daughter, Thursa Coote. And back in those days, you didn't get wine unless you had something . .

Bob Zybach: Okay, we're talking about uh. .