11. Coffin Butte Fires

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: and it was different on the other side of the Butte, was all barley beard.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] I think that was, there was grass on the hill and some of that area was a little more rocky and the grass didn't grow on it. I think is what that is.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Didn't you at one time plant Sudan grass up there? I thought you did.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] No Sudan grass there.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Where did you plant some Sudan grass?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Sudan grass wouldn't grow up there. It's a different kind.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] I thought one time you guys planted something up there. But the Coffin Butte was all barley beard.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] That's like a foxtail grass.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Got between your toes, and the dogs' toes used to fester up. And the socks. Gosh, it got into everything.

11. Coffin Butte Fires

Bob Zybach: Was that a native grass?

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] That's native, and it grew. . . and I remember Leighton and Bud set it on fire one time when it was dry. Do you remember that? You guys had to fight it. Man, that field burned twice that I seen. Just the grass, it didn't get into the trees. Man, when that's lit it just zipped up there through that dry foxtail. I mean it just went 90 miles an hour, didn't it. Just poof and it's gone.

Bob Zybach: I'm really interested in that. How did the fires get started?

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Well, Bud and Leighton was wanting to see if it'd burn! And they had been smoking a little, they was just little. Gosh, Bud must have been about 7 or 8 years old. Real young. And they was, Bud was walking, going home with Leighton. And they decided to stop and have a cigarette and then they decided to see if that grass would burn, and WOOF. And they all run to somewhere and hid and Les Davis and Uncle Oswald and all them come to fight fire. It burned quite an area that time. But one time the whole thing burned, I don't know how that started.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] I think . . . it seems like it burned off three or four times altogether.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Well, I can remember twice.

Bob Zybach: So it was still burning even in fairly recent times. Do you remember it burning after World

Bob Zybach: War 11?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] No, I don't.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] No, because we didn't live out there. It might have, all right.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Yes, it's possible.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Because before it did, I know.

Bob Zybach: How fast did it burn?

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Oh, I don't know, but it burns fast. It just seems like you light it and it's all.. . well, it's just dry and dead. And once it gets about that high it just waves in the wind.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Generally gets lit down at the bottom and its uphill and naturally burns faster uphill than it would downhill or on a level.

Bob Zybach: But not hot enough to catch the trees on fire?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Well, it didn't get up into the trees.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] No, well there wasn't so much barley beard right up on top that'd got in. And they could stop it up there with gunny sacks. That's all they ever fought it with was gunny sacks and water buckets. And that's all anybody had. They didn't have any fire equipment. They'd sure beat them in, I know you swing them sacks.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Five gallon bucket with water in it. And put your gunny sacks in and soak them and start swatting, and then soak it again and swat some more.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] But we used to ride down. . . the tobaggon or sled would go as fast or faster on that stuff than it did the snow. Ask Babe Studack, he got his mouth full of barley beards and it darned near killed him. He had his mouth open. They're kind of like. . . well when they get in you know they don't want to, they want to go on through, you can't pull them back out.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Do you know what foxtail grass is?

Bob Zybach: No, but I think I know what barley beard is.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] It's got a point where the seed is and then the beards go out like this all the way around. And the whole thing is probably not wider than my little fingernail. With a point. It only goes one way, it gets in your clothes it only goes one way in. But you can't back it out. You've got to pull it clear through. Gets up your nose there's no way you can get it out of your nose, hardly, other than fishing it out with

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: something.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Yeah, and we used to pull it out of the dogs' feet. Dogs' feet used to get it terrible. Their feet would swell up like that.

Bob Zybach: So you'd ride the toboggans down?

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Yeah, we used to, Bud and I did with Leighton and Babe Studack and other kids. Boy you'd just go like a.

Bob Zybach: Would you do it all the time or just every so often?

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Oh, now and then but we had to learn to keep our mouth shut, because when them things flew in you couldn't get them out, hardly.

Bob Zybach: After the fires burned, do you remember how the grasses came in after that?

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Well as soon as it rained I imagine it just turned green again. The hill was just beautiful in the spring. When the barley beards was green and starting to grow, but as summer come they died, made seeds and died.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] It's an annual grass. So then there's seed in the ground from before that didn't sprout, and well even some of the burnt seed that didn't get too hot. Seed part would drop down and the first rains would sprout it and it would become green again.

Bob Zybach: Was there any taiweed or anything up on there?

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Oh, yeah.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Later years not so much, but I can remember earlier years, especially Baldy, with that white face, and cows and everything would come in there, the whole face, lower part of their face would be all tarry, sticky, and nasty.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Sticky, geez.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] All this gooey stuff. But I don't know what happened to the tarweed. Whether it got a disease or something. But it was awful bad. Way back. But as the years. . . by the time we left Camp Adair, I don't think we ever saw it anymore.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Not much anymore. Oh, I remember our pant legs just get covered with them seeds.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] It was a problem with grass hay, too. A lot of tarweed in the grass hay.

Bob Zybach: But it just kind of disappeared over time.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Yeah. Whether it got a disease or what I don't know.

Bob Zybach: How about in the flats. Did you ever notice, say around the water or any of the flats,

Bob Zybach: Canuzs?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Yes, when we lived out at Camp Adair I didn't know what it was. But since we moved over here, in the river bottom there's some back water down in there and a friend told us that that was Camas and that the Indians used to use Camas for food.

Bob Zybach: So you recognized it from earlier. Was it a familiar plant, like one that you can remember from the family farm?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] We didn't have any on our farm, no camas.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] All we had was rose bushes. Lot of little rose bushes. They used to eat them rose hips, the Indians did. I always heard, wild roses.

Bob Zybach: How about wild onions?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Oh yeah, we had quite a few wild onions in one field, next to Beals. There in that southwest corner. Yes. And you could sure tell it in the milk, we didn't dare turn the milk cows in that field because they'd eat the garlic and you could taste the garlic in the milk.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember any of the wildflowers up on Coffin Butte, Willie?

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Oh I remember I went up years and years ago when Studacks come out, every Easter, man the dogwood and the ladyslippers. We went down there and picked them ladyslippers all the time. They just grew in one area, where there was a few fir. There just wasn't many fir trees on Coffin Butte. And they grew under the fir trees. And that was our big thing Easter Sunday was to have an easter egg hunt. Mom had the Studacks for dinner. Well, see they didn't have a car, we had to bring them out and take them back. That seemed like a long ways to Corvallis in them days. And Mom would have a big dinner and we'd have an easter egg hunt and then head up the hill. Ladyslippers and johnny jump-ups, and lamb tongues, and then bird bills, and then cat ears. Remember the cat ears?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Yeah, they were a little later, usually.

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] Yeah, they was later. There was several kinds. And violets, we used to call them violets.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: [JAKE] Johnny jump-ups?

Wilma "Willie" Rohner: [WILMA] No, they was little blue. They had just little dinky blue flowers on there. Not violets. Spring beauties, we called them spring beauties.