I. Mackey Orchard

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: migrated south yet, but pretty soon we'll be hearing them.

I. Mackey Orchard

Bob Zybach: These filberts that are through here, were those here back in those days?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yes, they. . . no, that . . . well yes, yes, they were planted by the Armstrongs. That later bought the Mackey place. And I see there is a house back down in there now. I didn't know it was there. Now the Armstrongs, or the Mackeys built a house right in here.

Bob Zybach: Okay, is that an old walnut tree there?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yeah, that's a walnut tree, yeah.

Bob Zybach: So these apples here, are those just seedlings along the fence row?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: I think possibly they're seedlings, yes.

Bob Zybach: So is that remnants of an old orchard back there off to the left there?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Would that be the Mackey orchard or the Annstrong orchard?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Well, the Mackey's probably, those. And the house was right in here somewhere.

Bob Zybach: But the Mackeys built that house. There wasn't any house before then?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: No, they bought the bare land. Just like the Studacks and my father, the 41 acres, it was all bare land. See they, cause Ed evidently could use a little more money of something, why he'd sell a piece of ground. And the Mackeys owned this knoll here on the other side also. Then of course when Camp Adair came in Wiles still owned this hill here and this side here and that side down through that east-west road down there just the other side of those trees.

Bob Zybach: Okay, that east-west road. I'm not familiar with that. Is that the one that goes out to Suver Junction, and out to Berry Creek? Does it have a name?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: No, it don't have a name that I can remember.

Bob Zybach: Who had the land on the other side of the road?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: On the other side of the road? Walter Wiles.

Bob Zybach: Okay, so it'd be Walter Wiles, and then.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yeah, Walter Wiles had this, and all that was on the other side of the road. It went back up this way a little ways. Probably as far as the Ed Wiles place went. And of

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: course this road, Camp Adair built this road in through there.

Bob Zybach: So the road along what would be the northeast face of Coffin Butte was built by Camp Adair.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: That was built by Camp Adair, yes. They had some, I think some pistol ranges and things along in here.

Bob Zybach: What did the neighbors think about Adair moving in and moving evetybody out?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Well, they didn't like it. Most of them didn't like it very well. Most of them were old timers and still original inherited, donation. . . or parts of donation land claims you see. And I know we hated terribly to move. And of course we were newcomers more or less to the area. And we had just gotten the place fixed up to the way father wanted it, except for the house. That was the next year's project, was to build a new house. We had a new barn in 1937 and in 1941 we built the new barn and had it almost done except for the siding on two sides. And when they took over, so we hated terribly to leave the place.

Bob Zybach: ***

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: you don't have to take it, but you can take it to court. But it will be in the courts for maybe two or three years, until it gets settled. Well, in our case and in a lot of other cases, they couldn't stand that you see, because they had to have a place to go to because of the cattle and one thing and another. But what they failed to tell us was that, later on we found this out, that they paid you a lot of the money anyway, right to start with, and if you won in court you got more money. And if you didn't win why it would cost you the court cost, but you'd get the rest of the money. And that they failed to tell you, they said well, you just won't get any money. See, there was kind of crookedness on the part of them.

Bob Zybach: Were the people that were negotiating for the government, were those like real estate dealers, or were they hired by the Army?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: I really don't know. I know I sure I didn't like that one man that was negotiating with us. He was kind of a bully. He said, "Well, it's too damn bad. You'll just have to take it to court, and maybe it'll be a couple years till it gets settled."

Bob Zybach: Was he the same one that negotiated with the other families here?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: That I don't know, but he negotiated with a lot of them right at first because it was real urgent that they get started on it, so all that was in the building area they

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: negotiated with right away, you see. But those outside, they had more time to think about it and. Well, Beals was one of them took them to court, and I know several others did fmally. Well, they could afford it you see, they had money. In the case of Beals, they had another farm to go to in Linn County. So they weren't put out all that much if they had to wait. But they had won a larger settlement. And we could have too, if they had told us that we get most of the money down anyway and we just have to wait on the rest of it.

Bob Zybach: So that one guy that caine in, was he from Oregon or did they send him out

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: from

Bob Zybach: Washington, DC?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: I have no idea where he was from.

Bob Zybach: Pretty pushy.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Pretty pushy, yeah, big husky bully sort of a guy.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember his name?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: No. I wish I would have kept it.

Bob Zybach: Now, you said that a lot of the Donation Land Claim people had been here since the beginning, and then you said you were the newcomer, you'd only been here for 20 or 30 years. Was there kind of, in the neighborhood, was there kind of a dj(ference between the Wiles, and maybe the Glenders and Marcks who'd been here a little bit longer, and Schulmericics and Rohners, all those people, were they kind of stratified by how long they'd been here?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: I don't believe so. Didn't have that feeling, anyway.

Bob Zybach: It was all just community pretty much?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Community, pretty much. And, well, World War I they were a little bit more bitter about the German speaking people. And I don't blame them. Because that was World War I.

Bob Zybach: Did they d{fferenticue between you Swiss and the Germans?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Well, most of them did, most of them did I'm sure. And we certainly didn't speak German. Our native language amongst other people that were English speaking. And of course our German, well my father and mother, they could talk the regular high German, but all of us kids why we knew only the dialect, which was German, but the regular German could hardly understand.

Bob Zybach: Could your parents speak English?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Well, my father could fairly well because he spent about 5 years in Kansas My mother came fresh from Switzerland. And at home we always talked in the Swiss dialect, which I'm glad we did because it's stayed with me better in later years.

Bob Zybach: You said when you started school you couldn't speak any English.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: No, just once in a while a word that I'd picked up from a hired man. I heard some wood cutters, and picked up words here and there.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember what kind of words those were?

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

Bob Zybach: Now you said right around World War I, there was problems with people speaking Gennan speaking dialects, and you were starting school, and you had to have a German speaking dialect -- did you have any problems?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: No, not that I remember in school.

Bob Zybach: Now, in World War ii, all the neighbors were being forced to move. Were you all kind of in a group together, feel equally put upon, or did dWerem neighbors kind of react different to it?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yes, there was neighbors that acted different. Some of them, well it was a good chance to sell the farm. Others of course were old timers, they dreaded the move. I was really an old timer, because even though I'm Swiss I was born here, and I can't remember any other home, except our farm. I don't even remember the Writsman place as far as memories except what my parents talked about.

Bob Zybach: So your whole life you'd been here, from the day you were born?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yeah, my whole life had been here, really. And I was born here. Switzerland is a beautiful country, but there is a lot more opportunity here, back in the earlier days anyway.

Bob Zybach: i'm curious, this is kind of a little bit off the topic, but you were born here and now we're doing a history here. Do you think that's generally a good idea?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Well, I imagine it is.

Bob Zybach: I know you are being real cooperative. But I don't know f you are cooperating just to kind of be nice to me or you think it's an important thing that we understand these situations.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Well, I think it's important that we understand this.

Bob Zybach: What kind of use can you see being made of a history like this?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: I really don't know.

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Came to my mind just minutes ago sitting there, that I believe I have seen more deer since we've lived where we are now, than I have all the time I was near Camp Adair. We had quite a few deer in the river bottoms, and I see deer quite often, where here we rarely ever saw a deer cross our farm.

Bob Zybach: Would you think in terms of hunting it f you did see it?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: What?

Bob Zybach: Would you think in terms of going and shooting a deer f it'd cross your farm?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: No, I've never been a hunter.

Bob Zybach: How about fishing through here. Did you ever fish on Soap Creek?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yes, mostly crawdad catching.

Bob Zybach: Okay. How about swimming. Did you have a swimming hole through here?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yeah. Well, I never did really learn how to swim, and there weren't very many swimming holes here on Soap Creek, but we did lots of wading around Soap Creek.

Bob Zybach: How about, were there a lot ofpheasants in this area?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Yeah, there were a lot of pheasants. Dad used to raise corn for the hogs, ear corn, and there were a lot of pheasants in the corn field in the late fall. And he'd go out, and corn wouldn't keep on the cob very good in this part of the country. Now they can dry it, but in those days it didn't keep good, so he'd leave it on the stalk and go out in the sled in the winter time and pick a bunch for a week or so supply and feed the hogs.

Bob Zybach: Were there wild game birds and grouse?

John Jacob "Jake" Rohner: Oh yes, there were grouse. On Coffin Butte, Beals Hill, there were grouse. One day I got in the dog house with mom, I don't remember what I did. So I went up on Beals Hill and I scared up a grouse. And it took off and hit the woven wire fence and knocked itself cuckoo. So I went up and grabbed him and wrung his neck, brought him home, so I was OK then, I got out of the dog house. Yeah, we used to hunt gray squirrels. I said I'm not much of a hunter, when I was a kid I did. Well, let's stop here for a minute, I want to look at something. You can shut that off if you