1.. Family Homestead

Part II.

June 16, 1990 Interview

The second interview with Charlie Olson took place in his home, near Summit in Lincoln County, Oregon on June 16, 1990. We started the interview by examining two photos from his family album; a family portrait taken a little after the turn of the century, and a photo of his sister in front of the family Soap Creek homestead following a snow storm a few years before World War I.

1. Family Homestead

Bob Zybach: Whenever you are ready to go Charlie we can

Charlie Olson: Start on any of them, and I should have made a little sketch of what I should say and what I should report on but I haven't.

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Charlie Olson: There's so many things that it would take quite a lot of literature to copy it all down and read it.

Bob Zybach: Before we talk about the armistice, if you want I could make a little list and then go back to the list.

Charlie Olson: It doesn't make any difference as long this will report when, and a fellow can go on up to a certain point and take something else, another topic, and can bring it up to that point if a fellow can remember it and do it.

Bob Zybach: Yep. Well that's why I've got an index in this. So we can skip around and then we can come right back and somebody reading the index can put it together. But I do know we want to talk about the Armistice and your personal experiences and want to talk about family life and home life, how your mom did the washing, what you ate, how you put up food, djfferent times of the year, that type of thing if we could.

Charlie Olson: Well, it don't matter to me which day we start.

Bob Zybach: We looked at this picture right here. [Picture of Olson family, about 1901-1904.]

Mrs. Olson: [Mrs. Olson] Yeah, that's the family (Olson) right there.

Bob Zybach: Can I borrow these pictures and copy them at school?

Mrs. Olson: [Mrs. Olson] Well, I think so.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Is that your mom and dad?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: That's gotta be you?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: And your older brother and your sister.

Charlie Olson: That's right.

Bob Zybach: And we've got all the names on the first recording so if I can copy this and then this is your homestead there. Is that your mother in front? [Second picture of Olson homestead in snow.]

Charlie Olson: That's my sister right there. And that's the barn. This picture is correct. We have several that are not.

Bob Zybach: Do you know when this photograph was taken?

Charlie Olson: I'd have to figure a while before I could tell you that. My sister on there was probably about 16.

Bob Zybach: And she was born a year and half after you?

Charlie Olson: Before.

Bob Zybach: Oh, before you. So this would be maybe 1912?

Charlie Olson: That would be close enough.

Bob Zybach: And then the barns in the background on the lefihand side with Bakers Mountain behind it, what's that building there?

Charlie Olson: That building is not a building. You mean that white spot?

Bob Zybach: No, this building here, the large building.

Charlie Olson: That was the house.

Bob Zybach: Okay. And then this off to the side, is that a kitchen?

Charlie Olson: That's an addition. That was a porch.

Bob Zybach: Why is it enclosed like that? Was it used for storage?

Charlie Olson: That was a built-in addition later on.

Bob Zybach: So this is the home that your dad built after you were born.

Charlie Olson: I was born down here [indicates spot on picture] in a log cabin while he was building that right there.

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Charlie Olson: And that roof stays on that. That's made out of the old yellow fir. That roof was

Charlie Olson: made out of shingles that he shaved out of what they called old growth then, yellow fir. And they stayed on that house until I think after you took a picture from the air, you told me you had a picture of it. I think the roof was still on it when that picture was taken. [Referring to 1948 aerial photographs.]

Bob Zybach: Okay. So this place was built what, about 1898?

Charlie Olson: He was building that right in 1898, yes, he was building it then.

Bob Zybach: Now that pipe coming out it looks like a metal pipe. Is that a metal pipe on the roof there?

Charlie Olson: That's a stove pipe. That stove pipe came from both stoves, the heater and stoves in what we call the other room, and then the kitchen, of course, they came together, and they went out in one stove pipe. Just the stove pipe, nothing else.

Bob Zybach: What would you use for firewood?

Charlie Olson: Wood, nothing but wood.

Bob Zybach: Would you use yellow fir or would you use oak?

Charlie Olson: We used mostly willow and fir.

Bob Zybach: Why would you use willow? Just soft to cut, or.

Charlie Olson: There was no particular. We cut wood from many things. And there was no particular choice or any particular schedule on the wood that we used. We just burned wood, whatever wood we happened to get at that time. The woodshed is a little ways back of that house. It doesn't show it. It would be back here, back of Hilda's shoulder this way, a log cabin. That was put full of wood every summer, late summer, you know, fall, and used during the winter.

Bob Zybach: How many cords would it hold?

Charlie Olson: It was never measured, and it was never any uniform length. It was just whatever a fellow could cut it into and then haul it to the woodshed on the sled. And then bucksawed.

Bob Zybach: Oh I see, so once you got it to the shed then you prepared it for the stove. What's that small building off to Hilda's ?

Charlie Olson: That was, on the side there, that held our milk and cream and butter; kind of a little cold storage. The sun didn't get on that.

Bob Zybach: That looks like it would be the east side.

Charlie Olson: No.

Bob Zybach: is that the north side?

Charlie Olson: It's on the north.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Well we're seeing Bakers Mountain here which would be to the south. Oh I see, it would be kind of northeast, almost. Were you ever at the old homestead?

Mrs. Olson: [MRS. OLSON] Oh yes, all the time.

Bob Zybach: Oh. Were the parents still living there then?

Mrs. Olson: [MRS. OLSON] The father was there, and his stepmother.

Bob Zybach: How long did your father live there? When did he finally move out?

Charlie Olson: He moved out from Corvallis just about a year before I was born. He was working for the mill. Fisher's Mill. Flour.

Bob Zybach: Then how long did he stay?

Charlie Olson: Well, he moved out just a short time before I was born.

Bob Zybach: I mean, how long did he stay at this homestead then? How long did he live there?

Charlie Olson: That's a little difficult to get. We got him, we moved him out here [Summit] when he got too old. My stepmother has a little deed to the place. That she would stay with him up there until the last. And that got so hard to get to, muddy or slick. Probably three miles of nothing but dirt road and [unintelligible]. And I bought a little house for him right over here at the Y [Summit intersection between Blodgett, Eddyville and Hoskins], and moved him out here. And this stepmother had a will that if she stayed with him until the last she could have the whole thing. And when we moved him out here, she began to get scared that he would change that will. He wouldn't have done it of course. But I bought that house over here on the Y at the corner and I deeded that to her. And he didn't think I should, he thought I should have deeded it to myself, but I deeded it to her and told him that the reason was that if he had an automobile accident, he was still driving, that he wouldn't lose his home. And that seemed to satisfy him. So that was hers over there too, but she was terribly scared that he would change that will, just scared to death.

Bob Zybach: Was she a pretty nice lady that you were concerned about that? Your stepmother, was your stepmother a pretty nice person?

Charlie Olson: She was, in a certain way, yes. But a neighbor woman over here knew her brother in New York, and my stepmother wanted to go to New York and see him, and I loaned

Charlie Olson: her the money, my father wouldn't give her the money, I loaned her the money. I gave her the money I should say, so that she could go over there and visit her brother. He told . . . Ms. Smith, she was married . . . and he told her that it's no use, any amount of money she get ahold of, she will spend it, that is my stepmother would, she would spend it on an airplane ticket from here to Sweden and back. And that kind of loused things up a little bit, but I never told her that we knew that her brother had said that, and she, this neighbor woman, also told us that he kicked his sister out of there.

Bob Zybach: In New York.

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: What was your stepmother's name?

Charlie Olson: Hannah.

Bob Zybach: Okay. Your sister's name is Hannah too isn't it?

Charlie Olson: Hilda.

Bob Zybach: Hilda. Okay, that's what I was getting confused. How long after your father died did your stepmother continue to live at the homestead?

Charlie Olson: She never did live there after he died. We moved them away from there. I don't mean never, I mean after we brought them out here, she didn't go back up there. But there is a lawyer in Portland by the name of Gitner that had gotten a three-year option on that home, that Soap Creek home, a three-year option to take the timber off for $3,000. Timber wasn't worth anything in those days. That three-year option was seventeen years old when we went in to the lawyers I was doing my business with to have this timber cut on that home and by a fellow by the name of John Weinert. And he was going to take a section and pay a downpayment what they figured that one section of, not a regular section but a marked off square, and he would pay down on that approximately, and then when that was taken off they would adjust one way or the other and they'd mark off another square. And when we came in there to have this settlement drawn up, Gitner, the lawyer from Portland was there with my lawyers. I can't think of their names, there was three of them. Anyway, they started in to bother my father, he was there, and they put him clear at the other end of the room, and then they were in the middle and then they put me clear over here at the

Charlie Olson: other end. And when they started to make a deal with him, I realized that they was gonna try to install in his mind that they still had this option. So I spoke up pretty loud, and said "If he decides to sell it to you, would you be willing to pay more than that obsolete option?" [It was only a 3-year option.] And he said "Yes." But my father missed it, I know that he missed it. And they started to bother him to make a price. And after a while why they decided, well make a price on the whole thing, not just the timber but the whole thing, the land. What went through my mind at the time, I should have probably done it but I didn't, if I'd got up and go around there and take him out of there and tell him "let's get out of here before they want you to pay them something so they can have the whole thing." But I didn't do it because there was that one thing her brother had told this woman "everything that she gets she'll spend it on airplane tickets between Sweden and here." So I just sat quiet and let him take it. He made them a price and then they took it right now, I don't remember what the price was for sure.

Bob Zybach: How many acres was

Charlie Olson: 160

Bob Zybach: It was 160 acres.

Charlie Olson: It was 160, and in 1914, the [Benton] County cruised that to 15 million board feet. That 15 million board feet was yellow fir. And in the meantime, from 1915 until somewhere around 1955 or something, I'm only guessing, there had been a lot of this second growth. So there was a lot of timber on there. [C.O. Addendum: Timber cruising by the Forestry people then was as far off as it is yet at times 3 times too little or 3 times too much.]

Bob Zybach: Forty years of growth. What year did your father sell the lanil?

Charlie Olson: What year did he sell it? He sold it right then. And I don't remember the year. I'd have to guess and I could probably miss it quite a little bit. [Maybe 1950]

Bob Zybach: It's not too important. Did your stepmother take the money and go to Sweden like her brother said?

Charlie Olson: Apparently. Apparently she did. [Not until my father died.] And I don't know how long it took her to get rid of it. And then she began to find out that it was worth a whole lot more than she got, and she came back and tried to get them to, out of just

Charlie Olson: sympathy, you know, give her approximately what it would be worth or quite a lot more, but of course they wouldn't do that. So she went back to Sweden and married a man back there just to get the citizenship paper so that she could be taken care of there in her old age. They were socialistic, Sweden was a social government, and they would take care of the older people in probably a better form than they do here now. We haven't caught up with the world on that.

Bob Zybach: Was your father a socialist?

Charlie Olson: Oh yeah. Everybody in Sweden were socialistic. They were a socialist country.

Bob Zybach: Were you a socialist?

Charlie Olson: Me? It has taken me about 78 years to decide what I am. I have been on the fence. I registered as an independent so that I could vote independently, but I soon learned that that deprived me of everything, only just certain things. Then I continued to stay that way, and I have stayed that way, until -- I am still registered that way.

Bob Zybach: Independent?

Charlie Olson: Independent.

Bob Zybach: But have you ever decided whether you are a socialist or not?

Charlie Olson: There is no difference between socialism, democracy and communism. There's three Constitutions. The Constitution of those three, socialism, democracy and communism, they mean exactly the same thing, they cover the same thing. So I am still registered as an Independent. But I would go democratic if we had a democracy. But we haven't got it. We haven't got a democratic system and we never have had. It is nothing but a bureaucratic [system}. And it constantly becomes more and more and more bureaus. And if anybody can gain a position where he could start to make it democratic they'll kill him. Lincoln was the first one that they killed.

Bob Zybach: Well, he was registered Republican wasn't he?

Charlie Olson: I think he was. But I don't know -- the histories, I've been told it's airight, but I lost faith in the histories after I saw that quite a lot of history and then read what it was supposed to be afterwards. I never would sit down and swallow the history after I began to learn what they did.