4.. Hop Yards

Charlie Olson: run on one foot." Well, I had a lot of confidence in my brother, and I got up and hobbled over there and started to sign up with the boys, he said you don't sign up with the boys, oh no, you sign up with the men. So I went over and signed up with the men. And when the cap pistol went off I gritted my teeth and just ignored the pain and dug in. And pretty soon I realized there wasn't anybody very close, I slacked up a little bit. And when I got a little ways from the string I put on a little more in case somebody else did the same thing. There was no problem.

Bob Zybach: So you won the race easily with a bad ankle.

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Did they report on those races in the newspapers in those days? Would there have been a newspaper article mentioning the race?

Charlie Olson: There was no newspaper correspondence to my knowledge at that time.

Bob Zybach: But it was a Fourth of July race. After that you were about. . . We kind of skipped from the one subject, but what would you eat for dinner and what did you drink, would your parents serve you coffee when you were young like that or did you drink milk?

Charlie Olson: I never did like coffee. Milk.

Bob Zybach: Just milk.

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: How about your folks. Would they drink milk too?

Charlie Olson: They drank milk all right, but coffee was their main drink. But they used the same thing that they used in Sweden quite a lot. They would take rye and brown it in the oven. And when it would get brown, not black but just brown, they would cook coffee on it. So the regular coffee, they didn't use very much but they had it in case somebody else wanted coffee.

4. Hop Yards

Bob Zybach: When you were a little bit older, just past these races, when you were about 15 you started working out, away from the home. Was that just hops?

Charlie Olson: We came home from the hop yards, and the thrashing machine would do its thrashing in September. And the hop picking was in September. And when we came home from the hop yards, they had only about a week left of thrashing. And we stopped

Charlie Olson: and talked to Goviers for a while, and they were short a pitcher. And they decided that I should come down there and become a pitcher. And my father didn't think I could do that; I was only 13. And they said "He can." And so in the morning I went down there, and I pitched for a week, and then the thrashing was over with. And the next year they wanted me right from the start so I went with them from the start. So I worked with them I think 6 different years.

Bob Zybach: So up until you went up to Portland to work in the shipyards. Now, one thing we didn't get on the tape is you mentioned the leader on the shipyards, and that you were working with a lot offoreigners. What countries were the people from?

Charlie Olson: Every country. I never knew any of them. I never could speak to any of them; I didn't understand. But they were over here from a good many different countries.

Bob Zybach: Were there any orientals or blacks?

Charlie Olson: No, they were all white.

Bob Zybach: All Europeans?

Charlie Olson: Yeah, I never saw a negro working there.

Bob Zybach: Were there any black people in Corvallis or the Soap Creek area that you can remember?

Charlie Olson: Not that I can remember before this S.A.T.C. There was two negroes in our company, there was two negroes in that.

Bob Zybach: On campus?

Charlie Olson: Umhmm.

Bob Zybach: Were they discriminated against, or did anybody pay attention to them?

Charlie Olson: They did seem to kind of resent them. And they called one of the "Snowball". And I thought that was his name, and when he was waiting on me one day I called him Snowball and he didn't like it, he went to the Sergeant, and the Sergeant came back and talked to me and told me that he resented being called that. I felt kind of a little bit ashamed of myself, but I explained it, I don't know if he

Bob Zybach: Okay, you're at Oregon State C'ampus, and you just had an incident with Snowball, and I was asking if the two black people that were there, if they were just working in the mess, were they just serving food or were they soldiers also?

Charlie Olson: They were soldiers also.

Bob Zybach: So it was an integrated company, it wasn't all black or all white.

Charlie Olson: They were soldiers just the same as the rest of us there.

Bob Zybach: When you were working at the hop yards, were there Siletz Indians working there?

Charlie Olson: There was quite a lot of Indians in the hop yards. Very. They had a whole section of Indians in the hop yard. They had five sections, and one section was Indians.

Bob Zybach: Would the Indians work in their own area? And then the other four sections, were all just

Charlie Olson: They were all in one area; they put the Indians into an area by themselves, and the other four sections were white people.

Bob Zybach: Were the other four sections, were like all your neighborhood would maybe be one section, and another neighborhood from another area be another section?

Charlie Olson: No. No, they couldn't control that because they came from every direction, you know, and they only counted the number of rows that it would take, two people to a row, and they would take that many rows and they would have them divided into five different sections. I happened to get in as a wire tender in one section one year, and I didn't do like the rest of them. They'd always just wait 'til somebody hollered "wire down." They'd run, and by the time they'd get over there, somebody from where he'd come from would holler "wire down." They'd run back. And it was a chore. But everyone of those rows had a jack or a mule, call it anyway you want to, it was two sticks fastened together with a bolt. And I would start and go across and let the wires down whether they needed it or not. And put that thing underneath so it would be the right height. And when I got to the end of my section, I wouldn't have to go back for probably half an hour. And before that half an hour was up, I would go back through and do the same thing over again. It was an easy job. One day while I was tending wires in the hop yard the weather was very hot and the pickers started to go to camp early and about 4:00 there was only one or two left. I was down the rows a long ways and by myself so I started to whistle. Our campground was wide enough so it had two sets of tents and a road in between them and the yard boss came down that road and turned in to our tent and said "Boy, what are you doing out here letting down wires, don't you know anybody that can whistle like that belongs on the stage?" That made me a little more careful when people might hear me.

Bob Zybach: Would people camp out in the hop yards?

Charlie Olson: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Would there be any socializing at night?

Charlie Olson: Quite a little bit. We had camp fires and we would have a quite a picnic lots of times, you know, play games, youngsters.

Bob Zybach: Would you socialize with the Indians, or would people pretty much keep their own.

Charlie Olson: The Indians were in a different place. They put them in a separate camp ground; they were not with us in the camp ground.

Bob Zybach: Was there a reason for that?

Charlie Olson: Well, I don't know for sure. Butler was the name of the guy that owned the yard, and he was pretty strict. But I don't know of any reason, really, because there was no conflicts among us.

Bob Zybach: Were those Indians from Siletz?

Charlie Olson: They were Siletz Indians.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember any of those families?

Charlie Olson: Never got acquainted with any of them.

Bob Zybach: There were no Indians around the Soap Creek area were there?

Charlie Olson: No.

Bob Zybach: So, when you went to the hop yards, that would be maybe the first contact you'd had in your life with the indians.

Charlie Olson: That's the first time I'd met any amount of Indians, yes.

Bob Zybach: And maybe when you went to Portland, would that have been the first time you'd been around Black people at all?

Charlie Olson: There were no Black people in Portland, that is, in the shipyards. There were no Black people on that shipyards.

Bob Zybach: So it wasn't actually until you came back to Corvallis in the service that you had any contact with Black people?

Charlie Olson: There was only two in my company. There was only those two boys.