9.. Bastard Fir and Douglas-Fir

Charlie Olson: wasn't very hard, because she had it in her mind that she could repatriate him you know, so they got married. Then he moved in with us, 620 N. 14th Street. And he lived with us for about a year. And he had a little place south of -- that little town straight south of Corvallis.

Bob Zybach: Monroe?

Charlie Olson: Monroe. He had a little place there that he had started a house. He wanted her to quit Wilson and come out there. And she did. And she got a bunch of turkeys. And she'd pasture them on the neighbors pasture after they'd thrash, you know, and they would clean out the grasshoppers and all of the spilled grain, and she did pretty well with those turkeys, you know, she got quite a lot of them. And he induced her to pay the rest of the money that he owed on this little 40 acres up there, and also finish the house. And when that was all finished, paid for, he sold the whole works. And she had a bunch of turkeys. And he had an apartment. My mother saw the situation, you know, and she bought this place out there at Harris. And Hilda moved her turkeys out there. And then he came and was gonna move in. And my mother said "No, you don't move in, you moved in on me once and that's enough." So he went back to his apartment, then he came back and wanted her to stake him, he wanted to go up to Montana, prospect for gold. And she wouldn't do it. And so he left and Hilda raised turkeys, did real well on 'em

Bob Zybach: We were just talking about your sister and raising turkeys, and her husband.

Charlie Olson: Well, we learned, I learned long before, from his brother, Bill Winney's brother, I learned long before what had happened. In Montana he had an illegitimate family. And that's where his money went when he sold that place. I never told Hilda because I figured if they could get along why it would be better if she didn't know it. So I never told her. But I think we have dwelled on this situation here long enough.

9. Bastard Fir and Douglas-Fir

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Charlie Olson: Before we left Soap Creek up there on that Sunday [January 20, 1990 interview], when there was that big showing, I told you up yonder is a farm. I pointed up there and told you that there was an incident there that I would try to bring out.

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Charlie Olson: And they had built a gate that would open, when they would drive a road it would open away from you. And then when they got by the gate, and pulled a rope, it would close, but it would be behind you. They had fastened that to an oak tree that was only about 4 inches through. And they had put a band around it, and put two holes in the band and made it real tight. And then they went on with that band to hold the one end of the gate post. And that tree started to grow above that tight band, and it didn't grow below it. And it continued to grow until it got big enough and heavy enough that it broke that little tree and it fell over. And I realized that what that oak tree was getting didn't come out of the ground, it come out of the air. It couldn't go by that tight spot. And that got me to looking and wondering. Now let's go to Corvallis. On the streets in Corvallis there would be big maple trees, and there still is some, and when they grew right beside the sidewalk the dirt would pooch up all around them. And where the sidewalk was, it would tip it. And it would get slick. And they would cut the roots off of that and dig down and then put in a cement sidewalk. And that cement sidewalk began to come up. And when that tree got big enough that it would make two cords of wood, there was still a lump. There was no hollow. A cord of wood is 128 cubic feet. And if that tree would make two, then it would be 226 cubic feet. Saw wood. And I realized when you burn that two cords of wood, everything except the smoke, everything could be put in a big dustpan. And you could spread that down there, and you'd still have a hump there. You could dig that stump out, you could burn it out, and you could realize that everything in that 226 cubic feet had come from the air. And people think that it comes out of the ground. There is a big mistake that people should look at and realize.

Bob Zybach: Well, if it's coming out of the air, what they teach us in class is, it's coming out of the sunlight. Mostly it's taking solar energy and through photosynthesis making the food that creates the bulk. So it's coming out of the air, but it's not. .

Charlie Olson: Burning that, it would put nothing back in the air except what came out of the air, and it wouldn't pollute.

Bob Zybach: Do you think it maybe puts it back in a derent form? Do you think maybe it's taking

Bob Zybach: carbon dioxide out of the air and putting carbon ash back into it?

Charlie Olson: It didn't put carbon monoxide in the air. That type of stump doesn't put carbon monoxide in the air. If you take stuff out of the ground, oil or coal, it will, it certainly will. But a tree or a field of grass, is a different substance altogether. And the people that are trying to sell you stoves today that will burn coal or oil they will try to tell you that the smoke is going to make you wake up dead some morning, if the stove is smoking. But the Indians with their tepee that was tight at the top would build a little fire right in that tepee and they would drop around it. And the little tent was tight. And they never woke up dead in the morning. These fields that they are burning today it doesn't put any smog . . . it does smoke up so that you can't see, and it burns your eyes of course a little, if you get into when it's really thick. But it doesn't put anything into the air that didn't come Out of the air.

Bob Zybach: Did people burn fields or burn out slash in Sulphur Springs or Soap Creek area? Would they do it every year?

Charlie Olson: We made quite a lot of pasture by slashing down small trees and then burning them and then sewing it to rye grass and cheat

Bob Zybach: You used cheatgrass on purpose?

Charlie Olson: Sure, sure. And we made brush fence by falling the trees so that they would pile up. The entire south side and all of the west end. 180 rods. Brush fence.

Bob Zybach: So brush fence was trees that you just dropped over on the property lines and then let the brush grow up and over?

Charlie Olson: We put the brush on them. We fell enough so that they were high enough as it was. And when it was brought down a little why we would fall one across it so that it would hold up the next one that would fall diagonally across it, and then some more, and we would pile it up. We kept it up that way. And that was the only fence that we had on those two sides of our home. On the north and east side was wire. But that was not on the line, and this wasn't either, because my father wasn't too sure and he didn't want to get over on the other. But inside of that is where we slashed. Just cut 'em down and as much as possible so that they would be piled and when they get good and dry we would catch them on fire.

Bob Zybach: Would those brush fences ever catch fire?

Charlie Olson: No.

Bob Zybach: You just kind of keep the fire away from them.

Charlie Olson: Yeah

Bob Zybach: Where you were slashing those smaller trees and brush, were there large stumps in there, or had those grown up from old prairies?

Charlie Olson: There wasn't any old growth, but we would . . . there was a lot of old growth but there wasn't any of that that we cut down. We wouldn't cut anything but what they called at that time bastard fir. And it later took on a little more pleasing sound, and they called Douglas-fir. But I have never yet found anybody that could tell me where it came from.

Bob Zybach: I think we started this conversation on the first recording, when we talked for about 15 minutes of it. The good thing is now we'll have a record of it so even though I can't give you an answer hopefully somebody will be able to read this at some point and maybe figure that out.

Charlie Olson: There is a quite a different group of this Douglas fir. I don't know how many different kinds there are, but one of the fellows that taught me knew quite a little bit about it, said there was 30 different varieties of this Douglas fir. And I know that there is a difference in them because I planted some down here on the bottom. When I cleared that I planted some of them for Christmas trees. And I bought them for that purpose. And then I planted some others that I pulled among the bigger trees. And they were altogether different. We had trimmed them, we trimmed them twice, and the ones I planted down there for Christmas trees, I don't think they had grown. In 20 years I don't think that they had grown taller more than maybe a foot. But all the big limbs that we cut off they had started new ones.

Bob Zybach: That's unusual for a Doug fir. They don't usually sprout.

Charlie Olson: And they were big. All those little limbs are bigger than the tree itself.

Bob Zybach: Where did those trees come from? The seeds?

Charlie Olson: I don't remember where I bought them. I bought them from somebody that was selling Christmas trees, small Christmas trees. These that I pulled, we pruned them too. But we didn't get time to prune them all. It made no difference, the ones we pruned, went up, the ones we didn't prune went up. The limbs at the bottom were