10.. Fiddle Playing

Charlie Olson: small, and when they get big enough, why, they'll die, those limbs will die and fall off. Altogether a different tree.

10. Fiddle Playing

Bob Zybach: This is kind of skzpping around a little bit, but when I was recording before we got outside the vehicle and you told me a story about when you had a fiddle that you used to play at dances, right across from the school, at the peoples' homes across from the school there. Can you recall that story? Can you tell me that story again, we didn't record it last time.

Charlie Olson: I pulled a bunch of pine. On the Fourth of July we went over on a trip, on the fourth of July, and I pulled 18. I put them in a trailer, brought them home, and planted them up here and every one grew.

Bob Zybach: When you were about 12 or 13, you used to play, I think fiddle, at dances?

Charlie Olson: I played for dances when I was 15 years old.

Bob Zybach: You were talking. . . who taught you how to play the fiddle? How did you learn how?

Charlie Olson: My brother brought me a fiddle when I was about 6 years old. And I just went in, you saw the house, well we had two rooms in there. What we called the "other" room, and then this was the kitchen. I went into the other room and shut the door. And then I started in to play that little scottish tune, Flow Gently Sweet After, and the first night I mastered the verse, and the next night I mastered the chorus, and I could put them both together. And a kid that age will gather stuff pretty quick. And when you get older it's lots more difficult. But I learned to play it and I got to where I could fool the people and make them think that I was pretty good, and the type of work that I was doing, pitchforks, axe handles, shovels, my fingers would get kind of stiff. And I realized that I never could reach the peak where I wanted to be. So I kind of let it drift. And when I got started then in the automobile business, they got limbered up, and then I kind of wished that I had continued it but I started again a little bit with it and it was simple. And I could do pretty good with it. We had a teacher, a music teacher moved in right next to the school house up there. It's just across the road to the left. The house is still there, a fellow by the name of Dorgan built it. And he was a catholic, and he was 45 years old. And he went to Portland and he met this woman from France. And she was a music teacher, and she came up

Charlie Olson: there and lived there. And she would teach the kids different songs, and teach them to sing and also teach me, the ones that she wanted me to play. And then she'd move her piano over to the school house when we'd have some kind of a meeting you know. So, I got accustomed to quite a lot of music and I did pretty well with it but I put it aside.

Bob Zybach: Did Mr. Dorgan then build that house that's there right now? He was the one that built that house?

Charlie Olson: Grabes don't live in that.

Bob Zybach: No, Dorgan.

Charlie Olson: Dorgan was dead years ago.

Bob Zybach: But did he build, was he the one that built the Dorgan house there?

Charlie Olson: Yes.

Bob Zybach: Now that red house, the Cook house, further down the road. You know where the Cook house is? Did that ever have another name? Was that ever called the Baker house or anything like that?

Charlie Olson: That was built quite a while after Bakers left that place. Ernest Cook, Wanda Cook's husband built that.

Bob Zybach: Oh he did build it. Her son thought that that house already was there and that they just moved into it. He didn't think that Ernest built it, he thought that it had already been there.

Charlie Olson: Wanda's.

Bob Zybach: Wanda's son, Roy.

Charlie Olson: Oh. Well he was mistaken.

Bob Zybach: Ernest did built the house.

Charlie Olson: Oh Ernest Cook built the house. And he built the barn right back of it.

Bob Zybach: Do you know where the Marc/cs' Place, at the other end of the valley, did you ever hear any stoiy about either one of those places being haunted?

Charlie Olson: Being what?

Bob Zybach: Haunted. Anything to do with a ghost in either one of those houses.

Charlie Olson: No. There's quite a story about this Cook house up there. There was quite a bit of superstition and damned foolishness.

Bob Zybach: Do you know how it got started? I wasn't paying any attention and all of a sudden people

Bob Zybach: kept talking about it. Quite a few people have told me stories.

Charlie Olson: No, I don't know how it got started. There's one thing only that I know of that probably could stan it, but I don't know how they could do it. The Goviers had hounds. And there was coyotes in the area, and they put those hounds on the coyotes and let them run for 2 or 3 days and then they would take them off and put some fresh hounds on. And one coyote got so fagged out that he came down there to that Cook house and went under the barn. And Ernest Cook went under there with a hatchet and killed him. But I have never heard any kind of a ghost story about that. Ernest Cook brought 20 cows up from Portland. He drove them up. They wasn't married yet. And when he came past Marcks, the Marcks went out and told him to turn them in, they'd stay all night. You know the cows would be fagged to walk from Portland and up there. He turned them in to the pasture and in the morning every one was dead. Larkspur. The cattle would get used to that Larkspur when they grew up with it; they wouldn't eat it. But these cattle were just famished, and they'd eat anything. They weren't used to it and it killed every one.

Bob Zybach: So, but then at the Marc/cs' place, and he ended up mariying their daughter. I see.

Charlie Olson: They were engaged at that time. Cook had money. And he was kind of a peculiar looking fellow, he had no muscles at all, it was just bone. Just bone and skin, and his chest was flat and he had a cousin, Miss Allen, that taught our school. And she was built the same way. But I think probably they were a whole lot alike, they looked alike, they had the same type of glasses, great big thick glasses. And this woman, calm, quiet, never bragged, but the Soap Creek people took the two high school grades under her if they stayed that long. The ninth grade, of course, she taught that right along. But anything that come up, any topic that could come up, people could discuss it back and forth, she wouldn't say anything, but if they'd get stuck somewhere on it and ask her a question, she usually could tell them. Anything.

Bob Zybach: Uh huh. So she was real smart. What did you think of her cousin, Ernest.

Charlie Olson: I never got to know him very well. I never got to know him. He didn't have any idea of farming. He didn't know how to use a hand saw. These long saws, you know, where you've got to give them a long swing and bring them back. He'd sit down this way with it. And the people would laugh at him. Heck, he had never seen

Charlie Olson: it, he never grew up in the country.

Bob Zybach: Couldn't he learn from his . . . Wanda says that her father was a real good farmer.

Charlie Olson: Wanda's Farmer?

Bob Zybach: Wanda's father, yeah, Marc/cs.

Charlie Olson: He had a pretty good dairy. He had quite a few pretty good cows, and he had pigs and he was a successful farmer I would say for the time. And that's what killed him, I'm pretty sure.

Bob Zybach: Too much work?

Charlie Olson: No, too much cream. I began to notice it with different people. And over west of Corvallis was several dairies, and there was an old family that owned almost all of the ground between Corvallis and about 3 miles southwest. And the older guy of that family, he was probably 70 years old. He had married a young woman that had a kid already. And the kid was about 14. And they went to dances, I played for almost all of the dances in that area at that time. And their breath was just awful. And I learned from what I saw, Witham's was the name, you know, and there was a lot of them, and I learned from the different ones that I could see, I learned what used mainly for their diet they use a lot of cream. There is a George Witham, he lived out there by that school house, out there on Oak Creek, the Oak Creek school house. And we worked together at the end of a sawmill, back end of a sawmill. And he and I happened to get trapped so that we were the two at the rear end of the mill, there should have been three. And we took care of it.

Bob Zybach: That was George Witham. Did you know any of the other people around the Oak C'reek area, in there?

Charlie Olson: I knew them all at that time. Winneys, Rices, and Dohertys,

Bob Zybach: Were there any Mulkeys still living in that area?

Charlie Olson: Mulkey?

Bob Zybach: U/i-huh.

Charlie Olson: There was a Mulkey.