APPENDIX. Personal Memories

APPENDIX: PERSONAL MEMORIES

Charlie Olson: Armistice. Went home and went to work in Kings Valley for Christianson about a year. Left Christianson when thrashing time came and went to work for Goviers in harvest and then for Alvie Govier in his little saw mill. I got a used 1917 Model T Ford in 1917 and I sold it in 1920 and ordered a new one in 1920. Adam Wiliham had the Ford agency and Ford couldn't put them out as fast as people wanted them so we had to make a deposit of $50 and wait our turn. There were three ahead of me, but he kept the depositors waiting and sold the cars to others. Henry Ford caught him up on that and he lost the Ford agency, but he wouldn't give me back my $50.

Charlie Olson: Getz and Grout got the agency and I got the first car that they sold and they gave me credit for my $50 and Ford took that out of Adam Willham. That was about March 1920.

Charlie Olson: We learned the Swedish language first. My folks knew if we didn't we never would. I was six years old when I started to school; had 4 miles to walk and it was very steep. This has been covered in the book, but we got a little teacher when I was in third grade and she taught us a few things that was not in the books. "Love without respect is an angel but with one wing." "First of all to thine own self be true thou canst not then be false to any man." And a song, "There is danger in the flowing bowl, touch not, taste not, handle not." And a few more too many to bring up. What she taught was loyal to me and I lived it all my life. She gave me her picture when school was out and I still have it.

Charlie Olson: Most all important things are covered in the book, but not in the sequence and date so this will be in sequence and dated I hope here.

Charlie Olson: As the book has stated, I had my first work try out when we came home from the hopyard in 1912. I was 14 then and I was as big then as I ever got to be. And all the working out would be when there was no school until after I was 15 years old as I was 15 when I finished the 9th. I was 17 when I went to Portland, and I wasn't there very long. When I came back I enlisted in that Student Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C.) because I was 17 then and it was about 4 months in it. I'll have to go back and pick up some small events as they come along. There was a big family named Swanson and they had a big house they had come from the same part of Sweden my folks had, but they didn't know each other there. We always had Christmas dinner with them and everything had to be just like it was in Sweden. A small glass of whiskey by every plate about four tablespoons full and when we came to the table somebody said grace and then they would pick up these glasses and touch them to their neighbor's glass and say "Skoll!" They would take a sip and then start to pass the food. But one glass wasn't picked up and a 7-year old kid was sitting there. Everything stood still for a while and nothing was said. His father and mother were across the table from him and they seemed to be proud not embarrassed and that helped that kid as much as that little teacher had. They had a girl named Esther, she was four months younger than this kid and the parents on both sides had it all fixed up when they would be grown up. She wrote me a letter every week but I never answered any of them and another fellow from Portland named Johnson spotted her when she was about 17 and he grabbed her. I saw them about ten years later and she looked and sounded just like her mother.

Charlie Olson: The book mentioned Mrs. Dorgan and our school programs but there has never been anything said about my ability to whistle and chirp because I never did it when anybody could hear me. It was a pastime when I was alone and when I went after the cows. I worked for Benedicts later they had a hopyard and George Benedict was about my age. There was a girl named Lena Toby that went to high school in Albany when I went there and whenever there was a group of people she would get up and whistle. Once George said to me, "Why don't you get up and do the same thing you can whistle her under the table and nobody knows it." I told him I didn't like to show off. When I had my teeth pulled I lost it and can't even call my dog now.

Charlie Olson: I was going to high school in Albany when the war broke out and I stopped and went to Portland and that is covered in the book so let us take a little space here and straighten up a few things. Floyd Zeller never had an electric saw mill. He had a mill 2-1/2 miles north of Summit. He sawed 4-inch cants and built a tram road straight to the Summit store. There was no road then where it is now. He put his lumber on the train there and sold it to Alaska Bridge for $10 a thousand feet. When he ran out of timber he moved up Norton Creek, put in a tram road to Blodgett and put his lumber on the train there. When he ran out of timber there he moved to Wren. At Wren he put up a high steel track with an electric plant on this track through a bunch of ropes hanging down and a walk not just under but to one side a little. My sister Hilda controlled this rig, which unloaded and loaded both lumber and logs. One morning when everybody came to work Zeller didn't show up and they found him dead in his office. He had no mill anywhere else. Hilda got acquainted with a man named Louie Marquet in the Wren mill and they got married. The doctors told him not to work so he stayed home and had the house warm and had supper ready when she came home. He kept her Model A in good condition all the time. All he wanted was a little alcohol but he never got drunk. One day when they were both home he went out in the kitchen to put some wood in the stove, he opened the door to the woodshed and she heard a "thud" and he didn't come in. She went out to look and he was dead.

Charlie Olson: Let us go over to when I was working with that tractor I got from Lyle Winney. A man came out with a truck and said I am here to get that tractor you got from old man Winney. I paid him for it and I have the title. So they had pulled another one on me. That was about 1921. This is not the Fordson I have now.

Charlie Olson: About this time a man named Alvin Eads had the Exide battery franchise for Benton County. He wanted me to take it over but I didn't have the money so he sold it to Wilidig and Witzig. Wilidig was a contractor and Witzig was a house wirer. They got me to do the automotive work. I had a Reeds manual that for $17 a year they would bring it up to date and it pictured everything so I had no problems. The auto mechanics in those days didn't know as much as a grade school kid knows today so I got plenty of work. A man from California going to O.A.C. bought my bosses out, and he married a woman also going to O.A.C. We had a test bench and a lot of equipment and Frank Burnap put up a building -- No. 113 on 3rd and Monroe -- just for this. It goes full length from the sidewalk to the alley. It was the only floor long enough in Benton County to focus lights and I had the only license to do it. There were not very many cars then but I was pretty busy. I think the procedure is given in another part of the book. This man's name from California that bought my owners out was Marshall Dickensen but we called him Dick. I could soon see they were

Charlie Olson: not getting along too well. He was to stay in the shop while I went to lunch at 12 and I would be back in half an hour. His wife would come at 12 and insist he take her to lunch and she wouldn't listen to reason. One day he didn't show up and I didn't see him any more. I brought my lunch and stayed at noon. That went on for about a month and a half. He had given me two checks that totalled about $900 but I had no chance to go the bank when it was open. Then three Portland stores and one in Corvallis went together and attached the equipment and the building would have to be padlocked for a month if the attachment would be legal. The sheriff couldn't put a padlock on it because Frank Burnap owned the building. And he told the sheriff "I'll saw the padlock off and throw it out in the street." These stores claimed that Dickensen owed them $44. I went to a lawyer named Fred McHenry but he did nothing to help me. McFaden and Clark was the lawyers that could scare everybody so they made it work and these people took the equipment out. A harelip in Albany wanted me to come over and work for him and I told him I would help him till Frank Burnap got some more equipment. While this was going on I got a letter from Dick telling me he had stayed with Kerr for a while and he had told him to come down and tell me he was giving me the equipment for what he owned me; he knew the checks were no good. But Kerr didn't come and tell me. I went over to Albany and he gave me about 20 sheets of papers and told me give one of these to everybody at the sale. When Clark got one he said, "What is this?" I said, "Read it." He threw it down and said "Go ahead with the sale." The sheriff was a little reluctant and I said, "You think parts is ahead of labor?" and Clark said, "That is moral and this is legal -- go ahead with the sale." And the sheriff sold it. I went back over to Mark Weatherford and he said this opened another avenue. It was me who told Dick to do that now they sold it and that let me out with Dick. "I'll take this for you on this condition -- I'll get you that money or it won't cost you a cent." The hearing came up and the Corvallis lawyers tried to stop it by telling everybody go home there is no hearing. But we stayed and everything started. I had a letter from Dick stating that he had left the equipment to me but the Corvallis lawyers said that the letter was forged. Weatherford called for a mistrial and came over to me and said we can't risk it, the jury might go their way, I'll call for a retrial and I'll take the witness stand and my partners will plead the case. I can prove I told Dick to do that. The sheriff was a good friend of mine and he said if I would win it he would be the goat so I told Weatherford to drop it.

Charlie Olson: That harelip in Albany wanted me to come over and work for him and I think that is covered already in the book. Burnap got the Exide franchise and I came back and worked for him. The building was open at both ends all day so the cars could come in and go out the back door and in the winter it got pretty cold. My brother wanted me to go out but I hated to leave Burnap; he was paying me 35 dollars a week and wages was $1.50 a day for a mechanic. My stepfather drowned and my mother wanted me to come out and take over the farm and that is where I am today.

Charlie Olson: In 1929 a young fellow started a school bus from Summit to Philomath for high school kids but he drove it into the garage where he got it and disappeared when there was 3 months left of school. The store keeper at Summit had gone his bond and he induced me to take over and that put me in the school bus business. This too I believe has been covered before. So I am still logging, restoring antiques, and putting up buildings to keep the mice out of them. I'll be 93 years next twenty-sixth of July.

Charlie Olson: All this has been in the past. Maybe we should look a little at the future. The spotted owl is a big topic in large old growth timber, but nothing is said about those big blue grouse that also live in that big timber. They live on the buds of that yellow old growth in the winter and that is why there is no seed. They are not fit to eat when they are eating those buds, but when they live on grasshoppers and grass seed they are very good and they are the biggest dry land bird we have.

Charlie Olson: Carbon monoxide in our big cities and putting millions more internal combustion cars every year when in 1966 a steam car would outperform them. They made steam cars with only twenty-seven moving parts and the wheels are the fastest moving part. In zero weather they could go Out to the car have it going and drive it away in 30 seconds and they have made many improvements since then.

Charlie Olson: The United States is in the most difficult situation we have ever witnessed. If and when the oil co. and the steel co. that control us have to give it up and let us put representatives in the senate out of our own walks of life what will be done with all the internal combustion cars. We have lost our allies and we don't have the resources to fight a war on our own.

Charlie Olson: There is enough here to make another book so I'll have to leave it out. Maybe soon we will be forced to go to steam cars. The oil co. still try to tell us about the water troughs every five miles on the roads but in 1966 a steam car could go 1500 miles without stopping for water or oil.

Charlie Olson: I can't give you the details on this but the information is correct. When Jup and Letty Govier were small Neva Govier, Alvie's wife, took his car and left him with the kids. She left with another man. Alvie got another car and two years later he got a storage bill from Richard's garage -- so he had two cars and two kids. You can get the details from Jup and Letty.

Charlie Olson: Several years later we found out that Neva was in Falls City and the man was cutting wood for a living. His name was Polard or Poland or something like that. My sister saw them later and told me Neva was a little wreck would weigh about 80 pounds.

Charlie Olson: Alvie got married to a German girl that was working in the laundry and they had children too.

Charlie Olson

Summit, Oregon

December, 1990