2.. California Homestead

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Bob Zybach: And you just got to smell the steak!

Neil Vanderburg: Smell the steak! Anyway, but times were hard, I mean, there wasn't, in that country, there was nothing you could go out and shoot, a deer or anything like that, to get something to eat and so we ended up we were on welfare for a year or two there, and the thing I remember about welfare was that they, the story went that our government officials decided that they were going to put a big herd of cattle out there in the desert and pasture them, so they got all these cows and were gonna make meat for the starving people and turned out that they figured that you got a cow you gotta have a bull for the cow. So they had as many bulls as they did cows, then somebody told them that wasn't necessary, so they made these big old bolognas about that long and about that big around and all the welfare people, every time you went for welfare you got those bolognas! And that was all bull meat from the surplus bulls!

Bob Zybach: Do you think that story was true?

Neil Vanderburg: I kinda think it was 'cause I heard it from several different people. But it's very possible! And, anyway, but then my dad then got a chance to trade that place for a place on Berry Creek.

Bob Zybach: So he was. . that's kind of how the Hanishes came up. He was able to trade his real estate in California, that he was homesteading, for a place in Berry Creek?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, except that he [Hanish] also had property back in the midwest. And that was at the time of the dust bowl. And he traded for some property about, probably two miles, I don't know if you ever got to the Chaffin place up there not, but I think probably the fireplace is still standing. They were way back off the county road. And he had 100, he traded 160 acres of farmland back there in, I thought it was Nebraska, but it could have been Kansas. And he traded it for some 160 acres of ground in Oregon. He says, boy he sure thought he'd pulled the wool over the guy's eyes. He says he got out here and he said he found out his farm was all covered with trees!

Bob Zybach: Wow.

Neil Vanderburg: And so that was what he was logging. And that was probably a mile and a half from where they lived. And I don't know if Jim even knew that, but his dad told me, you know, I told you that I worked for his dad on Saturdays helping him fall trees to keep him busy the rest of the week, and he told me that. And he was kinda mumbling and grumbling about trading his farm back there in the midwest for a bunch of trees, and they weren't worth anything.

Bob Zybach: Did he ever change his mind after he started logging, or..

Neil Vanderburg: I don't think so, because at that time, you see, he was selling stumpage for 50 cents a thousand, and Orval, my brother4n-law, cut wood on his place, and he paid 50 cents a cord stumpage for the wood and it, those trees were probably 30 inches across the stump and no limbs up there for 150 feet and you'd just haul them. And of course in those days you didn't have power saws so you cut it in four foot lengths and split it and then they came in with power saws and sawed it. Not power saws, but buzz saws. And it was. . but anyway, it was 50 cents a cord or 50 cents a thousand for that timber and that was worthless as far as he was concerned because a good man could make a dollar and a quarter a day, you know.

Bob Zybach: So a #1 peeler now was just firewood then.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. We made a lot of firewood. Anyway, that's off on a different subject, but you did mention the F{anishes and I do know that he traded that farm back east.

Bob Zybach: How about your dad? flow did he feel on his trade?