3.. Land of Milk Nickel Trees

Neil Vanderburg: He felt real good about it. But he was too slow getting his feet under him to make payments on it. And he lost it in '40.

3. Land of Milk Nickel Trees

Bob Zybach: But in '35, . . . why did you decide to come to Oregon? Nothing going on at home there, or. 2

Neil Vanderburg: Well, there was, actually, his farm down there in Wilsona had water at 50 feet, all that you could use, and he pumped it with an old Hudson motor but that old sandy soil, it took a lot of water and he never got financially capable of planting enough alfalfa to make a living off of it, and, so, he was always watching newspapers and, you wouldn't know it, but I remember when I lived down there that when my dad worked on WPA, during lunch time, well all they talked about was Oregon. And everybody wanted to go to Oregon. And of course one reason for wanting to go to Oregon was there was berries, and there was wild fruit and there was wild animals and so forth that you could supplement your diet with, which was quite a difference when we moved to Oregon. The fact that we could eat berries and there was wild plums and, you know, we never did shoot a deer cause we never did see any deer in that country at that time. Maybe we'd see two deer a year.

Bob Zybach: In the Berry Creek area?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: But even down in Southern California, families were made poor by the Depression, there was a lot of talk of coming to Oregon, just because of the ability to live off the land, support yourself?

Neil Vanderburg: More or less, yes. Uh huh.

Bob Zybach: That's interesting.

Neil Vanderburg: I remember, there was guy by the name of Andy Anderson worked on WPA and during his lunch breaks, he was quite an artist, and my dad used to take me with him sometimes cause we were real close, and Andy Anderson, every lunch hour, he was drawing a picture of Oregon and I remember, of course I was probably 5 years old, and right in the middle of the picture he had a big picture of a milk nickel tree. Well the milk nickel was an ice cream bar. And he thought that they had milk nickel trees in Oregon, just pick the milk nickels off the trees! But that's the way the gist of the thinking was running in that time frame there out in the desert where we were, was the fact that you could pick most anything off of the tree and, you know, life, and so my dad felt that we had an opportunity there and he got help from the FHA buying ten head of cows and to buy some farm machinery. But, he couldn't buy any tractors because tractors were not feasible. He had to buy a team of horses.

Bob Zybach: They didn't use those in 1935.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: So the help was on the farm up here, not down there.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember the name of the real estate dealer or the land owner that he traded with?

Neil Vanderburg: Dollarheide was the realtor in Albany. He was right at the foot of the first bridge there on the left across First Street or Second Street there, whatever it is.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember the name of the land owner that was engineering th trade?