4.. Migration to Oregon

Neil Vanderburg: I didn't know because Dollarheide made the trades, our place for his place, and we never saw him. We dealt through the realtor. The guy that owned it didn't live on it. When we moved in the renter lived on it when we moved in. And so that, anyway, we moved up here..

4. Migration to Oregon

Bob Zybach: Did you remember anything about the move? Your dad.

Neil Vanderburg: I was just gonna say, my dad was on WPA and you weren't allowed to save any of your wages, you were supposed to spend it all to help the economy. So when he made the trade the he bought a 1923 Dodge truck that had been a garbage truck, $25.00. And we overhauled it. I say we did, because my dad wasn't much of a mechanic and even though I was only ten years old I did most of the work overhauling it. And we overhauled the truck there in the yard, and then we loaded the thing up with everything we owned, and we pulled out one morning and we got four miles down the road to where the pavement was and we couldn't get up onto the road because our load was so heavy the body'd come down on the tire and then it would stop us. So we had to back up and go to the people that had the post office and store there in Wilsona and we left a bunch of our furniture there and we never got anything for it, I'm sure they sold it but we never heard from them. We had to get some weight off that truck because the springs weren't strong enough to get us up onto the road. So then we took off and there was a bolt sticking down from the bed and it started rubbing on the tire and it started getting a hole in it and so we had to stop and with a chisel and a hacksaw cut that bolt off down underneath the bed, between the bed and tire. And it was ultimately, took us five days to drive that thousand miles from there up to our farm and when we came in to Berry Creek we had to come in from, that town between here and Monmouth,.

Bob Zybach: Folks? Airlie?

Neil Vanderburg: No, on the highway.

Bob Zybach: Oh, between here and Monmouth?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, the one where the service station store is.

Bob Zybach: Well, it's Adair now, but it would have been.

Neil Vanderburg: No, clear on past there.

Bob Zybach: Suver?

Neil Vanderburg: Suver, yeah. Suver. We had to go in to Airlie through Suver because the road didn't go across from Berry Creek to Soap Creek at that time. There was no road through there.

Bob Zybach: From Berry Creek to Soap Creek, there was no road?

Neil Vanderburg: No, there was no road. The road went to Berry Creek school, and to the turnoff to Bill Coote's old mill, which he had abandoned before we moved there. And then, when he built the mill up on top, they had to come in from the Soap Creek side with their trucks and stuff, and ultimately that was what made the road be pushed on through between Berry Creek and Soap Creek.

Bob Zybach: Now, that road in there dates back to the /850's. But when you were in there, it had been pretty much abandoned, and wasn't in use anymore?

Neil Vanderburg: It didn't go through. The, right this side of where the school was, was a real steep