7.. Bennett's Mill

Neil Vanderburg: a car in to put a jumper cable on it.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember anything else. . . were the people surprised about that snow, or was there any...

Neil Vanderburg: Yes. That came fast. I went to bed, and there was no snow. And when I got up the next morning there was 3 feet on the ground. And our machine shed had gone down, and all of our tools and stuff. And the machine shed was a lean-to on our granary, and it tore lose from the granary and it went down and as I remember in this house where the barn is still standing

Neil Vanderburg: . make sure the thing's running, I don't like to redo my errors. Okay, we're on the '36 or

Bob Zybach: '37 snow.

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, uh huh. Yeah, anyway, when that snow came, well of course we were milking cows, and no place to put the milk anyway because the milk truck couldn't get through, but I always took a gallon of milk to Elmer Tandy on my way to school and so my mother insisted that I take a gallon of milk to him that morning through three feet of snow. And of course I was about, well, 14, and traveling through that three foot of snow was pretty tough going, I'll tell you! Cause it was clear up above my knees, you know. And you couldn't push the stuff and you couldn't get on top of it.

Bob Zybach: Did they close the school because of that?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh yeah. Yeah, the school teacher couldn't walk that. See, she walked over a mile and there was no snow plow or anything ever came in, cause of course this road didn't even go through at that time, so

Bob Zybach: When it melted did it create any flooding problems?

Neil Vanderburg: No to my knowledge. Flooding in our area was flash floods pretty much on Berry Creek because it's such a short ways to the top of the coast range there and it, if we got heavy rain all night well a lot of times you could hear it roaring when you woke up in the morning, but we never had any floods, you know, that amounted to anything.

Bob Zybach: Have you ever seen any snows worse than that snow since you lived in this country?

Neil Vanderburg: Had the same thing south of town here, in 1969. Had three feet of snow there.

Bob Zybach: Happened just as quick?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. But I had four-wheeled drive then, an International, and I went out.

Bob Zybach: How about the old timers that were in the Berry Creek area when that happened? Do they remember, did they talk about worse snows, or ....

Neil Vanderburg: Never heard anything to that effect. Like I say, they did say that Pedee had 14 [four!] feet. I don't know what area in Pedee or what, whether it was drifting, or what it was, but it was pretty good snow and one thing about it, we had lots of milk so we had lots of ice cream and rice pudding to eat! Till the snow melted off. But my folks only went to town once a week anyway, because. . . you know, people nowadays if they've gotta have something they run to town and get it. But in those days a half a gallon of gas was too much to spend just to go to town, after all it cost 12 cents a gallon, you know. 0

7. Bennett's Mill

Bob Zybach: Did you have the same vehicle, the old garbage truck was your main vehicle?

Neil Vanderburg: No, we also had a '27 Dodge Sedan that we drove up at the same time. And that was

Neil Vanderburg: the car we drove for a limited amount of time, and then after it kinda tuckered out, then we got a '29 Nash, and went on up through the ranks. But I did take that. . . I mentioned this Bennett's Mill, there was a man by the name of Jack Green that lived over by, just over the hill from Suver, that was in the wood business. And anybody cutting wood over in the Berry Creek area he bought it, and so he made a deal with the Bennetts for their slab wood. So I had that old Dodge, or my dad did, and so they offered us, if we would buy the slab wood for 50 cents a cord from Bennetts Mill, cut into four foot lengths, and we would load it and bring it down to Berry Creek Road and stack it 8 feet high and Jack Green would pay us $1.50 a cord for it. So we got 75 cents a cord for hauling that stuff out of the mountains. I mean, real steep mountains.

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Neil Vanderburg: We got 75 cents a cord for it for stacking it down on the county road. And so we took the bed off the truck and we would stack that stuff on the frame and come down the hill, and of course in those days only rear wheel brakes to start out with and not much of that, and low gear and down the hill we'd come. And anyway, I did most of the work on it, cause like I say my dad wasn't much of a mechanic and he was farming, and so that was my job for one year. Anyway, I made enough money I bought a 1933 Chevrolet truck then, so I was in the trucking business then.

Bob Zybach: So how old were you about that time?

Neil Vanderburg: Fifteen. I didn't have a driver's license then.

Bob Zybach: So you were in the trucking business anyhow!

Neil Vanderburg: I got a learner's permit and every time I had to get out on the road my dad had to go with me. But Cooper's Mill

Bob Zybach: Now where was Bennett's Mill located?

Neil Vanderburg: Bennett's Mill was in back of Hanish's house. On up the hill.

Bob Zybach: And. okay. There was a road that went up. . did you know where Forest Peak was?

Neil Vanderburg: No.

Bob Zybach: Okay. There was a road that.. . did you have a different name for the creek that came by the old Coote Mill site? Did you call that any

Neil Vanderburg: We called that Berry Creek, too.

Bob Zybach: Did you call it lefthand, or south, or anything like that?

Neil Vanderburg: Really, we didn't. It was just Berry Creek, we went up this fork or this fork. I imagine we would probably call it the south fork or the left fork of Berry Creek, you know if we'd have been trying to identify it, but I never heard it identified, actually. For the most part we called the Berry Creek that went past the school, we called that Berry Creek, and we didn't have much reason to even call the other one by name because it wasn't all that big.

Bob Zybach: There's a road that went back up along the base of that hill there. There's some apple trees in there. Do you know anything about that orchard in there?

Neil Vanderburg: Now, that's going past the sawmill site?

Bob Zybach: Just in the sawmill, getting ready to move up the hill, because I wanted to kind of tie that into Bennett Mill there, if that was the road.

Neil Vanderburg: No, no. .

Bob Zybach: It's what they call the 100 road now.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, you turn down here right there where that barn is that's standing by itself.

Bob Zybach: Okay.