Z.. The Tortora House and Raising Kids

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, Skillings used to keep you from going up into the forest there with his rifle. I met him one time with a rifle.

Bob Zybach: There's an old orchard here.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. Yeah, Skillings was a little bit on the mean side. I came out from up there on Oak Creek, I went in this way and I burned out a coil, so I walked out Skillings Road. Now the old [Oak Creek] school house set right in there.

Bob Zybach: Okay, now we're right on the corner of Cardwell Hill Road. And the school house set on this corner right here?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, right here.

Bob Zybach: Okay, about where the old cyclone fence is?

Neil Vanderburg: Where all these old trees are and stuff.

Bob Zybach: Where that holly is there. Is that associated with the school somehow?

Neil Vanderburg: I don't know.

Bob Zybach: So the school was right in there.

Neil Vanderburg: Right in there, yeah. Just real close to the creek there.

Bob Zybach: And you called that Oak Creek school?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. Of course, this was all gravel road then.

Bob Zybach: And from the school up that way, only Skillings lived up that way?

Neil Vanderburg: No, there were several. I'm talking about 15 years ago, I'm not talking about when I lived here.

Bob Zybach: Oh, I see, so Skillings was there only 15 years ago.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, that's the first I ever heard of him.

Bob Zybach: Okay, so when you lived here, did anybody live up that way at all?

Neil Vanderburg: I don't really know. I didn't come up this way very much. I herded cows down and I went to Corvallis. So I couldn't tell you.

Bob Zybach: So when Skillings accosted you, you were an adult. You weren't a kid then anymore.

Neil Vanderburg: No. Now Tortoras lived in that house right there.

Bob Zybach: Okay, that's the white house here.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Z. The Tortora House and Raising Kids

Bob Zybach: Okay, we're right next to an electrical substation.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, that wasn't there.

Bob Zybach: And it's got red trim on it. How about that big old red barn up on the hill there?

Neil Vanderburg: That's our barn.

Bob Zybach: Oh, I've been wanting to know the story on this for some time.

Neil Vanderburg: Well, that's all I know about it. It's a three-story barn. And we only lived there for six or eight months. But that was our barn. And Bill Wheeler lives in the next house that sits up on the bank like that one.

Bob Zybach: I stopped and talked to the people here that have this barn one day. I was tracing the Applegate Trail right through this area.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. When we lived here, there was no electricity here. This is where you turn to go up to Bill Wheeler's.

Bob Zybach: His is the brown house there?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, this is his house right here. Now this was all our pasture.

Bob Zybach: Up on the hill there.

Neil Vanderburg: This whole hill. Clear down to the valley. But I chased those cotton-pickin' cows all over this hillside. But our pasture went . . . see that was our fields down there. And our pasture went over two rises and valleys and you can imagine climbing these cotton-pickin' hills. See there's one of the low spots, then this is the next ridge here. But you see how steep that is?

Bob Zybach: Were any. . . we're on Ridgewood Drive here. Was there a road through here?

Neil Vanderburg: No, this was just slrictly our pasture. We had a fence around it and that was it. Our place and Tortora's place had adjoining fences, but there was absolutely no . . . I mean this was just pasture.

Bob Zybach: Who did you get your house from?

Neil Vanderburg: Guy by the name of Crane. We rented it from him and . . . see our pasture went clear down into the bottom of this canyon here.

Bob Zybach: So the reason you didn't know any of the neighbors around here is there wasn't any.

Neil Vanderburg: There wasn't any! This was all native grass and rose bushes.

Bob Zybach: Do they call it sweet briar? Or just call it rose bushes?

Neil Vanderburg: It was always wild roses.

Bob Zybach: Then on the blackberries, I'm kind of curious, you call them wild mountain blackberries, for those trailing blackberries, the natives. And then the himalayas, were those considered natives, or

Neil Vanderburg: No way. They were brought in by the settlers. And actually when I moved to Oregon they were still in rows. You didn't see them just growing all over like now.

Bob Zybach: How about the evergreen blackberries?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, I'm pretty sure they were brought in too. Because they were pretty much under a cultivated status.

Bob Zybach: Now we're looking at Bald Hill right there, right?

Neil Vanderburg: Bald Hill, right.

Bob Zybach: That's interesting. Right where your old place was and that barn was one trail that the Applegate Trail I was tracking out. I was real curious who owned that barn, I went and talked to the people there but they didn't know much about it.

Neil Vanderburg: Were they renters?

Bob Zybach: I think so.

Neil Vanderburg: Okay, I talked to the renters that were in that house a couple of years ago, and they told me that the owners were going to move in that fall.

Bob Zybach: Okay, it was a couple years ago when I was doing it.

Neil Vanderburg: And they were telling me that they were sure that the owner would just be tickled to death to talk to me and hear some history on the old place.

Bob Zybach: This is where the Applegate Trail went to the north side of Bald Hill here.

Neil Vanderburg: See how Wheeler's looking right down on our barn?

Bob Zybach: And you lived in the old. . . was that house yellow at that time?

Neil Vanderburg: No, I think it was white.

Bob Zybach: Okay. And then that little house wasn't even in there, right?

Neil Vanderburg: The little house wasn't in there, but there was a lot of buildings in there. There was a row of three big chicken houses in here, and I raised chickens. And this little building that sticks out behind the house there, we had a koller light plant in there, and we couldn't afford batteries for it, so we never ran it. We used our kerosine lamps and stuff. But on Thanksgiving and Christmas when all my brothers and sisters and

Neil Vanderburg: brother-in-laws would come -- it took 32 volts to start it, 36 volts I guess -- and we all had six volt batteries in our cars, so we had to get six batteries together to get enough to start it. And when we'd hook up all the batteries to it, all we had to do was turn on a light switch any place in the house and that power plant would start up. The way it was set up the batteries completed the circuit through the light and made the power plant start up.

Bob Zybach: So you'd just start the power plant for special occasions then?

Neil Vanderburg: We had to have at least six cars around before we had enough batteries to use it. It was just kind of a fun deal for the men to do while they were sitting around waiting for dinner or something.

Bob Zybach: So your place was right here, and how about out in that direction there, looking east?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, this road coming up here, right there where it corners that was as far east as we went. Then we went over that way quite a ways.

Bob Zybach: Who owned the land south of you, on Bald Hill there?

Neil Vanderburg: Knights.

Bob Zybach: It wasn't Knightson, it was Knights?

Neil Vanderburg: No, just Knights.

Bob Zybach: Then down at the base were the Tortoras. Did their land go out that way, then?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Out toward Oak Creek.

Neil Vanderburg: See our . . . we turned just about on the property line between Tortoras and us. And their property went back as far as ours did. And we had adjoining fences there, and one time I tried to ride down this hill on a bicycle and I sure got scratched up by the rosebushes. That wheel just slid all the way till I fell down.

Bob Zybach: Now on Tortoras, from then towards town then, what was the next family out this way?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, Knights came clear to the road here, and went clear back up on Bald Hill. And there was nothing at all on the other side of the road until you cross the creek. Then on one side of the road was.

Bob Zybach: The old homesteads there are Withams and Mulkeys. This is Johnson Mulkey's homestead is what you called Knight's place. In fact, Mulkeys formed a solid string here all the way out to Walnut Avenue.

Neil Vanderburg: Is that right. Well there were some Bartons lived on the north side of the road just over the creek there, and he ultimately ended up having some mental problems, and he got pretty violent. He had 12 kids. And they just mostly raised horses and just kind of liked horses and I don't know how in the world they made a living. But Bartons lived over where Gilbert Ennis later lived. And they moved over here before we did. And Hubbards lived on the right hand side, just after you cross the bridge, in that big house there. And I believe they raised turkeys. Yeah, I know they raised turkeys, because we could hear them gobbling clear up here. And that's the only job I ever just flat out quit. He asked me to work for him one time and they were thrashing his wheat and he wanted me to get in the barn and mow the straw back. They were blowing the straw in off the old-time thrashing machine. And I got in there and I worked for about five hours and his straw was practically all . . . never thought I'd forget the darn stuff. . . dog fennel. And my eyes were about to fall out of my head and the pollen had got in my cheeks and stuff, and man I was just swelled up like a pup. And I climbed out of there and I says, "It's time you put somebody else in there and let me do something else." And he says, "If you can't do the job I give you, you

Neil Vanderburg: don't have a job." So I says, "Okay, I don't have a job. Pay me off, I'm going home."

Bob Zybach: It was dog fennel?

Neil Vanderburg: Do you know what dog fennel is?

Bob Zybach: Nope.

Neil Vanderburg: Oh boy. It's a little short plant about this high usually. It's

Bob Zybach: About six or eight inches high.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, and it's got yellow flowers on it. And it's got. . . well, the plant is very much like a russian thistle, if you were ever in the country that has russian thistle, when they're green and small, they're similar to that. They're kind of almost like a fern, really, but they've got these yellow flowers, or white flowers with the yellow center in them.

Bob Zybach: Do they look kind of like daisies?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: And they've got kind of a stinking smell to them.

Neil Vanderburg: Oh yeah.

Bob Zybach: Why was he thrashing that up?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, he was getting the wheat out of it, and then of course the dog fennel was blowing in the barn, he was going to feed it or use it for bedding or whatever in the winter time.

Bob Zybach: 1 see. That was just li/ce a weed.

Neil Vanderburg: But all this country had dog fennel in it before we had herbicides. In the spring you'd see acres and acres of the stuff.

Bob Zybach: Oh, so that was just getting in there, it wasn't supposed to be there.

Neil Vanderburg: But I was sure hurting when I got through! Anyway, I'll tell you another little story about this barn if you've got a little bit of time. My dad didn't go for any foul language or anything. And he broke his leg, he was on crutches, and I climbed these cotton-pickin' hills and brought the cows down. And just as I got them down to the barn, it was in the spring, and the grass was good and they didn't want to go into the barn. They turned on me and ran up this cotton-pickin' hill. And I was working for another dairy, I got up at 2:00 in the morning, and went and milked cows for another dairy over there by Philomath, and I came home and I climbed the hill and got these cows. And it was probably close to 8:00 and when they turned on me I said, "You SOB's!" Only I said the words, with emphasis. And my dad says, "All right. You go on to the house, I'll take care of things." That was the only way he'd punish me was like this. And so he climbed that hill on his crutches, got the cows in, milked them by himself, and I sat in the house. And I felt just an inch high. I mean there was no way he could have punished me more. I never said that again. But that's the way my dad dealt with me. And I had a lot of respect for him and everything, but he never. . . his punishment was what, some people would say, "Oh boy, I don't have to milk the cows!" but that wasn't the way that it affected me at all.

Bob Zybach: Did that upset you towards him, or did you kind of admire him for going at it that way?

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, I admired him for it. It upset me to me, not to him. It was good punishment. For me to have to sit there and watch him climb this hill on crutches and get those cows back down and put them in the barn and milk them all by himself.

Bob Zybach: So how did you punish your children when you raised them, then?

Neil Vanderburg: I tried it but I wasn't as good at it as he was! No, I raised all my children, and I'm

[Withheld from this edition pending review. The page keeps its printed number and its permanent link, so a citation to it still lands here.]

Neil Vanderburg: old road went over the top of this hill, and this road was clear out here. They used to get up on top of that hill there and make love.

Bob Zybach: Over here?

Neil Vanderburg: Well, that little knob where the cut is. This was Knight's driveway here.

Bob Zybach: Did he have a bridge there?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. So anyway, I'd figure that pistol range goes right up here.

Bob Zybach: Right across from Knight's drive.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. And that's the old Barton barn there.

Bob Zybach: Which one? The one to the right?

Neil Vanderburg: The old barn there. The other barn wasn't there. And then that big house was big enough for their twelve kids.

Bob Zybach: How long did the Barton's live there?

Neil Vanderburg: I have no idea. They lived there. . I believe that the Bartons owned that up until

Neil Vanderburg: about 10 years or so ago.

Bob Zybach: And then this white house here, that was the Hubbards?

Neil Vanderburg: That was the Hubbards, yeah. And that's where I got all the dog fennel in my face.

Bob Zybach: So there was just very few farms up in this area at all?

Neil Vanderburg: That was all. Then the college dairy barn.

Bob Zybach: Was the county fairgrounds still here at that time?

Neil Vanderburg: I don't think so. The fairgrounds was closer to town, I believe. I entered cows and chickens and stuff in the fair and I don't think it was this far out of town. I don't know where it was.

Bob Zybach: And you don't recall anything else being built up around in here?

Neil Vanderburg: This is the road I used to go milk those cows. I went out 54th and over on the old Philomath Road about a mile or so. South of what is now the Phiomath Road. And milked cows. It was a grade A dairy. And we had to be through milking by about 6:00 so he could get his milk into town to go on the milk truck to be delivered all over town. In the morning. You see in those days milk would last two days and that was about it because you didn't have refrigeration, you didn't have the bacteria killing abilities and all that stuff. And I imagine our bacteria counts were probably up in the millions, you know. And so they delivered the milk the same day they milked it. And we would milk, and we would put the milk cans in water, and we would strain the milk into the 10 gallon milk cans and cool it with water, and we would do the night's milking and the morning's milking and then they would take it to town and bottle it and get it to the customer before evening. Milk trucks all had ice, they iced the milk down in the milk trucks.

Bob Zybach: Where did . . . after you moved from this house here, where did you move to?

Neil Vanderburg: Then we moved to LaComb.

Bob Zybach: Now who moved into this place after you left, do you have any idea?

Neil Vanderburg: What did I tell you was the name of the people that we rented it from?

Bob Zybach: I'm not recalling their name right now.

Neil Vanderburg: I'm not either.

Bob Zybach: But they moved back into it?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Where did they move while you were living there?

Neil Vanderburg: I have no idea. In order for us to rent that place we had to buy all their cows and some farm machinery and a whole bunch of stuff, and the Farm Home Administration,

Neil Vanderburg: that he had the loan with, they were the ones that found the place for us to rent. And so I think it was about February. So we moved in there and we bought their old cows and they were so skinny they'd have to stand twice to make a shadow. That's another one of my dad's sayings. And we just paid a whole bunch of stuff for nothing, you might say, my dad took their cattle and stuff to the auction and so forth. And we didn't have an airtight lease on it, so when we went to work and plowed the whole thing in the spring, and finally got it ready to plant it was too late, so we figured we got the ground all ready to plant this fall. Cranes was their name. And so in the fall they came in and said we had to be out of there by the middle of October. So we paid a whole bunch of money for absolutely nothing.

Bob Zybach: And did a lot of work.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. My dad really got shafted on that. But it was . . the administrator of the

Neil Vanderburg: Farm Home Administration that. . . they were the ones that got us into it and responsible for it, but still we had to pay for it.

Bob Zybach: So Cranes, did you ever see them again?

Neil Vanderburg: No. There was only one thing that we got for nothing there. They had two high school girls and the mother and they were all redheads. And they had a whole big closet all full of, well what you'd call pornographic magazines.

Bob Zybach: You mean the mom and the daughters did?

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah. And they left them there and I got to read them for a while till my mother realized what was going on. She got rid of them then. I still remember one of the jokes, something about a...

Bob Zybach: I got the tape recorder going here.

Neil Vanderburg: Oh, you do! I won't tell you then!

Bob Zybach: Just tell me what kind of pornography they had in those days.

Neil Vanderburg: Well actually it was more jokes and stuff than it was actually pornography. You know, I mean, like my brother says, the biggest thrill he could get was to look in Sears and Roebuck Catalog as far as pornography was concerned. And see the models with the bras on.

Bob Zybach: More than any kind of material they were writing fbr people then.

Neil Vanderburg: Yeah, they weren't writing. They were making jokes that were. . . had two answers to them, you know, and one of them would be dirty and the other one wouldn't be.

Bob Zybach: I was kind of curious, I was thinking what's happened in my lifetime with pornography in the last 20 years, I couldn't imagine what they had in the '30s!

Neil Vanderburg: But they had, I don't even remember, but I know my mother didn't want me reading It.

Bob Zybach: I don't know if want to end this actually talking about pornography or not. If th4-zt's the last thing we want in there.

Neil Vanderburg: I've told you everything I know!