4. Wells

Bob Zybach: How about the destiuction of the buildings and fences and... ?

Velma Carter Rawie: Oh, they just bulldozed those down and tore them up.

4. Wells

Bob Zybach: Did that bother people?

Velma Carter Rawie: Sure, because when you asked me the question about how many people lived in.. There was an Artisan Hall, that was a Lodge, an Artisan Lodge Hall, that was basically a community meeting place. They had community dances on Saturday night, and they had pie socials and basket socials. That's were it was, on the downstairs part of it. The Christmas plays were always at the Hall because it could seat a lot of people. The whole community would come and it had a stage, you know. You see the train, the passenger train that used to run from Portland to Corvallis, was the Red Electric. It was like a trolley car. It had a overhead electric...

Bob Zybach: Electrical line over the... ?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, and there was a thing that went off of the Red Electric that went up and rode the hot wire, so to speak. It was like a street car. . . like used to be in Portland or someplace...

Bob Zybach: A trolley.

Velma Carter Rawie: A trolley car. And it was the Red Electric. That was what brought the mail and if it was late, we always used to say that it had jumped the track at Whiteson, which is down around Yamhill someplace. That was the

Bob Zybach: Would it actually do that or...?

Velma Carter Rawie: Well it didn't jump the.. . but the rod that went up onto the. . . the electric line that would keep it moving would jump off of the. . . It wasn't that the train actually jumped off of the railroad track, but the trolley [inaudible]. There was a rod that went up like on the old Street cars. I don't know if you remember them.

Bob Zybach: Just one in Portland.

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, well it was the same idea but there was a rod went up from the top. So as I say...

Bob Zybach: Now was that the only train that came through? The Red Electric? Or did other trains .....

Velma Carter Rawie: The freight trains came through.

Bob Zybach: On the same track?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, there were sidings along the way and they'd have to move in to let the mail train go through if a freight train came.

Bob Zybach: Would the freight run evely day?

Velma Carter Rawie: As I recall it did. Yeah.

Bob Zybach: Did it have a steam engine?

Velma Carter Rawie: Uh huh. There was a siding there of course because of the grain mill, the flour mill we call it but it was Fisher's mill. They actually didn't do any flour making there but they took the, it was called the elevator I guess

Bob Zybach: A grain elevator?

Velma Carter Rawie: Grain elevator. But that's where they took in the grain and then it was shipped by train again to the mill in Corvallis where it was processed.

Bob Zybach: So at the Fisher mill here? So you had a grain elevator, a church, your grandfather's store, the social haiL What was the name of that?

Velma Carter Rawie: Artisan, that was the name of the Lodge, the Artisan Lodge.

Bob Zybach: Oh, I see.

Velma Carter Rawie: And the Lodge. . . They had the Lodge meetings upstairs once a month or two weeks. . . In the bottom was the dance floor and that's where all the school... all the general elections were held at the Artisan Hall.

Bob Zybach: Where there any taverns?

Velma Carter Rawie: No, no, no way!

Bob Zybach: No way, huh? Was it a diy community?

Velma Carter Rawie: Well I guess it was. I never even heard about anything to drink as a kid growing up.

Bob Zybach: Was that common in the whole community or just in your family?

Velma Carter Rawie: No, I think it was common.. . I'm not saying that nobody probably made any moonshine along the way. I don't know that. But no, no tavern. Just the store. Then there was one. . . I'm trying to think.. . where Mr. Hamen Lewis lived right on the corner and then my grandmother's and grandfather's house and then the store and then Mrs. Noise, who is Tomlinson's grandmother, lived next to that

Velma Carter Rawie: and then there was another house where people by the name of Colemans lived and I don't know if you are familiar with Coleman's Jewelry store downtown. Alfred Coleman was the crippled man who walked on crutches for years. He's dead now. Johnny [Coleman] runs the store now. Alfred Coleman, Johnny's dad, was the son of the Colemans who lived out there. Alfred had polio as a kid, crippled.. . But anyway, they lived there. There was probably. . . And oh, then there was a sub station at Wells to generate electricity for this Red Electric train.

Bob Zybach: How did it generate electdcity?

Velma Carter Rawie: I don't know. I'm not an electrician. I don't know, but it was called a sub station. Some people by the name of Lacey; Lacys, run the sub station. There was a little yellow house there, you know like S.P. . . . S.P., I think about S.P., but their house, the house that the Lacys lived in was sort of a cream colored house and everybody knew that that was the house of the people who ran the sub station. To me it was anyway.

Bob Zybach: So they were kind of there on a... associated with the business, but other people where more associated with families and community?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, and farming. It was a farming community. But I imagine that there was probably 8 or 10 families who lived in there close. Then in later years, there was a mill that came in, a small sawmill came in, and they shipped lumber out of there.

Bob Zybach: Was that Valley Mills?

Velma Carter Rawie: Valley Mills, yeah.

Bob Zybach: Now, Valley Mills had another mill up in Soap Creek Where those two connected?

Velma Carter Rawie: I think that that is where they got the logs from. There was a railroad spur, as I say, a siding or whatnot and that's where they loaded the lumber and stuff into the boxcars in Wells. I think the logs where sawed there at Wells. They brought the logs down there and sawed them.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember how they brought the logs in?

Velma Carter Rawie: I'm trying to think.

Bob Zybach: Did the reason the mill locate there because of...

Velma Carter Rawie: because of the railroad.

Bob Zybach: Where would the lumber go from that point?

Velma Carter Rawie: Well it was shipped all over. I don't know where exactly, but it left there in boxcars.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember what kind of lumber they sawed?

Velma Carter Rawie: Oh, they sawed. . . It was big lumber when I was a kid. I would say, 4x8, I mean it was.. . and it was rough lumber of course. Of course, rough lumber. . . a 2x4 rough lumber is a lot bigger than a 2x4...

Bob Zybach: It wasn't tie rails for the railroad tracks?

Velma Carter Rawie: No, no it was lumber.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember the years that that mill was up? About how old you were at that time?

Velma Carter Rawie: It was before I was married, I know that. I was married in '37.

Bob Zybach: So the mill would be maybe in the early 30s?

Velma Carter Rawie: It would be the early 30s.

Bob Zybach: How about the grain elevator?

Velma Carter Rawie: Oh, it closed. Well the farmers still took there grain there. I think my dad still took his grain there all the time he was farming. Yeah, it did. But he didn't work there anymore.

Bob Zybach: Would they have a separate operator for the grain elevator or did the fanners... ?

Velma Carter Rawie: My dad at one time was the operator there. The farmers, of course, took their grain by horse and wagon and this was before the days of combines of course, it was when the threshing machines went throughout. . . you know. People by the name of Brodie's had the threshing machine and they thrashed for eveiybody in the community and they had their own cook wagon. The biggest thrill for me as a kid was when the cook shack came and I got to eat one meal. . . climb up the ladder and sit on the outside and eat with the harvest crew. We always got to sleep one night in the haystack to keep somebody from stealing the stacks of grain. That was our summer vacation was to get to go out and sleep... [laughter]