5. Farm Life and City Jobs

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

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

Bob Zybach: Did you have an orchard?

Velma Carter Rawie: Oh, we had an orchard. We had our own apples and pears and that sort of stuff and a walnut tree as I recall. Most people were just very self-sufficient.

Bob Zybach: Were people. . . Did they read newspapers much or was there discussion about books?

Velma Carter Rawie: I can't remember. . . Yeah there was a paper, a daily paper. If there wasn't a newspaper how else would we start a fire. [Laughter] Really, papers were used for starting the fire and in our old farmhouse, we had an old house and then my parents did build a new house . . . We hadn't been in it too awful long when my father died. . . In the old house, we had a great big square kitchen with a wood stove in it and a dining table. It was a living kitchen. The only other heat in the house was a fireplace in the living room. So, we lived basically in the kitchen area.

Bob Zybach: And then the living room, was that for entertaining guests?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, often times in the evenings I can remember we sat in the kitchen because it was warmer and it had an upstairs and one bedroom downstairs.

Bob Zybach: What did you do with the house, the old house, after you built the new one?

Velma Carter Rawie: Tore it down, we tore it down. In fact, we tore it down and built the new house where that old one was and lived in the garage, the old garage. In the old house that we lived in, I can remember the old round tub we took a bath in on Saturday night. We didn't like that idea so we bought a bath tub, an iron bathtub. You know, with the things on it, claw feet legs, and put it in the corner of this kitchen and dad built a board top for it and attached it to the wall and mother padded it with, we call it creton, a pretty print material and made a ruffle all that way around it, you know. Then when on Saturdays we wanted to take a bath, we had a bathtub. That's where . . . When the lid was down it was like a lounge or something. Dad would come in from work and while he was waiting for dinner to get on the table he would lay down on that. You know, down by the wood stove and as I always said if we got caught taking a bath, we could always put the lid down. [Laughter]

Bob Zybach: Was that kind of a ritual, a Saturday evening bath?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, of coarse Dad always cleaned up more. I mean being a farmer and

Velma Carter Rawie: working outside, but basically.. . Then of course after we got into the new house, we had running water in the bathroom and that sort of stuff. By the time I started High School we had warm water and facilities and whatnot.

Bob Zybach: Now the old house, did that come down through your family?

Velma Carter Rawie: No, my folks bought that farm. . . let's see, I was about a year old when Mom and Dad bought the farm, that particular one.

Bob Zybach: Now, you're descended from Tolbert Carter.

Velma Carter Rawie: Right.

Bob Zybach: But there jg also a Smiley Carter?

Velma Carter Rawie: That would be . . . I think Smiley. . . I'm not sure whether Smiley or Smiley's dad and my Tolbert Carter were brothers or something. . . . were related or something, but I don't know. There was a Harry Carter too who lived in Wells there and he was a cousin of my grandpas. In fact, it's interesting that you should mention Snilley, just last week I had a letter, it was a letter addressed to my husband, Ralph Rawie, and the letter said, "Someone told me that a Rawie married a Carter, Rose Carter's daughter and I am writing to all of the Rawies that I. . . because I am a descendent of Johannan Carter and I understand that Rose Carter's daughter married a Rawie." But anyway, and I have contacted her since. She was someone from California. She is checking up on her genealogy and she was trying to find out something.

Bob Zybach: Was Johannan Carter one of the Carter family?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, he would be . . . she told me in the second letter that I got from her after I wrote to her... I said that, "I have no knowledge of Johannan Carter, but my great grandfather was Tolbert." And when she wrote back she said, "I think to get to Johannan you have to go one generation beyond.. . before Tolbert." I had no knowledge of anything before that. But then you're talking about Indians. One time I got a letter from somebody in California who wanted to know if I was related to Sitting Bull and it boiled down to, her daughter was trying to adopt an Indian baby and you can't. . . apparently unless you have some Indian blood in you, you can't adopt an Indian child.

Bob Zybach: There are rules like that.

Velma Carter Rawie: Anyway, so this lady was a Carter and she was trying to find out if maybe there might be some Indian blood in her. [Laughter] My husband laughed and he said, "Well if you've got any Indian blood in you I want to know about it. I want some of this free money that the government is always giving out." [Laughter] It was kind of a standing joke, but that is beside the point.

Bob Zybach: When you were growing up, you said in the summer one of the things you did was pick hops.

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah.

Bob Zybach: How about the rest of the summer?

Velma Carter Rawie: There was.. . On a farm we all had to work basically. -

Bob Zybach: Would you churn butter or gather eggs?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, and feed the chickens and. . . I don't know, there was always something to do. I can't remember ever sitting down.. . we did read the funnies I guess when the paper come. But I can't remember. . . we read library books I guess. Bess loved, my older sister loved to read. There again I was a tomboy. Now, I was outside all of the time.

Bob Zybach: What did you do for fun?

Velma Carter Rawie: Well, we never had a horse to ride. That was a non-profit, a non-producing animal, A riding horse. We had to just ride the old work horses. We had one that was named Clyde and so I'd get a bridle and get on him and he'd take it about so long and then there was a limb on an old apple tree and he'd go under that and knock me off when he had had enough of riding around in the pasture. He was smart.

Bob Zybach: Would you ever fish?

Velma Carter Rawie: No, never fished until I was married. My husband was a fisherman. There was no place to fish I guess.

Bob Zybach: Vhat was the nearest creek?

Velma Carter Rawie: Soap Creek I guess.

Bob Zybach: So that would be up north by...?

Velma Carter Rawie: . Sulphur Springs. Luckiamute river, we went to pick hops down on the Luckiamute, down close to the Luckiamute river.

(End of tape 1, side 2)

Velma Carter Rawie: We weren't abused, I'm not trying to say that. We had lots to eat and had a real good life. I'm not trying to say that I was deprived of anything. At times when I got into High school I wished that I could have participated more in things that kids in town did, like going to ball gaines and whatnot. But I couldn't because, I mean. . . now my son and daughter.. . they run all over the country taking their kids to things but in those days...

Bob Zybach: When you came into town, was there any problems with the city kids as opposed to the farm Idds? Was there any differences or.. . ?

Velma Carter Rawie: Well, I was never considered one of the "in" kids so I was a pretty good student and I had lots of friends in town. There were a couple of kids through High school that were town kids, but.. . Then when I finished High school, I went up to Portland to what was old Benke Walker Business College, at that time, in Portland. I went up there for six months, of course, to learn shorthand, typing and that sort of stuff. Then I came back and went to work as a bookkeeper. Well, in those days people weren't so specific on their things and a bookkeeper did a little shorthand, you know, you were sort of an all around office person, I think. At least where I worked. I worked one term at the Legislature for one of the Senators, as his secretary, when I first got out of Business College.

Bob Zybach: Which Senator was that?

Velma Carter Rawie: Senator Walker [Oregon Senator]. He was Polk - Benton County Senator. He was from down around the Independence area. That was quite an experience for a country girl, to go and do that. Then as I say, I went to work for an attorney in town for awhile. Jim Lane, who was a blind man and that was the only job I ever got fired from because I.. . When he would get ready to go over to the [Benton County] Court House, he smoked chain cigarettes so he always had ashes all around him, and I kept always whisking him and when he was going to go, well you know, I didn't want him going over there looking like that. His wife said, "I don't need you to . .

Bob Zybach: Just because you were whisking...?

Velma Carter Rawie: Well, she was a very overbearing person and I think that she just liked for him to look a little sloppy.