8. Farm Life and Wildlife

Velma Carter Rawie: there on the north side of this road cutting through here.

Bob Zybach: Uh huh.

Velma Carter Rawie: where a family lives. Their name is Ivers. The boy Ed Ivers and his wife still live there.

Bob Zybach: In the same home.

Velma Carter Rawie: They bought the land back after Camp Adair.

8. Farm Life and Wildlife

Bob Zybach: How come, now your mother would have had the option of buying that bacic, wouldn't she?

Velma Carter Rawie: That particular part where.. . if there was work. . . concentrated buildings where my folks were. There are all of those concrete slabs. It wasn't farm land anymore.

Bob Zybach: Oh, okay. It had just been too developed?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, they had put in roads and foundations for barracks and all that sort of stuff. They moved my folks house, and it was a new house in that area, moved the house the equivalent of a city block into a grove of trees and it was used as an officers club of some kind. It is gone now, but it was. If you go right north from the game farm from where the house is there is a road that crosses this road and heads north. You go right past where my folks house was. The old locust tree is still standing that was in our back yard.

Bob Zybach: Now, that is a question. I'm interested in some of these plants. Now, that locust tree, do you think trees like that or old orchards should be saved?

Velma Carter Rawie: Well, I don't know.

Bob Zybach: Would it bother you if somebody went and cut that down and turned it into firewood?

Velma Carter Rawie: No, it wouldn't bother me because there is no sentimental value left to that out there. . . It isn't the same country as it was before Camp Adair went in.

Bob Zybach: They changed it too much?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, it isn't, it just isn't the same.

Bob Zybach: Are there areas in that neighborhood that are the same, that kind of give you some sentimental attachment to Wells or to your family fann?

Velma Carter Rawie: I have a sentimental value to it. I've taken both of my granddaughters out there

Velma Carter Rawie: and shown them where we lived when their dad was born and whatnot. I've made up scrap books and albums showing pictures of the old house and of the school and all of that sort of stuff so that they know their heritage, so to speak, or where they are from. As far as being. . . There is a sentimental attachment to it only because it was where I was born I guess. The whole face of it is just so completely changed that it has really destroyed any personal attachment to it other than this is where I lived. I mean, that locust tree was in the back yard. In my own mind, I am attached to things that happened while I lived out there as a child. I can remember being very ill one time with strep throat or something and my dad. . . we didn't have a phone, but he went someplace and called the doctor, old Dr. Anderson, and he came out and my dad had to go out to the highway, this road here, with a team of horses and pick him up out here. Of course, it was a gravel road at that time. [Inaudible] I remember laying on this couch in what was the living room, I told you, with the fireplace in it. I was running a real high fever and he came in and those were the fanciest shoes for a city man...

Bob Zybach: [Laughter]

Velma Carter Rawie: well, they were fancy shoes!

Bob Zybach: All this talk about shoes are kind of making me self-conscious about my own. . .[Laughter]

Velma Carter Rawie: Oh no, they are fine! I mean, I didn't see many of the kind of shoes that Dr. Anderson had on and I remember saying to him that, "You've got mud on those beautiful shoes." He said to my mother. . . she says. . . he said, "She's gonna be airight. Her fever is broken now and she's gonna be airight." He stayed with us for quite a long time that night.

Bob Zybach: Where was Doc Anderson from?

Velma Carter Rawie: Here in Corvallis. He had delivered me as a baby.

Bob Zybach: Oh, so he was your family doctor?

Velma Carter Rawie: He was the family doctor.

Bob Zybach: Did he take that as a sign that you were gonna be airight...?

Velma Carter Rawie: Well, that fact that I acknowledged the fact that he had dirt on his shoes Well, I had been delirious.

Bob Zybach: So he was taking that as a sign that you were paying attention...?

Velma Carter Rawie: I had been running this terrible high fever and when I kind of came to and saw that and made a remark about it he figured that I was gonna be alright.

Bob Zybach: Now, you said that your dad went out with a team of horses, what did he farm with?

Velma Carter Rawie: Horses.

Bob Zybach: So he didn't have a tractor?

Velma Carter Rawie: Heavens no! This was before that days of tractors. People just didn't have tractors.

Bob Zybach: But he was modem and had money so did he buy a tractor when tractors came in? Did he purchase a tractor... ?

Velma Carter Rawie: He never did have a tractor. He farmed with horses until the day he died.

Bob Zybach: Till 1937? He had a new car when those came out?

Velma Carter Rawie: Uh huh. But he had his horses and he had his horse drawn equipment and he plowed. . . and he could plow the straightest furrow you ever saw in your life.

Bob Zybach: Huh. As you grew up on the farm and you grew up outside and your dad is a real efficient farmer, what kinds of wildlife came into that environment?

Velma Carter Rawie: China pheasants.

Bob Zybach: China pheasants?

Velma Carter Rawie: Well, I can remember Dad having a shotgun and we'd have China pheasant once in awhile.

Bob Zybach: Would you ever see deer?

Velma Carter Rawie: I don't remember ever seeing a deer.

Bob Zybach: Uh huh. Not the whole time?

Velma Carter Rawie: Yeah, I don't remember. I'm not saying that there maybe wasn't deer there. I don't remember seeing deer.

Bob Zybach: Can you remember hearing coyotes?

Velma Carter Rawie: No.

Bob Zybach: How about... We14 you didn't have any water so there were no beaver.

Velma Carter Rawie: No, no beaver. There was no creek.

Bob Zybach: Now, that is part of the fly over though. How about ducks and geese coming over part of your community?

Velma Carter Rawie: Oh, you'd hear the ducks, [Laughter] the geese, not the ducks, the geese go over,

Velma Carter Rawie: but as I say we weren't close to any creeks or anything so we didn't have any ducks. We raised a few turkeys. We always had chickens and pigs.

Bob Zybach: Would there be hawks or owls?

Velma Carter Rawie: Oh yes, and I was pretty good at shooting them because they'd chase the chickens.

Bob Zybach: If you saw a hawk or an owl, it was time to shoot them?

Velma Carter Rawie: You'd get them because they would get the chickens.

Bob Zybach: Would you have a...?

Velma Carter Rawie: The first time I ever shot a shotgun, I saw a hawk up in a tree and I took the shotgun and pointed it up like that you know. The gun kicked me and knocked me flat on my back. I can remember that.

Bob Zybach: Uh huh.

Velma Carter Rawie: Of course you don't shoot hawks anymore. I guess that they are an endangered species, aren't they?

Bob Zybach: Urn, I don't think that they are endangered. There are sure a lot of them along I-S.

Velma Carter Rawie: I bought this place, which is this house here that we lived in here four years before we built this house.

Bob Zybach: Dixon Creek ran through our property down here and we had racoons and stuff down there. They would come in and get our geese and our chickens. We had.. . a lot of times we had coon hunting. Of course, this doesn't pertain to this area up there when we'd have people come out with their coon dogs and we'd have quite a deal when we'd go out and hunt the coons. Would you do it just for the sport?

Velma Carter Rawie: It was a sport. Well, and to protect. . . and to try to get rid of the coons, save our chickens and ducks.

Bob Zybach: So what little wildlife you had out in the Wells areq, pretty much you tried to get rid of?

Velma Carter Rawie: That's right! Because they were, well they were predators.

Bob Zybach: How about things like moles or field mice?

Velma Carter Rawie: We had moles that would bother the gardens and Dad would always shoot them with a shotgun and the concussion would kill them. You had to dig them out right away. We didn't have.. . We had a yard and it was fenced but the yard