7.. Back on the Farm

Bob Zybach: wouldn't.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Isn't that a beautiful piece of work?

Bob Zybach: Yes it is.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, I like wood, I just like the feel of it. It has life. Plastic has no life.

Bob Zybach: I've worked with trees and wood all my l(fe and that's kind of my prejudice too. So.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Where are we? We're still on the farm.

Bob Zybach: We took a visit from the farm to the Lewis and Clark Exposition.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, that was just a visit, a few days visit.

Bob Zybach: But it's interesting to me that the Forestiy Building made such an impression on you that you went back year after year. Do you remember a slice in the Forestiy Building [exhibit of tree rings] taken from Table Mountain [Lincoln County, Oregon] that showed different dates and it had a metal cut. . I've been tiying to track that down for awhile. It was taken from Table Mountain where maybe there'd been metal there in the 1700's. Do you remember any particular exhibit?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No. I just felt like a big piece of me went up in flames when that building burned.

Wanda Marcks Cook: [Old logging equipment, wheels, steam engine, narrow gauge - WMC]

Bob Zybach: Do you remember any particular exhibit or was it actually the construction of the building itself?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Construction of the building and the fact that they had the imagination to put a building like that together. The pillars, you know, were just tree trunks, huge tree trunks with the bark on them, interesting. Now, when I could stifi scramble around, it's very difficult for me to walk now, but when I go up to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) I go up to the . . [long pause]

Bob Zybach: Forestry Center?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Forestry Center.

Bob Zybach: I was just there two weeks ago for their cultural resources [exhibit] so. . sounds like.

Wanda Marcks Cook: I'll be going again, I think maybe.

Bob Zybach: I'm loolcing forward to. . . when I get a little bit further on this project of maybe going with you on a trip to Soap Creek Valley and that might be a stop. It's. . a lot of these places you're talking about are the names of the hills and it would be a lot easier jf you're there.

7. Back on the Farm

Bob Zybach: Okay, back on the farm then.

Wanda Marcks Cook: So, we're back on the farm.

Bob Zybach: Now we've got trout in the creek.

Wanda Marcks Cook: There's a wonderful spring on that farm. Cold, cold, cold. And there was an old shack, we called it the spring house and the spring would overflow and under a wooden platform and that's where we kept our milk. Great big tin pans of milk about that deep, you know. And kept it cool and it would sour, naturally sour, you know. It's better than any ice cream, that sour. . that sour milk.

Bob Zybach: So that was like a treat to you?

Wanda Marcks Cook: It's clambered, you know. [Because it was raw milk - WMC]

Bob Zybach: Chilled clambered milk was kind of a dessert?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes, or you know, snacks with sugar and cinnamon.

Bob Zybach: Did you make your own cheese?

Wanda Marcks Cook: We made all our own butter. (cottage cheese, trick is working butter in wooden bowl with wooden paddles) Well, anyway there was a tin dipper hanging on that spring house and people would go by. Everybody in the neighborhood knew about that spring and they would stop the team, run up there and get a drink of water on the run. Nothing (unintelligible), right across. . . Some of them were strangers.

Bob Zybach: Is that spring still there?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I think so. I tried to find out and I couldn't find out too much about it. [Subsequent trip with son, Roy, failed to locate the spring.]

Bob Zybach: Was it called the Marcks Spring?

Wanda Marcks Cook: They didn't have any name. It was right close to the building, right close to the house and my dad built a. . There was a stream running through and he built a bridge across that so we could go from the house straight across and dip our water out of the spring. That's how we got our water.

Bob Zybach: Now the house is still there?

Wanda Marcks Cook: The house is still there, but.

Bob Zybach: Did your dad build that. . that house, did your dad build that?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No. I was going to tell you about when he saw the farm he bought the farm. He never even went into the house and when we came west and of course, there were no autos then. He took mother out to see the farm. She had never seen it and I remember seeing tears in her eyes because that house was such a tumble down thing and there was no heat. No heat in it except from the kitchen stove and this huge fireplace. It would take a back log of that big of oak, that long.

Bob Zybach: So that would be..

Wanda Marcks Cook: That was the back log so it was built like this,, see, and the back log would be in there, and we built it, and that was what heated the living room, and the house and the kitchen stove. [The fireplace was huge and so the back log was huge, the fire was built in front of the back log. The fire would be banked with ashes at bedtime. The back log would be one great live coal in the morning. Coals were then taken in shovel to kitchen range to start fire there. Wonderful draft, brick hearth, broken. - WMC]

Bob Zybach: And that would be. . The back log would be about two foot by a diameter of, maybe, afoot in diameter.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Oh, more than that. That big around.

Bob Zybach: Eighteen or twenty inches in diameter.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yeah. And about four feet long. So the front of the fireplace, you see, was a lot like that. And nothing but just plain ordinary brick and they were pretty well broken for the hearth. And mother was very disappointed in the house. But she got busy with paint and what have you and cleaned it up [Mother was a very good seamstress, we made almost all our dresses and underwear, flour sacks. Mother kept geese down and striplet feathers, sold pillows - WMC] . . but dad never even looked at the house, he looked at the farm, see? And he built it up, fenced it, put up two big barns, built up his horses and cattle, what have you, the whole thing, and then he got sick and died. So we never got. . The house was the next thing in his plans.

Bob Zybach: Oh.

Wanda Marcks Cook: And my dad had very progressive ideas. He would have put in a house that really was a house and had planned to utilize this spring either with a pump or something, I don't know how . . I don't know what the idea was, but anyway, that would be our

Wanda Marcks Cook: source of water. He was a'ways very careful not to cut any of the trees around there, you see that little mound covered with tiny trees.

Bob Zybach: So the small trees were growing.

Wanda Marcks Cook: And was the source of. . held the water, you see, the spring. . for the spring. That spring welled up until the water was about that deep (5 feet). We had to dip it out, carry it to the house, heat it in a reservoir on the back of the stove.

Bob Zybach: So, you had fencing, different kinds of stock, trout in the creek, vely few deer, but you had coyotes.

Wanda Marcks Cook: I used to carry on conversations with the coyotes. You know, a kid alone. They get so they can mimic the wild animals and birds. The same way with the crows, china pheasants, and jays. (My younger brother and sister were 15 months apart. Boy, when I was 8, my charges as mother was very busy. They roamed the farm like gypsies)

Bob Zybach: Were there a lot of crows?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yeah. We had pet crows, but strangely enough every once in a while one would disappear. I know now what happened to. . You know, crows are a nuisance. Steal! They're lots of fun, but they're as smart as whips. My dad would do away with one at a time, you see, while we were at school. We were too stupid to know it. We'd mourn them. Another crow gone.

Bob Zybach: He would be surreptitious about it, just.

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, never dawned on us.

Bob Zybach: Oh. Were there other types of birds? Were there migrations of geese or ducks that you can recall?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, they'd fly over but they. . No, there was no flatland, nothing for them to feed in.

Bob Zybach: How about raccoons and possums or bobcats?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes, raccoons galore.

Bob Zybach: How about. . would you have.

Wanda Marcks Cook: No possums.

Bob Zybach: Those were imported.

Wanda Marcks Cook: But beautiful, these beautiful silver-grey squirrels. And . . [pauses as if she is not sure what she says next should be recorded].

Bob Zybach: That's all right, even after we print this up, jf you see something that you don't want to say then we'll just. . strike that out. We don 't want.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, I'm just on a little sideline, you know, the lonely kid. I got to be a pretty good marksman. We had lots of greydiggers, we called them greydiggers.

Bob Zybach: Still do.

Wanda Marcks Cook: I got to be a pretty good marksman with the twenty-two special, but I never went hunting for deer. They were too beautiful.

Bob Zybach: How about pheasant. They were introducing pheasant in Oregon then.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes, there were quite a few pheasants around, and I got so I talked to them, too, and they'd answer me.

Bob Zybach: Were there problems. . did you raise chickens?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: Were there problems with bobcats ever, or. .?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Not bobcats, the skunks. Just the skunks, and the little civet cats, they'd come right around our feet and we'd stand on the porch and with a lamp in our hands, you

Wanda Marcks Cook: know, and they'd come sniff around, you know. Of course, you stand real still until they leave. But they're beautiful, they're far more interesting than the big skunks, but then we had both.

Bob Zybach: You. . I think I'm getting a pretty-clear picture . . you can see what I'm trying to do is pus the animals and the plants. . Now, what kind of crops did you raise?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Oats. (wheat, vetch, horse feed, no barley or rye)

Bob Zybach: How many acres?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I couldn't tell you.

Bob Zybach: Now..

Wanda Marcks Cook: That whole lower valley was all in. was all cultivated.

Bob Zybach: So there would be oats.

Wanda Marcks Cook: And my dad enlarged. Every year he'd enlarge the fields.

Bob Zybach: And you had a large garden of different vegetables for your family use?

Wanda Marcks Cook: We had just a garden. It was fertilized from the barnyard fertilizer and we never had any irrigation whatsoever. We kept it moist by a dust mulch, hoe it every so often to keep the dust, there'd be moisture underneath. Wonderful vegetables, flavor beyond compares. . because it wasn't watered down, see, it was.

Bob Zybach: Did you grow any vegetables that would be unusual by today's standards or were they just the standard potatoes and carrots?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Just the standards (cauliflower, turnip, beets, onions, pie cherries), just the standard. Then mother had a little herb garden, we had raspberries. . strawberries.

Bob Zybach: What kind of herbs would she grow?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I beg your pardon.

Bob Zybach: What kind of herbs would she grow?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Herbs?

Bob Zybach: Yeah.

Wanda Marcks Cook: I was just a kid, I can't tell you. There was dill, catnip, she always had shallots, and what are these onions . . the Chinese, these great big

Bob Zybach: Yeah. . not leeks..

Wanda Marcks Cook: Leeks!

Bob Zybach: She raised leeks then.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes, but these were smaller than we see in the market now, she called them winter or bunch onions.

Bob Zybach: Oh. Then you had raspberries for your own use or for conunercial?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Oh, no. No, we didn't sell anything of that sort. That was just for the family and the house was surrounded by blue Damson plum trees, and the blue jay would come in there and. . Blue jays are interesting birds.

Bob Zybach: I used to have one of those as a pet rather than crows.

Wanda Marcks Cook: They're such mimics you know. They quack like the ducks and talk like the turkeys and. . They're very interesting. And when the Damson plums were ripe, why the trees were just covered with these blue jays, these beautiful stellar jays. But we didn't have the Western jays there, like we have here in town.

Bob Zybach: Just the stellar jays?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes. Just the dark blue.

Bob Zybach: Did you ever notice owls or hawks or eagles?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes, owls and hawks. No eagles. But I can remember walking through the woods and hearing a "whissssss" . . the owl flying by, you know.