8.. Married Life

Bob Zybach: Can you remember anything about cougars or bears?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No.

Bob Zybach: So, it sounds like things were pretty well being farmed but the soils were depleted. You were saying, I don 't know tf we got that on the recording. But the early farmers from the South had not plowed very deep and so the top layers of the soils had been depleted through cultivation.

Wanda Marcks Cook: And that was true of that grey clay farm off towards Albany where Adair. . Camp Adair was. It was the same proposition there. I don't know if anybody ever built that up.

8. Married Life

Bob Zybach: There's records from the 1880's saying the soil was depleted then, so by 1904 that certainly had to be the case. Then you got married. Was your husband [Ernest Cook] from a family from the Valley?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, he was. . I think originally from Missouri. I think he was born in Missouri. And his father had an accident and so he wasn't able to do the hard work so he went into the feed business and he was really quite wealthy.

Bob Zybach: His father?

Wanda Marcks Cook: His father, yes. And then they moved west because his father [grandfather] had a breathing problem and they wanted to get away from the severe winters, they moved west and they lived here in Portland. They tried California, but it was too dusty and dry. So they lived here in Portland and then the son went to Oregon State [College].

Bob Zybach: Oh, so he went to Oregon State College?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes. But he was not cut out to be a farmer. Not the proper temperament.

Bob Zybach: Did he graduate from school?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: How did you meet him?

Wanda Marcks Cook: When he bought the farm. . they bought. . His uncle [John W. Cook] bought this farm and he moved out there. [Hired man and wife in new house - WMC]

Bob Zybach: Oh, Isee.

Wanda Marcks Cook: But his father [Tyrone P. Cook] and sister [Mary L. Cook] never did move out there. Then they brought his grandmother3 from Missouri so she could live with them. They brought her out and she lived in the home here in Portland, right down here on 21st and Weidler.

Bob Zybach: Now on your husband's end. . had he already graduated from college when you met him?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes. [His father gave him the farm - WMC]

Bob Zybach: So, he was out working on his uncle's farm?

Wanda Marcks Cook: He was living on the place, that's when I met him. [His father's farm which had been purchased for him - WMC]

Bob Zybach: Oh, I see. So how old were you at that time?

Wanda Marcks Cook: You would bring that up. Eighteen. [Laughs]

Wanda Marcks Cook: According to Roy Cook, she was Tyrone P. Cook's mother-in-law, Elizabeth Schultz (1836-1935).

Bob Zybach: And he was maybe twenty-five?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Twenty-two.

Bob Zybach: 7venzy-two, huh. So, then when you married him, you moved on, essentially, to the Sulphur Springs Stock Farm?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: Okay, then was that. that would have been right next to the Olson's?

Wanda Marcks Cook: The Olsons lived way back in the hills. Two and a half miles, way up in the hills.

Bob Zybach: O/z, I see. Do you know who the Cooks bought their fann from? Could they have bought that from the Moores?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I don't know. [Possibly - WMC]

Bob Zybach: Oh. How big was it. . that farm (the Olson's)?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I don't know. It was mostly like this. they had one horse, "Yim," Jim, "Yim," and the old man worked it. The whole family, Mr. and Mrs. Olson, Charlie, and Hilda would load up the wagon with one horse and drive all these miles out (to the hop fields near Independence for weeks) and then they camped down there and on the way home they couldn't make in one day, so as they went through they'd spend the night with us.

Bob Zybach: Oh, that would be the Olsons?

Wanda Marcks Cook: The Olsons.

Bob Zybach: So the Olsons would go to Suver to get their tax money for their place instead of Angoras and they'd pick hops there?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: Now the hops had to be used for brewing, so this is before prohibition?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: And

Wanda Marcks Cook: Independence was the really. . in fact, we still raise a lot of hops in Oregon, but Independence was the huge, huge field of hops and then the dryers. [At that time Independence was said to be the hop center in the state - WMC]

Bob Zybach: Did any Indians used to work in those hop fields? Would any Indians come through the Soap Creek Valley that you can recall? Did you ever see Indians?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No. You see that road, the road over the hill was not developed. It was just more of a wagon track.

Bob Zybach: The road from Kings Valley. .

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, the road over the hill from Sulphur Springs to Corvallis [Mountain View - WMC]. There never was a road directly from Kings Valley into the Soap Creek Valley, and from Sulphur Springs up over the hill to Corvallis.

Bob Zybach: To Lewisburg..

Wanda Marcks Cook: was nothing more than a wagon track.

Bob Zybach: I see, so there was no road between.

Wanda Marcks Cook: unimproved, unimproved.

Bob Zybach: So there was no road to Kings Valley when you were little?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No! [A little exasperated at persistence of questioning or density of questioner.]

Bob Zybach: And the road [over the hill] to Lewisburg hadn't been. . it wasn't suitable for carriages?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, we used to ride over it, but you couldn't. . no, you couldn't take a.

Bob Zybach: Not wheeled vehicles?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No. [With difficulty]

Bob Zybach: Was that area there was that pretty open or was it densely forested?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Forested.

Bob Zybach: Large trees or small trees.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Mostly alders along in there. [Along the creek, evergreens on the hills - WMC]

Bob Zybach: Alder, huh?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Then the goat weed took over the pasture land.

Bob Zybach: Goat weed?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Goat weed.

Bob Zybach: TWzat was the reason it took over the pasture land, why weren't the pastures maintained?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, because they're hills. How are you going to maintain a pasture on a hill like that?

Bob Zybach: I see.

Wanda Marcks Cook: And it spreads from the root, if you cultivate that just once you could kill it out, but you had to keep it cultivated, not only propagates from the root but from the seed, both.

Bob Zybach: So the goat weed started taking over the hills and I'm assuming the trees came in, alder you say, came in. [scrub oak]

Wanda Marcks Cook: The alders were along the creek, I'm talking about right around the springs, Sulphur Springs.

Bob Zybach: Okay, do you remember any building around Sulphur Springs?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, but I remember that they had a. . it was. . They had a cement wall, like a little well, you know, where it bubbled up. And people used to go up there to camp. And I'm trying to think of what the names of people that had it. That owned that. I can't remember the name. [Baker]

Bob Zybach: Charlie Olson said that there was used be a concrete fountain there at the springs and people used to come there by. . first by bicycles and then horses and then cars, that it was always a popular recreation spot.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: But he also said there used to be a hotel there for. . but he said there was a hotel there and people just lived in it like a house.

Wanda Marcks Cook: No hotel, no building there whatever. [Not in my time - WMC]

Bob Zybach: Anywhere around Sulphur Springs?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No building whatever, they came in tents, lived in tents.

Bob Zybach: Would they go hunting from their camping spots?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, it was just recreation, just vacation.

Bob Zybach: Just to hang out with the family in a tent?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: But they..

Wanda Marcks Cook: They'd probably fish the creek some and play around that way, hike around, but no, there was no organized play, golf or tennis, or anything. Not a thing.

Bob Zybach: No ball field,s?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Nothing.

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Not even a place cleared big enough for a ball field. It was right in among the alder trees.

Bob Zybach: And a lot of people came though?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Oh, I wouldn't say lots but they'd come and go, come and go. Maybe two families that'd get together and go up and camp for a week.

Bob Zybach: Would they go hunting maybe back in the woods?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I don't think so, nothing to hunt.

Bob Zybach: When you moved then to. . let's see you called it the Sulphur Springs.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Stock Farm.

Bob Zybach: Stock Farm. . Do you recall how big that was. . your stock farm. . how many acres?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Eleven hundred and thirty-eight4.

Bob Zybach: Okay, eleven hundred thirty-eight acres, that's large.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes, but a lot of it was waste, pasture, goat weed, brush.

Bob Zybach: Now was that the way.

Wanda Marcks Cook: He didn't have as much cultivated land as my father's small farm.

Bob Zybach: Oh. On the eleven hundred acres was that the total amount purchased by the uncle then, originally?

Wanda Marcks Cook: My husband's uncle [John W. Cook]. Yes.

Bob Zybach: Then your husband bought it from him?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, the uncle bought it. He was looking for a farm, John Cook was. . Ty (for Tyrone) Cook's brother and that was my husband's Uncle John and Uncle John was looking for a farm and instead of looking around and then giving them a chance to look it over, he just bought the thing. Which he was not authorized to do, but my husband's lather went along with it and stocked it and. . put my husband on the farm. But he was not cut out to be a farmer.

Bob Zybach: How long did you live there then?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Six years I think.

Bob Zybach: From the time you were eighteen until you were about twenty-four you lived on. . ?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: What kinds of livestock did ytu have?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Beef. . but not beef as you see it now.

Bob Zybach: Wizat was the d?(ference?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, it wasn't the high grade that. . It was common stock.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember how many head you had?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No.

Bob Zybach: And you planted an orchard at that time?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: And was that all apples?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Mostly apples.

Bob Zybach: And you think that orchard is still there?

Wanda Marcks Cook: They cleared it by dynamiting the trees so as to get the roots out.

Bob Zybach: Did you burn the roots up then? Did you have clearing fires?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I don't know what they did with them. I suppose we burned them. What else would you do with them?

Bob Zybach: Tiying to find out.

Wanda Marcks Cook: We cleared the land. We probably used the trees for firewood.

Bob Zybach: And the trees you cleared would those have been scattered large oak? (not ve,y large)

Wanda Marcks Cook: Just this little knoll, just the three acres little knoll that we planted to orchard. [We

Wanda Marcks Cook: " Wanda's son, Roy Cook, later said that the size of the stock farm was 1348 acres. The historical documents iii Appendix A substantiate Roy's number.

Wanda Marcks Cook: had Percheron horses, silo for corn, planted buck wheat for my bees in the orchard - WMC]

Bob Zybach: Okay.

Wanda Marcks Cook: I was there ten years ago, there's a lot of little houses have been built in there, now whether they are renters or whether they bought small tracts and built those houses, people that were living there or not, I don't know. But the road. . the Soap Creek Road was just barely graded when we moved there and they kept improving it, of course, as they went along. If they were going to telephone.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember when cars first came into that area?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: Was that about maybe 1915 or something like that?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I wouldn't know the year.

Bob Zybach: Right before World War I?

Wanda Marcks Cook: But this, I just remember that a man named Smith came out and rented this place that had the nice cherry orchard.

Bob Zybach: Then he would have rented from Goviers or. . ?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, I don't know who owned it. (Browns?)

Bob Zybach: And then the house you lived in on the Sulphur Springs Stock Farm, did you build that house?

Wanda Marcks Cook: That was built before I was married, I didn't have anything to do with that.

Bob Zybach: So,..

Wanda Marcks Cook: There was no house on the place when they bought it. (end of tape.)

Bob Zybach: We are going to have to repeat one part of it about when you. . you moved in with your husband when you were eighteen on Sulphur Springs Stock Far,n. Tell me what your jobs were out at the farm and. . Do you. . mind going through that a third time?

Wanda Marcks Cook: You want me to go through that again?

Bob Zybach: Yeah. Then hopefully that will be all.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Let's see. The home is kind of the hub, and the wife is busy in the garden, child to be taken care of. Wife always takes care of the chickens, and cooks for the hands. [clean lanterns and lamps, kerosene -WMCJ

Bob Zybach: Were those [hired hands] year round or seasonal?

Wanda Marcks Cook: What?

Bob Zybach: Were they year round?

Wanda Marcks Cook: We had one the year round and during the busy season they had another one, so that made three. All those places on Soap Creek were too small, they . . harvesting was done with a binder and then doing the shock (shocking bundles). I put up a darn good shock myself. And we were speaking of the weather, on a hot afternoon you would be shocking grain and you'd look out and leaves on the trees would begin to rustle. You could depend on the sea breeze at 3:30. You could practically set your clock.

Bob Zybach: Every afternoon about 3.30?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Every afternoon that cool breeze would come through, which is rather interesting, right in the foothills where.

Bob Zybach: So it came from the west? If it was what we called the sea breeze it would be coming over the hills.

Wanda Marcks Cook: It was a sea breeze that it came from the west. You could always depend on it you know, you'd be tired and think "oh, boy, time for the sea breeze." You know what

Wanda Marcks Cook: that would be.

Bob Zybach: How old were you then when your-first child was born?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Twenty. I was twenty the 26th of March and he was born the 6th of April.

Bob Zybach: My wife's birthday is April 6th.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Oh, is that so. That's Roy's birthday, and my second son [Richard E. Cook (1920- 1987)] was born four years later. I was twenty-five when my second child was born, he was born the 21st of April.

Bob Zybach: Now the second was born in Portland?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: The house that you kept house in, is that still there now?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes, it's still there and I have a picture of it [See Appendix A photograph #25 and 26,pp:79]. My granddaughter took a picture of it and I have it around somewhere else, I'll look it up and have it when you come again.

Bob Zybach: Now that's the.

Wanda Marcks Cook: But it doesn't look a bit like it did when we had it. We had it fenced in which is. most of them didn't take care of their yards. And we had water, I could water it and I had a green lawn, and it was really quite a pretty place. Small white house and you came around the curve and there was a white house and a flag and a green lawn and flowers and that's about it. (unusual -- green lawn that I mowed)

Bob Zybach: Did you raise flowers?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: Daffodils or lilacs?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Daffodils, lilacs, camelliis, and roses.

Bob Zybach: Raised roses, too?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Beautiful roses.

Bob Zybach: Do you remember any of the varieties?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I remember a beautiful red rose at the back gate. My hair was long at that time and kind of a red brown.

Bob Zybach: Auburn? (no)

Wanda Marcks Cook: And I'd often pick a rose and put it in my hair, and when I took my hair down at night it would be scented by the rose, rose fragrance. My husband's grandmother [Elizabeth Schultz (1836-1935)], was fifteen years old during the Civil War and she used to tell me stories about that. She liked to come out to the farm. She was a farmer's wife and when she could come out here to visit us on the farm she was in a glory, you know, when she came out to stay.

Bob Zybach: Did anybody write down in of those stories, or do you remember any of the stories?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, she told about hiding under a bridge and the soldiers came and drove away a lot of the horses and she was hiding under the bridge and she could heard the clatter of the horses, that was one thing she told me. And then, of course, the men were gone to war, and the women had to do the work in the farm. I don't know how large a farm they had, but. . she said, "Oh, it was terrible in those days for them to be tanned" and she would cover her face with a paste made out of flour and water, so that she wouldn't tan and bum.

Bob Zybach: Like they use sun screen now, as that time tan wasn't a good thing so they had to work on the farm and still keep their complexion.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes. Tried to. She was a very little woman and she was known as Aunt Bet [Elizabeth] in their county. She went around nursing, you know, more or less the

Wanda Marcks Cook: new born, I think.

Bob Zybach: Who did the midwifing in. . who was your midwife?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, my son was born. . the doctor came out to the house, doctor and his wife came out for the delivery and after that we managed there was a phone.

Bob Zybach: The doctor came out from Corvallis?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Came out from Corvallis. He was young in Corvallis, his name was ["Doc"] Anderson. He's probably retired now, but he built up a good practice there. He was modern, naturally.

Bob Zybach: So when you were first getting married, they were just putting in roads, they were just putting in telephones [when I was 11 or 12 - WMC], so really the lfes1yle was kind of changing.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, the road was there but it wasn't improved. But the telephone came and it brought a lot of.

Bob Zybach: That was..

Wanda Marcks Cook: That would be when I was about eleven, I would say.

Bob Zybach: Was that pretty big news at that time. . was that a major event. . getting the telephone in?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, yes. It was a link, link with your neighbors. Party line, everybody was on the line. And if you were smart, you wanted to be careful what you said, because you knew your neighbors were listening in.

Bob Zybach: So when you got a phone out at Soap Creek it was pretty early, one of the first phone lines to it. Was the railroad that went through Wells was that a major link in transportation or communication at that time?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, yes, with Portland and you know, that was when they had the big electric cars.

Bob Zybach: They ran electric cars all the way down into Corvallis?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Portland to Eugene.

Bob Zybach: Oh, were those real regular and dependable?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Oh, yes. We'd drive down [horse and buggy - WMC] to the railroad and pick up. our people and go back home and when they left we'd take them down.

Bob Zybach: So when you went to the Lewis and Clark &position, then you went to railroad car?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: How long did that take, do you remember?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I don't know, but they didn't have the red cars then.

Bob Zybach: Oh, the red cars came later.

Wanda Marcks Cook: The red cars came later.

Bob Zybach: So that was kind of a special tourist type thing, the red cars?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes. [No, they carried passengers, mail, freight express - WMC]

Bob Zybach: Okay, then on the hill side up on the Stock Farm, you weren 't using those because the stock was there and there were trees growing there, alder along the creek, do you remember what was growing up along the hill?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Scrub oak, and fir, no pine, and no spruce.

Bob Zybach: How come you know your trees so well?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I've always been interested in trees and woods.

Bob Zybach: There were native stands ofpine in that area [Kings Valley: White pine; Corvallis: Ponderosa pine] in the 1850's, do you ever remember seeing any pine?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I don't think there was a single pine tree on our place, and I've covered it. . pretty well.

Bob Zybach: And there's no hemlock or no spruce?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No spruce, no pine.

Bob Zybach: Red cedar or maple?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Maple, galore. Maple and what we called a white oak, but I don't know the. . big leaf. And we were talking about the roads, right in the middle of the road, there was a great big witness tree, a great big oak. And at that time they were surveying and improving and changing the lines. We surveyed and they would cut out a great gash like this in the oak tree and here you could see the surveyors marks in the sapwood, very interesting.

Bob Zybach: There's still some of those standing. Some of those old witness oak, but they were large oak.

Wanda Marcks Cook: The road went around this darn tree, but they took that tree out in time.

Bob Zybach: On the Stock Farm did you also raise any sheep?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes, we did.

Bob Zybach: Any goais? (no)

Wanda Marcks Cook: It wasn't too successful (sheep), I don't know whether their feed were not balanced right, we planted kale. And- that was another thing a house wife did, she went out into the fields and helped with new born lambs. Do you know anything about lambing sheep?

Bob Zybach: Just enough to know i'll never do it.

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, they came early in spring, you know, and lots of times there would be hail, very cold rain and hail mixed with it, and the little lambs get good feed, their belly full, and dried off, they can stand any amount of cold, but when they are newborn why many of time, I've slugged through the mud in rubber boots with a lamb under each arm, coaxing the ewe along to get her in the barn and bed them over night. Then I'd have to see that the lamb nursed and after that they were on their own. The next morning, turn them out and the lamb would do all right. But that was a small operation, that wasn't a big sheep ranch, you know.

Bob Zybach: Did you have angora goais?

Wanda Marcks Cook: No, not on our place.

Bob Zybach: Now, your father died right after you left home, two or three years..

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes.

Bob Zybach: And then. . when your mother moved to Portland after that you were pretty much the only member of your family

Wanda Marcks Cook: Well, I moved to Portland before my mother did. . mother sold the farm.

Bob Zybach: 1 see, so she stayed there for several years?

Wanda Marcks Cook: She stayed there for quite a while, she tried. . I told you. . she tried to run it.

Bob Zybach: TWzai happened to your place, the Cooks then sell all your place?

Wanda Marcks Cook: I don't know, I can't say, I don't know just when the Cooks. . (yes)

Bob Zybach: Now World War 1, that would have been.

Wanda Marcks Cook: We were still on the farm, raised navy beans that year.

Bob Zybach: Did that have any impact on your economy or your neighbors, was there anything about World War I or that was occurring that had any impact on the Soap Creek Valley?

Wanda Marcks Cook: It changed some of the crops. . as I said, we raised beans, trying to get something that was . . would go along with the. . get a cash crop. (field corn for silage)

Bob Zybach: And the beans then you were raising for military use?

Wanda Marcks Cook: White beans, yes.

Bob Zybach: Did that work?

Wanda Marcks Cook: Yes, for a few years.

Bob Zybach: So, on the beans, do you remember about how many acres you put in of that?