6. The Blake House

William A. Davies: money, so we were in the pickup; we always carried a shovel along, too, in case of fire. He said, "Well, I'd like to have some of that for around my flowers at home." And I said, "Well, let's get some." So we drove over there and filled the pickup with that sawdust and hauled it home and shoveled it out in his yard. Last time I was up there it was all gone. Other people had found out about it, you know, and boy they flocked in; faculty, they thought that was wonderful sawdust.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Well, I heard that Vern McDaniels hauled sawdust for the nursery from there. Did you ever hear that?

William A. Davies: Maybe he did later, after he found out about it. But nobody had taken much out of it at that time.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Right up from there is this place called "Old Pigpen Road." Marv Rowley called it that. Did you ever see any pigpens in there? I think that's the name the loggers gave it when they were operating there.

William A. Davies: There's old roads all grown up in there.

6. THE BLAKE HOUSE

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: And then the Blake House is right here?

William A. Davies: Yes, I got in trouble; I didn't get in trouble, but I got a lot of dirty looks for that. I had that burned down.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Why did you do that?

William A. Davies: Well, we rented it for quite a while - we got the property, and the Blakes moved out and everything - and we never could get any satisfactory renters. They'd live in it for a while and then they'd move out and leave it all a mess. When they got started moving people in the old Adair, all the kids would come over and they had a hey-day in it. They broke all the windows out of it, and I could see where they'd had a fire in it. Luckily it went out before it got too far. So I told the dean, I'm going to burn the danged house down before we get in trouble. Somebody found out about it. Some woman in town said, "That's an old historical landmark. You can't burn it down." I said, "Well, it's going to get burned sooner or later, those kids playing with matches in it. It's deteriorating; it is an eyesore now, all the windows broken out; they've broken the doors down, and they are hanging loose; and they've stolen stuff, they've taken everything of any value; and they've stole all the door knobs, stole everything out of it."

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Was it a two story house?

William A. Davies: Yes, nice, old mansion-looking house.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How many rooms in it, do you know?

William A. Davies: Gee, I don't know. There were quite a few of them, eight or ten. Big two story, raised a family in there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Did you ever know Blake?

William A. Davies: Yes, when I first came here. He was 80 then, I guess. So I called up the fire department out there, the Adair Army fire crew. The weather had been rainy. I said, "How would you like to get some fire practice?" They said, "That's fine, we'll burn that doggone thing down". "Be sure you burn everything up." So they went Out there and burned it all up for me.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: When was that, do you know?

William A. Davies: Oh, that must have been 20 years ago.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Was there much of an uproar over you doing it?

William A. Davies: I didn't hear much. They realized that the danged thing was an eyesore. This woman proposed that it be made a park there around the building, and the house be restored and kept restored. Now, who's going to keep it restored? And she said, "Can't you do that?" And I said, "No, we can't do that. You'd have to have somebody there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year because one day you go away and the kids would have it down again." And she said, "Maybe the county could do it." I think I called the county, or she did, or something, and they didn't want to do it. We figured the best thing to do was burn it down because it was looking worse and worse all the time.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: There's some legend about those two black locust trees. What had you heard about them?

William A. Davies: Yes, Blake told me personally about those.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What did he tell you?

William A. Davies: Well, we were up there when we were dickering about buying the 40 back in there from him. He was talking about the old days, and he said the old Portland-Umpqua Valley Highway went this side of his house, right through there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Cut across there?

William A. Davies: And he was telling me stories about that, in the early years when he was just a little guy. He said one day two girls came riding through there on horses. They had these locust whips for their horses and they stuck them in the ground. Then I guess his folks or his wife, whoever was there with him, invited them in for tea or something, like they always did in those days. And when they left they forgot their whips - they didn't take them with them - and they sprouted and grew. That's his story.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Is it reasonable to assume that it could happen?

William A. Davies: Oh yes, most of the hardwoods will sprout - willows, maples. You know, McCulloch swears that these gate posts down here at the entry way to Peavy Arboretum - the two maples there on either side of the road that goes in - he claims that those were gate posts that sprouted.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Did he see them when they were planted?

William A. Davies: I don't think so. That would be a long time ago.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: But a lot of these stories get passed on from one person to the next, and there's not much basis of fact.

William A. Davies: Yes, one time my high school teacher, to prove that, whispered a story to the first guy in the class and had him whisper it all the way around, and then the last guy told the story and it was entirely different, absolutely different. But Blake also told me that one day they had the Umpqua Indians down there where some of them got on the war path, so they were going to transfer them up to the Grand Ronde Reservation. And the Army officers and these renegade Indians came up the road there and they stopped and asked the Blakes if they could have some water for the horses and men. He said he remembered that vividly - taking the Indians past his house.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What was Blake like? When you met him, he was an eighty-year-old man?

William A. Davies: Yes, he must have been eighty.