10. The Dean's Cabin and "Six Bits"

William A. Davies: down. They threw beer bottles in the creek, so the kids couldn't wade in there anymore.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Was this a series of incidents or just a one-time happening?

William A. Davies: A big one, one time, and we tried to fix it up again and it happened again, and finally just had to give up. They wouldn't leave it alone. Then the Boy Scouts started using it. They'd go there without tables, take their own tables and tents, they'd sleep out there in the tents. The teenagers would find out about it - when the teenagers were just old enough to drive cars, you know, sixteen, seventeen - they'd come out there and throw rocks at the tents and curse and swear at them, and pull their tents down on top of them, and everything else, and so the Boy Scouts couldn't use it anymore. They [the teenagers] just kind of went to pot.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: What do you know about Tampico? Was there anything left when you came in 1946?

William A. Davies: Only the schoolhouse. By the time I came it was being used by the county as a garage for their grader. But that's one of the early towns, as I understand it; and, of course, it was centrally located for the farming around here. They had their fair every year there, and they had a race track where they race horses right there in that little flat just the other side. Do you know where the school house was? Have you been out there? You know, it's a crossroads there, and then right down below there, there's a schoolhouse, and just beyond that to the west - or is it northwestern - in that flat out there, they had the race track where they had horse races. A big deal. People would get on their horses and in their wagons, and come from 20 miles around to that big event every year. That was Tampico; right now population zero.

10. THE DEAN'S CABIN AND "SIX BITS"

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Was the dean's cabin still standing when you came in 1946?

William A. Davies: Oh yes.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: Did you ever go there?

William A. Davies: Yes, I had the thing torn down. We used to have faculty meetings there. Get the whole faculty in there.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: How big was the cabin?

William A. Davies: Have you seen the concrete slab that's there now? That was the size of it. No, I guess it was bigger than that. It was a two-room cabin. It had a kitchen, and a cook stove, and a sink, the whole works, and then it had a larger room on the other side with a fireplace. That's where we'd have the faculty meetings. Peavy was very, very proud of that cabin. It was built for him by some alums who thought a lot of Peavy. And one of the alums just died here a few years ago that was a real instigator of that; don't remember his name now. But Peavy used to use that a lot, for if he had some big wig from out of town come here to visit the school or something, he'd take him out there and fry him a steak or something. I know the head of the forestry school in Finland came here one time, and he wanted me to take him out and see that because he had been out there many, many years before when Peavy was dean here. Peavy had taken him out there and cooked him a steak dinner at that cabin. He had taken a picture and he wanted to take another picture when he was here. But it was used primarily by Peavy and by the faculty; and in his will, as I understand it, he left the cabin in the hands of the faculty of the School of Forestry,

William A. Davies: for them to keep. But vandalism started there. Kids hiked up the hill and we were afraid they were going to set the forest on fire; they tore most of the building down, and they built fires in the fireplace and burned part of the building down, and everything else. I wanted to perpetuate that fireplace, because it had agates in it, so we tore the building down and then poured a concrete slab where the main room of the cabin was. The concrete slab and the fireplace, that's permanent, no wood to rot or anything.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: You mean that concrete slab was not there when the cabin was first constructed?

William A. Davies: No, no, it was a wood floor.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: And you did that solely to commemorate the location of the dean's cabin?

William A. Davies: Right.

Royal G. Jackson / Jennifer Lee: To commemorate the dean's cabin, to make it permanent?

William A. Davies: Of course we had to replace the agates, because the kids went up there afterwards with chisels and everything, chiseled the agates out of the fireplace. But that's what should stand forever unless they can figure some way to tear that fireplace down; probably do that some day.