C.. Return to Mill Site

Charles Hindes: She was the real doer. They belonged to the Grange and anything that was a social nature. I never held Ed Blake in very high esteem as far as hard work was concerned. Not that that's any particular criterion, but Ed and hard work didn't seem to gel well.

Norman Hindes: [NORMAN] _ He never even liked to carry the milk in from the old barn when he'd milk the cow.

Bob Zybach: So you guys were kids and you'd come here on the weekend and then he'd kind of have you do chores or Johnson would be working?

Charles Hindes: [CHUCK] Not too much. We were pretty much under Mrs. Blake's jurisdiction and she was giving us a home that we hadn't had up to that point. I had living with my grandparents, but my brother and the rest of the family didn't have that nice a home setting.

Norman Hindes: [NORMAN] We didn't have that environment.

Charles Hindes: [CHUCK] And this was a real cultured environment that you came into, and she would talk a little bit about history and a little bit about life in general, and it was kind of a nurturing experience.

Bob Zybach: She sounded like a really a nice person.

Charles Hindes: Fantastic person.

Norman Hindes: [NORMAN] She's the one that started us. .. If my dad would've let me, she wanted me to stay over, Chuck and I both. She'd take us. Just keep us when the folks went to the valley and put us through school.

Bob Zybach: Charlie Olson's told me almost the same story about Mrs. Blake, but 30 years before then. About 1900 or 1905. She's real influential and got them interested in the school and. . .

Charles Hindes: [CHUCK] I think we were her family. They never had children and I think she more or less made us the kind of a pseudo family, if you will.

Norman Hindes: [NORMAN] Nobody liked us two because we was mouthy.

Bob Zybach: Just Mrs. Blake, huh?

Norman Hindes: Yeah. Mrs. Blake understood us.

Norman Hindes: [NORMAN] We always got one week. .. Chuck would be with a weekend and then I'd be a weekend.

Bob Zybach: Everything I've heard about her is along the lines of history and teaching and being just a real nice, influential person.

Norman Hindes: She'd sit all during the noon hour and peel apples and feed us kids. All of the kids in school were the benefactors.

Charles Hindes: [CHUCK] We had a lunch program before there ever was a lunch program at Soap Creek School.

Bob Zybach: A free lunch program. Well, can you think of anything else?

Norman Hindes: [NORMAN] No, except I'm going to have to go for home before damn long. I don't want to stay too long in one spot.

C. Return to Mill Site

Bob Zybach: Okay, back to the mill site.

Charles Hindes: [CHUCK] This plank road started from the Soap Creek Road and went pretty much over close to the hill there about where that line of willows is. I think there was a little creek at that time. I think pretty much flowed year around.

[Withheld from this edition pending review. The page keeps its printed number and its permanent link, so a citation to it still lands here.]