The following are some remembrances from my father, Milton
Richardson, during his childhood growing up along the Siuslaw River on the Old
Stage Coach Road. This road started at Mapleton, Oregon and went to Eugene,
before the railroad was built.
Rain pelted the boys' backs as they road
their bikes back home from an afternoon at Camp Lane. It was one of those blustery wet days so common to Oregon in the
springtime. Ahead Milt could see the county bridge that crossed the Siuslaw
River. It was made of logs, put together in the same crisscross fashion of a
log cabin. As Milt followed his friend Johnny, he noticed that Johnny's back
fender was loose, flopping back and forth in the annoying storm. The dirt road
was a mass of mud and puddles of water. A continuous spray mixed with globs of mud were being flung onto
Johnny's back by that flopping fender. After they had entered the bridge Johnny
turned to try and straighten the troublesome fender. Milt saw him fiddling and
then through the sheet of rain, saw his friend's bike smash into the log
railing that lined the bridge. Johnny lost his balance and flipped over the
bridge railing fifteen feet into the cold water below. He landed flat on his
back in two feet of water. Milt scrambled off his bike and was on his way down
to help when he saw Johnny climbing up the log pier with the agility of a
monkey.
"Are you
all right?" Milt asked.
"I
thththink so!" Johnny stuttered with cold as he stood there not only wet from
the rain but also now soaked from his encounter with the river. Before Milt
could do anything, Johnny leaped back onto his bicycle and started pedaling
frantically toward home.
Milt wasn't
sure Johnny knew exactly what had happened that afternoon. He did know that his
friend was fortunate to be alive, for if he had landed any other way he might
not have been there any longer to cross that bridge with him in the future.
He
remembers catching his first fish with his dad when he was five years old. That
first of many catches was an eighteen-inch trout. As he grew, fishing became
one of his favorite pastimes. Spearing salmon was not your common way to fish,
but for Milt, this was the ultimate fishing experience.
During the
late afternoon, his brother, and numerous friends prepared the river for their
fishing escapade. They dragged a chicken wire fence into the river and secured
each end across the moving water. This would be the device that would trap the
unsuspecting salmon from going up stream. Darkness came, and with it the water
cooled and the salmon started running. Soon the
flapping and fluttering sound of the trapped salmon against
the chicken wire blockade was heard breaking into the silence of the night.
Kerosene torches were lit and the spears were brought into view. These "spears"
were actually pitchforks that had been straightened out. Barbs were then added
so that with a successful throw the catch would be secure. The boys then
proceeded to complete their nightly fishing trip with the salmon that had not
made it past that unforgiving wall of chicken wire. The boys returned home with
their catch and the satisfaction that they had provided another meal for their
families.
During his
teen years Milt held a variety of jobs so that there was money to buy those necessary
school clothes and the much-wanted shot gun shells. One of his first took place
on the top of a little chicken house. Because the roads were dirt and some
spots would become extremely muddy during the frequent periods of rainfall,
gravel was brought in to fill the slushy sites. This gravel was transferred
from a train car on a sidetrack, to the road that looked like patchwork with
its many holes. Milt had the important job of making sure the sheep did not
escape from the orchard and get onto the railroad track as the gate was opened
and closed with the transferring of the gravel. A job that doesn't require much
skill except to keep your balance and not fall off the chicken house roof or
perhaps the agility to round up the sheep if they did manage to break free.
Wages, $1.25 a day!
While in
high school he took on the title as school janitor and earned $15.00 a month.
This consisted of building the fires to heat the schoolhouse. Arriving at 7:30
a.m. after walking the one-mile from his home to the school building, the first
fire was constructed. This was in the gymnasium. He then proceeded to make sure
the building was warm before his fellow students arrived by igniting the blazes
in the high school room and the grade school room. A simple, but important job.
The hardest
job Milt recalls was in the spring. This was the peeling of cascara bark from
trees. He hiked to the site where the trees stood. The bark was taken from the
trees with a special knife like instrument.
He then shoved the bark into a pack.
Carrying the collected bark on his back was the hardest part of the
chore. Milt unloaded the bark and then spread it on the ground to dry in the
sun. When it was brittle enough to be broken into small pieces he then crammed
it into feed sacks. The filled sacks were taken into Eugene where the cascara
bark was sold by the pound. The bark was used for making laxatives so Milt
never had the urge to sample its taste.
His last job before he left for college was driving the school bus for one year. Luckily, it wasn't the covered wagon he rode to school at age six, where he bounced around from the big ruts that were ingrained in the primitive roads. It was ever so chilly and damp during many of these trips, but he was fortunate as a child to sometimes ride up front with the driver. The school bus he drove during this last year of teen jobs was a 1937 Plymouth sedan, along way from the covered wagon!