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In 1885, I worked Union Mills on Milk Creek.  A neighbor boy named Jim Walker and myself went out there looking for work and don’t you never think we didn’t find it.  The first thing Walker and I did was to repair some old skid road.  We fell some small trees and cut  <page 21> 24’ and 32’ lengths and took a yoke of steers and dragged them out, cut them into 8’ lengths and placed them across the road and peeled them for the logs to ride on.  We worked at this for a week.  One morning Del Trullinger, our boss came out with his ax and said boys we are going to fell some timber.  He did the undercut and Walker and myself sawed them down.  We worked at this for two weeks and then he said, “you boys take your tools and cut up this timber.”  He gave us a list of so many of a certain length and size.  A short description of how to grade the timber for the different lengths.  We used the same saw for bucking with a handle on each end as we did not have but one saw and one ax an old sledgehammer and two battered up wedges.  But the ground was good and we had all the tools we needed.  If you needed and undercutter you took limb or small pole with a knot or small limb sticking out of the side for the saw to ride on and went ahead, we did not know any better and got along O.K.  When we finished bucking, we put  <page 22> our saw, sledge, and wedges aside.  Hooked up the oxen.  The logging equipment consisted of four pairs of log dogs or couplings.  A hooktender maul which was made of oak, about 5 or 6 inches through and 11 inches in length with an iron ring on each end and steel rod for a handle, one ax, one peavy, one old wooden block, and about eighty feet of manila line.  There was just two of us in the crew.  Walker drove the team and I tended hook.  We only had about a half-mile haul so it kept me busy getting the logs sniped and the limbs trimmed off.  Of course, he was busy also, he had to pull the couplings and roll the logs into the pond.  Sometimes a log can be very obstinate about rolling from a flat rollaway.  We used three yoke oxen and we turned them on pasture at night.  Rounding up in the morning was so you could work up a good appetite before breakfast as we got up at 4:30 A.M. in order to get the oxen in the corral before we ate breakfast and let them have time to consume some oat hay.  We put in the timber we fell and bucked and turned <page 23> team out to pasture.  We started the mill.  Del Trullinger was boss, sawyer, and filer.  Jim Walker was ratchet setter and I was the offbearer.  I had never worked a day in a mill in my life.  Everything was new to me and that made the work harder for a few days.  The old saying is, “practice makes perfect,” so things went along as well as could be expected.  Del Trullinger was a fine fellow to work for.  He was a son of Gabrial Trullinger and a nephew of John Trullinger one of Oregon’s early lumberman.  He built his first mill near Oswego and then moved to Tualatin Plains, Centerville I think it was the place he located.  He afterwards moved to Astoria and built a big mill and planer shed and manufactured all kinds of building material.  One of Gabe Trullinger’s sons was working for his uncle in Astoria the summer I worked at Union Mills.  John Trullinger was the first one to use electric lights around Astoria.  He bought his dynamos in San Francisco and place them in his plant and first used them in the planer shed and then he installed the same system in the mill.  He also sold some lights to businesses concerns for 16 dollars a month per light.  Del would come to the bunkhouse in the evening and tell us all about his uncles big sawmill in Astoria.  Jim Walker was very much interested in the millwork, as he liked something along that line.  But for me, I will take the logging end of the game every time.  We would argue on the subject once in a while just for the points of interest that were brought out.  I lived to see some of our wildest dreams come true, such as the roller bearing friction and the steam friction, and the high lead was bunkhouse talk ten years before they were ever put into use.  These particular things just mentioned above were not talked of at this time because the steam engine had not been mentioned as logging equipment.  To the of my knowledge it was ten years before the steam logging came in and then they were few and far between.  However, we did discus the possibility of using horsepower for logging and railroad for transportation.  Horse logging when it did come in was only for a short duration.  The steam was not long in getting started and soon dominated all other method of moving logs.  Getting back to the sawmill my position as offbearer was behind the saw and my job was taking care of slabs and lumber, all of which was handled by hand, no live roll or cutoff saw, you took care of the entire cut of the mill, just as it came from the saw, of course there were no rotten logs put in water and very few knots as they were left in the woods, and the timber was a high grade second growth.  The slabs had to be pushed out about one hundred feet from the mill and slid down the bank of the creek where they were burned.  The lumber was taken from the rolls and place on the two wheel dollies until the sawed what logs there were on the log deck.  While Del and Jim were sorting logs and filling the log deck again I would push the lumber <page 26> out on the dock and place it on the different piles and believe it or not that lumber did not look like they do now days.  All I had to do was keep the overhang out of the runway so we could get out with the next batch of lumber.  There was no time to be fussy about anything.  One day the boys showed signs of a little devilment which crops out in the human race occasionally, especially in the logger, they were sorting logs for a certain order.  I was piling some lumber on the bank just above the pond and I heard a splash and someone hollered help!  The only thing to do was go to the rescue.  Jim Walker had fell in and Del in trying to get him out fell in also.  On reaching the dike, I was enjoying myself very much at their expense so they swan out so there would be one on my right and one on my left.  They were very happy about thing and each one grabbed an arm and a leg and threw me head first into the pond, then it was their laugh at my expense, that evened things, so we went to the  <page 27> bunkhouse which was near by and changed clothes and back to work.  About the time we finished cutting the logs we had in the pond the road supervisor came along and ordered us to work on the road Jim and myself had to pay pole tax and the farmers could work out part of their property tax on the county road.  We took a span of horses, a wagon, and shovels and put in several days on the roadwork.

We than started falling and bucking, getting out a large barn order for some big rancher.  When that was done, harvest came on and Del did some repair on the mill.  Walker and myself worked on the old fashioned Marsh Harvester Ed Trullinger, one of Gabe's sons run the farm and drove the team on this harvest.  This rig resembled the binder in some ways, only when the grain left the draper it fell on a platform and was picked up and bound by hand.  Two men preformed on this platform and Walker and myself had that job for about three weeks <page 28>.  Then the thrashing machine came along and we helped do that which took several days.  All the time I was wishing we could be logging.  The days seemed shorter in the woods than any other place we worked.  When the harvest was over the next thing was falling timber and then a few days work on the skid road and than look for the logging team.  We filled the pond and sawed them up as usual and I asked for my time.  Uncle Gabe asks me to stay and help put in a few more logs to finish their orders and I agreed to stay and help saw them up.  I had been paid the fabulous wages of 16 dollars a month with board and lodging.  I had five months pay coming, amounting to eighty dollars.  They gave me $40.00 when I quit and $40.00 in thirty days.  Later my folks got the first payment and out of the second I got a suit of clothes which cost $16.00 or a whole months work for a suit of clothes in this year of 1946 <page 29>.  That would look like clothes was pretty high, but I get this straight, I do not want to see times get that hard again.  The lumber we were making sold for much less than you would have to pay for wood today, and that was no low grade.  Slabs were piled and burned.  Nothing but good logs ever left the woods.  That winter I helped my father make some rails for Ben Lewis the man that ran the store there in the little village of Viola, as my folks lived there at that time.  One morning a neighbor by the name of Jake Gerber came to our place and wanted my father to take our team and haul a dozen Chinamen to Oregon City, about 12 miles from Viola.  Father said, “I don’t like damn Chinaman and won’t have anything to do with them.  If the boy who met me wants to take the team, it’s alright with me.”  So we hitched up the team and took them in.  Gerber had them clearing some land.  The citizens of Oregon City took it on themselves in the early eighties to drive all the Chinese from the city.  They chartered a boat and in the evening the committee called on them in their living <page 30> quarters and ordered them to pack up and marched to the dock just below the Willamette Falls where a boat would be waiting to pick them up and take them to Portland.  The reason being that the white folks were walking the streets because the Chinese had all the jobs.  The Chinese had about all of the work around the woolen mills, and that was the principle industry at that time.  The change made plenty of work for the young folk and was a great uplift for the city.  The paper mills did not exist then.  It was installed later.  When I got to the city limits I stopped and had all of them get on the wagon so they would not have to walk through town.  Some of them were walking all the way, because it was crowded on top of all their material things.  I did not think it would be safe for them on the sidewalk.  The older heads were alright, but there were a few toughs around there them days that would just as soon fight.  We rumbled over the cobblestone of the main street of Oregon City to the boat landing and all was well.

Father took a job of building a board fence around Masonic Hall at north store called Upper Logan now 31” located on Springwater road about five miles north there was a store and a few homes there and a hall.  The Masons’ owned the hall.  A man by the name of Morton owned the store.  They called him Cap Morton.  We finished building the fence about Christmas and then we had a big snowstorm and it had a crust on top that would carry a mans weight.  It stayed on for about six weeks.  The Graves boys had the job of carrying the mail from Silverton to Marshfield, the name is Clackamas station now.  They boarded at our place in Viola, as that was the division point.  Grant Graves carried between Viola and Silverton and Toast Graves took the other end between Viola and Marshfield (now Clackamas).  We did not do anything while the storm lasted.  It was about the first of March before there was anything in the woods.  I rolled my blanket and started out for the camps to look for work.  I did not want to work in a sawmill, so I did not go back to Union Mills in the spring.  There was a small mill and logging outfit about three quarters of a mile below the overhead  <> 32” crossing at Canby.  They were logging with oxen and Sam Akins was bull puncher.  That was what they were called the teamster in early days.  He and my father worked together on the Clackamas when they were building the mill and camp there.  He got me a job working around the team but they were not ready to start logging and I was broke and did not lay around so I left my blanket and looked around a little.  A man by the name of Pete Burt who lived between New Era and Mount Pleasant on the hill road to Oregon City.  He wanted somebody to cut one hundred cord of wood so John Akins, that was Sam Akins brother and I took the job.  We worked about six weeks and John got a job as a carpenter and left.  Pete wanted a teamster so he asked me to take that job.  It was hauling wood but he paid $26.00 a month with board, room, and washing.  I put in the summer on that job.  It was heavy work but easier than the work in the sawmill and better pay.  I stayed the winter with Pete Burt, done so me work on the ranch and made a lot of improvement on his barn, put a good stock shed on one side and dug the potato crop <page 33>.  They did not have a root house or basement so the potatoes had to be put in a pit and covered with straw and dirt.  In the spring, they had to be sprouted.  When that was finished, we dissolved partnership.  Another young man and myself went to Portland and had figured on going on the Columbia to hit the logging camps as some of them were getting ready to start up, but bad weather kept them down.  There were two men for every job around Portland, but I finally went to work for Macadamize and Paving Co.  They were located out on Jefferson Street in the Goose Hollow neighborhood.  Most of the people who lived near the company barn were Irish.  They were fine folks as a nationality but some of them would get too much whiskey and then there would be a fight.  The company was owned by Burk-Tuerrey and O‘Neal, all 100% Irish.  We graded Seventh Street along the west side of the Portland Hotel, although it was only one story high and was called Villard, named after Henry Villard a big railroad promoter, however it stood there for several years before a bunch of business men formed a company and the decided to use brick instead of stone.  They called the Portland.

<page 34> We boarded with a Mrs. Joyce near the barn and a saloon and not far from the Gambrinus Brewery and there was never a dull moment as they could stay open all night if they wanted dot.  There was a bunch of young fellows around Goose Hollow and they played a good game of baseball to.  There was a ball ground near by so we would go out and watch them play ball on Sunday afternoon.  There was another tough gang from Albina, the slab town gang they called themselves.  They also played baseball and they would get into a fight usually before the day was over.  I cannot remember any of their names except one man and his name and he was some man to, his name was Henry Bacon.  He was the leader of the Goose Hollow gang.  I do not know what became of any of them.  Mr. Joyce became very ill and after a few days he passed away and when we went in for breakfast the next morning there was two quarts of whiskey on the table and glasses and all the trimmings for the wake and of course being green I asked Mrs. Joyce what was going on.  We had not heard that her husband was dead and she answered my question by saying, “The auld mon doid last night and we wanted to show him a wee bit of raspict” <page 35>.  I worked there until harvest and then went home and worked through harvest and the thrashing season and through the fall seeding, plenty of farm work, making rails, cutting wood, making posts, and shakes.  Anything about the woods was interesting work to me and what I mean, it was all work, and small pay, not much cash, you could get bacon, ham, dried fruit, and a order on the little grocery store at the road side for the other necessities of life, also all the good stall fed beef you needed as most of the farmers raised their own meat and enough surplus to feed those who were not equipped to raise their own.  You could if you did not have money, work out the amount as the older settlers always had land to clear or fences to repair, always something, a new comer could find work if he was not too fussy about what kind of work he done or about the wage rate.  The old settlers always had a little ready money so they could meet emergencies.  But cash among the new comers was scarce.  Our family was a fairly average only it is now the year of 1887.  The next spring I started out to <page 36> find a job in the better logging camps.  Left the Springwater neighborhood about the first of March 1888 walked to Oregon City and caught the old wood burner S.P. Flyer for Portland.  Staid at the old National Hotel, which stood on the South West corner of Front and Yamhill.  The next morning John and Bill McIntire came in and wanted a bunch of men for their camps that were located on the Nasalle River in Pacific County, Washington Territory.  So we hired out for $40.00 a month and board and you furnished your own bed.  We stayed in Portland two days, as they wanted to hire thirty men and pick up some equipment for a new camp, about 25 to 30 men to a camp.  We got away one nice clear morning on the steamboat S.G.  Reed, it carried freight and also did quite a bit of touring as it was a large and powerful boat and very slow.  We did not arrive in Astoria until after dark.  We found a place to stay all night, but did not get much sleep, as Astoria was wide open.  Full of loggers, fishermen, and sailors and all celebrating at one time, made a lot <page 37> of noise.  We had to get up early to catch the boat across the Columbia.  The wind was blowing and the river was rough, some of the boys got seasick before we got across.  We had to walk 15 miles over a very muddy trail and pack our blankets on our backs.  We arrived in headquarters camp about 4 P.M., tired and hungry, nothing to eat since 6 A.M. just before we left Astoria.  The camp was at the head of tidewater on the Nasalle River.  We were put to work the next morning clearing right of way for a tram road.  The had some fine timber up on some benchland and it was good ground except this one steep place, so they built a skid road on the top and brought the logs there by ox team and rolled the logs down this steep place, load them on the tram car and haul them to tidewater, however they were not loading yet, they were rolling logs into this cold deck, but they had to build one half mile more of the tram road.  We got the brush off and the foreman came along, picked six of us, and put us in the peavy gang and I was one of that gang.  The chunk bucker had followed the swampers and we went back and followed the chunk buckers and rolled all the stuff that was too heavy <page 38> to handle by hand.  When that was done, we cleared some land for a camp.  I did some work around the team, such as, tend hook getting out some skid timber and also clearing some of the camp sight, which suited me fine.  My experience gained working at the Union Mills in getting out logs had begun to pay some dividends.  We got mail twice a week in camp.  There was a small boat called The Mountain Buck, a shallow water type, which brought freight to camp two times a week.  For this, they used a small barge.  Of course, they used a lot of hay as they had about four logging teams at that time and more later on.  There was a little misunderstanding about the peavy gangs wages.  We were to get a few dollars extra on account of it being very heavy work, but when our statements were issued there was no mention made to that effect.  We took the matter up with the bookkeeper and he said, “That he did not he did not have and orders to make any changes in the wages.”  The timekeeper’s name was Charles Dubois and a fine fellow but he was only working there and had to make his report according to the figures shown on the time book <page 39>.  By the way, he was an old schoolmate of mine and I also went to school to him so he tried to get the thing straightened out, but no success.  They were getting ready to start a drive down towards the mill which was on Shoalwater Bay and they expected me to work on that job which they were promising to pay five dollars a day, but several others besides myself were mewing around about something and were dissatisfied about this and that so this being a very stormy day, windy and rather dangerous in the woods, but warm, and we were around camp nursing our different grouches.  Me being a old friend of the office man put me in a bad position for about thirty men had collected around our dump as we called our sleeping quarters which was a lean-to along the side of the ox barn and ten of us used it because the big bunkhouse was so crowded.  So they made me the goat.  I was to go to the office, see the headman, and see if they would do anything about the matter.  He hemmed and hawd and would not commit himself and I seen we were getting nowhere.  So there was only one thing to do, and that was to ask for my time.  <continued>

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