Friday Flashback - Daddy was a "Jack of All Trades"

Me, Daddy & Dale

My daddy worked for wages. He done some logging and some mining and stuff like that. He always took us with him. We always found a place to live. He never did leave us in one place and him work in another unless it was just a real short job. Then it wasn’t worthwhile to move.
If it was school time and it was way too far from school, he’d just come home on week-ends. You know with us. After us kids got in school they tried not to change schools in the winter time.
He worked where he could get work and they paid good. I suppose. I don’t think he’d a done it if they didn’t. But he didn’t leave Mama and us kids a hundred mile over here while he worked somewhere else.

Dad worked in the timber a lot. He would probably be out there when the weather got so he could. I don’t remember that part of it, but from experience after I grew up I knew when you had to work in the timber and when you didn’t. Oh, I spent more summers camped out in the mountains than most kids ever do in a lifetime. We had to be where his job was or as close to it as we could get. And when school was out we moved to the timber. We’d camp all summer a lot of times. Not every year.

Daddy trapped in the winter time. There wasn’t any work, so he trapped. Animals. Sold their furs. One of those mean people. Caught those poor little critters and sold their fur.

When I was 8, he was the fire warden on Jack Creek. He liked that kind of a job. He liked to be out where his family could run loose and Mama wouldn’t have housework to do. She was crippled and didn’t get around very good.
I liked it best when he worked in the timber. Because he’d take us with him and we’d camp out.

Sometimes he worked in the woods – logged. He fell the trees and sawed them in two. And a truck came along and hauled them to town.

He worked in a saw mill for Hudson’s in Sparta. I’m not sure what he did.

They were paving the street in Union. And Daddy found a nickel while he was digging. It was very old and he wanted to keep it. I can’t remember what year for sure, but I think it was about the first ones ever made. It was a way way back nickel. I took Dad’s precious nickel and spent it. I spent it for candy. He oughta beat the shit out of me. I don’t think he ever did.

Daddy and Uncle Will worked for Jim Holcomb on a peach ranch at New Bridge Oregon just as you enter Eagle Valley. We shared a 10 room house with him and Aunt Ada. If they let me run through the barn yard – that kind of work – I was a good worker. I don’t remember Dad expecting us kids to clean the barns. We were expected to do the dishes. That was our job. Mom didn’t have to do those dishes.

He was a truck farmer in Union, Oregon. That’s big garden country up in there – the Grande Ronde Valley. I think I was about 10. We had a big garden and one of these vehicles that has a screen over it. The bed of it is all under a roof and you can see out the sides. I remember going with him when he went. We’d go to the saw mill camps. I thought it was quite a treat to get to go along.

Uncle Will rented a dairy farm in Dry Gulch from Old Jim Holcomb. He wanted Daddy to come and work it with him. So we went. I can remember that house. It was YELLOW. I don’t know if it was the color of the wood or if it had been painted. I think it was the color the boards turned when they got used.

I don’t think he did any mechanic work. If it came up in his work he did it. He was a good worker. He could work on anything. He liked to work with livestock. I know he was a cowboy.

He was handsome. He was about the nicest guy in the world. He could be funny. He was quite good looking. He was not a big man – 5-9 or something like that. Wore a 6 shoe. His foot wasn’t big at all.

He was a good daddy. He was the most wonderful person that ever lived. It was terrible when he died. But that’s a forgone conclusion – kid’s father. He was gassed in a mining accident. He was 48 and I was only 15.