Latah County Oral History Collection

Sam Schrager: This conversation with James Cleave took place at the McConnell Mansion in Moscow on July 6th, 1978. The interviewer was Sam Schrager.

James Gleave: I did go on a job and tell whether anybody was working or not, you know. Yeah, they'll do it and Google him. You want to see what he was doing. But there was a little money around there. And people are gonna grab a hammer shot beaten on a board or something. Be busy.

Sam Schrager: Oh, okay. Yeah. I heard Larry didn't come into the mill very much, but you see what was going?

James Gleave: Yes. He didn't live on his end of the work. And, of course, I would put a young man on Bill very die dad murdered. And when he died.

And, So he.

He, he dad was Lenny Henry Lovering, and he was a praying nerd. That was the first grade committee. So when you came into Paul, anyway, they were really not, I had one man or two on my. He went down there to down. Worked as a nurse for him.

And,

But I remember him as a kid, you know, he was like, I say, pretty bad for the kids. I never went up around his place very much, cause I was younger than.

Sam Schrager: The stories I hear saying that he. He swore. You swear up and down and go out and in the early days and go drinking with men and you know.

James Gleave: Well, I suppose he would most of them there, just like when he was in Moscow, hear one time say, I want to put the mill in Moscow. Originally. And, It was he just told them they didn't have water enough to drown the bastard. Oh, right. I remember, come on. Paper one time something. But. So they didn't have one of my illegitimate child mothers as well.

She says, well, he said, well, I didn't have water enough to go in the bathtub. They couldn't build a miller. They didn't have waroona.

Sam Schrager: But he had something to do with the decision. Oh, yeah. Where it is.

James Gleave: Oh yeah. Yeah. I think an awful lot to do with it because he was, Well, he was a man in the field at that time. Had got a little timber, Potlatch. That was all timber.

Sam Schrager: Well, it seemed like he had a respect from from local people at Laird. It my feelings from what I've heard people say, that people had mixed feelings about their.

James Gleave: Well, there was a man that,

Didn't know many areas. How do you say he kind of was? He just didn't go down and mix with the with the people he had a job to do. And he did it. he didn't, I don't remember Mr. Larry ever coming in a pool hall or anything like that when I was a kid or, which big to.

Of course I work. I know what I knew, Larry, Mr. Mallard, very well. But see, a job that had. The most it. I guess when you first went there, Campbell was full. It was. It was, Constable. That's what it was. You liked it, Constable. If I didn't get elected Constable, I to keep a police officer over there, the company would have a man deputized and and they'd bond and pay them.

Okay, so to patrol the town. But Potlatch was always a dry town. Even when Idaho was wet. Potlatch where Guy would try and, and when dad came there, I think Campbell was just just, Constable was one who had known at home. Probably they needed more of a constable, rough and tumble man. And he was.

And, Jack Campbell and, and when dad was there, he took charge of the town that he was, he had ever had maintenance on everything from a railroad track up. Who did then? My dad. He had a child there. I think the railroad track up, he had to maintain his nose. And of course he was. He had a homeless man over him and then left him derisively.

The maintainers of the town was up to dad, I should say. That would have been kind of the dividing line of railroad right now. I took a water mains from the mill, and a pump and a steam line from the used to heat well, for the main office and the heat. The main office from a steam line had a three inch steam line running the mill hooked on at the pump station.

And that's where we took over the steam line at the pump station. And it ran up. Miles out Main Street, poles up high. Drop down the deep one crossing out on railroad track and had dropped, you know, the depot and everybody it up again. See that they'd read it. I thought they could push the steam downhill a little.

So the water run ahead, drop it out. I kept the steam dryer and the heated.

AC one to the house where the house on the hill was. The three of them. I thought it was hammer or.

Dairy. Laird and Hammerstein and House and Fred. Shirley. You know, a message neuron that was on a steam mine in the house right before Doctor Thompson was on the steam mine. And I think two houses that would be east, where Charlie Theater knew the planer foreman and the a man. The other name was seen on a steam line.

Then, of course, the stores were heated on a steam line and,

The old Jim was hit on a steam mine. I don't know why. There's no one would have built those storage now around top billing. You know, seem to me they had a steam line, and I bet it had an example. It was sort of running low on steam. They could fire their own boiler.

Sam Schrager: Well, your father's job, was not just steam their way through. His job was was, more than keeping the steam in the house.

James Gleave: Oh, no. He had the whole, all the maintenance, maintenance and police work and everything. Yeah, he was in, most of it seemed to me he would just consider it. Always elected Constable corner. Constable was voted in. But if he hadn't been elected constable, I'd appoint him deputy sheriff, and he'd been over there.

Sam Schrager: So he started doing that pretty quick after him.

James Gleave: After came here. Yeah, I'd say about 19 and Lincoln, then 11. It might've been 12 or 13. I fell into that job and then he stayed out of 31.

Sam Schrager: Really, you know, was like quite a bit of responsibility to.

James Gleave: Delay. Delay? change it. Potlatch for for the potlatch for incorporated took over Potlatch lumber. Then I took these old days. Well, just lum the Canada allowed you to go mining and give him 30 days. Get out of town. This was an awful, dirty thing. Cause you will die in a lung cancer. Then.

Sam Schrager: And now I that that's a story that I heard. Not that.

James Gleave: Particular. Mrs. Laird told me this herself. She came Mr.. And said that they did that 30 days get out down how much them and read me off was he was an auditor.

Anthony Valentine also ran a little scam. I know quite a few of them. My course at that time, they shut down the Elk River mail g. So they bought some other people from Elk River to Polish animator. No different. A little different chain of command. They didn't really have they, they kept a kind of police officer out at the Bay study after that.

I think trout was the first one that they put on and, study police officer and that's all he did with that. The police officer was just a, well, say, a small end of his job. Because he really didn't ever run a big group. You recap on course this year. I work there start out, and they on the sidewalk and, we,

But I say with that, with the police work while I was out and he used to go down, we went. Well, I think when he was constable, he was gonna, you know, a lot of money. I don't know just how big one. Just the town finance, the voting district there. Anyhow. But things were pretty quiet. No one. Anything too bad.

I don't think. And, but he like I said, it was his job that he was fired along with the rest. and I don't remember. I had a I bought a 48, but I would have been fired. Do I think just on general principle, but I bought 40 acres from the company, and, And I want them to know about it because I signed a three year labor agreement on a what the the last time that worked on 31 to the August or September and 31, I think it was in the fall of 31.

It was about a year, anyhow.

Sam Schrager: Go wrong. What was the agreement?

James Gleave: Well, when I went to work there, I signed to see, agreement work at that dollars and $0.10. Not want to run a crew a seven and a half when somebody else ran. When I was working singlehanded and when Lori Mendenhall and I would work together. He was a plumber, had gone because I didn't he stayed there day, and I but, we got, I got then he and I worked together.

He'd worked two weeks at 87.5, and I work at a dollar and ten, and I work two weeks at 87.5. You know, you're still working on maintenance. Well, then I went up and I seen Irwin. I told him, I said, I bought this land and as far as I remember, I had the three year labor contract. And he said, well, I think my life force can't cooperate.

Didn't honor the labor agreements. The Potlatch Lumber Company, different company. She has the how about the other contractors? Oh yeah, they're legal. So I think the last one, how much was a lawyer? I was telling how much? Nobody I didn't know. I knew I had no experience last year. Well, let me see that agreement. So he, kind of torn it.

Yeah. Jim, I wrote this agreement. Offices. so I don't know about. They let me work another year while the person was coming on. Then, you know, a lot of people was out of work, and I worked at the same wages. I they cut wages down pretty good after that lawyer was working for quite a little less than I would, but I got my, that gave me a chance to pay that 140.

Archie.

Sam Schrager: Yeah, that's probably what that kept you, right? Partly because you you you own money on the land.

James Gleave: Well, though they don't, they can't or you can't go through you. Right. A company takes a company where they can. I sure will honor this agreement. If the company won't honor that agreement. See?

Sam Schrager: Well, this this I see some people that, that potlatch took pretty good care of, some of their employees during the depression. But it sounds like they were putting out guys like your dad. Well.

James Gleave: They just had more for looking back. They probably had more form. And they had they did away from that with that department, pretty much. They run a maintenance strictly from the office was a foreman and job. And I put a wash, police officer on study. He was a deputy sheriff and trial. Was it up to show? And he bought that shuttle that time.

Was running the farm at one rate. Was a city or town. It was on a tax list. I might be wrong, but I think I'm right. There was on a tax list. former lumber mill. She, she, they didn't have a state school there. They kept a better than standard school in the state. They had it with their instructor and stuff, but they did a in school taxes.

They kept the school up. They furnished the school. And a lot of country towns did that. Westwood, California. Cambria, Wyoming. but, now I'm not sure where he. I don't know where the Pullman car people. I had a town and met with a real nice company on Highland Mitchell that always kind of. I'd heard him say to us retirement.

He like Potlatch. He. That's what he used in a pattern. He thought it was a good town. But, I got all these things back and things, you know, that funny now, they wasn't funny. Want to happen. And, a lot of people looking back all the time, it was Potlatch. Well, I can remember that was one of these guys.

That was a dirty job. Come up. Us kids see me like I got it. you wouldn't, maybe he'd work on himself. I remember one time, about the sewer. That time went from now to picked up, pine out over your incline. Where the streets or not? The first street was fine. So when I that time went up, I'm up in the mill, dumped in a river below the mill.

And, they went up Pine Street to what the values be a hospital. The green. That's an apartment house? No, I think there was a boardinghouse at first. Arnold Beanery. It stopped there. Then it went up main Street, one of the picked up houses on hill. Cause, you know, now we're up there. And I went up and I picked up one.

Didn't pick up any houses on large. Picked up on that up to pick up. I didn't pick up our lives on Cedar. And then as we just grade above the school, I spruce picked up. Around two blocks there. I want to try the street on the upper side of the street. and then. Crews here and. No, no, I figured I was on spruce and then on Oak Street.

Them houses were all. Not all of them, I remember I but the plumbing in bottom, they they got off the upside back houses and of course Elm was always off. And Maple Street of course was built over 20, 1945.

Sam Schrager: This was a job that you found and you said you you're saying your father had kind of a job? Yeah.

James Gleave: But of course he had to target all this stuff and I remember one time on the night that I quit, and that's how it all fell up. They just had, each each woodshed. They had a toilet with a box on it. So the garbage man or the nine yard people laugh about the garbage man, but that wasn't for them.

Time. It was a good paying job, wasn't the nicest job in the world, but it paid good. They got that a slob right out west of the mill, out on Flannigan Creek Road. They got that. And, picked up a garbage. And I don't know how many nights a week. do you see this book Raymond Harris wrote on Potlatch?

Sam Schrager: Yeah, I read that.

James Gleave: You read that?

Sam Schrager: Yeah.

James Gleave: Right. I read that most read dates pretty good, but I he he was a country girl often in his. You see, the things I saw. And I remember one time they had a, I believe, I don't remember who. I think in my mind, I cannot remember who it was, but I wouldn't give given all names. Quit, moved up there about one month.

They had these have none of the back houses. So wintertime and and we had to clean back houses. And I remember Bill Trotter, he used to farm downtown but yeah, he ran his team out at the town and working down and go down now and boom, dad drove there to team and I was I and I on the other one cleaning them things.

We didn't have nobody to drive. We pretty small kids and do it. So I remember a lot of things. Potlatch wasn't real nice either. And stinking alleys. Well, they got hotels very well. And first one that I don't remember was stinking as a kid so bad. But a got all their own stuff soaked in the ground. But 1930, they were pretty much stinking alleys.

No way out.

Sam Schrager: And each house had its own.

James Gleave: Yeah, the head of back house behind each house. They don't. Well, they built that. There was even houses on a street, even number they built to go to watch judge together with an outhouse on each end. It was not even. No. That'd be one woodshed built with one outhouse.

Sam Schrager: They, How often did they, dumb.

James Gleave: Well, Raymond, I think in his says two months or something like that, but I think, after the guy run his job, they would take up a lot of times I think they had to do it about. And it was supposed to hit all at once a month. I know.

Sam Schrager: But when did the bombing actually come in from? Well.

James Gleave: I was they of course, now we was working on the town like Louis and I had on permanent and we maintained the maintainers. Man, I didn't have a little extra time. We shot dead in a ditch into a house and put in a pound. So we got a few houses up till 1931 when I left. But really the how the houses got off the sewer, I don't remember what year it was at the Potlatch sold the town of the people.

That was when.

Sam Schrager: That's when I really.

James Gleave: That's when they. I don't know what. Yeah. They put in sewers there and and did it right. Potlatch Lumber Company didn't do that. So people don't as I remember of course. And I was away from there them see. So I don't know much about that. I never monkeyed around how I lived at Princeton. I lived on a ranch north or, you know, north of Preston till 36.

I never paid much attention to Potlatch.

Sam Schrager: Was that the land you bought from Potlatch?

James Gleave: What part of it. Yeah, yeah, we had quite a little bit up there one time. And, no, we never lived on the land I bought in Portland, but I bought it off and sold. And, but then I remember. And then it was one road from the mill up to. Well, large street up where the post office.

And that would be Plank Road. And that would drive roads out to the railroad track as you went out towards Blues. There were black over the long and short brown over the warehouses. That was all plank Road and it was Plank Road on Pine Street, up your pastor pool. Yeah, that'd be 67th Street. Pulled up one in past the intersection of Salmon Street and a pool hall sat on one corner.

And, across the street there was a boarding house where every one house was built. It was a a boarding house, rooming house. And then it they made that one into a gym. Now when it built burned, they made the gym was there. Now are the buildings there now. And they run a but another boarding house in there.

Eagan, Washington. Did you ever talk to him. He's an Australian. No, he's over there. He used to run the boarding house.

Sam Schrager: He's still about.

James Gleave: Them a well.

Sam Schrager: Bill McGreal. Yeah I've heard that name. No no.

James Gleave: Know he was there. His dad run and his dad run the company barn him on the horses. And I used to because he work all horses around the mill pretty much, you know, work quite a bunch of horses. And, I don't know, to been on the railroad. It was really a bet. But he. Well, I think and wrote a lot of this just picked up, you know, picked up the tracks, work on Winslow.

But they they got a horse crippled up in the woods they'd bring down to Potlatch Bar, and I'd work around a mill or do about the good work and try to build them back up to. I seen Billy show up classes and things where they'd been busted open.

Sam Schrager: He still had two.

James Gleave: Well filled old boys. I know he'd been dead for years.

Sam Schrager: Yeah, well. You mentioned pouvons or you guys do you spend a lot of time in. Was that our gathering place?

James Gleave: Yeah, that one part I would say is gathering, but it was a pool. Well, there still, there I was pool. Also Bear Potter, I guess now, but us the. What was that? I don't, well. Be the west side of the street towards the middle. Wasn't a jail. the quarry was of 6 or 6 and seven.

Comes together on a on, west side of the street. It's, bars. No, no, no, I hadn't been in there for years, but it used to be a pool hall, and they had a confectionery on the front, so everybody went in. The had they handicapped people on a 21 on the pool hall part, but they school there's no they was kind of a gallon.

But of course a gym was quite a gathering place. This gym was, was a good thing. They had a what they call the Portland Amateur Athletic Club, but, they had a good reading room right away. Room down. And it was a gathering place. And the fellows were working in a mill or anybody in town. People for a dollar a month.

They joining a gym. Well, I'll give you a they had women's night a couple nights, a week on a gym floor that the men didn't go. Then use a gym. and then but it was a good thing there were most of them didn't have no, no washing facility at all, but, you know, shop around hub. So for the gym for you could get a locker for a dollar.

Yeah. I might be wrong I that was I remember a dollar a year was down here. That was quite a lot of money on to work for 340 a day, 85 or 340 a day. And, for a nickel, you could get a town. A lot of guys coming home from work. We stopped by the German clean up.

Wasn't just the people that run in and actually did rooms, a gym floor for basketball or anything. A lot of men never used it for anything else but a bath. It was worth it, you know, and it was a gathering place too. And of course, they had their dances and stuff there. And of course that was a school gym, but their school just had an afternoon.

They didn't have night. And that's was a game of, you know, and they had they had a full time instructor on and he had men's classes with fellows and stuff. So it was, it was, it was really a gathering point that was really, I'd say the biggest gathering point. And so, yeah, it was that's what it was built for, was for a center.

And of course, they had the Union Church, the big church. It burned, was used for a lot of things, lots of meetings beside church meetings, you know, and I've seen Metro show and at one time. Really? Oh, yeah. And,

that's female town by one club was a Catholic church. That would be the end of the line up that way. And.

Like that.

Sam Schrager: I think the Greeks and Italians were they it was there a lot of mixing between them and these and older American.

James Gleave: Well, people often all town was that way. Mass grew up right. It used to be shut down. I think of the when they come over now when Potlatch and I remember first the Greeks and Italians very much the Japanese lived up and boat upon this. I don't think anything left of first. Me fir was a first street. they used they put a lot of what they call temporary housing, and they were kind of clapboard houses that they'd built for the men that were building the mill was all they could build.

A town. Well, a lot of the Greeks and Italians around these and other people do. But down by the mill where the company barn was and Hollow Ballpark was along in there, the lot is old clapboard houses, and a lot of the Italians moved in down there. This was kind of. And Frank Petrillo says they big old town.

but there was a lot of Italians and Greeks down there and, and, that they kind of formed in together, you know, up on the hill, the one to many English. But they kind of settled in and on one little corner together, kind of at first. And I begin, they had a caution tape that most of the town was Swedish.

I didn't know they could run a sawmill without Swedes. So I went down to Westwood, California one time, especially the woods. I thought they had to have Swedes toward the the neighbors to do. I'd never seen anybody hardly know whatever Swedes.

Sam Schrager: And, Well, you know, Gus told me, sneaking back you. You mentioned Jim talking about him. Yeah. Gus told me once that, in the early days, the the Greeks and Italians didn't feel like they conjoined. Jim. They didn't think they they welcome there at first.

James Gleave: Well, I think some way to them that didn't make them welcome. I remember when.

U.S. Georgia native. When a nail on a mason stuck in then or when he also launch first anchor. I remember one year later and he does raise hell. I don't know them people in the lodge. Well, I'll tell you, they were good lodge members. They were no. both. went to the chair and I don't know. And I don't know whether God's name was on the other or not, but he bombed the Masons.

I know, and he gone to the chair, and he really liked you. That's more than I can say about myself. I was part of the what would you call probably a dues paying member. And, I went all last fall, and I tied the fifth year pin on me. That's what makes you feel old.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so the way he talks about it sounded like the Greeks really stuck together, and they damn well they did.

James Gleave: Pretty much in their early. Yeah, I nearly died. I and of course, I used to have a pretty fall rock and but this wasn't just Potlatch. It was all over. a lot of people who gave you a formal one day pay a month for your job.

I think earning was. And I broke that up in the mail when no one would get the foreman's name. I don't know, no one was just kidding, Lord. And died of a tied off. And you come around for a pay and we write him off with a pick a route killer for the well, make quite a stink out of it and went up to Mr. to homeless in and a layered and all over what was was me and always the man wouldn't do that and I was all your brothers and all of mine.

Well we're doing it. I don't think dad ever did on a town, but I know what I remember. One time he hired some Japanese boys. Version worked, and Elway bought him gifts from time. Well, this is, you know, there's a but this is something dad didn't believe in. He that had his first position, and he lived in other countries.

And, well, one thing, given all of that one thing dad never believed in was tipping. He never even tipping a waiter anything. He thought people should be paid what they were worth. They shouldn't have to. He's. This is servitude. When you take tip. This was his idea. And I kind of went that way with me, too.

I don't like to tip too much when you tell me a sport. The temper tantrum 20%. I do go and get my crawl. I tip, but I don't. I don't believe in it and I never received many tips from my wife. He. But,

Sam Schrager: Your father must have found some things do objective about the way you run that town and do well.

James Gleave: I think anybody would remember him. I think he done a pretty good job. For what you get out of fire. But you got to satisfy the boss first.

Or the company or whoever you work for. He was the first man you you got to satisfy. And I think it still holds true.

Sam Schrager: Well, it kickbacks. You had kickbacks. And, I would figure from things I've heard that that too. That's, again, someplace in the middle, too, that you'd have to be pretty cozy with for a minute. Time. Well, wouldn't hurt.

James Gleave: You know, it is still there. Still hangs to, but want to say what it is, what you on a day off on a day's pay for a day's work and got to Mr. Learn. And I bought 2 or 3 of the Greek boys, and I knew, you know, younger ones, and they said it, Mr. Lives. Well, you wouldn't expect me to take their word against, you know, one of these Mormons word for word.

So I went up and I got the Demus. I know I've got your. Denise's first week was kind of king of the Greeks. And he says, yeah, Germany says, I pay him, but check. So I took him up. Mr.. And said, well Jim, I'll take Georgia's. That's is equal in Greek. I take their word. And, so George, he went out and got his checks in the next morning.

This morning.

And he. What do you mean? He had somebody that can go to work? She got a job. Work? Maybe two months. And I find you go down to Spokane and it gives an employment office two days pay for a job. You go back to the same job. Employment office gets one day pay the boss in the you get another.

And you won't put a stop with that. We'll have our own employment office, which they did. They hired but hiring not Spokane very much.

Sam Schrager: So in June. And it was it is the same thing is that as a song same thing.

James Gleave: Though it was in the same set, but this one just policies was all through every place. You might want to. Well, or in towns I never had much experience with them in my day was Potlatch. I worked in Westwood, California. Wow, that was a company town. It was the same racket, Donner, only worse. And, but then working on construction, working at plum around construction like I did.

You work for smaller contractor and you didn't run across it. But. But this used to be a common thing. You paid. paid for your job, and, they show. Got that in interstate? Very much so. Would your farm labor, Mexican labor. One of you guys come in, they don't pay. We can't move the farm. Last place you don't even pay the people that work for them.

They pay the boss man. He pays the rest. nobody know for he rolled out. I think rather than trying to clean up foreign countries, we should start thinking.

Sam Schrager: I'm a damn.

James Gleave: Right. I don't say what. What? With Potlatch, I had this one pick I thought you might find and drive. We give you a little idea of drive, I thought I have some from another one of the potlatch load. And I think clip has that.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. Oh, yeah. That one.

James Gleave: This. This would be our entertainment number.

Sam Schrager: donkey.

James Gleave: And this would show. This would be seventh Street. There was a rooming house there which they over. They made a movie theater, although I know they were bunkhouses out there in a bunkhouse there. The two of the. So now, if that's the rules set over here, this runway here that went into the. Oh, where the first gym. Where the boarding house, where it was.

It was a boarding out. And at the time we figured, hey, but I remember making it in the gym from the boy from the morning. how come we didn't see the blind girls go up seventh Street? There you go. Up the hill by far. But they went up a little bit because it was built up pretty, right.

They shot the bar here. Break right here on this way. And, this is one of my pride pictures. All these kids are still alive.

Sam Schrager: Are they?

James Gleave: With me. Until I get another one out close the poor relation.

Sam Schrager: Thank you. Good. Thank you. Everybody is.

James Gleave: And, this would be a commuter train. Who I he designed it when I retired. Russell. Jim. The way up the top beam was bad, but he retired now, and he's.

In Arkansas, and I'm a firefighter. I get this my youngest national model.

But, I keep that because that proves the wooden. All right, Raymond Harris in his book, you know, he tells it, All good streets except this restored, you know, the concrete. That was when I was a kid. It wasn't concrete that long. Would really. No. All the streets. Yeah. They didn't have no. No concrete at home. They didn't even put,

Concrete blocks under the house. They built all the houses, except I'm gonna have basements that had built up rock houses. Always had wooden plank, wooden box that they were built on. Well, I didn't treat them rock box or anything. So wasn't many years before they started right now. So this was one thing that was the townsite that we did.

We'd raid one house, move on to the next, but when I would, some of them, we didn't have to jack up, but you'd have to jack them up and put in a concrete block and, You know, get over all the dirt from. Yeah, for 2 or 3 blocks, maybe if these, these sinks right into the houses, it just had a little tin sink in it.

You set a buffet on it? Well, people would stick a borehole to as long at the water run under the house. And then one car, the house would start. So this was, was part of the things that they was up to. They used to use a well, I said if we could tell where a guy worked, if he worked in a boiler or he worked in, for the railroad down in the roundhouse, he had two rooms out of the engines that they overhauled the steam engines, and he made a drain and maybe out to the strategic advantage.

Sink water out the street, dump it in the street. Or if it was on the low side of the street, dump it mainly. And, So all this stuff was not in at all. And of course, this is this is where I started working with for dad on, out of town doing everything last time. Looking back, I think I got a lot of the more marsh of the dirty jobs.

Sam Schrager: Well, that then, you know, the dump dumping the the, grandpa, the back houses. Certainly not going to be a fun job.

James Gleave: Well, of course I it that the two, not 2 or 3, not as the two of us to do it. I ever had to get.

Sam Schrager: Other hard jobs besides that, but.

James Gleave: Well, now you take it all in pipe. You just made the one pipe up in the house. That's all. The heavy one pipe the drawing, you know. How do we try to throw them out sometimes? They had a lake under the house where they would just let in a snake water dump on to the house.

I remember one time, where did mom all these high back houses still must have been across the corner. They cut a hole in the floor and use that for the toilet, and some other people moved in it. I don't know how to move in like that. And I remember cleaning that mess up. I was kind of a hard marsh to get the smell out of.

Pile up under the house.

Sam Schrager: How old were you about when you started helping your your father?

James Gleave: Oh, God, I guess I saw a guy over there on the sidewalk worried about, I don't know, 11 year old. I only know something I'm.

Sam Schrager: You know, when you were about, Let's see it, the other VW strike would have been when you were about 13 or something like that, I suppose.

James Gleave: Yeah. I'd run the highway as when I was about 15 years old. 14, 15 years old. but we been in Klamath Falls.

Good organization. Now it's like lawless organization. Sure. They got credit for a lot of things they did. We got a credit for a lot of things they didn't do. Do. But at that time, a lumberjack packed his bedroll on his back. If you went into a lot of them cattle, a camp companies, of course, had board and bunk that you furnished your back in your bedroom.

Most of them was larger than that, cuz if you wanted some put in, you take, they turn you down at the barn and maybe the barn. But he didn't want to give you the best guy, save that for his horses.

I thought that was always pretty good. They kept up other pretty clean camps, but I'm not another of those companies. So yeah, WW was one. If you ever read the Constitution to the I, it's a pretty good today. It would be a pretty good labor organization.

And of course they got credit for light and fire and stuff and stuff that they that I don't mind mine. I think that I remember one time I went out of Potlatch, a distraction machine burn. Everybody said the IWW fired. Well, most of the farmers that were working on that trash machine was working there, too. So they get their fashion done, you know, vanished, then burned.

And you can see the smut you see was trash machine. Good working, but the smut, you couldn't see the machines for smut. That's what Barnum got. You say that WW fireman. I just don't go through all that stuff. I do my places. I would close to the.

Sam Schrager: Why did Potlatch came from so.

James Gleave: Well, there was getting better conditions for the working man there in Potlatch. Wanted to get burned. Weyerhaeuser wanted him.

and then they formed what they call a loyal legion of loggers. Lumberman. That was kind of a company from that. So the men could talk to the management. Well, Potlatch was always, I think, more of that way than most lumber companies were. Most folk go down and most, most big companies, you could, in a way get through to the management.

But, Then. Just like today, people are against unions. A lot of them.

Sam Schrager: Well, I'll tell you, I've. I've heard the good things about the IWW working there.

James Gleave: Yeah, well, if I say I today, I work, I work probably most of my life work nonunion. I started my foundation in Oak Grove, local. And, Had to be a plumber. And then the depression hit. Or no work. I kind of have when I say I go back to Polish and 28th grade and. Yeah, 2820 8I9 30 for before you dirty one.

That's right. So networking agreement with a potlatch. Well and I try to go to that at that time that was a little better than union money. I try to go in Spokane and transfer Oakland. Spokane. Well they actually should work. Done. Well, I didn't listen to work this than me. They over me to go home over me this job and I signed an agreement so I work nonunion.

So after I went from a union, after serving my friendship, I never did work much as a union partner. Now, like I said, I was laid off from 31. I went to ranch. They there to stay there and I stayed out of 36 LA out. Then I came to Moscow. Well, what work for a nonunion shop here. And then I didn't go union again a little while.

I'm in white union. And, Chihuahua. And then he won big on the Electrical Workers Union because he did everything. And I run a repair truck at that time and not doing a lot of electrical work. So I never did really serve an apprenticeship, got, electrical work. But then I got in a union, and, and I worked last 22 years.

I worked at work union with electrical work.

Sam Schrager: It seemed like from what I've heard of these, IWW is more a lot more effective in the woods, organized in the woods. And they were in Potlatch. And you think that's true?

James Gleave: Well, yeah, they were basically they were Potlatch, I think was more the woods was, of course, most people in Potlatch that were mill people. They had a little furniture and they did keep it. There were pay and board room and Potlatch. They got their beds and Potlatch used to furnish preferred bunks in the woods a lot more than beds.

But the lumberjack, he carried his bunk on his back up, taller than I was able to. I used up pretty strongly, I don't know. We used to have our membership cards stamped out of ten. Ten? Yeah. So you put in the bottom of your shoe and not wear at all. Because you had the police officers and everything? No, we didn't have no problem.

Potlatch got Brown a mining town. It was in Kellogg Butte, man. When the sheriff put the gun on them and put them in a bowl, Pan. I think I got with our sheriff here before Pearson. Yeah. I think if you talk with him that he was put in a bull pen. Wants to know what one sheriff put a gun on him.

I'm not yet certain with it, but I think I remember him. Tell him I think that's.

Sam Schrager: I think that's true. You know, actually, I, I no good will Axel Anderson. Oh, yeah, I, I spoke to him up in Spokane. He told me that the Pearson brothers were, you know, in 36 strike. Well, they got they got thrown in jail or.

James Gleave: Well the lesson went in and all these people, they they brought in strikebreakers, they buy in toughs. So you had to get tough to bargain. I got a lot of stuff I didn't like to see, but, pretty close to it in lots of ways. Not since our, but right in a town apart. I have never seen anything too rough around the town.

Pretty fair. I forgot my town was one of the best town that right there on gambling.

Sam Schrager: You didn't gamble. Told me that, that during the war, they set up a home guard in Potlatch. That part of the purpose was, to be sure that the, Wobblies didn't, didn't make too much of the inroad.

James Gleave: Well, the, they had a home guard there. but they, this was a lot of people born to homes. I didn't want old cause I was too young. Dad. He was. I've got his certificate here where he was a captain and a home guard. But, it was, of course, you know. Yeah. Okay. So what do you run across of movies?

There's always guys that are wild. These are called Jim and Paul. Everything. I don't know. I.

I, I don't I remember little Martin and a lot of, some of that, some of these. I remember that I'd rather not.

Sam Schrager: Think about when he's not the Home Guard.

James Gleave: Because maybe I need, What would you say? He was on one side of the fence. But you believe in the other side? but looking back, it was a, I guess, a better than average company town. And I never lived in any other kind of a town. Really. That I was more in a company town and called home.

Sam Schrager: More when when was it that you you joined the IWW as well?

James Gleave: Bob? 14 and 15 year old.

Sam Schrager: Women in Potlatch.

James Gleave: You know, I mean, Ben in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

So, yeah, I kind of got my schooling through the School of Hard Knocks, College of Hard Knocks, a lot of only one eighth grade, a school.

I took my little night school. That is what you say. Night school. What they call our night school. They call my boy a. They used to be a I think more and is now little colleges or schools that put on courses.

Sam Schrager: At night.

James Gleave: That, the university put on. Now, these courses I could go up and get I get the universe dashboard. Now what? You couldn't do that if you didn't have a qualification. You couldn't go to university and take courses. Was it was always international schools. and, I took a couple correspondence courses. Took nine courses when those were who night in San Diego or down here for the winter or something.

I'd always go to a take in some non-magical something lined up with mechanical work construction.

Sam Schrager: When you left home, and pretty, pretty soon after you got the grade, you in Klamath Falls.

James Gleave: I left home once before I got all the grade for the summer working here. They built gym over there on the shingling lot, and he kind of a hard guy to work for, so I buck shingles on him. Brother up on a roof and, and shingle a few houses there. And he had two barns and what a war.

And I remember now the first big money I ever made, he, went down and got Potlatch used always, oh, ten days pay.

Yeah. So be sure to get their boarding out and their store bill and stuff too. And they paid coupons. You could always you can make you get paid on the 10th to the first. You are paid on a temp and then on the 20. I don't want you to my wife. You could you could make another cash draw if you got anything in between.

Had the coupons, company money? No one. If I know, I wouldn't have known that. Well, so I was going to store inflation. Potlatch. It was Barnum. I you could take a measure of Clyde Fisher in a jewelry store, and I had a $5 buck. He could give me a $4 cash for sushi rack. It was going on, and and, they,

When I was a. Coupon. But I don't know, before I was, I kind of. And being a cop scared I a lot of things I saw I think a lot I saw from a different slant than a lot of kids didn't see.

Sam Schrager: Jew. when you left town, did you know that's where you were going? To Klamath Falls, in that area where you just hit in the road and riding?

James Gleave: Oh, no. I gone. I had one Klamath. I just started out looking for work.

Sam Schrager: You can travel by, but you travel on rails to get there. You're right, I have.

James Gleave: I wasn't at that time. I wasn't traveling on the rail, but, I have rode. When I had out with this little shaver. Well, I don't say when you are in the office and seen how much, for some reason, I don't. They didn't because I worked. Well, my, when they went to saddle up. Wow. Me. What the hell are now?

I'm seeing homeless men. I wasn't asking for all that first thing. How much dollar they had? This little tab that you took around the store. See, it didn't own no dirt, no bills to the boarding houses to haul and dump me. And this little Jew is nice. I don't do that. He should, I don't know, I paid my bills.

You want send some brown? You sent them around. He that I'm not my money. So how much? I guess how much it sent there. I think that for goal. At that time I was working as kind of an office boy around the office and homeless and sent him around. I'm not sure. And, so when I got saved, how much?

One. If he'd paid me. I need to know now. I said, would you rather pay him to make sure he paid? You know, so be know, kick back in your classes. Okay, Roy. How much? What do you want me to just put a track right down the middle? Is the kid. Put the shingles. Well, I want them. You know, right down the middle.

So I made pretty good money. So I went down to Walla Walla. Did that the first time I ever rode wrong. We we bought a rode the cushions to place on a W9 am because I guess you want to make a good impression with dad. We went out of town style. Then we nail rod Smyrna, Walla Walla and shingled a couple of barns down there.

And then we got down around Modesto, California. By the time I had my nephew ride the cushions and we came back up and a guy named Bannon was.

Going on. So I went out in worked out there and and camps. No, no, come on home. Went to school, lost half of our school, was in some big high school. I flunked out, got two years and my sixth grade.

Unknown: And,

James Gleave: Then the next time I went, I kind of have no idea where I was going. I went to this job down there. I know, how was I going to Wobblies? IWW and no constitutional it. And there's still there's still copies of this constitution wrong. Yeah.

Sam Schrager: Yeah, I seen the Hoover example, but I've never seen that on some of the machine.

James Gleave: Yeah. You know, you you read the Constitution. Whoever wrote up. Well, he was a pretty well-educated man. He knew what he was doing. you know, quite a few. I've been retired eight years before I retired. Oh, and pulling one nine copy forward. I probably ten years ago, I work with a couple students. Was they asked me these questions and I told know I think I've got this constitution still and my stuff, but I went home.

It was burned out in 36. And sometime you think you got stuff burned if you never look up. We saved some stuff, you know? and then I saw my father, and I said they found it in, college. I had copies of it over there in my library, and they did a pretty good labor agreement, but it was way ahead of his time.

Sam Schrager: I think that's I think that's it. Yeah. The nail.

James Gleave: There. Now, you've got one thing. Labor has gotten the upper hand, which is bad laborers not any worse. And capital loss, you know. There's still capital that would push you around if you could.

Sam Schrager: Walk when you when you were a member, what kind of contact did you have with, with the others that were that were in the organization? Oh, well, I, we.

James Gleave: Had a meeting here just about like a large list, as I remember. I was set up like a large. Electrical workers union. So they call themselves a lodge.

And I still boardroom.

Sam Schrager: I guess the thing with the IWW, though, that may have made them different, is that part of it is that, it seems like you're always getting hounded.

James Gleave: Well, times was tough, and they didn't want Auburn. I didn't want labor to organize. And they held them. And labor fought back.

Same the same time. This. And it wasn't that bad in a lot of in camps. And and just like with the fires and stuff, they always claimed labor said, well, I don't work a maybe they did have a few. Any organization you take your church you you've got some members that surely ain't God fair and membership. You take your lodges, they try to screen their members, most of them.

If they lived up to the constitution of the lodge, all of us would be better. Any lodge I've had anything to do with, you'd be a better member than if you didn't. No one had ever wanted to run into a Wobblies IWW. You know I didn't. You know, my intimations. It was related I belong to. Well, the one in the Elks never went on.

what was prohibition illegal in Idaho? They take you on the Elks? The first thing I do run around the bar and give you a drink. And you swear allegiance to the flag. Another country with a with our oath to the Elks Lodge. And then I take it, bushel of weed out of the bill. So, like I say, if, but all these, all these lodges and stuff, their constitution, most of them are pretty good that I've read.

Sam Schrager: I've heard it said that having a, wobbly card was kind of taken a mission to ride the rails. If guys who rode around who were expected to have cards.

James Gleave: Well, I don't know, cause a lot of guys riding around that were them up to World War two, I didn't railroad, didn't approve of riding a large group, but for the depression died then whole family road. They didn't kick them off. They low demand cars to get them out of town. Up to that time, the railroad didn't want you riding around.

It was quite a hassle. You know, railroad board were pretty tough and some of them braggy, were like to kill men.

You know, I seen tie rope on a brake stick and drop a damn 20 cars to knock hobos off.

And,

Then after I got a little money, I know road rage anymore, and I had to. I had money enough to buy a ticket where I wanted to go find out later on in life. It didn't pay to spend your last dollar.

And, I would, you know, generally, all I knew was I think it was as good a time as anybody could have been raised in. Probably they had good schools. First, they didn't have a high school, but they. And they did short one. I think they had good instructors as good as any other old school. You know, they taught on the same side.

Sam Schrager: Well, I know, but like Potlatch and, the good what people said to me is good about Potlatch is a services that they had working for Potlatch. And then the town was pretty good. In fact, I've heard, your father's in the other business. I've heard good things about. In fact, if you need something done your house, you could get it done.

But, they do it for you, and that's that's something that a lot of, of course, would want.

James Gleave: There was some people go to say that some people got all their houses to the tore them up, would, wouldn't say that.

I was, and one too many of them that way, but there was a few line. That kind of figured I was undesirable. And to use my other job at the mill in a nice way, I'd be laid off and wouldn't be hired back on home. Something that happened mentally, I'd move them out.

Sam Schrager: What would make you decide family wasn't good to have around? Well.

James Gleave: A hell raiser or guy that wasn't on. Their the house up or something.

There's always some people. The people don't change. There's more or less. what would you call an undesirable maybe. I don't know, maybe they're right and I'm wrong. But, there's there's always so many good people. So many mediocre people don't. Many bad. I think percentage wise, the world stays about the same. The. And it gets old and I give them.

Well, I would open to giving it more of a break than they used to. It used to be. Well, we just did. You would call it. That was it. Now you can tell it's done. So I don't, I don't know.

Sam Schrager: If you didn't like it. You got it. You and you had the same potlatch when they were definite. In Potlatch you probably get kicked out of town. If they found out a bad thing.

James Gleave: Oh, yeah, they would have. That was where you kicked him out. You take him by the. But now they used to have a bunch. Used to be common occurrence from these towns for some wanted to come in with a bunch of Spartan women. Hey. Well it took them the edge of town, shut them down the road. That was.

Yeah.

They didn't want them in town. Dumped all the town. Some didn't. Potlatch didn't.

Know a lot of guys are just escorted to the edge. Don't all and start. Although I will put you in jail and Potlatch. Anybody put time in jail? Do they burn someplace?

Sam Schrager: Oh, yeah.

James Gleave: That was balloon. Always in life. Well, it was just two cells with a space in between them. The one were big and you had two buckets. One of them had drinking water and the other one had one. You got really? You drink the water in.

You know, when I was a kid that picked 2 or 3 guys up drunk or something and throw them in jail, when they leave, they take the bucket and pull it off the wall. And that was my job. Cleaning in the jail. You know, kid, till Jack cross long shadows. Different judges was on, travels and all. the one guy crossover was a judge job.

We got a little bit bigger, and I balked on that. And Jack said, well, you put dinner sounds like glue in the room for the leave. Remember, the first guy was in know I could give his name. He did. You know what I want clearance. I say, you know, two, three days more and they decide if they give him a buck in the mob, he'd clean it up.

After that. They didn't do it. And I remember cleaning up after that.

But, the motel that usually had one. One uncomfortable jail at one point. These jails today.

Sam Schrager: What about you? But your father did his responsibility to get rid of these undesirables. Did that show that fall on him?

James Gleave: That. No, that was part of his job. Yeah.

Yeah, you kind of. You can't ease them out in a nice way. You gotta be tough. You don't want to divide the town so that it.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. Now, who would make the decision then? They didn't want this guy from higher up.

James Gleave: Well, might come from higher up. Might come from. Might be some guy one form of the mill. Have somebody working for him who was a troublemaker. Wanted to get rid of him. Oh. They just gradually they just eat them all. So all they kept. But you might say a pretty congenial community. Of course they had. No, that was how it originally got started, I think, for people who to own their own homes, some of them, it was doing a little bootlegging, a little illegal stuff, though.

There company couldn't talk him away.

Sam Schrager: Well, that's where, some of the Italians that, that were making their wine. Oh, that was the question.

James Gleave: I always made the wine up, and there you. Yeah. And, wasn't was bootlegging. But I, like with dad, he never went after bootleggers too much. That was up to the sheriff's department to do that. That was a county enforcement. I don't think he ever. If somebody put paper on him or whether he served it, but he didn't.

Well, he rode.

Sam Schrager: Around in wine. He he figured if if they made one, it was okay.

James Gleave: Little motion less. Sheriff got after him. Why? He just kind of. He had enough do without on his police job. That would just more or less one. It didn't work. But then just after complaints, you know, I don't remember him going down to. That's right. I think it was down there. Police in advance or anything like that. If something happened, you went down.

But, Kids got in trouble. They talked to him. Usually he kind of settled out of court. He was kind of a little. Well, what was a diplomat or a peacemaker or something that, in a word, settled out of court.

Give a kid a lecture. And he she had a way of talking to people. He could make kids get through to.

Sam Schrager: And what you're saying sounds like you didn't really find that you, he didn't have much trouble controlling, the booze, and,

James Gleave: I don't think so too much. No, the sheriff would do the. They help, but there was no open saloons or anything like that, you know, through the people that sold it there. But, the sheriff, they was raid and all that all the time. But there wasn't. Well, I get blow off when you ever talk with a golfer.

When he was prosecuting attorney. Edwards won't give me the spotlight. Spotlight of, I anyway, when I was a younger man, but, we both went to Potlatch.

And,

So, I don't think they had too much trouble, but like I said, I told him one time, he said, well, this is it. They figured every rancher was a bootlegger. Well, that's a long way from the truth. I think the biggest still in Little County was right in Marshall.

I think maybe I helped build it. I was compliant, and then all the coyotes for.

Sam Schrager: Well, then you could see that how big it was.

James Gleave: Oh, yeah. I know I could turn off the guys. Only brother was a sheriff. The other brother or cousin, I don't know their brother, their cousins.

Sam Schrager: well, they've said as much to me. not about the still, but he said, he said to me, you go to the, high class parties in Moscow during prohibition and booze.

James Gleave: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Sam Schrager: He said when he was prosecuting attorney, you tell him, he come late. They get that out of the way before you get there. So he went out to see it, but he knew.

James Gleave: They were doing. Not sure. Well, it was a far as far as I'm concerned. At least as I remember prohibition. It was easy to get liquor. You didn't know what you'd gotten. It is today, you go into well, maybe not in Potlatch, but if, you know, the people were selling it and it didn't make no difference if your ten year old, if you had price of a bottle they sold it to it didn't make no difference.

Now, a ten year old kid would have little trouble going into a bar and buying a drink.

Sam Schrager: You bet.

James Gleave: So there some control over it. But, I don't know my bottle. When I was very young. And, all the way home and, I don't know if you're watching Spokane County, Spokane or tell somebody they want to sell you a drink bottle. now, if you want to drink, you got to go buy it. And ain't nobody putting you on a street to buy a bottle.

And I never saw prohibition. I never saw the time. I couldn't buy a drink.

Sam Schrager: Would you take, like, Potlatch where you weren't supposed to have booze in there? Oh, no. It's hard for me to believe that he's working in. Oh, they've been in the mill all week and all that we're going to drink on the weekend.

James Gleave: Yeah, they're drink at home. Have parties. Yeah, but the company just didn't, show a lot of at home. Good. Had good liquor, but they didn't have the saloons and stuff. They had saloons in Blue Moon depression.

Sam Schrager: I don't way do.

James Gleave: Well, I don't remember as a kid. Well, I don't remember. I won't say the one. I won't say that one because I just don't know.

Sam Schrager: But that's where they go with it. Yeah. The saloon.

James Gleave: Yeah. But, I don't remember. When I was a kid, they used to grab the train, go to. Plus I go to plus on a Saturday and they come home, a new pair of shoes and a shoe box with a chance of liquor in a shoe box. But, Bartlett, who said they tried to keep a dry town in there and they didn't tolerate.

No, no drinking in on a job at the mill. Which I very much pool of even today. I run a lot of job in my life and I didn't have. I've caught firemen for granted. They never get hurt. No drunk, hardly ever get hurt. I guess somebody else heard.

And I run jobs very, you know, 8 or 10, 15 men. Quite a bit of my life. Foreman, you found a superintendent? The ten years I work for pasture area. Water superintendent. All time and.

But looking back at partners, like I say, I can see a lot of the bad part of the town. Most people, they talk about the good parts about. Well, I can. And I've got, like I told people, I don't remember when I didn't have to work. I think there's a lot of other people my age. It kids had to work in them days under the folks needed the money.

They had to work.

Sam Schrager: So, when you talking about the bad parts, what about, like, working in the mill, working conditions, what those conditions were like? They.

James Gleave: Well, I'd say they would like any other mill. I never worked in a mill. Only two mill. Right. A little bit. I went around. When World War one, I was getting to just in grade school in the summer time, and they took a bunch of us down and I was going to work in a box factory, and that run the boss, right, was going to show me how to run a rep.

So 5 or 6 was, and you saw it off a couple fingers. Well, it off all four fingers, I put it that way. And I decided right then, well, that's why they're on a rep. So I don't want nothing to do with it. I don't like it, don't like them. To this day. And I remember we were talking about old, our high and old.

I said, well had them fingers. John had John back on. You know, don't.

Sam Schrager: Do hands, private.

James Gleave: And, I don't remember bothering him, but I picked him up and we took him up, and Frank better go his car, his own kid. And Tom had of had an old model, you know, do Ford was painted red on a kid, and Don had a car. His dad was bootlegging. Had a little money, and, So I don't really know.

Now we want to go and tie down a, I'll be tied up in the car. And I never do work around the saws or on the mill itself, only to mill around a little bit when I wasn't work uptown. Or if they were, something broke down. They needed, if they broke down. Say we was busy uptown.

I broke down in the mill, and Melba, that one first, I that was a that was a run. And Paul. And you got me working for dad of Tom mechanics would be would go to the mill anytime. If dad needed help in the mill, he never got them. But the other way around the mill was what they were making the money.

She. So I have mill right there and I'd mill out another mill, but not too much. Right. In Potlatch I didn't, I just didn't care about working in the sawmill.

Sam Schrager: You think that it was pretty dangerous for, well, the guys and worked there too early.

James Gleave: Accidents and no dangers and other jobs. The they, What, those of you guys got killed over the years, Paul. I mean, one sort into one time. No, but he was doing something he shouldn't have been doing. And, then when I put that loader in, there was a man got his hand in it, and lost it. And another one time guy got on one of the shelves in the basement.

Owner under the mill goes green. Jay, you come out of the room, Jane junks. But, this was happening at all. In all mills. And get safety laws. And lots of times companies want a lot of these things. Men have been careless and shall not put back guards on mechanics, people working. And sometimes they ask what they don't take the safety precaution.

Maybe the company would ask them to take. And of course one thing would shelves. It used to be then they all shall go on the road with no one other steam engine had big pulleys on there and had big square not motion was stuck out. They grab just waiting to grab somebody. Come now with machinery when they built it they use Allen screws that go down and hole and guy get bumped.

And he probably wouldn't hit a bomb and it probably wouldn't catch his clothes.

Sam Schrager: Though it was decent, there was a difference in the whole thing.

James Gleave: The whole up and men were cheaper and I'm sure man got what what the hell? I don't think the potlatch was more of a closer community, but I've worked on jobs where they didn't come. I worked on a course in the woods one time. One guy got hit in the woods and they didn't even take him to town.

Low Sheriff quit. No, my boy there.

That was it. But one capital had the upper hand. They were bad doing. Maybe labor government nowadays, going back to capital again. And the capital the the thing that bothered me real bad is inspection laws. Even the federal government says they can't go in without notifying people with an inspection. LOL. They got no inspection then. I never got to understanding the mines when I state inspectors going to inspect a mine, let them know a couple days in advance.

These on these runaway inspectors to walk in Idaho never did have inspection. It had inspection I seen on construction job. One of the things that was a fraud here on a campus. I seen the state safety inspectors just beg contractors to do stuff. No way. Walk across and into Pullman. And the state inspectors didn't beg them to do anything.

Wrong. Damn I they shut them down. I remember one time over there, of course, was getting a long way from Potlatch when my working on a job, when an outfit from Provo, Utah come up there and on a school job and it was pretty. They left a lot of stuff open elevator pits and stuff, like there's no guardrails up at all.

And after getting done, it cleaned up. And they did cleaned up. And then he came back. He just had water power pull the transformers off. And the guy said, I don't mean no knowledge of diesel generator in here. You got to shut me down. You hear him? My think 2 or 3 more days and come back. He hasn't done anything.

He's still run with a diesel generator. I guess I was talking with Inspector that. Well, it's kind of funny that. Well, I'll go in for a while. I'm on that. And he yelled long ladder! Or we had 2 or 3 wire wrapped. What had been scratched, been cracked and was painted and washed. And you don't paint on that or you can varnish it well, but they gotta be able to see the ground.

He wasn't been broke. The good thing when you understand why they do it and, and inspect your opponent now on that here, all the car road is cut off every three joint can't hurt me. What I do, and I was Inspector says all you got one wildman saying as he stand on up on a bank. Guys, you know what's going on.

He said if it wasn't walking, it wasn't safe in Idaho. So don't don't bring it back. Them.

Sam Schrager: Come on, Idaho, you know, Potlatch is only in power. Yeah. These other companies have always corporations have always had power.

James Gleave: Well, when I was on the state electrical Board, when I first started stating, this was first date inspection, I was on the first board during my representative. I don't work Potlatch with Panama with them, but, the guy was the chief had told me the head man on the for the state, the foreman work for Idaho Power, and he wanted this law passed, but he wanted companies that employed full time electricians wouldn't have to have inspection.

That means the farmer he that had inspection you in town, or they have to have spectrum. But a big company, they get full time electrician. I take for granted. This man's going to do good work. Don't have inspection. Well, this law would be illegal. I don't know who we bought it. I ended that contract by then. But did water from Twin Falls?

He's dead now. But him and I kind of got together on that. And we went down and Gina, state attorney and got some opinions from him. And, so law covers everybody. There's always a lot of cover. Everybody I know body and, but, they still don't have the enforcement they can turn jobs down by I if a job don't come up.

This is a safety inspection. This is Dillon inspection. Well, I've got an inspector. I have the power in Idaho to tell the PA company you can hook onto it. So that. That's nuts.

Sam Schrager: You is a story about and over in improvement. Yeah. We'll start talking back and well I.

James Gleave: Was gonna say come back. And so we've been gone about 20 minutes and the contractor come around and she manages, you know what the inspector knows. I said he was going to Walla. He's why. And he says he pulled our state contractor's license. He's we got a job and all that. Then a job in Seattle. What's your job?

The big one. And he's like, get thrown a we'll just have to put give him time. I have to pick up their material and lock the doors. Move off. They're not operating tonight in Washington. And he was sweating blood for about a week. Inspector, come in one day and he's. You got your job cleaned up on dialysis. For God's sakes.

Let them open and see how long. First I go inspect them. Job. believe me, I see nothing to work on. I worked on 4 or 5 of their jobs in Pullman and Jeannie, the South that had from probably me in Washington. They keep their jobs clean. In Idaho they don't. But in Washington they do.

Sam Schrager: You know where it is you talk about, you know, capital, capital having the upper hand. And it seemed to me like you look at Potlatch and what went on in the town, you got a company town, the company, pretty much sets of standards, does what it wants to do. You think it then? It did. Potlatch didn't have the.

Well, I mean, it seems to me they didn't use people. I mean, that was their they gave them, enough to live on.

James Gleave: Oh, all companies use people that there is. Why when your union start we asked for more money. We want for better living conditions. It's hard for you just for you young kids today, probably to realize we didn't have cars. That's good. And most of it didn't have bicycles. We had a jackasses. If I hadn't had a rich uncle, we wouldn't have had the uncle born.

This jackass was in order. He had one of the good jobs you bought, right? Playing golf. And, well, he didn't stay too long, but, people making up kids, you just didn't have that.

Sam Schrager: The people didn't make enough. So they get ahead very much.

James Gleave: No, that's for sure. They never got ahead much. Just, for most of my working life, I drew less than $2.75 an hour. And I was tied up at the top of the wage bill more once I was a top, but I was in a skilled labor.

And you don't say much on that. Then what was in Potlatch? when I first went, they would pay em. Common laborer was probably two and a half cents an hour. You ran a team. The company got 37.5 cents an hour for team hires, and you had to keep it shod, and you'd make a little. But you couldn't make work that much.

And I always had 2 or 3 teams or one anyhow, to the lot from the time I was old enough to buy a team, and it was to make a little better with the men would if you got a good skinner.

Sam Schrager: What we used in 1849 Potlatch.

James Gleave: Welded they the company picked up all the stuff around town and over eight, and taken the men out to work. That took them out with a team. They didn't have cars.

Sam Schrager: So you got 37. In addition there. 42.

James Gleave: Yeah, yeah. The the driver got 42.5. Sister got 37.5 for your team.

I didn't work my teams always hired a driver or they got me a driver. I got a team from. Yeah. unless I had a lot a big surplus of horses down from the war in the company bar. They had a surplus of horses. Then they didn't run them from the farmers around the people. They had horses for em.

Yeah.

Sam Schrager: Seems to me like, from what I've heard people talk about and where these people, like the guy wrote that art outside of town. Okay.

James Gleave: Yeah.

Sam Schrager: You'd like, some of them felt that they were more independent and, people in.

James Gleave: Pot. Well, I think they were you not. They were more independent, more way. I think the people that boxed up. Right. You lived out Rock Creek and not Rock Creek, but all I think it was more people bought for Rock rocket because. Well, I think while the other land was settled, pretty much that was all that land was leveled off and sold for East people out that way.

So there was a little more than dependent. They mostly, grade a little grammar look, read, read as part of their stuff. Then I potlatch a lot of times. I remember during World War one when they had quite a piece of ground, but where Maple Street is now, you know, in the cemetery, they'd plow that up every year and have it and market down it a lot.

And you can put in Olive garden. You wanted.

To we've always have quite a spot that we always had spotted leftovers. But in corn.

Sam Schrager: Each person had a block.

James Gleave: Yeah. Anybody worked for the company. And they went home. And how often they had water out there.

so it it was they were, I think, better than average company time.

Sam Schrager: But they still had reports of any company down there.

James Gleave: Oh, yeah. Well any towns that is false. Was a company town or not. All that goes. It's just what,

no, I, I, I bought this, I didn't want to bend the other one. I know it was a short time or not, you know, but, you know, this is mine was put out there. But the company town that I live in before I come to Potlatch, when I was a kid, they, you were called home. And, I used to walk up 365 steps up the hill to school.

You're, You didn't. There's no. She came here.

Sam Schrager: That was the town of Wyoming.

James Gleave: Yeah, right. It was a quarter. It was a company down.

Sam Schrager: How did your father. Are you folks decide to come to Potlatch from.

James Gleave: Well, I think I was I going to Fred was here first and he got married coming out.

Unknown: And, you know.

James Gleave: I think I found my dad. Come out here and it wasn't much going anyplace else. My. He's gone broke in Wyoming on a homestead. He didn't care much. He didn't get along with a partridge on the mines without that. Well, like you said, they said machinery is more important than men. And that if I had to cave in in a coal mine, you sealed it off.

Then I a command out then were cheap. And I remember when men were cheap.

But they figured, you know. But not steel. You lose a man for every so many tons of steel. He just figured on it. They didn't do anything to keep from that was just. I worked for boss. I thought I was kind of bad about men who had gold under him. I thought it was kind of funny.

And they. I didn't kind of. Well, I'm kind of sold a lot of my own hide. And so I didn't work for a job. I put a lot of good jobs because that's what we do today is for me.

That's why I like Moscow to work in it. I worked here after I retired. I, I think maybe I could have gotten more money a couple of different times, but, along pretty well with the old Dutchman and.

And, I got pretty safe.

Sam Schrager: Do you think that these people like the the, Japanese and Potlatch, the Greeks and the Italians did the jobs that they have? Were they not as good as the jobs? Well, what was the differences there?

James Gleave: I don't know the Japanese. And I remembered that because I didn't work right in the middle so much. But the Japanese were pretty much in a box factory in them places fast, walk around and saw when woman making wooden boxes and fast people. Now a Japanese average Japanese. Take a guy like me twice as big as they are, and they'd kill it off on a small shovel and a machine.

A fast accurate. So they did a lot of this type of work. It work pretty much, I think. So the male, the same way that the people jobs all paid pretty much the same unless they were piecework or a lot of their stuff was piecework. No matter who you was, you could turn to work out. You made more money.

Oh my god. But a thousand they had guy work was a day. But then guys by the day probably didn't do a quarter of the work. Good men zip one work.

Sam Schrager: Do you polish the mill shut down there during the strike at all in 1718. At that time.

James Gleave: I don't remember shutting down it while, but I don't remember.

Sam Schrager: I know about Riverton Mill up.

James Gleave: Here, but we're right in the middle of the woods and have a little bit more of a of a squeeze play put on it, I think in partnership with Potlatch, had, like the page I showed you the log train. They used to have that river pump full of, you know. Oh, we didn't come in for a couple, three months.

That was all they could keep us on.

Sam Schrager: Japanese. were they real? Separate from the rest of town?

James Gleave: Pretty much. Now that I remember, they had one job. Me. It was a janitor in the store, and I had an older. He was a janitor. Jim, you know, all this work, but on a mill motel, I think was around a box factory that was around the lighter work. And the faster work, like, you just do it better.

And we can read only the kid and yourself. They're faster. They move faster.

And, there wasn't too many Japanese there, but there was. It was quite a few. Was mill used to employ an awful lot of men? Lazy Potlatch was always when the mill was run, I think. But basically it was all way over. 50% would be Swedish against all the rest of the nationalities.

But I don't remember that they give the Italians a for course. I used to kind of look down on Italians, and I think it was all over the country. Jews, Negroes, maybe the people, but it was Irish. They used to give that Irish an awful bad time.

And, I don't know. So monorail or an Irishman was good for work because you.

So, I don't know. I don't think Potlatch really given any worse of time and then anybody else. I think the good like I say, the jobs paid a certain wage and and that's what they got.

But not like a work I did a lot of time, but we'd be busy in the summer then when water would hit Tab to get a month or two off. When there was no work. Yeah. Or no work, or sometime in the summer. If we'd go there, then I'd hit out, work someplace out, go south or something, and.

We'll.

Orphan. You know, you can't. You can't put a portion of God like you do a car. You got to feed him.

Sam Schrager: Well, could somebody stay out there?

James Gleave: Yeah, the like in the wintertime was love. And we had to redeem some old lumberjacks and shelter and feed them for the board room. Probably. And if we didn't smoke in that room, Ballymoney was glad to.

Sam Schrager: Have a boy.

James Gleave: Get a place to stay. And.

Sam Schrager: I did feel about about getting fired in at that time. Was he pretty bitter about about it at the time? Oh, that was your father. Pretty bitter about it at the time. It.

James Gleave: Well, I think so because I know. Oh was it, oh the year that that had Office of Better Jobs. But they'd always told him how long you're okay. Well all the your way. You got a job here. And of course a man. They had to own a fire there. You like to fire a man and, that never heard of.

You know, he heard as soon as he was fired. Long before he. Before they told him that. Hey. Oh, I had two guys there, and I didn't have much useful work for him. Jack Irwin were the one hired. Of course. Dad, I never did like Jack.

No. When I was honest. Life, a good boy, no gamble. He was, I he could. I did a lot in for the Potlatch, but he was a of in the company. Sure not to have no inspection. They were all take care of them so. Well. What? Let's get the mail fairly safe. They had this just like all the mines over that safety inspection I believe in.

I think it's something I think we wanted. So this I think we can have this inspection. This is federal court now. I can't go in without an inspection. I think this is an awful, awful setback. Few years I'll be have margins.

Sam Schrager: You know, these guys that, were bachelors that lived in a boarding houses? yeah. And work and, you know, were they more like the lumberjacks were like the guys that worked in the woods?

James Gleave: Well, they're all the same kind of men at all. Man of Diane Woods. You were not there for a month, maybe of six weeks. Two months. Never got time. When he got down, he got drunk. Everybody said he was drunk when he was working. You. They didn't. I know all the times I've been around was I've never seen too much liquor in the woods.

I didn't have you see more of it now? You did then. They didn't. All liquor in a camp. So a lumberjack comes down and people gets the impression of him. That's the the whiskey. The towns, families wages. So I guess drunk. You raise hell. But when are you back in the woods? Are you working hard? Well, so they was no different to me than that.

And the people in town, or single men in town, of course. Later on, the bar.

Unknown: And houses and and.

James Gleave: Were not because they want to smoke and raise a little hell to. But, cause was a lot more single man then a lot more men and was women like a town like Potlatch. There wasn't been enough girls out for any of that. I was good was probably 5 or 6 men and one woman. She had married families that were there.

What? I mean, it was a boarding house and that stuff where man. And the people that were married, that lived in the town, it was probably many boys. There was girls that would eat them out that way. All right. You know.

They never seemed to have much trouble that way.

And they got car loans that they were going to smoke in all the time and go back.

Sam Schrager: Did that did that mean it? It was less going on and in the town than there used to been?

James Gleave: Well, no, I wouldn't say that. But like I say, with the money, go get drunk, go around. See, the gals is not negotiable. Yeah. Fag. something like that. And, the potlatch always had a little things going on. The school was good pushing, you know, they got entertainment and had a pretty fair theater. Well, I didn't have much of a theater, but they had the same shows I had anyplace else.

it was it was a good enough town to work in, I guess, as good as any town.

I think times were just awful. Well, when I first went there, I think I only like that I think the mills worked in 10 or 12 hours a day. I'd say eight hours a day, six days, weeks. Enough. It down to that.

And you got it down to 5 to 4 and a half days a week. And they got down to. Five days a week. All right. And then five and a half days. Yeah. And it down to five.

Sam Schrager: Did you ever know guys in the mill working there in Potlatch who had who got in trouble. Because there union union activity with people like Laird.

James Gleave: I don't think they ever got in trouble with Laird so much. That would boil down to the form of the mill under the. The old man was a police officer. Not mad to happen, but that would boil down to, they get the word and I get it a quarter or, straighten up or they just lay them all.

That's all. But Potlatch had this wedge arm, you know, the you no union down there say that you can't fire that man because you work for you so long.

And I don't think that Laird himself probably was the one to me. Or have then more of the lake. Laird took more with the he just kind of pride in the town. He tried to keep it clean, you know, he took a pride in that. He. But I think were the men any any squabbles come between a male and a man.

How much was usually the one the foreman they went to. How much? And first, if he couldn't be at all, then they'd go to Laird.

But I don't think they had too much trouble that way.

Sam Schrager: I thinking I think if you after you left the town and you gone out and seen, you know, seen some things in the middle of yourself and you come back and you worked in the town for years, you you probably saw things kind of differently. And.

James Gleave: Well, I got know the towns of her times was kind of tough then you can't really say by a big dummy word, for there was all drive and hard back, you know, little old Ivanhoe.

No, I don't be glad to hear life, but there I, I guess I guess was as good as any other town. I don't what I had done better than or not in another town. Not one thing would bother. That's the only thing there was to look forward to was a sawmill.

You know. And I did better after I got away from Potlatch.

But then everything else about the people in Potlatch, I think did better, too, you know, think you just got better.

Sam Schrager: When did depression come along. And Potlatch had to make these choices about who they were going to take, trying to take care of people who they didn't did they keep just the families or did they, they keep going. The Italians too, or how did they they kept.

James Gleave: An awful lot of, like they get some of the Japanese and the Japanese kind of began to kind of pull out. It seemed to me about that time lessons for many of them, of the Italians work. They were good workers. no. They just, They made the biggest change, I think, in, the pers, they're all the same person now.

They're forming the nest up. they're more shook up now. Like I said, they brought many of them just walking around from different mills. And of course, a lot lay the older men off and get the younger men, which is good business. I think they could see it coming where there was going to have to carry insurance and things like that.

So they want men with more years of work. And,

Polish. Just give them 30 days out of town. That was it.

And like lots of people say you. I've had company officers are just a gym. You shouldn't say the camp, Mr. Lerner's. I don't want it. Authority I got from Mrs. Ladd herself.

I didn't get off my little shower alone. But then was a girl that ever done in Missoula doing that?

But they do this. All companies do that when they come in one on one. A company comes in by the shore in a town. They say, we're going to keep all the personnel on you about two years later, and they've made a change, every one of them. So this is this is just this is just.

Sam Schrager: What about the people in Nob Hill as a whole, a Nob Hill? We start me it's kind of, you know, I've had people, people from out the country who call it snob, you know.

James Gleave: Oh, well, yeah. That was where the, the the best pan people in them had the best job. Lived on Nob Hill. Except now, like with dad, of course, he didn't have one of the biggest pan job. Not like in the mill, but we live on the first one that we lived on, on 60, just above the post office, and we lived at 650.

Now and then the last house we lived in. As you go out of town, the house on the right, the last house on the right, that was that house was built for us. We live there. And then when we lived there was the Legion Avenue down below the graveyard River. We had about seven acres, you know, it would get more calls and we all that always got a call, the 4 or 5 or six.

Sam Schrager: So your from nice nice. You had a pretty good set up there in town.

James Gleave: Oh yeah. I'm not bad.

Sam Schrager: But, you didn't live on Nam Hill. No. I think seems like that that just made a sharper division between the ordinary.

James Gleave: Well they would, but you seen that room? Well, like I say, like you say. And I said even the races went to war. No candidates had the Klan to climb up together, so. Well, you said it a time like this. People's got the money getting kind of a community by themselves. You college people will get in a commute.

Maria, you've noticed that very much. I don't know where you can off. And I dropped out of the Elks year ago when I first went in. Else you could just see the difference between a university people in the Elks and, farmers in the town. People just kind of three, three groups of people are you going to tell us 1 or 2 of them?

Yeah. You had been, Max same.

Sam Schrager: Way in college as far as in the community got together.

James Gleave: Oh, no, I only got together. They all make a lot of times the people from a lot of, a lot of the things that the town people might do, the people on the hill didn't go to or something like that, you know. But,

Sam Schrager: What were some of the, some of those things that the townspeople went to? What was the type of, get together?

James Gleave: Well, you'd have goats. I had, I don't know, probably more school play and things like that than they had. They'd have, of course, every week they'd have a dance with the gym. They had as a kid with me. I got a big kick out of the gym. I go down there a couple nights a week in one on one.

As long as I work now, let me go down, take a bath, maybe go out of one, take there. And, of course, I had two shows. And like they do now, they've had their parties at their houses, their boss or something pull on outside. Not the one too much more than.

Sam Schrager: Was there which get together people's houses.

James Gleave: Cuando that's ya.

Know, I think people done more at home and I do now. They would work good neighbor more. I never played cards very much. I play a lot of solitaire or something like that. But with me with cards, most people want to play cards, want to play for money. I'm a born loser. I work too hard for my money.

I don't I don't gamble.

Sam Schrager: What about of your friends? When you were growing up, did you have. Were you friends? any of them Italian kids or.

James Gleave: Or. yeah, I think Frank Pedregal and I was pretty good friends for years. Johnny Kinsella, he was Irish.

Phil McGill was Irish. I know, along with them alone. I didn't know too many. I then the golf, I never had too many real close friends. Never still do.

I say maybe a kind of a loner in a way.

I,

And maybe in a way, I'm one of these little kids. Probably with that being a police officer, maybe a lot of places. If he hadn't been a police officer, I'd have been out here otherwise. The one you know what we're doing and buying and things like this. And.

Unknown: And, I.

James Gleave: I don't know, I of course, I drink a little. But, I don't know, I think part of that was about, like, any small town that way as far as entertainment pollution only. but, you know.

Sam Schrager: You know, from what you say to like, you, you work.

James Gleave: You work longer hours. And most kids had work to do. Like what? The farm kids. You know, I'm not sure you work, man. You on home? You did another day work. Good definition that I remember. The Williams kids that lived out of night there. One on my left home. And so never make another call as long as I live.

My next time. Dad and I seen him smoke. And that's what I know, is I'm not Captain Hazelwood. That's. I thought you weren't going to work melt any more hours. No, I got all I got to do now. 40 had twice a day said don't have to day work. He's his where he's where the from dam was out there.

He says we melt. He said we don't prairie cows. We don't wash them off. We. No. Milkers. No. That was before Melvin. Machines. That was duck soup for him. And then we had him out, probably ten, 12 cows. And then do they work in between know 12 hours? And I was I think the kids sure, we'd hang around on the streets and on the street, but, and of course we swam a river a lot.

Well, young people always had a drop line going in a water time. So you mean most of my life I had work to do. I had things I know if I didn't have to do, I line out like a trap. One I'd have figured me. So now.

Sam Schrager: You think that came from your.

James Gleave: From your father. And on things on your mother that made sure you kept busy. Both of them. Yeah. They believed the idleness was the devil's workshop.

But then we could make a contribution on the summertime. We'd always. I always had a couple hundred drops trapping squirrels. I got me on the line between Potlatch and Branch. The company. Right. Which is the Marsh place now? Well, they give you $0.03 a piece for squirrel nails. So all kids had a bunch of scraps, but most of them, they didn't have enough notice from a bunch of scraps out that squirrel did.

At least we got dropped down so bad we used to have to cut the tails off. I'm trying to move so I could go wash world.

I well, I wasn't that sharp of dropping over. No. Used to the graveyard up on the hill a little bit. There. I couldn't catch you. Squirrel with no tails on I said zone, but one the other kids says, didn't you know what we're doing? We're cutting the tail off and turn them loose. Got to go. More squirrels.

And, Well, we put a lot of time in a river. Swimming. Walking logs was a great pastime that you did. Took about one kid a year.

I think over the year that river came about one one person a year.

Sam Schrager: You think that the spirit in the tail among the townspeople was used as much community spirit in town as there would be for, say, a neighborhood like, had a creek or some area out of out of town.

James Gleave: I think maybe there was, I'd say about the same. I think the people hung together pretty much rocket people on together pretty much. but like, people always kind of hang together. Seem to me, the people working the mill. Something happened while. Well, they lived in town or out of town or kind of home together.

I guess. Welcome back. It was a good town. This is any town of New Wave. Yeah.

Sam Schrager: What about the ball team? There? I know it had a good reputation.

James Gleave: In baseball for baseball towns. Had baseball teams. Part that used to have for. They'd have the Sea Railroad would work with oil burners. The sawmill was bobbins. Dryers in the town would ball, which is mostly bought on the boulevard right where the town meeting where to go and burn.

Giant balls in boxers and.

Often working the balls cause the balls got caught cold.

Sam Schrager: So.

James Gleave: Oh, Joe with a ball. That was it. So now we didn't have the best team mascot for there was a fight. Afterwards. We got the best.

I remember one time we went down to go meet all these little town. They'd have a good basketball game, then they'd have a fight afterward. Somebody get in an argument the whole damn team get into it. Max Williamson had a Hudson touring car, and we were down the cordon and everything was fine. We loaded nothing. All of a sudden everything got loose.

I remember Max, Tommy's kid, get in that car. Well, even then, I don't know. He got in the back seat and kind of squashed down somebody. So the bat case in Army got. I rode up and I guess my face was just all blood and everybody quit. Fight me. Some kill. No, I always been a bleeder. I bleed real easy still to.

Myself. That's not the five runners in the bat boy beat up. What I was going through for probably one. Would probably. Max himself. Probably told the bathroom.

Sam Schrager: What? Why? Why fight? I mean.

James Gleave: I don't know, it was just there used to be more fights in the.

Sam Schrager: After the game. Yeah.

James Gleave: Yeah, yeah, I have the and I did have a rhubarb during the game, but it was always a lot of friction seemed to me between when I went out between Potlatch and all Uniontown Court and Genesee and then things and they play a lot like a lot of friction between both of them. The potlatch had to, for they had a pretty good, pretty good bad and pretty good baseball player.

This Joe Lloyd Lavoe, he fought he pitched professional baseball before a game that I understood. But he was the only ballplayer on the team.

I remember the lines. You played second baseman. Bill might have made a pitch ball to the pitcher, and he might have fished a ball to first or to second. But you know the pitcher ball from second base to home had to be relayed.

No. Now that word. But that was through the gym, you know, that was due to their sports deal. They always had a though. They had a banner, Burnham, McFee, Ernest McPhee. And he was a good he, he, he thought that he got nailed around in the school, took care of the gym, but he took care of the men's.

Yeah, he always kept something going in the line of a sport. Now, it wasn't nothing else. It'd be on the bars or something. And, exercising and, they tried to keep stuff going that way cause the company, they put money out that way cause people started forgetting Beliveau not giving him mischief. You know?

Sam Schrager: That was their fault. And that was their philosophy.

James Gleave: Of, Yeah. You still. Doesn't see trouble today. We're not keeping people busy.

Sam Schrager: What about the women in town? What? What was their their way to keep keep busy?

James Gleave: Well, I suppose I don't know. That wasn't what they do now to keep busy. They had the churches that had their clubs. The younger women had, boyfriends, I suppose, and had, I can say two nights a week. They had the gym and they.

Sam Schrager: What did they use the gym for? The women.

James Gleave: No, they play basketball or whatever they wanted. Softball. Tennis. Had two tennis courts down there for years. And, they had a pretty good athletic program going most of the time. And I suppose women use the showers the whole lot, just like the men did. They didn't have him at home. Like at at home time.

Sam Schrager: So a lot of a lot of women older and as well as. Oh yeah we did down.

James Gleave: Yeah. Yeah. And they had the dances that dances and lodges would have. That was also they have the, they had the gym and then they had another meeting hall up over the bank that the store value in the bank. And then that burned. They had a big meeting hall at that, most lodges many. And they'd have dances up there and

Sam Schrager: People stayed for very long in the town, people that you knew when you were growing.

James Gleave: Up, most of them that I knew, you know, well, stayed over the year. You customers, kids coming in and going all the time, family moving in and moving out. It didn't seem like I got to know them too well. like when it overhaul and stuff, they bring out a bunch of, a bunch of people and, a lot of times they just kind of clicked off by themselves, you know, they didn't really.

Well, it was always a little friction there when they overhauled the mill or something like that. And they bring in these outside machinists mechanics that always pay them a little bit more than a regular mill crew. I was doing the same work the most. I knew a mill was doing the same work and they were gone from, I don't really know, friction.

There, but when the job was over, them guys all worked to looking for another job.

Sam Schrager: They come in with families and just by themselves.

James Gleave: So I'm coming with their families. I'm most normal. I'd say these part of them would be single men. Or they leave the family someplace and. I told al just he always lived in question. I don't know if you ever worked in Clarkston.

Sam Schrager: In any of the guys from from who worked in the mill then ever go out and start working in the woods?

James Gleave: Oh yeah. I know someone will work. But usually most guys stay pretty steady. A job at the house, especially if you're a married man. They stay pretty awesome. Married men, mostly. They like to work in a town because they a home and in the woods, they didn't get home. And them, they didn't have a car. You out and ended up there for a week.

Anyhow, I might get home on weekends, but.

Sam Schrager: You know, thinking about the the attitude. I know the attitude towards the company, towards saying IWW this was death on. But what what do you think of the way the men felt in the town, say, in the 1920s?

James Gleave: Well, I think Bob Potlatch wasn't had as much as a lot of companies those don't know. the little communication and potlatch between the management and the men always was. You could afford a big hassle. They could talk it over how much you would always talk at all. What people and, most of the farm men would, and they didn't push people around with guns that I knew of.

Never in Potlatch.

Sam Schrager: Do you think that the the men, though. Why do you think that the men potlatch that worked in the mill, I think most of those guys supported. They really believed in something like before. Else we think they thought of it as just no.

James Gleave: I think they moved on to join a lot of what they call a lot of legal lawyers. And I'm a I think they thought it would be a good idea. They did give them a little jazz, but still, the company was pretty much a domineering power. The working men would have some stiff like me or something that.