Latah County Oral History Collection

Before I was born there. Really? The history of Iowa and community first, it wasn't violent. It was spread. And people lived here from everywhere. They came early and then stayed late. There was lots of different ones. The earliest settlers were the farmers and the Lowery's and the Scotts and the Griswald. Griswald was a. Well, shall we say he was a school man.

He married a princess of the Nez Perce tribe, and he moved by the back all the time. Farther back. Pioneer got up to what we call Grizzlies camp now. But that was Griswold middle. He lived there with his wife and his children until the country commenced to get so settled up that people were coming by there and the miners were coming in.

So we moved farther back. Farther back. The living one lost track of him entirely, but it was always Griswold camp. Well, that got cut down to Grizzlies Camp and Grizzly Camp. It is now today. My earliest recollection of grazing camp was dad and the family always like to go up there to camp and fish, and whenever it was vacation time, we always went to Grizzle camp.

One day we were camp there. I think it was an overnight camp, but early in the morning a man and a wagon, two men in a wagon, came rumbling down across the bridge and over into the meadow. Pretty soon we heard a shot. Dad said, well, I guess they must have got something. Pretty soon they came back and they'd butchered the beef, and they brought us a water bucket full of liver and heart and a few pieces of good meat along with it, and they said, well, maybe you'd like these.

We can't seem to use them because we're just taking the meat on back home. And we don't like the liver and the heart and the other pieces we've given you. And here's some good steak to go along with it. That turned out to be Mr. Saxon and Lemon, the big cattle people of that country. They ran cattle all over the country.

Then it was Meadow Creek and Basin Meadows and grizzle camp meadow all the way down across. And they had their big meadows overall. Middle Creek. They'd like to go fishing every year. He'd plan a fishing trip just as soon as he got the garden in, and the apples all sprayed this before haying time. It was always rainy then, but that didn't matter.

It was all the more fun. Put a big cover on the wagon and we don't ileum. Sometimes hired men would go along with the hired girl. Always. The family would come and stay with them about the time and get ready to go for vacation. And they had learned to take care of everything. They'd milk the cows and take care of everything until we got back.

Sometimes they'd stay as long as a month. Fishing and camping. All up and down the river. Over into the Saint Mary's in Saint Joe. One time we traveled as far up the Saint Joe River as down the mountain, and there we camped at Reed place, an old man that dad had known for years. The boys climbed the top of Bony Mountain, their spyglass, and they could see all over the country.

Clear way down here. But you know, they left the spyglass up there, and no one ever went back.

When we were on the trip, the one time we stopped at an old man's place that had these, they called him Honey Jones. He had a beautiful place and orchard and a beautiful little cave. Then blessed falls they called Honey Jones Falls. Mother went down and sat in the shade and talked to him and his wife, and they had a great visit.

Got some honey from him, enjoyed his place very much, and after a while we heard years later where he had given his place to the, to the park, and then there would never be anything that would harm his fault. He'd always wanted. That falls to be nature. And there was a year later, we went up in 1957 or 8, I believe it was, and took the children, grandchildren with us.

And we explored that park and the falls, and it was very much the way it was when I had seen it, when I was just a little girl.

Many years ago, when the first miners came through the country, there was lots of minnows and fishing was wonderful. But then after they muddied up the streams and taken all the game they could get. No, they weren't just a few miners. There were hordes of them. The country wasn't the same old Griswold. He'd shake his head and say, no good, no good, and he'd go on when he got enough skins from his beaver trapping.

But he done pretty well anyway. Then the loggers came in and they took off the timber. The mill was it Palouse city? Over the hill from his bridge. And the first mill was a big dam, and it was a water wheel up there, and they saw quite a few logs there at Plymouth, and made a lot of lumber, and enough to build a town of pollution.

Some of the country places were built out from police numbers. There was a pottery there too. They made with brick and plant pots and yards and areas and different things and jugs, massive jugs where they had to have jugs for the wine and the moonshine. Yes, it was grapes grown in this country in the early days. Mr. Miller, a neighbor over across from and.

Sure. And Nancy Palmer had about a half an acre of grapes and he made his wine. They were wonderful grapes. I can just remember seeing the grape vineyard there and watching the prune them all down to. They look like were all cut off in the spring. And then they all come out and the great big bunches of grapes, but no more.

I don't believe there's any grapes in the whole violent valley. I know there's none up in the valley up about Potlatch. How did Potlatch get its name?

Well, there was Indians, a legend. The Plains Indians especially. It was prevalent amongst them. Anything went wrong with them? They didn't do good on the hunt. Or maybe they did get on the hunt and they got a whole lot of game and a lot of pelts made through a potlatch. He put everything he had outside his teepee and give it away.

That was a part of it. And that's how Potlatch Town got its name, because that was the Indian campground there, a big grove of beautiful trees. Well, when the mill decided to come in, they brought the mill on up there from Grizzly, from Missouri, from mill in group. They brought it all up to the Potlatch grounds, cleared off all the timber and put in a town there, and that was warehouses, mill.

Then Potlatch Timber Protective Association went to work because they didn't like to. It fires in the country, but they took off the timber off of the flat of the flat land and also the low hills. You wouldn't realize that that country had been a well timbered area at one time, but there were huge big trees, pines and cedar and tamarack and fir, and it must have been a very beautiful country.

Up where the Scout camp is now was quite a grove to it was a cedar grove. But they took those all out. Wasn't anything like the thorn brush. The three sea boys came in and they built some of the buildings they torn down. I think the last building now at the scout camp that was built before the Three Seas, and they did their bit to remedy some of the mistakes that the loggers had made.

They opened up the trails and fixed the roads better. And tried to straighten it out a little bit. But that was the way it was in those days. In logged in, they didn't care anything about how they left the thing. They'd leave the timber some. They didn't like. They'd leave the logs laying out in the to rot. No one wanted the old logs that weren't good for cell logs.

They couldn't use all that wood. They didn't think. Nowadays I think they used more of them. Looking out of my window here toward the north and east, it used to be a timbered mountain. Now they've got nearly all of the timber off there. Just one little patch of timber. But think years ago there was orchards on and hillside trees on the top of the hill and in the gorges.

But now it's all there. They've taken off the trees in the Violet Valley. It's gone. The apple trees are calm. The pear trees are gone. The prune trees are gone. There just isn't any of the old time things left anymore. It doesn't seem even the houses of the homesteaders are almost all gone. There are maybe a few left that were homesteaded houses, but most are in huge, big fields operated by one man or firm of men.

And that is what has happened to the beautiful green valley that grandfather saw way back when Mullin was building his road.

There was once a trail up over the mountain, and once in a while you would look out over the hill and you'd see a string of wagons come down. Well, it would be one, two, three, maybe a dozen, maybe more than that. One time when I was a little girl, I climbed up the top of my favorite tree and sat on the tall branches and looked out up the road.

Coming over the trail and down across the hill to the road were wagon. Lots of wagons. I counted as many as I could count, but I couldn't count them all. Mother said there were 50 wagons in that train. Someone had died back up in the mountains, and they were bringing him down to the church here, and they all left for the ceremony.

And then up to the cemetery, and they all are for burial. But those wagons, there were so many they couldn't put them up at the church. The village was full and they were full. And when the procession started up to the cemetery, the last one to leave the church couldn't find room to go in the road because they were all crowded, one leg and right after the other, all the way up to the cemetery.

That was mixes. They had a sawmill back in the mountains where they sell the lumber for the early settlers, their lumber, the help to build this house we live in now mixes mill was where everybody went for lumber, and in turn the Meek Mill people would come down here and sample grandfathers and buy and dad's cherries and peaches and pears and apples, and they enjoyed the Palmer fruit.

The Palmer Orchard was famous all over the country. We've contacted people lately that live way back over in the media that said, they used to come over here when they were little to pick fruit in Palmer's orchard. They liked the fruit and they didn't have any other. So his orchards were very famous. Yes. Is our neighbor had orchard Chinese had orchard.

William had orchard. There was orchards all over the valley here. It was a good fruit section.

Baylor had grown to be quite a large city by the time I was 4 or 5 years old. I can just be, remember dead carrying me on his shoulder to watch the schoolhouse or church burn. They'd burn down the church and the mill, the grist mill and the schoolhouse and the livery stable burned, and even the hotel burned.

Almost all of I own the burned out. And the older buildings, well, there's only one left of the original building belonging to Nichols down in the village now, but the others were gone. It was a beautiful town. At one time there was a big 4 or 5 story hotel and the big livery stable and the grist mill, the Wells Fargo depot, the Wells Fargo Barn, where they kept their horses, and there was boarding houses and blacksmith shop and five saloons.

Believe it or not, when Grandfather Maxwell moved over to Violet from Palouse, he went around and tried to solicit people to get rid of the saloons. Well, a lot of the people didn't like them because wounded men would come to town and the boys would come to town. They'd get drunk, and then they start crowding up and down the streets and scare people.

And sometimes they'd do damage. So grandfather was the first one to start to get rid of the saloons. It was a good thing, too, I guess. Ornery Sims. Well, he was foster first, and then she married Simms, ran the boardinghouse and the wards, ran the blacksmith shop. And Davis had a big store. Well, it was a saloon first, and they turned it into a store afterwards.

It would come to be Jackson's store and several different people owned that store. And now it's the Vail, Tavern Saloon. In those the early days, they called them saloon. Now they're tavern. I don't know if they ever had any dancing girls here in their saloons or not. I never heard grandfather say, or a mother never told me about it either.

But they're big buildings here. Big grist mill they had where they grown. Corn that people were raised in wheat or flour. They didn't have to take it all to produce where they had request mill. Here it was run by horsepower, and the boys would run around and round behind the horses or mules and grind the corn and the wheat that they had to grind for feed and for flour.

One day one of the boys was grinding and grinding, and he got tired, and he tried to get someone else to do it, but nobody do it. So the next day Mr. Beazley brought his girl down to grind the corn, and she drove the horsepower and drove it and drove it and drove it. Funny, she tripped and she had sex around her legs instead of overshoes.

It was cold weather in the winter and she got tangled up in the tumbling rod and she was killed. One of the boys jumped in to help and his leg was hurt too. And he only had one leg. His name was John Rothwell. After that they called him Peg leg. Rothwell, but they set up the grist mill. Then they said well that was just enough.

They wasn't going to do it anymore. It was soon after that that the mill was burned down. I've often wondered if maybe some people citizen didn't want anybody else getting heard on it, and they set fire to it, but no one ever knew. Then the church burned and the schoolhouse burned. They accused the little boy of setting the fires, but everyone knew he didn't because he was scared to get up in the dark and he was a very timid little boy, too.

But that was Stecher, the little boy was a nice little boy. These folks finally sold out and moved because they couldn't stand the talk about their boys, set fire to the town and burning it up.

The folks always had lots of cattle. Uncle West had a huge ranch and a huge bunch of cattle. He never knew just how many cows he did have or horses. He raised horses for the cavalry and he had Morgan stallions from the government and Bill founder mares. So here is pretty nice horses. They were almost all the same color B with white stockings and a star in their forehead was black mane and tail, beautiful horses and fast too.

One day he decided that he'd go down to the village of Colfax by a well. It wasn't very big then. That was before Violet became very much of anything except just Blues bridge and the Post office. But I think someone had built a little bit of a store down here by the name of Knapp. Anyway, when he hooked up his team or head eastward, either got the team.

Rather, he always had a different forward. He didn't like to drive himself. He wanted to look around, see what was going on. And West never drove a team that wasn't right up on their hind legs, ready to run. Almost always, they were fresh horses off the range and maybe had never been driven before. Jeff Hill was the driver.

Usually after he got big enough to drive where he drove with his team everywhere, all over the country. But this day, West wanted to go to kopecks in a hurry, so they drove down to Colfax, and on the way they met to another neighbor that was going to call. I don't know, maybe it was Tex time or something.

They were going down for some kind of a meeting. It was George Hill, and he yelled at West and says, Come on, West, let's go. And they raced all the way to Colfax. So he got down there. Yes. Said they blanketed their horses and he rode the horses and worked with them. Well, they went up to the meeting that they had, and on the way back where they raised so much is again.

When they got home, he had to rub the horses down and blanket them and wash them to keep them from getting sick. The one time dad had a team that West had given him, one that was that good and quite a few different times, and they were quite tame. See, my dad had a lame shoulder and the lame arm, and he didn't do very much driving or very wild horses.

He was driving this team around and all. He could go places so fast in that team. I don't remember just what their names were. We'll have to try to find out from someone else and to remember what that team was. But anyway, the hired man wanted to take the team to go back to the dance. Dad said, all right, you have them careful and be sure to break them when you get them.

And don't let them go too fast. So they hired men, drove the team down to Colfax, and hooked them up to the hitching rail in front of the dance hall. Forgot all about blanketing him. He had his girl with him, and then after a while, when the dance was over, the wee small hours of the night, they danced all night.

In those days it had been cold, and those sweaty horses had had to stand out there all night long in the cold. They weren't used to that. You're used to being blanketed. Well, he drove them back home, but they were pretty stiff. They weren't going too good. He was pretty badly frightened. But then he got them home and put them in the barn, and he put blankets on them.

After he got them back in the barn and worked with them a little bit. Next morning, dad went out to see about his horses, and he noticed that they were all stiff and stove up. No good. He said, turn them out. We'll just turn them back out. In the past year, they won't ever be any good anymore. They were what they called foundered.

I don't exactly understand it, but it seems like if a horse gets real hot and then gets cold where they get so they're skipping silver, well, we call out to riders in human beings, I guess.

Uncle West teams were wild and his drivers were wild. He had about 40 hand cowboys that rode with him, studies writing, and took care of his stock for him to go down to the Rattlesnake Hills. The horse Haven country was his horse pasture, and a little pasture took in about all of what's south of Vail, around the hill, in the cup.

It was a huge, big spring there where he water his stock when he'd bring in the horses to sort out what he wanted to for the government, he put him in that little pasture. It was 100 acres or so, a pasture that was well fenced with high rail fence. Then he hit the horses out, or they'd take them down to the Fort Walla Walla and sell them to the for the cavalry remount.

Along about 1915, he decided there just wasn't room enough for him anymore. They'd sent up a lot of these pasture down the below Colfax. There was fenced in around the poplars in the wells, and they fenced in around the little towns as they went down, and the people had pretty well fenced up all the good grass. So he rounded up all his stuff, and his horses and his cows.

He had four train loads of them, and he shipped them to Canada. And here at Villa he loaded on his family and all of his house wares and these tools, and implement some of his pet stuff too. He had his fancy bowls and his real good stallions and his mares that he had, that he that were quite tame.

He brought them over to dad. There was Ned and Fred and Len and Joe and Pat and dad had another one he called Nell, and Susie was a little baby, a little green coat that had gotten crippled up on the race track. They were going to shoot it, but dad saw her and he said, well, we'll just see what we can do.

Doctoring her up. I petted, doing petted and he called her my horse because I doubted you and helped pet her so much and took her carrots and water, and she went down and she'd stand in the creek. She was just a little cold. I think maybe might have been a short yearling. But that was the team that dad drove.

The Susie and Nell there was Patsy was another one that with Let Dad Have and along those horses that were tame and nice. Uncle West gave to dad, for dad needed the horses on the ranch here to work. The others were shipped to Canada. No, he didn't sell many of his horses. He turned what he could over to the army at Walla Walla.

The court. Then he shifted the rest of them up to bigger Saskatchewan and started the drive to are told about it. Not too long before he died, because Jess was getting up into the 80 years of old before he told me this story. But anyway, when they got to Canada and the bigger they found a place to camp out and they said they'd stay there for a little while.

So he stayed there for several years and run the wheat bread. But the cattle and the horses went on to the peace River, weighing over across the tundra, and just said it was the opposite, meanest drive he ever saw in his life. But he drove with in the buckboard all the way across. When you got to the tundra, you just didn't know whether you were going to jump down in actual deep or whether you were going to go on.

There was no roads. They went along the head of the cattle and the horses. If they'd gone behind them, they might have had a muddier path because they drove from June until fall, when they got over these rivers. Oh, it was a beautiful country and a wonderful rangeland. And there was settled his cattle and his horses, and every now and then West would come back down on the train to buy his fall clothes one day.

Particular the funny story my brother used to tell me, run, dad, run a dairy at that time. And the boys would take the milk to the depot every morning to go to Spokane, and West went over to David's store in Moscow and bought his clothes for the winter. I think he had 6 or 8 suits of underwear and two suits of clothes, a big bearskin coat, mittens and gloves and camp socks.

Everything that he would possibly need all winter long. And he bought Overshoes two. He put these all on the morning. He was going back to bigger Saskatchewan up in Canada, because he didn't want to pay duty on them, and he would have had if he had known them. The boys did. They had to help him into the buggy, and they had to boost him on to the car to get on the train, but that was the worst of it.

He rode on past Spokane and fair up into bigger Saskatchewan. When he got there, there was a blizzard blowing the livery stable. Men had his team. They helped him out of the train and helped him over to the livery stable and helped him up into the buggy and wrapped him up good with robe. And they were buffalo robes to Jeff, said.

And they even put hot stones in the bottom of his buggy. And then they went out, and it was blowing so bad they tried to persuade him not to go. No, I want to get home, he said, and the horses will take me home anyway. So he started out down the road and he turned the horses loose. When the blizzard got to bed, and he took down under the road where the horses went until they couldn't anymore, and they got off and then near the hill and stopped and stood there.

Well, West couldn't get out of the buggy to do anything about it. He was too clumsy with all his clothes, but it was a good thing he had his clothes on, because the next day when the riders went out to hunt for him, they hunted at night, but they couldn't find him. But the next morning, early, they all rode out there around to hunt for the boss.

They found him sound asleep under the robes. He wasn't frozen. There wasn't anything the matter with him. The horses were pretty cold, but the horses were buried in the snow. The snow had just combed up over them and made a nice cover for the horses in the buckboard. After that, West never went out alone anymore. He always had a driver and Jess was the driver until Jeff got sick.

Didn't want any more of that. Canada. So he came back down here to live on the Hill Ridge until he died.

Dad had quite a few horses. If I can.

Only buy. Maybe he was a diary that belonged to my grandmother, Nancy Palmer. And way back.

Unknown: In 1874 or something like that. She dated it.

Verna Palmer Hardt: And the time goes.

Unknown: Back to the time when Mullen was building a road in the seventh. Calvary was working in Montana. Uncle with was just a boy then, and he was with the seventh cavalry.

Verna Palmer Hardt: And the army.

Unknown: And they were up in Montana anyway to build the mountain road, surveying and making history, he said, for white folks to sit in, to live in, they had time to go hunting a little bit now and then. The country was beautiful and fort game.

Verna Palmer Hardt: There was few Indians that they were not at all bothering. The people seemed like that Custer's Last stand had been just about the last of it all, and they weren't a bit worried about that. Uncle was just missed that because he'd been sent on an errand over to the other side of the mountain. And so that was the wind.

Unknown: Grandfather. And here Palmer was. And all this. Then he drove them mules here he's a little lance and a few little medical things to.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Fix up things. And he was called a doctor. Well, he was an herb doctor. So he went along with the army and had a grand.

Unknown: Time along doing it, too. I guess he enjoyed the country very much. When he left Missouri, his friend gave him a package of Appleseed, just a little buckskin bag he carried in.

Verna Palmer Hardt: His pocket, mile after mile, and he wondered if he'd ever find a place to plant those apple trees.

Unknown: Well, one day he was up in Montana, and he packed up in this, driving a six horse. Six moved him.

Verna Palmer Hardt: He didn't drive horses. It was mules kind of all loaded up and ready to go. And they one of the meals kicked him right in the side of the head and hurt his eye.

Unknown: He couldn't see, so he just hung up the lines and had the mules go. But the rest of the army, they followed.

Verna Palmer Hardt: They were used to doing it. So they did. And after a while they caught up with some of the soldiers in the series predicament. So they stayed on ahead for uncle with.

Unknown: He was an Indian scout at that time, and he came back and camped and said, you guys better hit home.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Than I do to be any good, and you're not going to be any good to yourself or anybody else until you get it treated. So they started the army.

Unknown: Over the mountains and down the corridor lane, down the singular river in Saint Mary's River to the lakes, and then over the hills, until it came to the priest.

Verna Palmer Hardt: River and down.

Unknown: Over some more hills, and came to a beautiful little meadow, white rock springs and trees around now and then and wishes came. There were deer in the meadow and prairie, chicken. And then Campbell went and looked around, and he said, here we'll camp. So he threw the set and the pants off of the meals and then moved to graze.

I don't know whether he humbled him or not. They didn't say in the old dairy, but I suppose they didn't. They couldn't take the chances of being left alone in the strange country where it was hundreds of miles to anywhere. So then he built a fire.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Example comfortably and told him to take a nap, and he went to see if he could find something.

Unknown: To eat for it. To get a deer, he had to meet a Hungarian river to pay for the river eggs and the chicken too. Well, that meant a stew. So he.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Looked around and he found some watercress in the spring, and some doc, and then some many roots, and he made quite a stew in our own meat still that we made nowadays.

Unknown: With potatoes, many of which are good. And he had some canvas folks too, and that's who. He looked around and wandered around my grandfather's lap, and he had a stew bubbling on the fire. It was a beautiful place, and we thought, oh, how wonderful it would be to live here. But after a.

Verna Palmer Hardt: While, when grandpa woke up, he looked.

Unknown: Around and he said, well, let's deal with uncle. Good. This is a beautiful place and going for a.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Stroll up the hill. So he rode around up on the hill and looked around and oh, what a place!

Unknown: And we put my apple feet right here. So he didn't. Planeteers. Apple Silicon says I'm coming back. We're going to bring the folks that.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Went down the Old West on it. And we said, I think so, too. Let's get out of here and go. So they got up new, bright and early in the morning and started out for a while.

Unknown: Numa fought while Walla. He got down there. I think it took them about a day to get there and we later I think they camp down on the river that night. That was the snake River, and they.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Went across the snake River in on down the wall all the next morning. And there they decided they'd better take a boat.

Unknown: On down to now. There was very well with that I heard that the port wall was built up a little bit, and they went on down with the raft and canoes down to where they could get a boat and go around and clear around that way, around the horn of the South. And that I guess what Ruby said, and then.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Down and up the.

Unknown: Mississippi River into Missouri. Did you see him? And then on over to where they both live in Illinois. And that was the end of the story.

In 1870.

Verna Palmer Hardt: That grandpa started to come back home and ship home. He called it home. He was quite nicely. So he weathers the family together. And I do honor.

Unknown: Put me in the well between. We decided that would go in.

Verna Palmer Hardt: My courses, but it didn't go very good. So dad finally decided to go up home that instead of asking, and he loaded on everything so we could get along with him. And Ernie Land was there with father 319 and children Artie and Louis, and they come on back to Missouri to help Joe. When they got bigger, more of the other wagon trains in the morning, wagon train in the morning.

And I wouldn't say no more with the people that didn't know the things that we were going to put them on. And you think we're on the train thinking when they came in to say that we I mean, it didn't. And he decided to go on with the morning from the wagon train again if you wanted to or not.

We don't know, because later on he found out he didn't want to. But they left another story to think that something could go on. And then day went on up to the massive Columbia Road, going on up to Oregon City. So they stayed for a year or so. And while they feed their grandpa and the boys somebody's uncle, well.

Unknown: And my dad went on up the river.

Verna Palmer Hardt: With some of his mother's relatives that were along with him.

Unknown: There was the Legion and the women, and they come.

Verna Palmer Hardt: On up the river and clear up the snake River, even going up the hill, I'll motel where they stayed overnight and over winter throughout the know. At the time they got there and was going on over one day, but decided to go with the name of the local because there was a little trading post, because up at the fort to the river, the reasoning for.

Unknown: Me went on over the hill to the top of the hill. There's no way we couldn't.

Verna Palmer Hardt: We couldn't go any farther to try to put on top of the hill and put down a hill to report to the trading post and got the nerve. Climb back up one letter and come home with that. Would be wonderful to have to get a few things that in the paper. The people. The supplies were getting short and going on back down, down the hill.

They were living in a little rock hill.

Unknown: Down there, I believe we found the same old rough house. William, when we.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Were there just before we started the dam. None of the board members of the population labor of people known to one of them were taken along with them on the own. Must have been hard working. Those who moved and worked all the way up row. But they had. They seen kind of a tug. You got to get well.

They seen both of them. Pata, pata pata with the diamond behind it. And that was what to come up the river. But they went on overland in here, across to Cooper.

Unknown: And they had two little girls with them, but.

Verna Palmer Hardt: They lost their sleep through the noise, and that there wasn't anything left at all but the families that because they when they come on up here to wake.

Unknown: Up in and don't have anything to do, I know that the have office opportunity to.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Go back out to grandma and Norman and then hurry up and come out that time so that they build a house there. And I was going how to go there with two from grandpa said it was too far to go to Kansas and babies were coming in pretty soon. So when grandma and the girls came the next to Riley decided to apply for both of them.

So we did an event traffic Regulation 75. Over the course of 2700 certificates from the government. We back in.

Unknown: Washington DC and we had to go.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Home. Don't worry about war. The folks were all coming up, so we went down the we went by Grandma and Amy and them up. So they got up here in 1875 and they had a full fledged post office here and brought over with them an old test. secretary they called him that had little pigeonholed in it. That was.

Unknown: The process. And grandfather kept it, you know, to go back.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Minute, grandpa and grandma got here. She looked all around and they would set up a little baking.

Unknown: Stove so she could build. And they were all pioneers.

Verna Palmer Hardt: And so lots of nice kindling around for some of them. I'm going to cook some dinner. And she went around and she found them was apple trees, and they were loaded with apples. What was in the apple? This is in July I think August or was there any apples? And there'd be a lot more later on. But he made the most wonderful apple pie.

It was down in the those movie maybe, and we had people going back and he told us about it, that apple pie from the glove springs. I know they didn't, but they looked around and it was too big. The government had said it not be the big houses you could be, because, you know.

Unknown: And was people getting mail from all kinds of neighbors around. But it was certainly not people.

Verna Palmer Hardt: It sounds a beautiful place. It was. And the Indians weren't bothering and they were friendly. And I know I'll have to go back and tell you a story about Grandma Maxwell.

Unknown: When the man put him on.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Grandma Maxwell people, grandpa Maxwell, James Allen Maxwell, and Lucy Newton were married back in 1860.

Unknown: One ABC family was born in 1863, and in 1885 the baby when they decided to come out here. It was after the war and grandpa had got home from the mama, and he decided that there wasn't anything to do but to get right out of where they were and come out here. So they left that part of the country there in Indiana and started off.

Verna Palmer Hardt: With a pushcart. And then they lived in an old farmhouse for a while. They thought it might be home, but they were in Ohio. And then they started out in a place called home. That was pretty good.

Unknown: Then they thought it was a nice little place, and he built a little side house.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Dug a hole in the ground and sat up on top and made a little town home. And they stayed there all that winter, meaning to spring and find the garden. And they had flowers and although anybody had a home and they would get along.

Unknown: Real good here, and the and only had been born, and they.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Thought what fine tuning would work in that, that would be there. And then they would then be so hard and there was no way that it was a beloved. It would never be too hard to on a big low point on on the plan to go find the town. It's a barn. They couldn't see the barn at all, and the was blew so hard and that they did.

It would be hard to get around in here and it blew. And then boom, boom, boom, boom. He got to the town, loved whatever, and now came back in there thankful the babies could have milk. When the knowledge that the milk woman thing came and they turned the garden again away from.

Unknown: All that was horrible. No. If they went outside and.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Going and going everywhere, they're gonna think it's a little girl. And I think she's about eight. She covered up the flowers and they tried to save things, and they got roses in the garden that the grass and everything. They had put them in the garden. And the good neighbor who was down in the town.

Unknown: And he was all gone. There wasn't anything, even the grass. After the family, the homestead.

Verna Palmer Hardt: And all the girls who started anything left, even the flowers of Goshen, Boston. They decided to suggest that there was a good.

Unknown: Time at eaten up where they were disturbed. Rather said, well.

Verna Palmer Hardt: We're moving the people up. Well, what? What are you going to put everything?

Unknown: We went on over to where the railroad was and down on the railroad came, and that we had all their belongings in the car, and they could sit in the car and eat with family and move out of the ruins. And this is rolling over in the car right next to them. So they had a good time coming up with some little forgot there was another baby born.

But you know what happened? The name of the album. Well, the moment and Uncle album dropped in the morning. So when it was still and Little boys at that time, two or more people undressed a little boy.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Go down and put brother up things.

Unknown: In his apron and pack him around and go along. Any little or anything going to do it all the way through this room with a little pioneer boy who would run.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Along with the Robertsons and cook from the train, and they loaded onto a boat that was going to take them up to the.

Unknown: The Oregon Country. They rode steerage and saw sawdust on the floor. And when.

Verna Palmer Hardt: They got out to sea.

Unknown: Grandpa named grandma and the children all lay down to the that new way up the sea and then he let them.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Get up to where they could look around. People were so could. He had extended the food down for. But they went around and looked down. And there was a funny thing going on was that it was a turtle, one kind of turtle. And the sailors were cutting it up to make turtle soup. Well, that was going to be a change from the dingy barber local college.

And the brown people think that they had aboard wasn't anything like we have now for food. We had a hard time for food, hard the many popular people that were still grub. But it would be my mother so she could remember that green her would think. But oh, how good it would. We had to to keep them for 4 or 5 days.

And finally they got cleaned up to.

Unknown: The mouth of the Columbia River, and they went over to the Oregon city of.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Portland. But there was a little shopping place there. And grandpa got a job chopping.

Unknown: Wood for the boat. We lived there for a while, and they moved into a cabin in the north and it was a beautiful member, and they were all on the boat with one episode, white folks to their home loaded with apples, and they were all over the ground over there. I've never seen an apple before.

Verna Palmer Hardt: I you get a.

Unknown: Was and he was open and he'd go around to do new things, go on home, go and pick those apples. That one was going.

Verna Palmer Hardt: To have apple. Carried the apples up.

Unknown: And that we knew place. Mr. Ewing came down and he gave them milk and cream and they had meat.

Verna Palmer Hardt: But he chopped when grandpa tapped labor for them before they bought for 2 or 3 years, before they finally decided to come on up to the.

Unknown: Place and treat.

Verna Palmer Hardt: When they boarded the boat, they had like steamers then going up the river. They put all their things and their little dog on the boat. They've been there, Collins and chickens, and they come on up to Lula, where they got off the boat. They got a paddle on their horses too, and they got and unloaded their wagon and all their things and put them in and headed up over for coals.

That that was the place to go. There wasn't any place out because they could go over to Fort Wrong about it, but they didn't. They went to coal, Frank. They got the coal banks and then on up, they didn't know exactly where to go. But there was a place called Idleness Ranch, where men could cut rails and wood and things for the settlers.

And he thought, well, I'll cut enough.

Unknown: Real to home. That's my homestead. Before I try to homestead.

Verna Palmer Hardt: So he went out, and they.

Unknown: Lived there for two years. When he cut real, sold them to the neighbors.

Verna Palmer Hardt: For supplies, he got.

Unknown: Turnips and potatoes and meat from Mrs. Roland. He had a farm over for Moscow. And now that they call that that Paradise on Camas Meadow, and they lived there, and their grandma was learning to read. She was nine years old and and Ollie and Uncle Alden. Finally he.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Got enough real.

Unknown: To go and go home and the place that.

Verna Palmer Hardt: They went down with.

Unknown: Waimanalo and they came here home, got there and got it all real built, everything going in there and oats and barley in there.

Verna Palmer Hardt: And cows were.

Unknown: Doing well in that move. And mom was going to be a good guy to live with. He had a horse he called. Yep.

Verna Palmer Hardt: And he'd ride all.

Unknown: Over the country to visit places and he'd go to school and sell him.

Verna Palmer Hardt: He had quite a name for the school there in the summertime, and go down and pick side to stay.

Unknown: Down on the three foot Pullman now and then. He got to be a pretty good sized girl. All of a sudden an accident happened. Grandpa was still cutting rails. He would fall in some way and go too late.

Verna Palmer Hardt: So Grandpa Daniel had to see the boy and family and grandma and an alley down. The stories and people came in and helped. They got the tracking.

Unknown: Done and everything. All this, all the neighbors who come in with everything in the house. When somebody got hurt in the.

Verna Palmer Hardt: There wasn't any doubt.

Unknown: And so that was the way they lived. Then their mom had to go to school.

Verna Palmer Hardt: So she got to the they called school there, and she went to common school and got acquainted with J.R. Collins and some more of the boys. But then she was about 12 or 14 and had to go to Moscow Mountain.

Unknown: And what had a little village name, and they had a college there, high school there. She went to college there for three years. They thought went to school there with.

And he learned.

Verna Palmer Hardt: To be a and then she called the crown prince here.

Unknown: Well, we don't want to forget, uncle, where he and grandfather were always wandering around and.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Going places and doing things when they were hunting. We out in the mountains. They'd been prospecting around for some more timber to make snakes with and to make rails. And so grandfather's ranch and.

Unknown: Uncle with his ranch were progressing rapidly, but they were camped out there when evening they decided that we're going to home the next morning, and they didn't have any food to eat, only bits of dried fruit beds that will allow them to fire to night and put those prunes in those iron pot. And we'll have room for breakfast.

Anyway, before we had the home, so we'd have them up. We'll get them rolled up in this buffalo robe, the buffalo robe, instead of breaking them. And they went to sleep. But I went with his wife to sleep.

Verna Palmer Hardt: His grandfather was. And he hadn't slept. When I opened.

Unknown: Up. Got the memories. Buffalo robe. And what a.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Newcomer. We come down.

Unknown: And poked around and all the places, even with all the buffalo robe, and tried to.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Pull it off and. But it was cold. So he went around. The sun went up to the fire. We could die down now.

Unknown: Just barely a bunch of anchors that were warm was. It smelled good. He looked at it as well and poured out of vanity, come.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Down into their nose and made it around, and all the little well, that was better yet. So he picked a nose down in there, and she got a spoon. That was good. He looked it up to me, to him and he covered the pot back up.

Unknown: Uneven weights and stick some things up over the lip with the rain. Went off into the wood. I'd go with what. I couldn't tell you to come back. You little baby came through with it all. There were two puppies and he brought.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Them right up to.

Unknown: The kettle. And he opened the kettle again, and they sent him home. And he covered it all up again. And the way they went into the woods.

Verna Palmer Hardt: But at home a foot, which was so interesting that he laid still to watch. But it was getting light. No.

One lay down at home that that trip they heard the story of what had happened and came up with something to eat. Grandma. Oh, now we're. And they and his wife and the other girls. And mama said, well, yes, one of you told him all of it and said, grandfather, we didn't want too much, but I'll tell you that much.

We're hungry. That's something. Horse eat more, one more thing or do. And that was the end of the money. Ready to go and laughed about it. How to tell you that grandpa and breakfast. Then there was another story that was interesting. Then Father Maxwell had to write them.

With the note or Herman and his wife was at home, and he didn't like it one bit, but he had to be out there. He wanted to get a little more sleep because he heard that the baby was broke. Well, they didn't seem to make any difference to anybody else about his baby, so he had to go along anyway.

As they went along down the road, they were following down after the southern soldiers going on Sherman's big march to retreat as they went along the railroad along the fence. And it was rainy and bad weather, and they hit him and asked this orderly to go and tell the lady that they would get there. And they promised that he'd only take just the top rail shoulder to the banks to build a camp where, so they could cook their supper.

All they had with him was hardtack and what they could point them going, and we'd find corn bread, corn pone, it was called, and warm, and they'd slice the bacon and heat the current home and Barbara Fryer and they had their hard pack along with him. Well, that was just fine. That night. They had a big seafood and everybody was so happy around the bonfire.

But the next morning when they started off down the road, grandpa looked with amazement. There was only one row on the ground, so the railroad growing. When he went to the general ceremony, general, I told the lady we'd only just take the top rail. When I looked around and he called me captain and some of the others, and he said, what's become of the rest of those rails?

Well, captain, there's only just this. Every man took the top rail, and when they got to the last man, there wasn't anything left but the bottom rail. And that was that. Then another time there was that. So that was interesting to me. I was thrilled about when they told him. Grandpa crept down and with me one day. I was only 5 or 6 years old, but I remember him telling the story so vividly when he was running with him remaining and what was muddy.

And he was running just as hard as ever. He could run and something was following. It would retreat. Everybody was either run or get captured by the citizen soldier. Oh no. He was to move down again, but he had to run. So he ran and he ran and ran and he got the power. He couldn't go. Another step put down beside a tree a great big old oak.

And he said, all right, here's my moving down here. I can't help it. I can't run another pair sitting there with breath and listen.

Unknown: Something came right up to him and that would never work in the.

Verna Palmer Hardt: World of work. So.

Up with his hand. And there were two great big years. It was so dark he couldn't see the he felt around. And well, if it wasn't the old army mule, the women who used to up and drive was in the well going north. He got on the mule, or maybe went through the lane and walked and walked until finally caught up with the rest of the troop.

And then he was pretty good about being too slow and well run in the morning. You feeling right about what's the matter, anyway? You're all wet and gravel, and when you come in, ride no gray. Well, I was dead. Thought he was the enemy soldier and he was going to bear me being hit me every minute. Mary. He was right behind me.

I could have caught a line and rolled, but I didn't want to. Just this last little wave. And that was the story about the mule, another dead rabbit. Know the story about. They caught beside a little hill. It was rainy and cold and they all built fires around this time. It was right in the woods, so they had lots of wood and pretty soon the word was passed around.

Don't get close to that hill. It's serpentine a this cemetery. This is a trip and time for us to make turpentine. All this stuff. All right, we'll be careful. Everybody had a nice fire, and they put a little piece of paper on their fire to make it burn. We'll get. It was done that night.

Unknown: There was more moon with smooth going all the way in. The trees were nice and sheltered.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Nobody would have had anything but a good time. They'd gone over to an old big farmhouse where there was any good, and the Negro mammy helped make him some corn pone for the general. So we never had corn home that night, as well as his other things. Eat Army got caught up with the provision wagon and brought them right one nobody knew how to cook it.

They had their little kettles and there was one boy. He's around. Cook the well. Can you eat it? So he started cooking it the first year. Little kettle got to go in about another and then another and another until everybody's kettle was full of rice. Because rice. Well, you know, well the time he got to. Everyone in that put him in had rice.

It was broke. But they learned how to cook rice.

Unknown: It only takes a little, you know. And they had used a whole lot. Then the next.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Morning when they went off down the road, marching down toward the sea, grab a look down the side of the.

Unknown: Road, and there was a steaming stream of things there. Well.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Hello had gotten on fire some way and all that. It was melting and running down the side of the.

Unknown: Road in the dirt. And that was a wind. But they couldn't help it.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Now to get back to this part of the country again. Well, they had gotten stages in and the stages were run by camp.

Unknown: And green chambers. They didn't come up with Moscow to Moscow with.

Verna Palmer Hardt: A gravel mix. Well, and they had a grand time. They had Cayuse horses that they'd gotten from the Indians, and they run the horses to get hurry up, get there fast. And then they'd keep them in pastures a different places, that grizzly camp for one place, and then over at Green Little Ranch, way back up in the mountains.

That's where our cabin is now. And then they back and forth with this sage, and he enjoyed their riding in the sage driving. When they green told the story, he had a passion here. Them it was a Chinese gentleman. He had a long few that came down with him, and he wore a long black.

Neck. Then them, and hung him up behind the cookhouse. And they were going to have their steak for supper that night. Well, the Chinaman saw that, and the cook was cutting off steaks, and he was there. He run back, hunted up Jeff, and he said, our green. And he said, get me out of here. Get me river quick!

They're eating human beings. I can't stand that. Get me out of here. I just can't stay here. I don't want to eat. Human being will be eaten. Meaning? Green laughed and he said, oh, come on, let's go see. They went on around the to the cookhouse and looked up and the green said, oh, it's a bear. And he rolled over and over and over in the grass, tumbling, laughing and laughing until he couldn't stand up.

He said, come on, I'll show you. And he hunted up the bear's head and the bear's skin and the claws, and cut off some of the claws for the Chinaman. And the chairman got acquainted with the wild, wild with. No, they didn't eat mama bear. And he likes to bear to the next girl to come on up, to bring the end of the stage, one where he found these Chinese coolies that were working the mines up on China Hill.

We were up on of hills several years ago, and the diggings are still visible and way back up on top you can see their little log cabins that they lived in. They're not completely rotted away yet.

Unknown: And it's been over a hundred years. When they come back.

Verna Palmer Hardt: The Chinaman always collected every bit of their gold up every time he came in, and he came in every month. Regular. And then he take the gold back and go back down to San Francisco. One day, his story is told about mom's cousin, Bob Nugent. He work on the stage, mine and you know, and he like the Chinese whiskey.

Those coolies make the best whiskey ever was. He said. And I'm going to get them tonight. It's not a bad night for it at all. You anybody going to help me? No, nobody wanted to go. You can go by yourself. Bob was a heavy drinker and he was a big man. He weighed around 300 pounds and he was over six foot eight tall and had curly red hair.

So the legend tells us, of course, mom said he was a big man. He weighed around 300 pounds alright. And he was taller than most everybody else. And he went up to that night walk by himself and they didn't say anything about they didn't hear him come back and they wondered what had happened. The next day they went exploring and found he laying in a ditch beside the road.

He had a jug of his Cooley's whiskey all right, and he drank all he could, and had gotten drunk and laid down and gone to sleep. Well, they took him back down to Green's house. Cabin sobered him up, and he told the story. Those Chinamen, they got $1 million. Was a gold in that little black pot. Believe me.

Now I'm going to get that little black pot of, like, if I can. They got $1 million in it. Well, Jeff and Green said they don't have it there very long. That Chinaman that comes in every month with a big, long queue takes it back to San Francisco. No, Bob said, it's there. I know it's there. Well, nobody believed him.

He'd just been dreaming. Maybe he's seen some gold. All right.

Unknown: But the Chinaman with a long who had taken it back to San Francisco. But even today, people come in knowing they're looking.

Verna Palmer Hardt: For that pot of lost gold of the Chinese old bill.

Unknown: We bury our friend and miner of the hoodoos said he had looked many, many times and other people had always come in looking for that of gold. No need to look for it.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Oh, I think there is, they said so. They went wandering around.

Unknown: All over the hills, and they wound up clear over the hills and over Gold Hill, into.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Gold Creek, into the Farmington Country, and even wound up over in the the Minerva McCloskey drive and park. But they couldn't find that gold, that cattle, evidently the Chinaman had hit it too good, or else there wasn't any cattle to go back a few years from that, because we're getting along real fine in their new homesteads. The orchards were going good, and their wheat fields are going nicely, and they were just having a lot of real good farm, a good time.

And all of a sudden grandma looked up and there came a rider with a foaming horse, a just a pound in the horse's hands. He couldn't riding and screaming Indians, Indians! They're coming! They're going to scalp you! Grandma said. Scalp us where the Indians are friendly. What's the matter with you? Well, they are going to. They've got a tremble up there and Mullen and around Spokane and Colville and all round up in there, and they're going to come down here and scalp us all.

We got to run to the fort quick, and he just beat it on as fast as he could go up home in his horse and making it go faster and faster till the poor horse can hardly go. It looked like grandma said, well, I don't see what's the use. And grandpa said, well, what in the world? I don't see any sense.

The Indians are all nice and friendly around here. The only ones we ever see are the Blues or the Spalding Indians. And then the fall. The others all come and they're just as friendly as can be. I'm not going to run me my place and all native rolling over toward Camas Meadows or the Paradise Valley, said, I'm not going into that foreign.

You guys don't go to the fort if you want to, but I'm going to watch my garden. I don't want the cows and everything to get into my garden and ruin it. I've got a good garden this year. So she stayed out there and watched her garden, and all the other people that were afraid went into the fort and urinated, roll in wood, taken some milk, some cottage cheese and butter vegetables from her garden every now and then.

And she'd always say, well, what are you so scared about? There aren't any Indians around here. There's no Indian trouble. What's the matter with you, anyway? Well, the man rode on to the fourth wall and you'll soon be back with the army. I know what you will. Oh, she said there's no trouble. We had a little skirmish up there in Spokane.

The little skirmish over at Steptoe and Colonel Steptoe went on back down to. Well, Lula, I don't know what's the matter with you guys. Joseph had his trouble, and he's back on the reservation now, so I'm just going to stay right on my place. And you can just eat my vegetables as well if you're going to let yours go to waste.

So they finally, after a long time, they came back, but they were real scared they weren't going to stay in those homesteads if the Indians were around. But grandma and I already roll and they were a bit afraid. Grandma told the story when she was a little girl to me. When then she said, you know, the Indians never hurt anybody.

When we were almost out of food and didn't have a thing to eat at all, and grandpa was laying in bed with a broken leg. The Indians came down and brought a salmon, a whole bunch of venison, and they got wood for us, and they helped us all they could even hunted up our lost cattle and brought them in for us.

No, I don't think Indians would do that would ever hurt anybody. Well, she said way back a long time ago, back in Indiana, the Indians would come up from the Platte River, where they lived in a little sod house, and they'd come and bring them fish and and things from the river and sometimes a whole of erosion. But she said, every time they come lay mom and Ollie and little baby Alden would be hiding out in the cornfield because they didn't want to get near the Indians.

But Grandma Maxwell wasn't a bit afraid, and neither would Grandpa Maxwell and Grandpa Palmer, and the rest of them weren't a bit afraid either.

We still have friends amongst the Indians. Antoinette Lewis was 16, and she would soon be the princess of the Dakota Indians. He was there in Oregon. Her folks were working in the hops and in the beans, picking beans. And grandpa and I were picking beans, too. We had he had decided to work at the hop yard for a while.

It was easier work. And I went on out to the Dean patch and internet, said, well, can I go along with you? I'm going to pick some beans too. Well, I was glad to have her company. She was a pretty girl, and I drove the car out to the bean patch, and we'd picked beans all day. And then when you get tired of picking beans, and then most of the crew would quit with chicken or beans and see how much we had.

And then we'd go on our way home and on our way home, we had to go by a huge pat and nice BlackBerry. They called them Oregon blackberries. Some were harmless and some were just a regular old big black berries, and we would stop and pick some berries. I didn't know very much about picking blackberries, but Antoinette said, I'll show you.

She got a ball about 12in wide and about as tall as she was, and she'd walk up on that board, put it up in the top of the bushes, and she'd get berries. And we had all the blackberries we could possibly use, and I can some made some jam and jelly beside. And then on the way home one day, there was a place where there was some nice sweet corn, and I went over to the house and asked if I could get some and he said, just help yourself, take what you want, because it seemed to ripen.

I can't sell it anyway. I just gave you or me Indian girl all you can carry home. So we got the examples of corn and put them over and put them under the fence. And I said, I've Bigham patch of Oregon Farms, where plum. I said, well, I'm going to sebring's find some wild plum so-and-so that come along with me.

And we got a couple of pumpkin, some in our hands, and we went on back, and I was going to crawl through that fence or go way back to the gate. I decided I'd play it a little bit easy. I walked up as a cattle shoot with a load of cattle. I walked up on top of that and I thought, well, I'm only just a little ways down and I'll jump down.

I jumped down all right, and I lit right on my back. Come to find out, it was a good six feet up to the top of that chute where I jumped off. Well, I laid there for a little while and Antoinette was really scared. She thought I was hurt when I wasn't very bad. I got over it in a few minutes and drove on home.

My next day. I didn't feel much like picking beans, but we went anyway and we got beans. Then where there was another place where we could get blackberries. So we explored that up along the river, the Willamette River, and it was beautiful patch of berries there, but they've gone and carried mosquito poison all over the same little black polished stuff.

It came in mosquitoes, but it was all over the berries. Antoinette's mother, Mrs. Louis, said, well, I don't think that will hurt. I'm going to pick them anyway. Well, I didn't want any of them.

Unknown: And we went to work and their mother went to work on picking the berries, and I went on up by there.

Verna Palmer Hardt: I was trying to find a place where we could get some milk, and I finally found a place and went on in and asked the lady, and she was a schoolteacher, when she said, here, you can get milk here, I'll give you some. So every day. Then after that we went up to her place to get a quarter milk.

I sell, and in her orchard I saw my first big tree. The leaves were big and big with my two hands put together, and the fruit was yellow and oh, it had a delightful fresh flavor. But they weren't any good. Picked out the trees. They were only good if they landed on the ground first and you picked them up.

But when you picked them up, you had to be real careful not to get a yellow jacket in them, because the yellow jackets would crawl way down inside of them to get the nectar. But we figured every day we had our things and we'd go after our milk. And then the lady from out of my pasture. There's some good familiar berries.

That's a kind of a black berry that's big in here, a thumb or a little bigger. They sometimes go as much as an inch and a half, long and a half inch wide. But they're also good. So I went on out there and she says, watch out for the cattle when they come down, because they don't use to you.

But I was with the cattle, but I never did see any. And we got blackberries out there in there. Oh, they were so good with the cream off of the milk. And we just really enjoyed ourselves. And around behind. Mrs. Hennessey was the boss of the firm. Her husband was the boss of. They a hot meal there where they were picking the hops and milling the hop, and around her corner of her house she had a artichoke.

These were the kind that grew a great big bud and the artichokes were taller than my husband. She says in just a week or so, to summarize them. And they were just the prettiest rose you ever.

Let me tell this story. It was about your Uncle Dan and their Uncle Claude way back in 1917. They are taking the herd of cattle. Well, my grandpa, my dad and my grandfather both had herds of cattle. And they had taken the herd out in the spring early because it was short of hay, and they'd gone on farther on.

First they were in Hatter Creek, and they they had made acquaintances with the sheep men Club, and he'd given them a shepherd dog, a cute little puppy named him, and he was a regular herd dog. And they had him and we'd go up on top of the hill sometimes. And then after buried one day, we rode the horses way back up on top of the dog knob, and the other berries were so sick and they were low bushes, not more than 6 or 8in high, and they were so thick with the horses.

Hooks were just gripping huckleberry shoes. We think, well, we could we didn't have a need to carry them in. Came on back down and on the way we saw a lost sheep. The sheep herder had gone for weeks before, and this little lamb was left out there all by himself. Well, nothing to do with what we had to get that lamb.

So my brother shot him, and then we had to dress him up with nothing much, just a pocket knife. But he brought him out right quick in the fur hide away from the meat. And the meat was so good. We took it back to camp and enjoyed it very much. I have been visiting the camp that weekend and I had to come back home.

We were back home. I took some of the mutton back home for mother and mother didn't like mutton that she thought it was maybe some wild meat. So she ate it and oh, it was so good. And when my brother told her he was just a lamb, he she zero. But it's the best lamb I ever a. And then we went on over and they took the cattle on over Father Peter up to Hog Meadows.

You know where Hog Meadows is, where you should. And then father on over clear over the Elk River and up to the basin, where they picked to the cattle clover meadows for a while, and they put on the Milwaukee Railroad, and there they were camped. Well, Mom and dad and my older brother decided that they'd go up there, and I decided to go along, too.

But I was taking violin lessons then I was only ten, and we had to practice a lot in order to keep up with our lessons. So I took my violin along and my other brother took his horn along. Know they're going to have some music at the camp the other boys had. Claude had his yellow, and Glenn had his cornet or a trumpet.

And so we went on up there and over the hill and down where they were in the camp there, just before we got into the camp, the motor in the car broke down. Well, dad says we'll have to go back to Potlatch on the train and see if we can get a new block to put in, because that's what's the matter.

And the Pistons and everything to go with it. So the next day, dad and my older brother got on the train and went back to Potlatch to see if they could get a new motor. Well, they got the motor and on the way back they'd missed the train some way and all the way in from from Belleville to Elk River.

They had to borrow a car and pump all the way up over the neighbor hill to the tunnel and coast down to Elk River. And that's the way they got down there. But then they walked out to the camp and took the horses back and got the motor to put it together. But in the meantime, we'd been there a whole week for my entertainment.

The ranger had a daughter, and she was lonesome, and she thought, what would it be so interesting to play with another little girl? Well, his daughter was about 15 and I was only ten just coming 11, and we went horseback riding, and I used one of my brother's little horses, and we rode around all over the place. And one day we went with Mr. Started the Ranger over to Elk Falls.

Elk River falls. It was the most beautiful falls I had ever seen. Someday I'd like to go back. And while we were there, he caught fish and we had trout. And he said, well, I'll catch enough so that your mother can have a sample of trout. Real trout. So he caught a nice big, massive crowd and put him in his pack sack.

And then when we come home that night, when he gave mother the trout and he said, your daughter is a very good rider. We'll take you again next time we're going out with some wire over to another place over on the top of the mountain, and she can go along. So I've had to go along again. We went by that beautiful falls again, and another lower falls and up over to the timber to a pretty middle and and up a high mountain that way up on top.

And they carried the wire on the mules, and the men put the wire up on the trees. The funniest arrangement you ever saw. They put a wire up on the tree and fastened little circle, and then they put the wire somewhere through that circle. It was easy doing, and they just did it right from their horses, and the pack animals would just keep walking along.

And that word played out behind and in those circles that they wired up on the tree insulators. I think my brother told me they were, and they got up on top of the mountain. That was the end of the trail. Then they had a telephone and then a good talk clear back down to Elk River and blew them and carried over into Potlatch.

But the main ranger station then it was PFI, Potlatch, Timber Protective Association and their main place to call would be down the Clark, which was a little ways away from Elk River, down across the hills there somewhere. I don't know where now, but anyway, that's where it went. Gold Creek, I think they said it was. And Saint Mary's and the main radio station is at Saint Mary's even today.

But that was way back in 1917. Then one day my mom said, well, you can go over and stay with me. Started her name was Belva Stoddard and you can stay with her all day long because you're getting tired of staying around here and they're fixing on the motor. And tomorrow we'll probably be heading back home to Moscow and Iowa.

So I went over and stayed the day with Delvin, and he had to go and get garbage for her chickens and a home with their. So we got on a big wagon with a team, went down to the boarding houses in Elk River and collected them, bread and all. She had barrels of bread. They didn't eat much bread.

It seemed like they wasted more made, but they had lots of bread for her chickens and some meat scraps and potato peelings and different things. And she went by the cook house and the cook house, then gave her a great big box of bread and cookies and different things and new bad company. So they gave us some donuts and a pie, and we took those on home and we got home.

She said her chickens. And she said, well, we'll see what we got in our garden. And she picked some peas and there was carrots and some little tiny potatoes. He had quite a nice little garden there. And then we went in the house and well, we gotta have some meat along with us. So we went into the cellar.

What a salad. It was a great big, long cellar and just lined with glass jars of meat. There was bare meat and elk meat, and their meat and things. Then pheasants and. Well, I just can't name it. Everything. Vegetables and all kinds of things. Mr.. Started down this dad was a great hand to cook and canned things, and he had just about everything and canned, well, fruit jelly.

I think it was the elderberry and huckleberry and all kinds of things like that. And the best thing he had, they open the can of the berries, really mulberry jelly. And it was so good. And he said, well, we'll have something else. So he opened a can of grouse, and the grouse blessed. And we had grouse and chickens, and then we had our donuts and our pie, and he got some milk from his cow, and he had it cold in the cellar, and it was cream and butter.

I don't know, but I guess maybe I was hungry and I'd made an egg and I enjoyed that meal so much. Well, he said, we'll send some back to the camp for your mother. So we brought back butter and pen, huckleberries and jelly and a can of grouse.

Unknown: And a can of deer made that he had made and all.

Verna Palmer Hardt: It was good. And of all things can peaches. He sent us two cans of peaches. So we had a real feast that night for supper at Mr. Stoddard's. And. Picnic that he gave us that night we were playing, and I was practicing my lesson, and I was playing and playing, and the songs we liked then were the songs that were brand new.

And I was playing over there, over there. And then I was playing the one about Long Boy and some other presume. We looked up and there was a whole row of them section workers, we call them Dago them, but they were all lined up on the corral fence just outside of our tent, listening. Well, we played and played until I got so tired I couldn't play anymore.

So I put my violin away and the boys played a little while longer and then wouldn't go home until we quit. They really enjoyed it. The next day they knew we were about ready to go home, so the next day the cook came over and brought a great big huckleberry cobbler for us to eat, and they brought over jars of huckleberries for us to take home.

And then the boys got interested in well over there, after we had already gone home, they went and bought jars at the store and sugar and ten huckleberries. We brought home six dozen quarts of canned huckleberries with sugar in. We're now. In 1917, sugar was pretty scarce and you didn't get very much, but they got it there from the logging camp while we were there.

The 4th of July came on and the celebration, there was all kinds of logger activities, and then some people had brought in some rain, or that they were going to have horse races. Well, the boys heard about it and then had Pepsi. He was a Bill pounder, Hamiltonian mayor and real fast. And he had a colt called Hemi with him.

He was only just a youngster then. He was still nursing his mother, and he was just a real up and going code. Glen said, well, I'm going to enter this horse in the race and find you riding. I'll keep him back here at the camp. And you know what? Pass he'll do when you turn a loose. You'll come home.

And so you ride Patsy in that race. Well, they entered the race and everybody got all ready to run. And they said, all good cowboy can't do anything. He's got to have a saddle, and his horse isn't trained to run anyway. Well, the boys just kept still and they were going to see what they could do. Well the race came off, the gun went off and Patsy went off to.

He went home to that little colt of hers, and he went. He just kept going. And he got ahead of everybody else and all the other horses. And she left. He didn't stop till she got to back to camp. And then Glen decided that he'd better take her back. So he led her back with his other horse that he had back to the starting line.

And they said, well, your horse one way ahead of all the others. They had won the race. Well, that's when they started the trouble. Their horses were away ahead of the other, and there was some jealous people, and the boys didn't think anything about it. And Glen went somewhere that day, and Claude was around and didn't seem to make any difference much.

And all of a sudden they Mr. Horses, they were all gone. But one old bird, old bird was a pony and a wonderful pony at that. He'd track the other horses anywhere. Well, then got on the horse on broad, and he said, Bert, go find the horses. And he rode and rode, and it got dark. We wondered about it back there at camp, because we taken care of the chores and doing things and worrying about them, but then kept right on riding, and he noticed there was wagon tracks and the horses were right behind the wagon.

They were leading those horses away, stealing them and other work. Well, that was a new kind of a horse. The men didn't know what to think about it. He had his gun and his saddle and his pony, but he was going to get those horses around. So he rode on into the night, and he came to a fence, and he opened the fence and left it open and went on through.

Pretty soon he saw a little light in the distance, so he got off his horse and he crawled up. Creep real careful. And he didn't know what to do, but he didn't want to leave birds, so he put his hand over a bird's nose and got up close, and he saw his horses. They were all tied up there, so he cut them all loose and he and bird and the horses whipped up and went back to camp just as hard as they could go after they got out through.

Well, the people never came back to the camp to get those horses. But then down there was the end of all their troubles they had up there at Elk River. The fire broke out and it burned and and burned. Of course, this was the second year they'd been up there. So they were well acquainted with the country. And the sheep men were up in there, too.

But it was good pasture, and they were there. And the fire came out. The ranger came by and he said, you'd better get your cattle out while you can. That fire is going to be over. Never pass before you get there. Well, that had a bull we called Old Joe. He wore a trouble and he led the cattle everywhere.

So Glen said, go, let's go. They got all packed up and they put their gear in behind the cattle and they followed. And Glen went ahead and led one of the cows, and old Joe followed, and they went down the road and they got to the fire. Glen had to go back to see about things, but old Joe just shook his head and plowed right on through, and Glen went back to help with the horses in the drag, and they went on through and up over the pass and down on the other side.

Glen looked back. He said there was a sheep and sheep man was following right behind one just as close as they could come, and they went out of there. They all, Joe led them through round through the trails and down to the creek, the Ruby Creek, and they cannot stop and got a little drink and went on through.

But Joe was going home. He shook his horns and shook his bell, and the other cattle started bawling, and they followed him right on down through. And they came to Bovill and they went right through Bovill. Old Joe went right to the mayor, his yard, and took the sweet pea that's long on his horns. They didn't even stop down and home Meadows.

They just kept right on going. Well, the boys finally got ahead of them and round them up, and they stopped overnight down and at the end of Hog Meadows for that night. Then the next day they came on down. They called up dead in the meantime, and dad met them and helped them, and they got home in a hurry.

That time of the cattle turned them out on this double fields. And that was the end of the Elk River episode. They never went back to Elk River again. The next year they took the herd, I think about 90 some head of cattle and some horses up into what, big creek now? And they built some fences, and they had the horses in there and the cattle.

And that was where they finally wound up, where they.

Until 1937, the year that Lillian Amos, well, our cousin graduated from high school at, Kamini, she came up and stayed with us for a while. So she wanted to go out to the academy because the boys were in the cattle. So I went with her and we went up on the motorcycle that my brother had. He had a sidecar on it and went on, and we could ride in the sidecar.

So we went up to the cab to the cattle camp and they had 60 head up there, and they had made a kind of a part of a log cabin where they kept their feed and thing, and they did stand up for us so that we girls could stay in that pan there, and then had given them his rifle.

And he said, now, look, if you hear anything in the night, don't shoot. But when you see what it is for it, because we've got cougars around here. Well, there was a pair of cougars that lived there, and the head of the men of the middle there, a big creek. And that night, sure enough, they commenced the whole way over on the hill.

You'll hear one. And then on the other hill you could hear the other, and then you'd hear the coyote and then the cougar. The next morning my other brother had come in and dad and they said, well, we're going to see if we can't get Cougar. So they took their rifles, but they left the 32 with me. I'd learned to shoot in the meantime so that I could shoot pretty fast.

And now listen to see if you see that. But were you shooting? Well, I still feeling pretty bad. I had some boiled food that morning for breakfast in my stomach was all upset, and I was laying in the pen kind of halfway asleep. But I heard what they said, and I said yes, I would, and my horse feed was just a poor run up a circle all around.

He just didn't. Was there one book? He was an Arabian pony and, well, horse mare. I guess you better call her because she was about 700 pounds and just a real good saddle horse, but she didn't like it. Up there in the mountains you could smell the bear and the cougar. I heard the voice happening. Sounds crazy. And I heard them shout.

And I heard some shot. And I crawled out from under the tent to look out over the meadow. And I saw a yellow streak going across bound down, down. There was the cougar. Biggest one. Well, I. I was sort of they came back one. Well, I just didn't. That was all I could say the next day living in and I went out with a roundup.

And then he decided to go out with me for groceries again on the motorcycle. And I stayed in him. So I went out with my other brother and dad to round up some space. We went up past the last year creek and on up to Ralph Nader and Price Meadow, and I said, well, I'm going to go run back to camp.

And I hear them say, if I see any strings, I'll bring them on down. But I said, all right, we'll look around a little bit more up in here. Lane ought to be back with him. You get down there. I started down the trail and I just went along. I was riding old buddy, a little baby cow pony that was very, very gentle and, well, he was trustworthy back then.

He wouldn't let me ride Peter. He wasn't trustworthy in the mountain. So Pete stayed at camp and went round and round on her, picked them till she wore a trail about a foot deep. Around that end of that picket line. She was restless and she wanted to get out of there. Dad said, well, you're going to have to take her home when you go home.

That sure, because she just simply won't stay up here. Well, on the way home, I didn't see anything and I didn't hear anything, and it was just all easy going. There was beautiful orchids blooming and in the grass and along the side of the and the dirt underneath the trees. It was trillions of big white star flowers, lots of orchids and other kind of flowers.

And I was interested in them. I didn't even see a present or hear a twig drop. We just kept problem down. We got home. When we got home, I got many and tied Bobby up and took the saddle off and looked around. Glen hadn't got in yet. I was all by myself. I didn't like that too well, but I was there.

So I got my rifle and went inside my tent and laid down the rest of the land because I was pretty tired. And then pretty soon I heard Bob shouting, here come dad and my other brother! And they said, well, did you see anything? Not a thing. I said, did you hear anything? Nope, didn't hear anything. Dad said, well, you carry that rifle hereafter or you're not going to ride up here.

Do you know what we saw following you down the trail, riding your horse tracks? That cougar, he was covering daddy's tracks right along all the way down to within a quarter of a mile of camp. Now, you either go home on Pete in the morning or you carry the rifle. Well, I was about ready to go home anyway.

I just about had enough. I was tired and around it was over with anyway. They'd be driving up in a few a few days, maybe a week. Let me give you.

Pete. Right there. One of the horses, and I'll ride. Pete that he had to go home because he was getting a little bit lame. And that. Or I should take her home anyway. So we started out, and dad says, no, you be here and got over that hill. But Johnson's is only three miles farther, and you go that way because Malcolm is mad enough.

He got out again, and the boy is here the other day and tried. And, Tommy had an awful practice with him. He was going to beat Claude over the hump, and Tommy made him stop with the rifle, and that was just about enough. We can't have any more trouble like that. So you go home with Louie, and you go around.

Bye, Johnson. That's an order, all right? But I don't like to. That makes it just that much. Brother. Home. Well, you go on on the all ride. I started down the road on Pete and Louie, came along on battle. We got down to the corner to go up over the hill to Johnson. I said, Louie, I'm not going to go.

Excuse me, Miles, I'm going through you coming? I kicked Pete in the ribs and we sailed over the fence and away we went, right on down as fast as we could go through Malcolm. And on down to Bill, Texas. We got down there. I stopped, pulled up a little bit to let the horses heave a little bit. And Lewis, boy, did I have a ride.

I have to to keep up with you. You're flying on that mare. But he says, I don't know what the old man's going to say, but there wasn't anybody around to see us, and we got out of there before they did see us. Well, I said, that's the way it is. Let's go home. So we rode on down the road until we got to Harbord and stopped here and got a little bite to eat and went on down.

Louie stopped at his place. The guilder pro said, just before you get into Harvard, it's some. I think the guilty place belongs to. I don't know, but I'm not too sure. It's that back where we stopped and he went on into his folks narrow down, down home, passed Princeton and on down cross over the hill to make. Flannigan road home.

Well, we rested at home and it wasn't more than a week, and dad came down and he says, you got to take a couple of horses back up. So you start out to Sunday morning and you take yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, me and buddy, you have a ride, Pete, if you want to, since you don't like to ride the others.

But you take those two horses and go back them up there. And this time, no more going around by Malcolm. You go over the hill to Johnson's. I'll be waiting up there for you so we can take you down across the hill. I'm afraid of that. What that Malcolm will do to you? Well, I rode on up. It was quite a ways.

I started him just after daylight, took a line to the stand so I wouldn't have to stop and kept the horses at a good pass trot most of the way. When we got up to sections, we stopped and he says, where are you going? Says you're going by up by your Malcolm. This time again he led. You were a great big six foot two men, and he probably weighed about 250.

And he had a great big sombrero, the old fashioned kind. And he had high heeled cowboy boots that he always wore. And he rode a big black stallion with white feet and a brace in his head for him. And he just got through with his round up. He says, if you're going to go up here from the red and see and pick up the pieces, oh, I said, I don't think he's the best.

We are not to be too bad. They just arrested his son and for poaching. And maybe the old man's cooled up a little. But you better go on around. Your dad's waiting up there. Johnson's for you. Well, I said okay, well, he says you better do it, says Ole Miss. Mr. Saxon, bill Saxon always called me, says for some reason.

Rather, I didn't realize at that time that he was a relative of ours. But he was his mother's mother was Randall Maxwell, sister, Mary Chambers, and, Bill Sexton's wife was her daughter. So actually he was they were cousins of ours, I suppose. Anyway, we went and went up around the road and gave my horses a drink and got them to go on a good first trip, and I got up to that road.

Oh, it looks so good to go right straight on up the creek and see the go around and up over that hill. I wondered if I did do it, and I got there and very stuck up her nose and decided she was going. And Sammy says, come on, we're going. They'd been up there so much it was getting home.

So Sammy was good going and so was Betty. And they started out and kind of hard to turn. So I just let them go. What come naturally? I didn't want go around anyway, so we rode on up the road at a good fast lope and there wasn't a gate shut. There was a new road cleared around. So his place and all Malcolm's place over on the hill was we didn't even have to go by it.

So I rode right straight on up, last chance and up to Round Meadow and Camp. I got there and pretty soon here come dad down over the hill. And he says, you came straight through Bill. Me? You did? Yes, I said I did. The horses didn't want to turn. They wanted to go straight up. Well, he says, I guess they did hear me and Betty does like it up here.

And you didn't bring Pete this time? Well, that's good. Well, he says, then I'll take you home now. So you hike on. He's all ready to go on the bike. So he he came back over the hill. Lynn had been waiting up at Johnson's, so he came back and got me, and we went right on down past Old Malcolm's place and down past Saxons and Saxon.

He stopped and he said, well, I see you got through all right, he says. I was kind of worried. So I went up to tell your dad he was gone through. I said, you did. And he said, I did. Well, he says goodbye. He says, I guess you'll be going to school now. I said, I think this is about the last of the roundup for me this year.

So we went on back home on the motorcycle. Another story I could tell you was a little bit different. We were on the drag, driving over the hill to Brown's Meadow. The cab were all ahead and the calves were little and poky. It was early in the spring, but it was still good weather. It was 1st of May and then going up the Flanagan Hill, just leaving the Flanagan Creek when Betty got loose from the wagon and started back, well then yelled, get on your horse and go get her!

So I got on Pete, who had been tied to the wagon two, and I started after. I was sure I could catch here because peek did outrun Betty most any time. Well, I run and I run and I ran and went down across Flanagan Creek and up the hill past pick fleas and on down and cross and. Every day have some years.

And then started up the next hill and we got pulled over to where you go up past the hill, up toward. Oh, it's a good steep hill anyway. And it was all clay, and there was a rope ahead was a teamster and a big load, a load of logs, wood he was hauling. Would I recognize who it was?

It was Hill. So I yelled and I said, here, that horse for me, will you please? I can't catch here. He turned around and he cracked his whip right in front of Betty's nose and slammed down in the corner. He'd caught her with the whip around her head. No. Some way. Anyway, he had her caught and I ran and he said, you couldn't catch that little short headed preacher run with that long legged Arabian mare.

The truth. Ha ha ha! He laughed at me. Well, I said, I just couldn't. I guess you want to go home, he says. I guess she did. Look at her. She's sweating all over. And your horse is sweating too. Why couldn't you catch that little more little pony with that Arabian there? Oh, he says he left the. I guess they both wanted to go home anyway.

Now you have to go back, I said yes, I have to go back. And they're going up the hill. They'll be over to Brown's Meadow before I catch him. This raid. What do you say? You better get going. And so I got the horses. And this time I tied Betty on with a rope around her neck and tied it to the back of my saddle by the saddle strings so that even I know how to do it.

So I did, in a way. We went and we looked all the way down and up the hill and down and another hill got here over to Mrs. Mill and started on down and still a little cattle herd. I was following him. I knew, but, you know, actually they were clear over there past the Flanagan and over into the Rock Creek country, and they were going over just about two miles from Brown's Meadow.

By the time I caught up with them. Oh, I was disgusted. Why didn't Pete run fast enough to catch Betty? I just couldn't figure that out. But I guess Pete didn't want to go back up there anyway. She didn't like whatever, and she didn't like the cattle, which was just against her religion. One job I didn't like was herding the cattle and bringing in me.

And all this trouble in the fall, when they brought the cattle in off the range, they'd always get stubble pasture from some of the neighbors around one time especially, I was riding a wild pony. I think this time I was about 8 or 9 years old, and I had gone up in the field to get the cattle. They were on Uncle Winston's, 80 acres.

Nice view that be in there. But I don't know what happened to me, but it sure, there was some holes in the hill on the top of the hill. Never looked really interesting. I got off of my horse and went down. I look down into those holes. I dropped some sticks and things down in the holes, and all of a sudden my horse snorted and I grabbed the reins and she jerked me back and there was a badger.

It was a badger hole. And there was the badger. Well, I threw some tabs at him, and he went down the hole again, and I got on my horse and went on after the cattle. But that was a first time I had ever seen a badger. My horse was afraid of them. Later I was told that horses are really afraid of badgers because they make holes in the horses, step in them and break their necks.

But I was hurting the cattle that afternoon. It was Sunday, and I had to move away all over and stay with them and keep them out of the railroad track. And there was something with his garden and I had to keep him out of that. And there was a berry pat to all. There was the best berries there and peaches and different things, and I could eat those.

I took some potatoes out of the garden, went over by the trees, build me a little fire and roasted my potatoes. The meantime the cattle were scattering and I had to run fast and get them off the railroad track. But this time, for some reason or other, I didn't get them all, and 1 or 2 of them were gone, and I hunted, knotted, and I couldn't find them when it was time to take them home.

So I took them back home and told them that there was two of them gone. Little Dory and old little Dory was a black heifer with a white face and all. Dory with a yellow color with a white face. Well, he took his horse and went to find them, and he didn't find them and they couldn't. He looked in a lot of people, and he found them up on the railroad track.

But a train had come by and bruised up, one of them pretty bad, but didn't kill her. But he brought them on home then. But he said, now you don't do that anymore. Well, I didn't, but when I brought them back, I had to take them up into the past year. And there was a big spring there, and there was water.

The boys were supposed to pump it full of water for the cattle, but I was to keep the cattle away from it until they kind of laid down to their cut just so they wouldn't blow, because it was alfalfa there too. But they didn't. One time one slipped away and got up in the past year, and she died a blow.

And dad said, well, it's just too much for a little girl to herd those cattle. We got to have somebody else doing it. So that was the last I had to herd those cattle. But talking about blowed, it was bad business. Right before Mr. Gray, our neighbor, had quite a dairy herd and he was pasturing on alfalfa. They told him it was bad business.

They don't know. They'll be all right, he said. But the next day we heard a racket down there, and he was running these cattle up and down the road.

Our hired girl, Myrtle, that had stayed with us for years, brother was the veterinarian for the community, saw what was happening. So he went down, grabbed a good, sharp knife from someone and started slicing open the sides of the cattle that were down. He saved several of them. Among them was all my grades. Favorite milk cows. He gave a lot of milk.

He was an old Holstein, and he told gray then that he should put red bits in their mouths and they might not vote again. So he put brighter mints in all the cattle's mouths, and from then on not much bone, but old pike had a slit in his side, and every time he'd eat, too much weight had come oozing out of his side.

And Paul Gray would say, It's a good thing we had Myrtle Beebe around. We wouldn't have any cows left at all. There is no evil from which good does not come. No, he work who been no longer. That's we do equador. God gave us 2 in 1 to think with the other to sit on. Success depends on the adequate use of the right end.

Heads we win, tails we lose. This is from Margaret Watts, an old time school teacher at Cottonwood. Cami.

Unknown: I ride and finally down at Spalding.

Verna Palmer Hardt: She taught for 16 years. Says you a tired fisherman, are lucky he went to sleep reading the new Outdoor Life magazine. A very good fishing story. It was.

Unknown: But finally he dropped off, sound asleep. The weary fisherman lay tossing and turning.

Verna Palmer Hardt: In his bed, dreaming of next summer and the joy of fishing he his pet trout stream in the wilderness of Idaho. He muttered and thrashed about, groaning, and at long last with them my bookshelf sat up in them. He looked about, where am I? Here? In bewilderment, I thought I'd hook 6 pound trout. My rod was bent most double.

My line was caught. I'd almost got that trout.

Mind, what a beauty he was.

Unknown: A real cutthroat. Or perhaps a good mountain speckled trout.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Anyway, I had to wake up now. I'll never know if I caught him or not. Oh, well, him look. This happened to me. Henry and Margery and Terry and my husband and I were camping at our cabin on the same hill the north brought of the Blues River at 9 p.m.. It was the last night out. Everyone had gone to bed but me.

My dream. Henry. Outdoors, under a tall white pine about 20ft from the cabin door. Henry and I in the cabin, I replied. Well, my dad was snoring. I had.

I heard Margery make a noise, then scream. He's come quick. I've been by br. He's right here. Hey, him! Henry! Wake up! Henry was sound asleep. He's up in the tree. Henry. Henry was awake by that time and he shouted. It's a big one! Bring the rifle!

That gave you out the electric ladder. And then I got to 32, 21. Windlass threw down, loaded it, and we broke out the door. Who might be Henry? It was a black bear up about 20ft in the cedar tree, about ten feet from the book, where Henry. We was window, I could see. Well, it was a yearling cub.

My husband circled, looking for the old mother bear. But luckily to be about. But watching. Unluckily, nothing to be about. But after watching a while, we decided to all go into the cub, and maybe the cub would go away. But along about 11:30 p.m. he was still there. And what to do? Margery and Henry wouldn't go back to bed with the cub up the tree, so rather regretfully, my husband watching all around for a mama bear.

I and Henry, who had Henry hold the light, and with a cautious caution I shot the cub between the eyes. He laid at our feet, and I gave him one a look in the ear. Went back to bed. Next day a m we looked over Henry's great big bear, 250 pounds or more. So Henry insisted he was just as scrawny.

He starved yearling 60 pounds or more carrying. Had the claws to take to California with him, and he. Henry dug a hole and buried the big black bait. The hoodoo country high on snow capped mountains. Craig a big bull elk bugles his piercing challenge to the beautiful hoodoo Valley far below long seemed still peaceful and quiet, undisturbed by hunters.

Rifle. For the hunting is over at last. In the hoodoo country. In the beautiful valley of the hoodoo. Far below the cries of Dozier and the screaming Kristin. And all our power saws. And the crash of falling timber, the thunder of lugging hammers and trucks, the pounding, grinding pace of Miners Joe's mind and shovel, the appointing of winches, all is quiet at last, fueled by the source of snow soft modeling.

Snow is covering beautiful to behold. In the valley of a hoodoo. So far away the snow covers the skies. Man made in the hoodoo country. Hide the burned over hillsides. The rock spoon miners claim they dragged out meadows and the dredged meadows. The once beautiful valley and stream of hoodoo country. In the faraway hoodoo country. Nestled in the quiet cove of Hoodoo Valley, there was a little cabin snug in her blanket of snow, though, and locked and windows shuttered, awaiting another summer when the snow was all gone.

In the beautiful valley and hills of hoodoo country come the campers, the fishermen, children to play the hunters and lumbermen, miners, prospectors, rockhounds, timber, pup and just visitors for the day to the beautiful peaceful valley and hills of the hoodoo country. The old timers come to sit in the sun to dream of bygone days. When the rush was on for hours.

Gold in them, the hills to pan with gold. They remained in the clear, sparkling, icy cold streams, plunging over rapids. Those can feel the moment rushing over and around rocks and ruble, on to the beautiful river in the valley of the hoodoo country. Go, oh God, grant this plea that the beautiful hoodoo valley and hills shall forever remain a haven of rest.

It's a human's delight, a sanctuary for the wildlings and the elk. The snow capped, distant on snow capped Justin Craig. A playground where the children may come to see the handiwork yet unspoiled by men who do country men made with her of her gold and cut her timber. But still I pray that the beautiful hoodoo country valley and hills shell forever remain a wonderful haven of quiet and rest.

The little cabin waits in the blanket of snow, waiting for summer. And the old miners of long ago. Waiting to hear the sound of eggs. And so sorcery. Shake, shovel and pick this up. The falling trees and the thunder of dozer and truck. The laughter.

Unknown: Of children. This real bugle of the big blue elk and snow capped.

Verna Palmer Hardt: Mountain crags far above. When is summer in the beautiful valley? In the hills of hoodoo country again dedicated to Lou and Mrs. and prospector and miner, early 1892. The 1963 of the Hoodoo country. The last of the old hoodoo sour. Those one day dad had gone down to Bill's to see what he was doing, and to fish in the big hole in the Blues River.

I had taken it upon myself to clean the weeds out of our front door yard at the cabin I was shoveling away as hard as I could. I noticed the neighbor come by somebody we knew. It was Glen Pit Wood. He didn't wave or anything. He just stared as he went across the bridge. And then it backed up again and he stood there, stopped in his old pickup right in front of our door, and gazed and looked back up.

Wasn't any gate there then? It was just a road. We had to build a fence later on, but he kept looking. He never said a word. I thought, well, I'd better look to see what he was looking at. And I turned around to look at, oh, only hold here on our front doorstep was a mama bear. Her ears were just up, touching the roof, and he was standing there and looking at me over in the creek with two cubs playing in the mud in the creek, having a grand time.

And I was standing there with my shovel, and I just decided it was time for me to move on. And I started walking slowly and carefully with the shovel in my hand, going down across the road and across the rocks to the other road. And when I got here, across the other road, I looked back for the first time.

I hadn't dared look back before, and there was a bear. They were playing in our front yard, so I got myself in a big hurry on the way down to see where dad was and Bill. And he was doing well and I told dad about it. He laughed and said, when you're out of there.