Latah County Oral History Collection

Rob Moore: Well, what what were the different jobs that the men did on a thrashing crew?

Herman Schupfer: Well, on the first note about my brother, they used to come down off of the ridge. Well, Martin Thomas had a striking machine, a horsepower machine. And from there, so far, equipment tumbling. Rod went to the machine and run the machine. And my brother Dave, he was young, but he was always running the machine and working. And then a few years later, I got a job going out and help oil on the threshing machines.

Rob Moore: And what did the Oiler do?

Herman Schupfer: You know, the whole machine that is keep sheep in a very good heart. And at noon, when there's still oil, all the bearings and just keep it in shape. But he was real interested in this, the running of it, and he seemed to catch on and off easy about it. And so this fellow that really the machine operator is run it by he cheated out of that on as a oiler.

Herman Schupfer: And so help him out too and so he does that. And then later on I come in too, and I went out and pitched bundles. Old days. We got $2.25 an hour. And I started.

Rob Moore: Out an hour or a day.

Herman Schupfer: A day? That's right. And you get up early in the morning and the water out of a barrel and wash and have breakfast. And you just start out at 6:00 or maybe even before and then about in the middle for noon and Kamara to learn about 5 minutes to 10 minutes to stop. And then at noon our afternoon had another lunch and then thrash that kind of get dark, then go in and have feed and go to bed.

Herman Schupfer: Except I remember one time that I was out and with all the money in the stores, that kind of fire and they moved the machine over on was kind of on a sloping slope. They moved it over on the other side of the valley and set up and didn't take them long. When going again had the fire let the fire burn down on the straw that had to surround it.

Herman Schupfer: Well, that that left the machine. So I think we fresh till nine or 10:00 at night because our light. But then later on, while I don't usually go out help on the separate or something like that and while I went out and pitched battles in the summertime, I had a team out all bundles. Another time I buck raw by following the straw to the engine because it burned straw and then also the went to catch up with the straw.

Herman Schupfer: Why do they help the fireman relieve him? Because I had to put straw in there with the fort. Just keep pushing it in as fast as a burn. And as the steam went down, it just pushed it in a little faster. As the steam got up and I slow down a little mass about the way it went.

Rob Moore: And they started the fire was straw to really start with with wood or coal or something to get it going. They start the fire with straw too.

Herman Schupfer: And I just started the fire out out that rod was. And I later they some of them burned coal off, but mostly all burned strong those days. But they burn coal or wood when it was moving from one place to other and they used it burned or wood.

Rob Moore: Well, the the straw buck would help would help the firemen out. And the firemen got a the straw block would help the firemen out when they.

Herman Schupfer: Had got about Brubaker generally, it was really a job. But they would do that because the firemen went to help put it steady there just to keep that going and a straw buck, if they were working, pulling too heavy, had good burning straw or something, why he didn't need it much straw and he had a little time in between.

Herman Schupfer: And they did it sometime, helped the firemen out and let the firemen go get him a drink or something in their room and for even for the fun of it, just seem like. But what I like to do and the first machine, they remember the old fire machine, they had, I didn't blow the straw out like that do now.

Herman Schupfer: There was Draper.

Rob Moore: This is a mine you're talking about and.

Herman Schupfer: All this stuff, you.

Rob Moore: Know, horsepower, thrashing.

Herman Schupfer: Machine. As the horses went round, round. And this machine had a draper which carried the straw out the ways. And then they had one or two men on this straw pile to make a straw stick and also to feed these bundles they laid there. And there was I think they had one man on each side with it with a knife and they cut the band on the gunnels and they come in headfirst and spread them out and stuck them in carefully.

Herman Schupfer: So they went through even close with kind of a smaller set up. They and then they come out later with a knife, cut the bands and they just threw them down in there. And then they later, then they come out with a blower on it and blew the straw out there to the get the use in the steam engine on them.

Herman Schupfer: And most of them got to be steam engines. And then later some of them went to gasoline, as I think I believe somebody. So I'm not too here, but I think there's a they didn't call it diesel and do something a little different I guess with that one.

Rob Moore: Well after after the grain went through the threshing machine, what happened to it then?

Herman Schupfer: the grain. There was a spout at the come down first and then hook a sack on it at the switch. There's two spouts and they could switch one side. Right. Hold it to another and they'd be a sack put on the spout and that would be filling while they put a new sack on the other spout. And now and I told the last I had the bigger machine and it's faster.

Herman Schupfer: They also had what they call have two sex toys and a jig. There's the so that you throw up two sacks and put them down and break your back a little ways. And that's what they'd sit on. And then the jig would put a sack to start out with. You'd put a sack on each one of the fellows and it let one of them fail.

Herman Schupfer: And just as soon as that and got full enough, he jig it down and carried over to one of the sack. You know.

Rob Moore: What, what was jigging it down.

Herman Schupfer: Just to settle it down and get it about the right for. And so if he spilled and if he had too much and they stupid out on the ground under him so in the clean up but it'd be there where he was and then he carried that sack lift up to the top and carried five or ten feet wherever the stakes were.

Herman Schupfer: And they sit there instead of between their knees, and they'd kind of get the knees around it. And then they chew it up and then it bounced it up on their knees and then get up and put over on the sack pile, carried off maybe ten or 15, 20 feet or whatever. They started the sack part. And when this jig wanted one fat could get full, you'd have a empty sack on the other of they would come out and switch or just put grain into that sack.

Herman Schupfer: Well he did this down and carried over to the sanctuary and then put another new sack on it. But that at that time the other sack was about four and they dig that down, get it over to the other side and put Antisec on it. And that's a back and forth.

Rob Moore: So he never got multiple paths then either. Well he never got much of a rest then either.

Herman Schupfer: they never got an arrest unless something broke down or something that sometimes something like that would help out a little bit.

Rob Moore: Well, was the oiler always busy? Too busy. Just always.

Herman Schupfer: I make the in a separate attender. Let me just mostly always watching and see if something needed. Sometime we'd have a burning stove. The heat is something heat oil that every occasionally afternoon And this kind of look over over this thing and you learn a new now and then they'd go through it and it completely again. And if there's anything needed just sitting or something like that, maybe just add up again and try to get do in an afternoon again until lunchtime and then I'd have lunch in the forenoon.

Herman Schupfer: First to used to at our place and we had the classes there were nice. My mother always had a cook for them and avoided them and they used to went home in the evening. There's quite a crew in those days. I was really impressed and thinks about it. Hot stove in the kitchen, you know, and then in the dining room table around and people eating there.

Herman Schupfer: You can imagine how warm it would be there. There's really warm. And they had an hour, noon, and they tried to fast. It couldn't get out and cooled off enough. And then you get out and go to work again. But later they got the cook houses up on the ridges and they was always to cook and they'd have a lunch and a meal there to cook out.

Herman Schupfer: And they had what we call a flunky. He was a roustabout and he'd get the food and get whatever they needed and water and things like that. And they also had a water buck that had a tank and he'd hold water for the engine and keep it going. And it took quite a few people to run an outfit.

Herman Schupfer: That too, they had run right at the QuikTrip. And the combined come.

Rob Moore: On, how long would it take them to build of steam again in the morning before they even get started.

Herman Schupfer: it's going to I guess. And I don't know. I never sold one inflation machine, but we run a tramway and had something similar to it, but we could get up steam and 2025 minutes with kindling and wood and fuel but I wouldn't exactly you know, this was taking its measurements, you know, to have 45 minutes for that can be more or less of a guess.

Rob Moore: What would the fireman get out earlier and everybody else in and get working.

Herman Schupfer: Yeah. Yeah. Well, some of them then had a watchman at night and I think he started started the fire. Now, I might be wrong on that, but I kind of believe that that did have somebody that looked around and then different things that had to be done through the night so they could get started in the morning.

Rob Moore: Would be watching for fires or what.

Herman Schupfer: I don't know whether they or I'm not sure, but whether they used them wood or coal and put in there to hold the fire overnight or whether they started a new in the morning. But the but it seemed like he liked it always ready to go. When I was pitching bundles, we never got a chance. They weren't ready to go.

Rob Moore: About how long until when were the thrashing machines coming down here? In point of fact, until. Until about what year were you working with thrashing machines?

Herman Schupfer: What was the remember got to peculiar area on a home place? Martin Thomas come down and this picture was taken believe it is in 1918 95. And that was a horsepower rig and it used to be on Macon Ridge. These it was only one on the end of the ridge that used to come down there. And then about 19 ten, I believe it was, I think all of us started to go up about eight, 19 seven or eight and oily and 1911.

Herman Schupfer: I would go out with bundles or go out and haul bundles or buck straw for a number of years, and then one that wound up, or maybe even before it was later years. We run the tramway just as soon as they started the whole pleasure warehouse. We'd go and run that to take care of the warehouse, run the tramway, and that really kind of quit the threshing there and then went to the training business.

Herman Schupfer: All of that ended after they had it in the sack.

Rob Moore: Were there any ever any serious accidents with that tramway? Did it never get away?

Herman Schupfer: No, it got away before my times mother said that it got away some way and the brand of it went up the hill and then it came in a little more on a not so steep, more in a flat. And it seemed as though when they stopped the car some way, I've heard different stories. I've heard that they had the lower one on the hook and they couldn't hold it.

Herman Schupfer: And I've heard that they backed it up some way in that car, but like in the cable on and hook and take off. But the mother said that she was hanging out close and she heard a noise and all she could see on the side hill over there was a bunch of dust and it seemed like this car went on down and they were just.

Rob Moore: It was an empty car or Fulkerson.

Herman Schupfer: Full and it is steep. And at the bottom of the steep pitch, there was a bench out that went out a little ways. And it seemed as though when it hit that bench, I mean, that it took it out and left the track and without any space and just scattered everything. It was down over the hillside. And that right now, whether my reminded more or less that it just got away from that, I don't know why they unhooked it so that they didn't have any safety.

Unknown Speaker: At it right away in a way, you know, it was it didn't.

Herman Schupfer: Pass in the lower one way. Then, of course, the just the cable itself came up instead of the car on it. But the tell me when they first start out they use block and tackle and I believe the horse and pulled a top car.

Unknown Speaker: Out of the level place until.

Herman Schupfer: It got to the front of the hill and then the loaded car would bring an empty one up and but that didn't prove out very good. And then they put in this steam engine. They had a twin cylinder engine with two drums, and the cable would come up and then keep going back and forth. They go back under.

Herman Schupfer: You go around the back drum and then go around the front, went back to back, went around the front and back for it's about time to. So until we went back out again. And then they had the band break on it and the engine could be turned on or off. And whenever the load got out to the front of the hill, they could uncouple engine and just hold it with the brake and then it goes down and there's never that get jumped the track once in a while.

Herman Schupfer: But otherwise this I in my time there was at one time before some way a car come down and bumped something out and some timbers fell on somebody and heard them. I remember one time, but otherwise the cars were sick. You couldn't hardly get off of the cable that did get out into the brush. Lie at the top.

Herman Schupfer: What you now have to do is fire up and get up to a little more steam. But they had in the engine enough there to pull a full car right out of the brush, back up again and put it up away and walked back onto the rails. And sometime it had even happened unloaded. And to get it on and back down there at all, it was it was quite a triumph that after the trucks came in, why then people quit talking to the tramway and my hall down over the hill.

Herman Schupfer: That wasn't taken care of, and I think it was 1917 or 18, We made a decision for scrap taking down and when the incident happened there, that that wasn't here at that time, that they took the railroad loose, pull the spikes out. I had a rail with like a railroad rail but a small size. And they some way have like a tackle on the lower end and they was going to pull it down one length of the time and they couldn't get it to go in some way or something.

Herman Schupfer: I don't know whether it didn't have a tail end up the tied, but it broke loose when it did get it started. The real that started it kept on coming to just double run on the side, the hill over there. And one feller that was up on the side hill helping the loan getting started he took behind the tree and he said the rail that this come on both sides of the double up around the tree and everything else.

Herman Schupfer: And brother's got a picture right at the time being there's a rail sticking in a tree up there that the end of the rail went into that tree. Don't know how far, but the coupling had taken the part where the coupling was. And there's about two or three feet sticking out of that tree. Now, in that tree with that one in there right.

Herman Schupfer: And we used trees like the one that Brown loses. It was quite a job. Nowadays, the work is entirely different. We lived just across from it. We're out taking about 10 minutes on the bicycle to get over to the lower house and then walk up the tram and get steam up by 7:00. We used to leave the house at 6:00 and get over to our house about 10 minutes after six and walk up that hill over the hillside to the top.

Herman Schupfer: And about 20 minutes we had had past start a fire in the boiler and load the first car out. And then whatever help you had either one or two men, they'd come up on the first tram then. But the first tram always run this right to 7:00. And then at night the Help rode down on the last tram and then, well, I had to walk down to get down the old days I, we didn't have automobiles we didn't have last year we run and we had a motorcycle before, but it didn't even dawn on us to ride a motorcycle around.

Herman Schupfer: We just took up the truck and and made our money. We got $0.30 an hour, $3 a day. That was good money. Those days know that day. And but on going down, there was days that we didn't run the tram, but just went up to the upper warehouse to receive green when the farmers brought it in and so down on me that they could make a rig and ride down.

Herman Schupfer: And it took some two before, four before, and two of them off of the warehouse at five different places stuff and put them on the rail lengthwise about three or four feet long. And then the one before or something on the inside for a flange nailed the board across the back four feet and they two two by six, the cross in the front was the space in between them.

Herman Schupfer: And so that then made a sled that fit on the track and they couldn't jump jump off. And then take it out to the front of the hill. And a better piece of rod like this letter is. And hook it between the space, between the two front timbers and put a pipe, hook it, run the cable underneath it, over the cable between one crack or the other, and then use the pipe on top and lift at this table, cable up underneath, and then use that for a break.

Herman Schupfer: And so that worked fine. And so every time it was in a flat, didn't have one of those things up there. But every time we had to go up and receive green, we'd make another one.

Rob Moore: And by the.

Herman Schupfer: Time we got to, we had five or six of it. And then whenever the first tram run off, load it all back and hold them back up again. And that was an incident happened there one time that this is either put your own this warehouse all for the banker and there was a circus coming to town and afternoon and school out I guess that day.

Herman Schupfer: And Porter told us it seemed like all the farmers were coming down to the circus. We didn't have to cram that afternoon off a tram in the forenoon. Why? If we could go all right with the farmers up there and that was going to haul, we'll talk it over with them. What would the circus show this boy? Man?

Herman Schupfer: Porter. He was a young fellow. You want to ride down with me? He says you can. I'd like a ride down there. When we go down on one of the we can go devils. And so he stayed up and run the last tram and we took it out the front of the hill and we got on it. And first place is the place out steep and the devil's bench down below and as we started down this train, down the steep place, tried to slow it down and there's a rod had been a lot of us it started to straighten out And so I told him, I said, now don't make a difference how fast we

Herman Schupfer: go and when I hit that bench, we're going to have to get off and but I'll slow it down the best I can. And so I told him when I said go that you get off on new side, you get ready and I'll get up over here. And so I got down there and I got to slow down pretty well but still go.

Herman Schupfer: And I went in about to get off and he got up on one side and I got up on the other. We bumped a little bit ourselves but not heard anything. But I still him when it went down through the end of this the flier me, he says, Aren't you glad we ain't on it now. And it went right down there and went in and knocked on to the bumper, not the bumper right into the lower car at the end of it.

Herman Schupfer: And it's made to sell all the pieces down that we had to walk down the way after that, whenever we rode double over to two of them and tie them together and instead of using a hook, we put a wire around it, grab a bunch of wire, but was always seeing. You could hear all of the valley when you come down here.

Herman Schupfer: That thing, a thing in the way that the line going down, flying over the cable and we had a lot of fun out of it too.

Rob Moore: Well, there were a series of preplanned train wrecks around here, too, weren't there? What? Wasn't there a series of pretty bad train wrecks around here? Wasn't there a series of pretty bad train wrecks around here?

Herman Schupfer: train wreck. And there was a train wreck at the I Want It building. I believe it is a line that runs up to Clearwater, the State River, the one that hung rail down for it and up a Troy. And I've heard different stories that said that the they didn't want to take a chance of going down to the frosty and one thing another but anyway they were going to go down with the rails and they came down and they couldn't hold it.

Herman Schupfer: And if it got down towards a friend, that third Kendrick up here, the conductor, he had cut the caboose loose and held him out, saved himself. And this another fellow and the rest of it kept on going and they went do real right above the Kendrick here and went into the Potlatch, quit and I think there was two or three of them engineers, both of both of the engineering requirement of leave.

Herman Schupfer: It was I've got more. I could either have it someplace, but I was killed. And then they had one or two hearings, trials of this fellow, that kind of stuff, loose with a caboose. And it seemed as though he got canned because they figured if you could get the caboose on how to the tail end back with that.

Herman Schupfer: These have been been all right, too. But it is quite a quite a mess. I can just remember of going up and see the engines laying in there. And it's just been a few years ago that is still a rail is working in that in a real down and down in there. I've got a picture that I've also got a story of of this wreck and also of the trial.

Rob Moore: Well, Kendrick had quite a few problems in the early days with with fires and floods and stuff like that, too, didn't it? Did what didn't Kendrick have quite a problem in the early days with fire and floods and stuff like.

Herman Schupfer: That, But it seemed like it in most trouble with fires and they had later on because it didn't have any equipment to set anything of fire. Much as always, smoking was the only thing. And it seemed like all day that my smoke or paper or something, I should go and smoke at night at work time that there wasn't as much out there did catch seem like the only trouble they had would be just eye catching fires from my God.

Herman Schupfer: But later on now with the trucks and one thing and then the exhaust I think that's why they this out some markers, this circle accumulate and in fact one go out into the dry grass. And so for the fire that my whole brother was involved as pulling the machine lot of time from one place to another because it just an uphill and one thing know I get up and pull it with the engine that they had it cause I remember they closed down there they brought in a new set, a new machine one time a you.

Herman Schupfer: Yeah. And they were going to thrash our home place down there first. I was about 1912 or so, I'd say 11 or 12 and loaded it down that you know, other then they couldn't go across the bridges with that. They had to kind of make a road inside and hold the front of the engine up or down. So it didn't rear up going to the bank and it's quite a chore.

Herman Schupfer: They just like to get them from one place to another. It was all right in the field for America. So the one field that I never go further this kind of hard to get, the other one went down to where we were some years, Right? You always try to find out ahead of time whether you're going to be able to get anyone to throw in.

Herman Schupfer: We just had a first place there that tried to get up, but it used to be that would be in about noon. You'd hear the whistle blow, three or four of them around machine, go out.

Rob Moore: There were quite a few floods here in the early days, weren't there?

Herman Schupfer: Yes, Yes. It used to be that we doing a few dollars once in a while. We got bigger on that from floods to wash out and especially on one in 1911. I remember down there that I had a cloudburst that covered up the track and they run a train. Then on each side of passenger trains and transferred and carried everything from one side to the other.

Herman Schupfer: And we used to get a job out them doing that and then they had it shoveled out so the train could get through and it seemed like I wanted to come up. Then that got snow to cover the tracks up every so often, and we'd be called out to help shovel them out. And so we got pretty good paying.

Herman Schupfer: We all were like, this didn't mind when it did get covered up. And that place for a while seem to bother. But in earlier years they I can remember about 1900 or 1901 is to wash out there and one of the years is a work train came down with the cookhouse and some sleeping cars and it just had fixed up and the caboose and the some old car too with the tools and hand cars.

Herman Schupfer: And they was going down below Giulietta But as it got this side that you had a down middle potlatch quick, rigid, washed out so they couldn't go any further and so they were going to go back to Kendrick. But by that time it was to try it out just about a quarter of a mile behind them and they couldn't get it back.

Herman Schupfer: And so in the evening there was I don't know how many of them, but there was a lady cook and her husband, they came up to our place and they some others that needed to sleep for the night. They came up and they slept in the barn and there's others stay down and watch to see what going. And they'd run the what they had left first at the caboose and the car.

Herman Schupfer: They didn't want that during the night and they'd run that engine ahead and just keep it. And they saved it. And I think one car to the rest of it went in. But I just went in. There was just above where the bridge was, took the bridge out and then, of course, that bridge went into the river and the car and it went down by and took a railroad bridge out a little further, went to the tramway and that gave Mr. Moore and it went down the bridge out to the other the nearby the depot.

Herman Schupfer: And they set up there was the caboose and a couple of a couple of cars were over across the creek. Young boy worried about where the tramway was just a little below where the water went in. And one or two well, in the land of the down below, do you get hung up on a place down there? And then later they came down with equipment and pulled them over and put them back on the tracks again and and got it out.

Herman Schupfer: Now, we used to go over there and play in that caboose. It was sitting there and kind of in a sand pile, leaning towards one side. And what and it kind of made you feel dizzy and goofy, but always make me think of it. Go on. And we should abort the caboose because I worked in places and they showed me where water would run uphill and the ball would roll uphill.

Herman Schupfer: And but that's what I did. And I. Caboose We used to go in there and because that made you think of the fact that picture illusion there made you think get the stuff rolled uphill so we should abort that caboose and then put up a sign the head something but then only take it out and I still remember the name of the people that the Neff was the name of the cook, and his wife left him in those people somewhere.

Herman Schupfer: Just remember the name. And then the baby was the next year, right? Either the year before, year afterwards. One was in 1900, I think when 19 one Heimgartner was located that you had a came, did you locate and they had to they came on a train. But when they got to Troy, the tractor washed out to Kendrick and they couldn't get any further and it was muddy.

Herman Schupfer: And the weather, the winter time, springtime, I think it was. And so they hired livery rig to leverage to had to bring their trunks and stuff. And I think there's eight in their family at the time and it brought them down in a muddy road and they and they couldn't get to do that because a bridge it washed out the middle part.

Herman Schupfer: Let's see. So where's the first place located? On the other, it looked like they put up a few up and so they stopped, come back that far. And the folks made room for them some way and they unloaded their stuff and delivery went on back and they stayed a couple, three days till someone fixed that. They could get across the creek down there, but it made it out all right.

Herman Schupfer: Some of them slept in the barn and but they often mentioned about it how far they that how they got there. And they then remembered the place and that too.

Unknown Speaker: And then they had the other.

Herman Schupfer: Washouts later use now get some pictures to wash out the load. You get it down about four miles where it took out a million in the creek for about a couple of hundred yards down below. Do you know where the water over the rail and up here, the depot where the water was, you couldn't see any ties that the top of the rail stuck out.

Herman Schupfer: And but it always do damage someplace long that you hadn't been a train for a couple, three days. And 1921, 1927 I had a wet snow up in the Bovill country. I believe the Thanksgiving Day. And then it ran into it and a wind came in through it and it all came down through here and it was the track out just below that you had a depot and a work train went down and the engine rolled in and one or two cars, I think with it and also a year or two later there was 1st of April the flood that over went over the tracks, washed out different places and Kendrick was isolated, couldn't get

Herman Schupfer: either direction. They brought the mail up by with a plane and dropped it up on a hillside. Yeah, so it was washouts and train wrecks. And something is kind of interesting place. And then of course, there there's train wreck that they had when that building a state railroad, I believe with the state branch over there, they're coming down with lumber, quite a few cars of rails and iron had two engines on it.

Herman Schupfer: And when they left Troy, they didn't think that make it, but they told them to go on. But as they got down there, they couldn't hold it and the caboose fell and that really kept the caboose loose and they got it stopped. But the rest of the train came down. And this there's a town up here that both engines rolled in.

Herman Schupfer: And I don't know how many of the people it killed. I think it was the engineers, both firemen. And I can remember seeing a lien in there. I have a picture of it, too. That's where they're taking it out afterwards. And also that they had a trial on this fellow that cut this caboose loose. But he wasn't supposed to do that.

Herman Schupfer: If he left it on that, figured it might have back him up to on. And I of course I believe the histories that yeah they fired him and that was one of the things I remember when one morning that they called up RH Porter down here jeweler and told him that the engine got away from what the Troy was heading down the tracks and if it got that far, they wanted him to go over there right away and put some ties on the tractor.

Herman Schupfer: There's a whole bunch of ties down there across from where I live and put them on this some way so that a wreck, that train, that engine so it couldn't go any further. And he did that, but it didn't get that far. It stopped up above it. And I was told that it seemed like that it on the side track up there and it lost some of the wheels under the coal car or something and it didn't.

Herman Schupfer: Does that then have it back enough so that it didn't get this far? Another time I can remember that was coming between here and Junior and a bunch of cars went by. We were just for carload. The cattle went by pretty good, like a speed faster than a train. Usually, and pretty soon engine come along well afterward behind it, but seemed like they weren't pretty careful.

Herman Schupfer: It was wasn't going too fast and but in about a couple hours why this engine come back? Bringing the fire of the cattle back up again that it got down below area where it got leveled area and it run into the back end of a freight train. And this freight train was also traveling. So the was lucky and was out and there's just a we got a lot of when kids things to see like that they were right here not too many years ago they had a I believe it was a snow plow that they had tied on the back couplings were out or something and they tied it on the back of a freight

Herman Schupfer: train that went up the Kendrick. And it got up above about a mile, a little over a mile away. It broke loose and went on down the track through the back. The train, a freight train up in order to get to catch it, to back it up in a way. But the freight train then jumped the track on the corner and two or three cars of frozen food went down over the bank about 100 feet across the middle.

Herman Schupfer: They got some refrigerated automobiles, trucks and get the stuff out and then later put the cars back up on the track. So there's something and then there's usually fires along the tracks up. There used to be that the engines, the spark breaks the spark and have trouble on the railroad had quite a quite a time of trouble between, you might say between aero and just above Kendrick here that down at I've got some pictures of where there's a track down here about four mile below Juliana I must be couple 300 yards where the track is laying in the river and up under wash to just settle down in and down below Jupiter where the

Herman Schupfer: water was over the railroad and over the highway and it's been quite often that would their no train service some kind of high water. And then down here at the 19 1 to 19 one, I believe it was that it washed cross up here where the train were in some way. I've heard that they damaged a fellow, somebody called a quick buck and the way the creek and through up there and came down through town and I know it left about a foot or two, a mud in the store.

Herman Schupfer: I just remember being up here, went down with mother at McHugh's storage, where the park now is. There was mud in that, but the get out store and down here a lot of the trees turn, the street down here, there was a ham. Linda Hanley lived there and Fred Crocker went in to rescue them out. It was surrounded as water with a team buggy and as it came out, the buggy I guess, or something came down and hit the buggy.

Herman Schupfer: And also it went in the hole underneath and two of the children spilled out and they drowned and so the end, it wasn't always just washing. Now this I don't know, did I mention this train about the arrow that was high water and it washed out quite a stretch of track there and put it over on the other side of the creek, the whole thing bridge and all of the ridges of Howard Gulch.

Herman Schupfer: It just undermined it all and swung over on the other side of the river as on a turn, and they built a new track filled in to build a new track in there. And so that wasn't we had some more a little high water afterwards, but it was really not considered high water. But in a way it was some of the fill that they made right at that place.

Herman Schupfer: And as a passenger train went down at night as well, about 1030 or 11:00, they there the baggage car and the mail car and two or three passenger cars. I have a picture of that to the ad, but they hit they went in, the engine rolled in, and the first cars, they didn't uncouple, but just the last one was on the track.

Herman Schupfer: And some of them were halfway down, the engine down. And they never did find a fireman. His name is Skidmore. I remember and I don't remember whether the engineer got out or whether he was drowned. But it is a bad wreck. It didn't materialize. Well, in those railroad days, it was interesting to think about the transportation when it'd be maybe 100 Italians on the crew.

Herman Schupfer: Well, they'd had these hand cars, pump cars, and they'd had maybe a couple dozen them together together. And they grew up and down the tracks on them, singing, having a good time of pumping away the run running single. IL had them tied together. Now everybody was pumping and pumping those same and going up and down the tracks, going and all the railroad work was done by pump cars like that and take it back down here.

Herman Schupfer: They couldn't pump them up so they'd have a flood car. And when the morning post came up sometime between eight and 9:00 where the had a rope and they'd put the rope around something on the back of the passenger train and we got to the furthest end of their job. Well, they they cut himself loose and and do their work.

Herman Schupfer: And then they saw that they didn't get on and hold a break coming down. They could come back coast, back home again in the evenings. But a little later on that made them stop doing that. And they came out and with the gasoline rig and and went that way, it used to be there take a train about an hour to go from try if we can be to Troy 11, 12 miles.

Herman Schupfer: I remember that we were on a picnic. All this was about 1915, 1916, up above Kendrick, about a couple three miles. And the passenger train came up and had one or two cars of fruit, refrigerator, fruit on it. And it was coming to a slow speed and another ball. And I went down and we climb on the fruit cars.

Rob Moore: And we.

Herman Schupfer: Rode up the track quite a ways. We saw a push car down there on the side, that side of the track, and we got up well, got off a little further up, but we walked down the first car and it had a hole knocked out that you could take a pole or something and put brake on the one of the wheels with the.

Herman Schupfer: So we got it on the track and we rode back down to where the picnic was on that push car. And we used to play around on the rear along the railroad track. Well, but they were slow. We still no work, telephone work. We'd get applied for about three miles of town and we didn't get off. Most of a lot of the places we knew about where the train has slowed down quite a lot.

Herman Schupfer: Always get all.

Rob Moore: Who were there. Were there as a kid used to? You say you used to ride the train around a lot as a kid.

Herman Schupfer: But what.

Rob Moore: You say you used to ride the train quite a bit as a kid.

Herman Schupfer: Yeah, and we rode the train. The train was full. It'd be 4th of July celebration and between you and Candy just in that standing room? Hardly. And it would be the careful $0.10 one way, $0.50 for a round trip. I've got some tickets. The 1912 years and some we didn't use or didn't take up and yeah, it used to by train to go into work or train or go to Spokane or someplace to go the train.

Herman Schupfer: And we used to come up, we used to come up here and roller skates. I remember early years and there's two of us, three of us before we'd come up here and we'd always buy a return trip ticket. We getting cheaper and they were good for a month and we always had one or two in our pocket either way, but in a way we'd go out on the back platform in the winter and they would come out.

Herman Schupfer: They wouldn't come out to take tickets because they didn't know there was anyone out there. So we'd see that ticket again for the next time. Well, one time I remember that this couple more fellows came with us and we all went out on the back platform they went along to and the conductor came out and this fellow thought, That's going to get the right for nothing.

Herman Schupfer: You know, we'll come back to God. We all had we had tickets. The rest of us got we always had done. But the one fellow, remember, he didn't have a ticket. So the conductor took his head and he told him, next morning, come down there and bring his dime. And they've given the hat back. So we rushed it $0.10 and paid his way.

Herman Schupfer: I think there's two of them. Well, that those youngsters, you know, that all to figure out something. So we have a little fun. There was about eight or ten of us got on that train and we passed the conductor and all but two of them got on the run out the back and jumped off and walked down to the other.

Herman Schupfer: And they just want to see what happened. And these other two brother was one of them. Another one they were there. She said that they had it all the way that you held under the seat, another place down, the one where the rest of those guys were. But where is running.

Rob Moore: Away if.

Herman Schupfer: We thought that was pretty.

Rob Moore: Good, know.

Herman Schupfer: It. Well, we used to. I remember on telephone work we used to go up passenger train down to Arrow and then catch a passenger train up to Myrtle on the other side and then walk across the hill over there you go for right out on the southern side and have a team meet you another side of the creek.

Herman Schupfer: But for my load you had to come back again at the time that trouble down towards Arrow, we'd go down there and play the horseshoe down there. Somebody had a horseshoe sit down there until a freight train came up and we get on that freight train. But sometime they wouldn't stop you. They stopped to take water. We could get off, but we lived at other.

Herman Schupfer: We had to walk from here. Did you get it back? That bit wasn't all the way, but I remember one time where they didn't stop. But this something they on the hill up here, they slow down and after we get off, we are a little further to walk but still have this wide world. Romero Where we used to ride the freight train back every once in a while, you know, sometimes they never, never see us.

Herman Schupfer: And if they did tell them what we did, they just call it good. Even a section boss, you know, the suspenders you use on a track, you know, and speed had rubber tires on it to go back and forth a whole lot more. All it would do anything like that was something that happened to him for the rest of his work, you know, and anything else.

Herman Schupfer: But those days, everybody helped more. There was many one like that to take it own chances. And that that's the way it was like when we got on the passenger train to tell the conductor, We're just going to jump off up there, what he says, be careful. And he didn't come out when we jumped off and the section crew used to go up on the train in the wintertime and jump off into the snow or someplace or the stuff of the before.

Rob Moore: When when you were riding, riding the the freight, did you ever run across any of freight, freight bums or hobos or anything like that?

Herman Schupfer: yes. Said they'd be hobos. Yeah. Well, most of the time I'd come in here and get something at the back door or something on the tracks. But I always figured a hobo, the reason he was a hobo and because he wasn't a crook, he. He wouldn't live, make an honest living neighbors. And because that guy would steal, but the hobo wouldn't feel much.

Herman Schupfer: And it makes me think of early Chaney at the Troy come up there one day. Well, he says I work pretty slick on a guy that's more. He was always dressed up in the old clothes and plumbing and everything else. And he says, one of those guys we're talking about is that one come to my house the other day.

Herman Schupfer: These are some coming. And they got outside before he could see that I came out of the house, I just walked out and I passed the message that, no, you try in here. He says, No chance. I said, the other guy, turn around, too, and you walk back. But there used to be quite a few on the train, even for they didn't bother him too much for a while.

Herman Schupfer: They'd be on there with their blankets going back and forth and getting along now because no, they reach. Well I think it all chance you might say.

Unknown Speaker: That on your own that.

Herman Schupfer: I railroad was quite an interesting thing at that that on the passenger train they usually passed it was to train surprise trains each way one of them a day train had a dining car on it and the night train had a sleeper on it and they passed it. You. Yeah. Here. And if it passed at Kennedy we used to get a return trip ticket to do another ride up on one and catch it and back again.

Herman Schupfer: Just for the ride. Yeah and, but I did. One of the great pastimes on Sundays was to go meet the train at the platform. It would be full of people on Sundays when the train come in to see the train come in and see two of them there, then wait for the next train and people visit network visiting place.

Herman Schupfer: And then of course, those days the mail were distributed to them and you got your mail afterwards. We had mail service those days, but now I don't have any service at my. You get your mail every day of the week. How are they now.

Rob Moore: Well, when when when were the bombs? Most of the hobos, most around on the railroad.

Herman Schupfer: I don't know. I just remember back in one time a little tough and there were 19 five or six in the third. We did quite a lot of them arriving, riding back and forth and and to take different train. Now, some of us fellows with freight train go along and we're going too fast or something. Get someplace, get on it and go.

Herman Schupfer: And even the passenger train then the Feloni one time got up, hit Kendrick, pass the trains. Then there real bad Carl catch and there's kind of a platform up to the fellows backyard going up there and riding around. Did you hear that? That's pretty good. I didn't know more than 70 that I didn't back out. And I went up to and we sat on that board and you had a there there was big crowd.

Herman Schupfer: There was a train come in, but the headlight them all. They couldn't see if I didn't in a way. And we got down there, we got off, we walked uptown. Nobody ever knew we were on that, but it was kind of funny riding, it seemed, when you got to a curve that the blame thing wasn't going to go around the curve.

Herman Schupfer: The front end just kept on going up the creek. But we wrote it out as you can't catch it. Yeah, I'll tell you those days and things you're more on your own and the I don't know you could take care of yourself more and for instance they take their one youngster who had a shotgun and a 22 if you want it, if you grow, if you all shoot a couple or three out that in the canyon you didn't have a license or nothing.

Herman Schupfer: We shoot squirrels. If you want to go fishing and get a fishing pole, we go down to fish. And this won't do it. It didn't need license to do anything. For instance, even in 1928, they bought and I started the garage up here. We had a money drawer where the money was in. Yeah, well, this money drawer in the office and we got a dollar to it, put it in there.

Herman Schupfer: And what we had a little more money than we thought. We all live in a drawer. We divide it out two and a half, but in his pocket, when we go over and eat the rest. And neither one of us made why, we just take a little money out of the drawer. And we never kept track of anything.

Herman Schupfer: gasoline from Pullman would send a truck up there, take a truck and welcome to bring down about a bunch of 50 gallon barrels. We had celery gas and and the only thing we paid was taxes the end of the year property tax and didn't worry about anything, you know, Now look at it now from 19 1920 and 21, 1912, 21 and those years in 50 years, there were sure a bunch out and with navel gazing, didn't need a hunting license.

Herman Schupfer: It did come in then. But that didn't bother you? I never had any of those days, never had a fishing license, other fish and everything else I never did was I just didn't know how to say it. But anything you do, you kind of do it on your own, at your own chances is taken and what you do and like riding the train or something like that, it just more or less it was chances you took.

Herman Schupfer: Yeah.

Rob Moore: What what do you think started to change that? Well, yeah.

Herman Schupfer: The progress, I guess you might say. And I think I'll take it. Just kept to get me going a little more and have to have this. If you're going to have to have the paved highway, you're going to have to get some money someplace. And we didn't have those. We had to hold them in the streets up here.

Herman Schupfer: And they Bob and I, we put some signs out in the manholes, duck hunting allowed. And as for you and the automobiles about October were people take them home and leave them home and put them up on blocks and take a battery out. And he and I'd ask service providers to get them charge to the wintertime. We'd have had 150 batteries in our shop there.

Herman Schupfer: Just keep them charged. And there was no cars running or anything else, but we'd overhaul some cars for people and rebuild batteries and work on cars and like that. And there'd be and it'd be after Easter before be much going, unless it did freeze some time and some would take the car out that winter and the sled broke a pretty good track.

Herman Schupfer: But of course they would never. But sometime we'd go out and we got a motorcycle. We've got a winter wrap, a rope around for a chain and and go in the snow.

Rob Moore: Grab a rope around the tire. Yeah.

Herman Schupfer: Rubber over on tires and glue for the chain. Yeah. I've, I had my first motorcycle in 1911. I had an end in motorcycle. I bought a second hand semi silver. It was the right connected the pedal to go around the now that it had a brake and it goes to break but neither started you had to pedal it and so it I'd get on it and pedal and go downhill a little to start or run to the side of it and then drop your valve, hold your valve open and twist your head, which would release a valve and then start, then jump on and go.

Herman Schupfer: And the next one I got is a twin cylinder one and I just forget about it. The 1912, I think it was well, it took me outside the town up there and I come down and on the dusty road there was a piece of macadam in there around Waverly come through that way. But it just of pollution. The road was just dust, but it is thick, is getting laid in the fall and it just staggers rain and right behind me and I made it home, got in a yard down at the other and I started up towards the house and then as the quit right and a sheltered way as the rain pretty soon and

Herman Schupfer: there was no rioting but the crankshaft between the two flywheels broke on the motorcycle. I right that lucky to get over for all that went through all the way there while I overhauled them and didn't get to ride it until I think it a little sometime.

Rob Moore: Wouldn't wouldn't there be a guarantee or something on it if you knew like that is.

Herman Schupfer: A second had done in the second. The first one I think it paid $85 for sold it for that the next be under 25. I think I it either for about 100 I believe it was then that the brother got the automobile at 1915. Well he was working in the garage and by the between us were not a match for the first ones with headlights and the battery starter.

Rob Moore: Well when you were, when you were a young man, what was the social life around Kendrick like? What kind of things that you do? Well,

Herman Schupfer: After school, some time on the way home, some of the boys had stopped. I know we play kids to play ball, something like that. But generally it was working or farming or how we knew something and there'd be a show in town for $0.10. Occasionally we'd go see that. And later on there was some roller skating. And a pit can be.

Herman Schupfer: We used to come up with roller skate at the end and mostly be go squirrel I than out outside or go climb the creek, go fishing, or just muck around along a creek someplace and.

Unknown Speaker: Wait around that or.

Herman Schupfer: Play ball. And the wintertime we went together, maybe plays card games or something like that because it was Sundays. They'd be neighbors get together too, and coasting. It was the snow on the ground. But after we got motorcycles, some other boys got motorcycles. We used to go out Saturday morning up up on the hill to some place for motorcycles, probably go ten.

Herman Schupfer: Something happened to them and then fix them up again. And they during the week and ride them again the following. But we used to use them on a telephone work by little then until we got the car. And then we used it. We still had to use steam until, I don't think discouraged the team till 1920 or so.

Herman Schupfer: We go. Then you'd have to go fly a river livery or rig, take out.

Rob Moore: Well there used to be Saturday night dances or anything here in Kendrick.

Herman Schupfer: Yeah, those are the dances that seemed like Country boys didn't get out very much to the dances that didn't such good dances until later on when they're done. The garage business here and one and I didn't they visited their dances and.

Rob Moore: What kind of affairs were they What kind of what kind of dances were they? Well.

Herman Schupfer: The dance in the old hall up here and then in the skating rink down at other places. They do. They have orchestra. They had a home orchestra played. I don't love old time pieces, Mr. Wall Street. What kind of morning? And some of those pieces that they had just regular dances. It was the kind that they step off.

Herman Schupfer: Now you know that the Yeah and nothing would change if somebody get on the dance floor now dressed like that. Boy, they they had them in.

Rob Moore: The house talking about the guys who used to used to ride the rails, you know, Were there ever any IWW around here?

Herman Schupfer: They used to be some go through and go to Hobo they got. So they call them all IWW. And I'll tell you, those fellows had a hard life you know, they didn't have anything. There was no sir, no welfare. Anything else is just what you'd give them now for somebody that somebody hit me up someplace, something like that, I would give them any money, but I take him in the restaurant and tell him to give this fella if they had as to what the had had some stewardship another give him, give him bonus, do knew the money for it and feed him that much.

Herman Schupfer: Well for a lot of time that give him a little more to you know that I always figured the course was was different but the whole once they just the bunch of people they didn't have anything. Times is hard now we grew up around home. Well it it just helped the neighbors. I do remember the neighbors we had that husband that grew up in the timber up here with Bovill, and he'd just get back home once or twice all winter.

Herman Schupfer: And this woman had two boys and a girl, and they had a little garden there. Well, we give them apples and and just lots of things like that. People just give them to them and help them along. And one beer, one just helped, the others are the people we knew. And I can remember some I remember people back.

Herman Schupfer: since Dan worked on telephones for Porter, that's back in 1910, 1011, go out in the country that and at the same time we tried to collect up some of the bills that people owed and maybe a fellow dollar a month What was he maybe six or 810? Though I sometimes lucky says Roy is very will give you a dollar.

Herman Schupfer: We can pay you a couple of dollars and that would be the size of it. But that seems like it always make it. But then they had then come once a year and they'd run out until the crops come in and it is it is more of a whole lot more sociability about people that if anyone was sick or the neighbors would be there and they'd bring in the soup and they'd help, you know, they were short lived like they are now.

Herman Schupfer: Now, if anyone sick, if they can't find anyone because they're on welfare and it's just hard proposition that there's people that go out, but then they're generally busy. What, few days you just about got to go to rest home or someplace? That's all right for the ones that got it. Or even if they don't have it now, they get this welfare and they're you to take care of.

Herman Schupfer: But the other days there were there was no such thing. There was a poor farm bottom article that I grew up on, a poor farmer.

Rob Moore: Was it? Well, where was that?

Herman Schupfer: Well, it was up north of Moscow. North up along the all electric railroad. Their way is out town. I used to be just a dumb name of the poor farm, and they whoever could work would do some work and they didn't. And that's where the the just up against it. They take them up to the poor farm and the county would keep them going.

Herman Schupfer: But I don't know whether anyone got any kind of money, I don't think they did. If they had asked for something they didn't have to go to poor farm and work what they could and the rest of it if they couldn't work, whether they would they were taken care of, but nothing to raise them. A person would run that poor farm on the farm at all.

Herman Schupfer: I think if I remember right and they didn't have no nice clean bread and stuff like they've got now, they just had to take care of their own. It had some blankets and stuff and I guess it's more up to them to keep them clean, one thing another and sleep in the bunkhouses and things that people younger generation, they don't know what it used to be for those people, even for the kids.

Herman Schupfer: You know, that afternoon, I know the first bicycle or bicycle I had to ride on the handlebars were broken off. I chose to take you to Woodstock. And then I tried to get at it with didn't have a coach to break the we the pendulum at around the same time. And I later bought a bicycle a couple of different ones, but there wasn't too many that even had a bicycle and that this year if I had a horse, they'll get the horse or go afoot.

Herman Schupfer: Well, if you are to go before you go in the pasture to get a horse. But it wasn't too far. By the time you went to college, you always just walked around anyway. And the But riding a horse then, wasn't the fun like to take it to be now? We had to ride horses too much. Yeah. The that was no treat but cultivate a horse all day or get it say prepare a race and sweat all the way through the hot day to get back to those days.

Herman Schupfer: It didn't take very many do to bits to complete total assets, but that was.

Unknown Speaker: About my period before this person.

Herman Schupfer: Was that out? It was the folks that were ahead. I never had any money then all that. I don't know just what they did, what really bought the first binder. I can remember the first binder I got it down downtown. I went down with them, rode down and they let me ride on the draper on the platform, coming home because I wasn't able to walk that far.

Herman Schupfer: I think they paid $50 for it on time and, paid it off, and then we run that binder and bound for other people at a dollar acre. Used to be my job if you run a lead horse or lead team as a driver, lead team and home place and a league team first, before I was able to do much, why, whoever shot, I'd be out there dragging a bundle up to him for all I could lift him up around the person that I wanted to see is able to do something.

Herman Schupfer: My yeah, you had a job and I should. I was shocked the hay those days and then the stack that and then run the threshing machine in between two stacks and trashed off of the stacks. I didn't hold it in like that did later on and sometime a be late you know, and make it fresh later on or the weather didn't hold it back from my and you know this was done stacked up and then later we had we had hay we had hay in the barn the stack you sell it for five or $6 a ton and people come after hay.

Herman Schupfer: I go fetch May and you get your $5 and that's about that. That $5 has been for a couple. Mother raised chickens and used to get about 1012 dozen take the day. I would take it to town for and things like that and well apples and potatoes and stuff like that.

Unknown Speaker: Had room gather and look at them. Put away the.

Rob Moore: Did you raise your own grain for the chicken feed or what grapes did you raise your own grain for the chicken feed.

Herman Schupfer: Yes. Yeah. Where is your own. And we've grown it. a 19 eight. I don't I, we that the warehouse there where they had a gasoline engine and we tinkered with it and we got one so we got our first, we got one in 19 eight. We had tinkered around with the machinery before and we hooked this up onto a coat shelter and we had a grinder too, that we could grind corn and grain and we had it.

Herman Schupfer: And we would usually raise or maybe six, eight, ten acres of corn and sometime would run the wagon through out there and just pull the corn is out right out there and throw them in their wagon and rest of the fodder, let it go down. Some of the some would cut it down and stack it and then it as it needed it afterwards and then sell it at the grain in there.

Herman Schupfer: We sell it with this power. So first we turn it by hand load. You want to put one in at the time and without it would sell and have corn and a granary. Feed that wheat. If we didn't thresh, keep it patch. If we and put around it and throws it with horses which drive horses around it until it stressed out.

Herman Schupfer: And if that allows it to breed enough for chicken feed but to make it always something to do apples together and sauerkraut to make and potatoes to drink. Yeah, the apple for the weather. You'll get the cows if you let them pasture. Now to bring them down through the gate, couple gates and get them in the barn and get them the feed there which fed Malcolm and fish that is skim milk and pans.

Herman Schupfer: Your mother put the milk in the pans and skin the cream off for that came separated as they get here and yes, as we grew up. Why it didn't take long. It had something there, something to do. We had a great patch. We had about four an acre grapevines had about three or four acres of orchards, fresh.

Rob Moore: Mostly apples or mostly apples.

Herman Schupfer: Mostly apples, some prunes and plums, Peach, two peaches, pears, apricots. Cherries is a good mixture Variety, really. Apples, later apples, I think Wayne Sapp, I think was are most of the labor force in Alaska feel good eating apples and would make tissue barrels of cider and two or three barrels of wine and most of it a lot of made vinegar out of it.

Herman Schupfer: The other side of those days was kind of a people come the folks that have the cider and we have cider anytime we wanted it, we didn't care for The more you get something, you don't care for it. We had bees, we had our own honey, but we take to town trade for sure. We get tired of the honey was sensational as I don't know.

Herman Schupfer: We had quite a bunch of bees one time, sold honey and anything to make a buck or to supply. And then the cannery later years, about 1913 14 interest in their can we come into town and we was always if there was anything like that, there's anything to learn to see in machinery. But I remember the cannery when the set it up and they had to put the campers in there.

Herman Schupfer: I spent quite a little time there. Just part of the time was getting ready. Do it to see how the thing work more for curiosity and I kind of help the fellow along had them stuff and she now had dusted. I remember working in a warehouse. Well, when they put the cannery in, they wanted us to take some stock in this cannery.

Herman Schupfer: This a stock company? Well, we didn't have any money to buy the stock with, and so we couldn't buy it. And they told us that, well, people had stock was going to be the ones we have and a job in this, Candy. Well, we had a job in a warehouse and they figured, well we just couldn't and couldn't take it.

Herman Schupfer: We didn't, but we had I can candidate down there and work in that warehouse and run finally come them. And they all know. So I know if I was around quite a lot with that guy, if I wouldn't come over down and see if I could get paid out, that they can leave. They couldn't keep from leaking. So I went down and I got to fix it.

Herman Schupfer: Got it. Just so it wouldn't leak. And I went back to the warehouse. I think I spent the rest of the day there keeping tabs on it like they went to warehouse was it is. So they come over again now for $0.85 an hour. If I would come down and just keep that cap rate go and, that's all I had to do with what's going well, I'll get somebody else to take my place to finish out the warehouse.

Herman Schupfer: I went down and but I didn't know I kept the cap were going. And whenever there was third, then I fired for them and whatever that was, cook them too, and everything else. And I worked the lines. Good. Pay one $0.30 now at the and they got in after good time. I would start seven in the morning but would never get a or women would quit at six.

Herman Schupfer: I believe it was five or six but then we had all that canning to do yet what this and that they had put up and then clean up and one thing and then needed never really eight or nine and there was about 100 women work there there the wall, the tomatoes and then they'd bring them in the baskets and maybe about three or four screen diggers and dump them in their dish pans and perm and put them in cans.

Herman Schupfer: And within the first grade one in the pile on there that's been up on routine went on by there where they could set them on and they go on first it pile up and then after they get enough piled, well then they started this chain and the three hitter they would go through and slow progress through here cabinet that they must have been in there, but they'd be in there about 2 minutes and get steamed up.

Herman Schupfer: Good. So they wouldn't bust when it's cooked. And they go through that and then it come to the machine and go through the machine and it usually can, if put they had a big tray. I remember right now 200 and 520 and 20 on one tier to put in to do that. 240 cans and then they put them in and cook them and then the water and then cooled them.

Herman Schupfer: But I remember the most record time I put in a little over a thousand, 10,000 cans and one day as the month of tomatoes.

Rob Moore: And.

Herman Schupfer: Get it out. And then I worked, you know, if I had a cannery in Lewiston, they had trouble down there. One time I counted other and they started at 5:00 and I'm at seven in the morning and know they wanted me to down to 2:00 in the evening. So I finished it. You had a and took me down to Clarkston and they had piled up all these canning and I got the machine adjusted and the canned all night and cooked them too.

Herman Schupfer: Then and down there, then come back again at 7:00 other and went around and then another time man in charge of it and she says they there's for the John Glenn up here has got 50 turnip prunes you'd like to sell and academy says if you want to he says we can can have after supper sometime if you want work evenings massive so as far as I'm concerned and it didn't take only a few of us would only put have hot boiling hot water on them and get them hot and kind of and gallon cans of a different machine to canned those with And so we took almost 50 cans of 50 tons of prunes

Herman Schupfer: in Canada after supper. I figured I'd done this in the gold mine that time, the wages I got in, the time I put in and that really kind of put me on the feet. I thought to be independent after that, but I went by an automobile. I then spent it again on an automobile that it had about ten.

Herman Schupfer: Then the telephone business came up. We bought it, but we had to borrow the money on that. And then I didn't know more than I had. One company bought the other would want to sell. So we took them on too, but we bought them on a longer lease at the interstate with kind of doubled up fast. But how to work in a where I am, right?

Herman Schupfer: Roger then and I worked at the warehouse and telephone and different places and then I went over and I worked in the Navy Yard over in a machine shop and the war was over. And I come back, I help different jobs out lumber office Now. Then at that time, I were up at the garage and helped on the home place, put it in.

Herman Schupfer: Now Juliana and I'd go out and teach people how to drive automobiles and sell automobiles here, and I have got there for a day or two and stay with them until my run the thing and this job job.

Rob Moore: I was like, You were the tide of progress around here.

Herman Schupfer: Yeah. And then I at the day ball and I bought out our brother in law that he was married. And either he found up here on the ridge, we bought up the garage up here, we won the garage business and rebuilt batteries and he'd done welding and overhaul cars for a year and a half, two years and a half.

Herman Schupfer: And I sold out his brother like I was. I like the outdoors better than I did Work at the meantime was the garage line work for the power company? One thing I didn't like that better for us, a lot of brothers and I went down to California and I worked down there for a telephone company and and then they come back up here and we'll talk with the notion of having them out of town.

Herman Schupfer: Did that. And the first thing I know, he said, well, he says, you have this job as long as you want to. And so I kind of temporary, but I stayed with it money. So it was more part put in and I temporary job. Temporary job lasted until I retired in 1967, 1957. I've been out in years.

Rob Moore: Not jumping back for a second, did they find out how that cannery in Juliet. A burned cannery? Yeah.

Herman Schupfer: No, I don't. It wasn't operating anymore. That the fellow that had a Dustin, he also was traveled on the road. And so.