Latah County Oral History Collection

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mary Lou knew him very well. I worked for him. Sam. He had Sam. Sam of Sam, Which, you know, Scandinavians. They always turn the bees and the devil is around.

Sam Schrager: You know.

Kenneth Wilkins: It's their average. But they were his name.

Sam Schrager: What was he like?

Kenneth Wilkins: this. he was. He was like. Like Arthur said, he was a real nice fellow, and he could hardly speak English so you could understand him. And he was the section boss for the Potlatch. And he he had a fella that worked in his crew that was just really troublesome and and quarrelsome and all with Marlon, with the men.

Kenneth Wilkins: And so he, He fired day on day. And all of them had a shovel on his shoulder. And you walked up to this fella and told him that it would be getting him out, Had a little bit of an ax, and he hit it then with that act and hit the shovel. And this come right down through his arm until his arm just barely hung on one.

Kenneth Wilkins: And you all just all just cut it off. And so but they fixed it back so that.

Dorothy Wilkins: He.

Kenneth Wilkins: Could use it.

Dorothy Wilkins: So I got at it.

Kenneth Wilkins: And then he was U.S. boss there for.

Sam Schrager: Years and years. Arthur told me that story, told me something like that. He told me that Sam shot the guy.

Kenneth Wilkins: And he shot and.

Sam Schrager: Killed him.

Dorothy Wilkins: Yeah, well.

Kenneth Wilkins: I had a pistol. He had a pistol. And and when the fella cut his arm off of the ax, he just shot him and killed him. Right there.

Sam Schrager: So that's what happened?

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, I think you told it. That's what happened.

Sam Schrager: He said something that. That Sam had just gotten that pistol back from.

Dorothy Wilkins: TP Well.

Sam Schrager: I had borrowed from.

Dorothy Wilkins: I Got it, maybe.

Kenneth Wilkins: Anyway, anyway, he happened to have it in his pocket. And and.

Dorothy Wilkins: And they find out what.

Kenneth Wilkins: He said. He just emptied it right into him. He said they said I shot him. Yeah. I had is anybody had more at the shack and.

Sam Schrager: More.

Sam Schrager: I think Arthur said I.

Dorothy Wilkins: Think I was.

Sam Schrager: Shot of.

Dorothy Wilkins: Water so get the.

Sam Schrager: Camera shot twice, three times. And it went down like a sober man.

Kenneth Wilkins: But he, but I, I remembered that, that although he was he was. You're a nice old guy.

Sam Schrager: I we're doing you come from.

Dorothy Wilkins: The right.

Sam Schrager: Party you.

Dorothy Wilkins: Know I'm sure I guess on.

Kenneth Wilkins: I would just just boy 1516 I guess I was 16 then. It's summer I worked there. There was a couple other boys work here at the track that went out from that camp. We went over a lot of hilly ground up the hill and down the hill and. And in the low places, the track would sink in the mud.

Kenneth Wilkins: So we we had to split rails, just like to do fence rails, jack the track up in the low places and put those rails underneath the track. Well, it seemed like we always found the best timber up on top of the hills and had a room. We had an old push car with load those rails on the push car, take them down to the bottom.

Kenneth Wilkins: And old Sam had a hole cut in the in the floor of the car and then he had a pistol all broken. Pakistani tapered it so that he could stick it down in there and use it for a break. And about once every two or three days we'd managed to cover up the hole on that push car so he couldn't get that stick in there.

Kenneth Wilkins: And then when we'd get it loaded, he'd jump on and we'd give him a boy. He couldn't break down there.

Sam Schrager: He could go off. And what?

Kenneth Wilkins: He'd get to the bottom, he jump.

Sam Schrager: Off and shake his fist, that he knew we did it on purpose.

Kenneth Wilkins: That it was just like everyday for a day. Or do.

Sam Schrager: You know? And then he'd forget again.

Kenneth Wilkins: we used to have a lot of fun with him.

Sam Schrager: how big was the crew that you guys had working?

Kenneth Wilkins: We only had about six or seven men. About six or seven men. And another thing we used to do, we used to be drills are supposed to be work and we'd be. And he didn't have any use for the honey he boarded in the camp. You know, they would have men worked on the crew that that live at home.

Kenneth Wilkins: And he didn't live very far from the camp and so it would just hunt drills when we but he'd send let do of us at a time go and not be trained when we'd been to be dry where the old crew would go and cut it and, and give the honey to that man and work there and he didn't have any use for himself, but he just wanted to make a good fellow out of himself, I guess.

Kenneth Wilkins: I don't.

Sam Schrager: Know.

Sam Schrager: Sounds like he doesn't. He wouldn't do hard. no.

Kenneth Wilkins: no, no. no. He he was a he used to tell us. Now, boys, he said, I don't care whether you work or not. But he said, don't sit down and keep your dues in your hands. And he said, I don't care whether you work or not. But I got a chuckle out of this one. I feel that Arthur had to say about a Sam sandwich.

Sam Schrager: Yes.

Sam Schrager: Yeah, he'd nice he'd been there for some years when you went to work for him.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah. Yeah. It had been then some time before that, he got had his arm cut and got it was all, all healed up till he could, he could use it but he, he wouldn't let any of the the Potlatch bosses know that he could use it. He'd walk around when they were never around. He'd walk around that arm and just go like that, but he could use it pretty good if you want to do it.

Sam Schrager: Is that how we got to be boss? Because he could.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well know he was boss before He was boss before. But then that just that just injured him. His job. He got hurt there on the job and.

Sam Schrager: You mean that? You mean because he'd get hurt? They they wouldn't.

Kenneth Wilkins: They would keep it and keep it. Yeah. Keep him on. And he knew that.

Sam Schrager: If.

Sam Schrager: This guy who got in a fight with Phil, he's just a troublemaker.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, Yeah, that's what they said, that he would just sort of a troublemaker always quarreling with the other other men in the crew. And he was just a just a sort of a troublemaker.

Sam Schrager: He.

Sam Schrager: How did you how did you go after three days?

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, they you find where the bees water generally they water the closest water from the tree and then you can you can watch them. They go in a straight line from from that water hole they're just raised and go in a straight line or that dry. And they're there when they fill up with water. Well, they're heavy and they fly slow and and you can just watch one and then just tell exactly what direction to go and then follow him.

Kenneth Wilkins: And and then if it's too far, then you can you can look at the trees and and kind of figure which tree is is a big tree, if it looks like it's hollow, got holes in it or anything or else you had a big box with some little honey or honeycomb in it and you'd follow that be as far as you could see him and then set this box down and then they'd start working that, that honey, and then you'd get another.

Sam Schrager: Nine on them.

Kenneth Wilkins: And then you'd, you could find the tree would you.

Sam Schrager: Trapped in the box. Once they were inside it.

Kenneth Wilkins: Sometimes. And sometimes some, some of them had a little glass lid on the box and they, the get three or four babies in there and then they'd, they watch one go and then they'd put this glass lid over and they'd watch one as far as they could go in and pick the box up and go and set it down there.

Kenneth Wilkins: And then they'd let out another one and watch that one and it wouldn't take too long. You could find the three. And there was just lots and lots of bees in that country. that was out on that ridge. It'd be south of where Arthur lays there. They were just worlds of bees in there that year.

Sam Schrager: After you find be treated in what Then you go in, you get a bunch of guys to get it done now.

Kenneth Wilkins: And it just got it down and got to get the jump right out. Or the bees were When you get Donnie out, if the bees in this thing, you're so much.

Sam Schrager: The.

Kenneth Wilkins: Levers.

Sam Schrager: Would you do to stop that you get stung.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well they run down sometimes they'd wait until night to do it, get the section out and get the bees out. But some people now, they don't seem to bother much and they go right in there, get the section out and get the honey. And the bees swarm all around them and that's not for me. They really, really got after me.

Sam Schrager: When they cut the section out. Did they would they make the honey right there? What would they do with the with the honey after Just.

Kenneth Wilkins: Just put it in the tail.

Sam Schrager: And take it back.

Kenneth Wilkins: Just take it. Yeah.

Sam Schrager: Boil it or.

Kenneth Wilkins: No, no, no. It just come right out. It was right in a comb. And you just you can just take the comb, dry it out and put them in pails and. And it is, it is good. Just the way it came out of the tree.

Sam Schrager: If you were the tree, you know, once you found it.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, some of them used to be that mom would mark the tree and then that was supposed to be theirs. And. And no one else was supposed to get it, you know? But like, we were there, we would just follow them as soon as we found them and. And take the honey.

Sam Schrager: What? When was it that you were working on the crew for?

Kenneth Wilkins: So that was in 1980, 1918.

Sam Schrager: First World War, where you work in working ten hour days?

Kenneth Wilkins: No, I was 8 hours a day, six days a week. Yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: And got down to the five day week at that time.

Sam Schrager: Did you bunk in the camp then?

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I first went to work there, everyone had to carry his own bed. And during that summer is when the company started furnishing beds for the men. But before that time, everybody had to furnish their own bed. Every old lumberjack had a bedroll, and he'd roll it up when he'd go from one camp to the other, roll that bedroll up and down the railroad track to put.

Sam Schrager: It in the.

Kenneth Wilkins: Next camp.

Sam Schrager: You remember the Were you ever in the camp before they improved those conditions?

Kenneth Wilkins: yes. yes. When I first started, you had to carry your own beds. You had an old bunk made out of just rough one, but one little straw in there. And you just roll your blankets out on that. That's where you.

Sam Schrager: Sleep.

Kenneth Wilkins: The bed bugs. you can imagine. Or who didn't have any running water. Never, ever bunkhouse had a water pal and and a wash dam in the corner or you you carry your own drinking water and use that old in wash basin and that had to keep the newspaper over the water bucket to keep bedbugs out of it.

Kenneth Wilkins: They'd fall down in the ceiling, in the water.

Sam Schrager: Their other.

Dorothy Wilkins: Yeah.

Sam Schrager: And men just live with that.

Kenneth Wilkins: yeah. Well I had to take that.

Sam Schrager: Job.

Kenneth Wilkins: In the summertime. There a lot of people just take their blankets and move out underneath the trees and on get away from the bedbugs out of those old bunkhouses.

Dorothy Wilkins: But don't get too out there.

Dorothy Wilkins: You mind telling all the fella out there about you have a yellow jacket for that?

Kenneth Wilkins: you know, they. I worked in one camp where they. They hold a lunch up to us at noon with a dean on a wagon, and it was supposed to be a hot lunch. They'd have a big round can full of potatoes and another one full of meat and another one full of gravy and so on. And. And it it'd be hot when they'd leave the camp, but it wouldn't be very hot down.

Kenneth Wilkins: They'd get to the woods with it. They had a great big tent that supposed to use to eat lunch in and they had tables in there and the yellow jackets. I think that you just couldn't eat any meat when that when that team would come in, there was somebody grabbed that can of meat and just start out through the woods and just scatter out there and let the yellow jackets have that you could lead any meat.

Kenneth Wilkins: That's all there was to it. They were just getting plowed. And the same way with that tent, you couldn't eat in there because it was just thick in there with it. So if everybody get their plate filled and then just take to the the woods and get out of the way from that campground little ways and try to eat.

Sam Schrager: That some.

Sam Schrager: Was like an awful tough word.

Sam Schrager: yeah.

Sam Schrager: It's one thing to hear talk about low wages, but it's nothing.

Sam Schrager: To talk about.

Sam Schrager: Going through scenarios today. And it could.

Sam Schrager: Well, that was.

Kenneth Wilkins: It was low wages. Do we get $0.50 an hour then?

Sam Schrager: Did the did you know men that had gears for dinner, how to keep bedbugs off from them, that kind of thing? I heard one somebody told me once that they had a vial of mercury in it that they thought would protect them.

Kenneth Wilkins: No, I never I never knew of any.

Sam Schrager: I.

Kenneth Wilkins: Never knew of any.

Dorothy Wilkins: Hope that they ever got rid of until I got the DDT, you.

Sam Schrager: Know, or about how they used to strip their underclothes off and throw it against the wall. And it stuck with it changed and.

Sam Schrager: Yeah.

Dorothy Wilkins: Yeah, I saw your leg.

Sam Schrager: In.

Kenneth Wilkins: One or fell in one camp I worked in and had lice. And so every every morning he pulled his undershirt off and turned it wrong side out and put it back on. You said I have to work for 11. He's had those so and so. Life can do the same.

Sam Schrager: What would you do when you're in there in a camp with no with no place to wash or anything? I mean, how would you how would you cope with the bedbugs?

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, you just endured them. That was all. You just had a little old tin washbasin. And. And he. That was it.

Sam Schrager: It.

Kenneth Wilkins: You carried your own water, maybe from the creek or or from the source that they had for the cookout. That was the first camp I had No no running water at all. And later, they they always nearly, always had running water.

Sam Schrager: After a few years, we don't get to come home very often.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, well, you're good. You had to.

Sam Schrager: Walk.

Dorothy Wilkins: In there.

Kenneth Wilkins: No dried predation. I've worked in camps up the other side, Elmer. And. And Saturday night after supper, you just start down the railroad track and walk down here after work Saturday night and then walk back Sunday night. Think nothing of it.

Sam Schrager: I

Kenneth Wilkins: Now then, that would be quite a journey, you know.

Sam Schrager: Probably get cleaned up when you.

Kenneth Wilkins: Got home. yes. You'd come home Saturday night yet cleaned up and clean clothes and whatnot and then go back again. But in the wintertime, of course, you didn't always get home every week to do much. No hard walking. You wouldn't make it every week.

Sam Schrager: Was Sam Savage different from most of the foremen and not not expecting too much of his crew?

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah. Yes, he was he he was different than most foremen. And that in that way. And of course you see his he only had a real small crew and the and didn't have anything to do with the actual logging. He was just keeping up the railroad.

Sam Schrager: With the other guys in the crew like you. Were they local boys.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, they were. They were all, all local local boys that worked there.

Sam Schrager: I was going to ask you, did did the IWW have much to do with this improving of conditions when you were in the care?

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, yeah. Well, that was the I think the beginning of it was the either that was that was the I think the really the kind of the forerunner of the of the labor unions and they, they had a lot to do I think with the cleaning up those camps and, and the furnishing the beds for the men and so on, I think they had a lot to do with that.

Sam Schrager: Did you hear about them when you were working in the woods? Did you hear about the.

Kenneth Wilkins: yes. Yeah, we heard I've heard a lot about them. But they didn't they didn't bother any around around the this part of the country as far as the timber work was concerned. But they did most of their damage in the farming areas and the trash machines and they were supposed to have burned up several trash machines and things like that.

Kenneth Wilkins: But the Potlatch had a organization that you had to do join in order to work for them. They called them the loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumberman for hours. And when you were at the camp and you got a job, you had join the four owls and they gave you a button for our old on it and you had to wear of acid where that button does go to show that you are your loyal citizen.

Sam Schrager: You know, as.

Sam Schrager: Did the men by that, pretty much. Did they do they believe it or they just didn't get along?

Kenneth Wilkins: Just went along in order to get a job. They just let along with it.

Sam Schrager: No. Well.

Sam Schrager: Do you think a lot of those guys belong to the lobbies?

Kenneth Wilkins: I don't think very many of them that they worked in the woods. If they were in these camps up here, there was very, very few because they were they were never any trouble around here that I know of. I saw a good picture of all Arthur in that.

Sam Schrager: Yeah, it really is. Would visited him now day after I stopped. yeah I read in this booklet and seen it.

Kenneth Wilkins: yeah. And then it Yes I read it.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: Quite an Arthur.

Sam Schrager: Would you tell me again about how your grandfather came into this country.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah. Well he came from, he came from Indiana and they, I think he had some relatives that lived over here at Marshall Washington and anyway, that's where they, they spent the first winter and then they, they were looking for their land, the homestead. And so he, he came up the Blue River where these gold miners over the other side of the divide here were mining gold.

Kenneth Wilkins: They had a sort of a road from from Colfax of the Blue River, and then came over the divide this way and located on this little creek over here on Bear Creek. And he told me that I asked him why he came to this part of the country. I tell you, surely. Good, good. They found better farmland than up here.

Kenneth Wilkins: And this timber? Well, he said there there were three things we were looking for. He said we had to have timber to build with and we had to have water and then we wanted some open ground that was fairly easy to clear so they could get some land in cultivation and they found some fairly open timber, almost natural meadows on this little creek.

Kenneth Wilkins: And so that's where they homesteaded. He and his brother in law came in here together.

Sam Schrager: Did you tell me he's the first man.

Kenneth Wilkins: In this county? Yeah, he was. He was the first man in here. Came in in 1884. And there's no other homesteaders here. And he went back to Marshall and spent the winter. And then the next spring, he came back. And then there was by that time there was two or three others in here. And then from then on it settled up real fast.

Sam Schrager: Where abouts was, was his the first place that he located here?

Kenneth Wilkins: I it, it's just about double or maybe three miles, right straight or more straight east here on on Bear Creek. But they're right at the foot of those mountains there.

Sam Schrager: And when you say you the first man in this area, you you talk about from there, clear over to here and around Avon.

Kenneth Wilkins: Around the Avon, around Avon country. And I don't know others, anyone around the dairy area then or not. But if there was they were very, very few.

Sam Schrager: How how did you describe tell you what the what the country was like when you first came here.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, he said the there was no underbrush like there is now. And he said that all open timber. He said you could just take demon or wagon and and just start out in the general direction you want to go and just go there. You said you had to drive around the drawers and that was about the only thing is that you could just drive a demon wagon right out through the timber anywhere.

Kenneth Wilkins: The Indians evidently kept it burned off. That's what I've always heard, that they kept the underbrush down and it was there was nowhere near the game in this country then there is now, because there was no like deer now, because there was no brush or fiddle. And that's what they need, as is the brush.

Sam Schrager: What would your grandfather's name?

Kenneth Wilkins: Lunsford. Lunsford.

Sam Schrager: James Lunsford seemed like he you know, what it felt like to be the first man to settle in a country where just about nobody else.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, I don't know. He never he never said much about it. He didn't go to like say he and his brother in law ever came in together and his brother in law settled on this this little creek over here. Or when Dennis leaves, I don't know, you know, or when Dennis leaves or not. But is his brother in law?

Kenneth Wilkins: Homestead was over there on that little creek and and my granddad were on this mercury.

Sam Schrager: Were they fairly close together?

Kenneth Wilkins: They're all they're about four miles apart, I guess. Lower elbow. yeah.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: But you see for the first few years it was in here, there were no, no roads, there was a settlement in Moscow at that time but there was no road between and they, they still went back to go back to do their trade and get their mail. But then after the railroad come through. Why, Troy? Why then down through Troy?

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, then they got a road through that way from Troy up to there involved L.

Dorothy Wilkins: Over $1,000,000 in here.

Kenneth Wilkins: He would later, I don't know, just when they were down in Denver find when he came in.

Sam Schrager: Here.

Sam Schrager: He.

Kenneth Wilkins: Was after the, after the railroad went through to Moscow before he came in.

Sam Schrager: Do you think your grandfather built a home in Canton right away?

Kenneth Wilkins: yeah. Yeah. How you build a cabin and. And a log barn and log cabin. And I don't know how long you lived in the first one. And then he built the second house and lived in that for several years. And later on in the third house, he had rebuilt three different houses on his homestead. And he built a barn.

Kenneth Wilkins: In 1906. He built a pretty good sized barn, and then he built his new house. After that, several years after that.

Sam Schrager: Did he ever talk to you about what it was like getting by in those first first years and how he how he managed it?

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, not not too much. He said they used to you used to hunt game and fish a lot and then after they'd been here a few years, well, they would go back to Colfax to harvest in harvest time and make enough money to live on land next year, bring back a year's supply of groceries, and take their team and wagon and go to Colfax and harvest.

Kenneth Wilkins: And I can remember on that come back from harvest. His youngest boy, the my uncle, when he got old enough that they could deem or they had duty and they'd go to Colfax and and work in the harvest and bring back their whole wagon load full of groceries and flour and whatnot. Left a whole year, but they had a pretty rough going.

Kenneth Wilkins: I'm sure.

Dorothy Wilkins: And so not really knowing it when they started in there.

Kenneth Wilkins: When I, I guess I told you about that time they had a little girl about 16.

Sam Schrager: That's what I like to hear that.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, I mean, really had that he had had two children by that time. The oldest one was a girl and he was about two years old and and then the baby was real small and he'd gone to Colfax to harvest and this girl got real sick. And so a mrs. Bower left the baby in bed and carried the girl overturned neighbors.

Kenneth Wilkins: It was a sort of a practical nurse and got her to go to a doctor up and and then carried her back again and that day or the day before it had rained and gold bags, liquor and harvest. So Billy borrowed a saddle and rode home to see how the family was getting along and found out this girl was sick.

Kenneth Wilkins: So he put that horse in the barn and got another one and rode try and got to medicine and rode back and just traded the horses again and started right back for gold bags if you've ever been. well, it's. It's 50 miles from here to Colfax, so you roll over the at least 125 miles without any rest.

Sam Schrager: But what were.

Sam Schrager: You tell me about how he came into this when he came into this country. You say he he had a harder road than most people do. Start going because the better land had been taken by the. He was one of the last of the homesteaders that started it. That what you doing? No.

Kenneth Wilkins: You he wasn't he wasn't too far behind the others. That is much later than the others he did. Lay got pretty good land, only some of it just a little steep up there on the side. But you know.

Sam Schrager: But.

Kenneth Wilkins: But he was he wasn't so much later than the others. But they just had real, real tough going, you know? No no way to make any money. My granddad said when the hard money's concerned, he said we didn't need any we didn't have any place expended.

Dorothy Wilkins: And they took from it wild strawberries and cattle.

Kenneth Wilkins: yeah, this is Mr. Bauer told me that said the only fruit they had was huckleberries and and wild strawberries. They'd pick their little wild strawberries. You can now.

Dorothy Wilkins: Away with getting that.

Sam Schrager: Really that.

Sam Schrager: they're small.

Kenneth Wilkins: yeah. They're just real small and.

Dorothy Wilkins: Then they, they take a wild cranberry. Yeah. Now he told me that.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. He didn't. You see that. Didn't you tell me that he when you're with your grandfather, work for money and didn't know.

Kenneth Wilkins: What to do. Yeah. He said after he'd been here a couple, three years. Was a man homesteaded in here and, and hired him to split some trails. And he said when I got through he said he paid with money and he said I didn't know what to do with it.

Dorothy Wilkins: Real feller.

Sam Schrager: Yeah, well he knew that because all the work they did with.

Kenneth Wilkins: Exchange just exchange work, you know, And again, that was a good hunter and the other neighbors would come and work for him and get him to hunt for them. The element here.

Sam Schrager: He.

Kenneth Wilkins: They just everybody just exchanged work and helped one another.

Dorothy Wilkins: That when we were here too.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, it was much different when we came here. But 47 years ago when we moved in here and it was just about the same.

Dorothy Wilkins: Areas.

Sam Schrager: And these kids.

Dorothy Wilkins: As one another boy be in there and.

Sam Schrager: You know, he's a distinguished looking.

Dorothy Wilkins: Like, yeah, you probably never get him to laugh aloud. He chuckle. Well, you know, but he wouldn't laugh aloud at all. So one time he grew corn short corn and had little ears so big. And I and I didn't farm for a long time. And boy, I was really eating corn. And I thought, boy, I've never looked at a grizzly pyle.

Dorothy Wilkins: But he gathered up from the rest the people and put by my plate, you know.

Sam Schrager: It's kind of what was. Do tell me about Billy Bowers hunting.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, they they tell about him in the wintertime you know, in a deer drive. And he'd follow that track until it got too dark that he couldn't see and, and he'd just stop under a tree and wait till daylight and keep right on that same track. Billy, run that deer down. Well, it was just. Just a case of have to.

Kenneth Wilkins: They just had to have it moved, you know, they almost had to have it.

Sam Schrager: Or did Billy have Billy Bowers have more kids or.

Kenneth Wilkins: yeah, he had a big family. let's see. You know. Yeah, they had kids all together.

Sam Schrager: Was it harder for him and for a lot of other people on the side?

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, I don't. I don't know what. It was much different. You know, she had that big family to support, but until they got big enough to work on, those kids got big enough to work or they help, which the all the kids had to do. And, you know, they they wouldn't even have school during home the year when the kids were needed at home, they would have a split school year.

Kenneth Wilkins: They'd have maybe three months in the winter. Then late spring when the kids could work, what they.

Dorothy Wilkins: Did, why.

Kenneth Wilkins: They didn't have school.

Sam Schrager: Yeah.

Dorothy Wilkins: I didn't realize it was starvation. I don't even to work.

Sam Schrager: From.

Sam Schrager: In here school at all during the time of work and.

Kenneth Wilkins: No longer long time, the year when they could. Kids could work in the field. Why they they didn't have school.

Sam Schrager: what was that? Seeing that you told me before about, living on.

Sam Schrager: What? 011.

Kenneth Wilkins: Said that he said of, how they that is that. Yeah. He said I lived all last winter on Fridays, no balls and boiled rabbit drags.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. That's, Yeah.

Sam Schrager: Well what kind of local industry was it before the railroad came in? Four or five.

Kenneth Wilkins: And it just was none. There was cut.

Dorothy Wilkins: Wood and they and.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, not that before the railroad came there wasn't any, but after they got a road through to Troy they used to cut wood and all that Roy do and tell the wood and they'd get the, they get probably a dollar and a half record for the wood in Troy and the road were good. They kept the they can haul about one and a half cord and then it take a day two for a man to make that much so he'd he'd work two days for a dollar and a half.

Dorothy Wilkins: It was you know.

Kenneth Wilkins: The the first, the there was a homesteader homesteaded right there south of here and he had the first hay baler in the country and he would Baileys hay and stored in the barn and then in the wintertime he'd want that a all to dry and he'd pay $0.50 a ton to get that hay all dry. And my granddad said that he just let it be known around the neighborhood that he's ready to hold his hay and anyone wanted to haul what come with their dreams and sleds.

Kenneth Wilkins: And he said, if you got there in time to get a load, you had to get their way before daylight. They'd just swarm in there to do all that hay for 50 cent down there to dry.

Sam Schrager: How much hay you think you could haul on a wagon?

Kenneth Wilkins: Well beyond the sled in the wintertime made all the they probably could haul one and a half ton with a D it's the road broke out pretty good to make about $0.75.

Sam Schrager: A.

Sam Schrager: Mosey with it often pretty tough to get from here to Troy.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well leveled off. Awful hilly. You see they had no way to no way to grade the roads out of this ideal. So then you have to go straight up the hill, one hill down the other. And there was lots of hills. But the the it did an awful lot of hauling. after the railroad got into dry lumber and wood then folks and everything like that, they lay in the summertime, the dust would be about a foot deep.

Kenneth Wilkins: And then the spring in the fall, the mud would be almost how deep on the wagon?

Sam Schrager: well.

Sam Schrager: How do you think homes, homesteader, like your grandfather would have built up his place through the years with? He started with the cow maybe, and cleared up just a few acres and would have grown from there.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, they cleared the land just as fast as they could clear and got the in the hay and and cattle the same way they, I don't know, very broadly start in cattle that they had to come from down that Colfax country some place I suppose. But by the time the railroad came through here 1960 had quite a few cattle and then he would be for the.

Sam Schrager: Railroad.

Kenneth Wilkins: And he got a pretty good start that way. And he got a good market for his, for his cattle.

Dorothy Wilkins: And it cleared land and green orchards.

Kenneth Wilkins: All they had and every one of these homesteaders had a good orchard. They tried to be as self-sufficient as they could, raise their own gardens and and orchards and everything at that time.

Sam Schrager: So it was for home use or for all.

Kenneth Wilkins: For home use? Yeah. I don't think they ever sold anything with cattle.

Sam Schrager: More of a, way of making a living for people. And then crop was or was was hay the main crop.

Kenneth Wilkins: Hay and cattle was the main, main crops. Yeah.

Dorothy Wilkins: Well then, then your granddad raised the hay for the camps too.

Kenneth Wilkins: yeah. When the after the Potlatch came in. Well then there was a good market for the hay for the horses and he used to sell hay over fall to the potlatch.

Sam Schrager: So before the, before they came in with the pot when Potlatch came in with the railroad the only market was wood you could sell out of Troy and shit shipped from Troy pretty much.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, I don't think there was. I'm not even sure there was a road due to Troy before the. Yes, there was the the railroad. The railroad went from down through Moscow and Troy and Kendrick before they were there were railroad up through here and after that railroad went in there, well then they had or they made a road up through to the dairy in Bovill.

Kenneth Wilkins: And so they had a market there before they were this railroad came through here. This one came through in 1906.

Sam Schrager: See.

Kenneth Wilkins: We'd been here 20 years, but that time so there was a there their first market was, was down in that country. Troy, Moscow.

Sam Schrager: What about the community at Avon? When did that start Get going.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well ahead of town before the railroad came through, there was a there was another town of the the road here about a mile, and it was a pretty good sized town. And the town there before there was a town in Dairy. And then when the railroad came through, they put the station down or Avon is now and then they moved the post office down there where the station was.

Kenneth Wilkins: And then the original town, just all of that. But there was a pretty good sized town there before there's ever a town and dairy there.

Dorothy Wilkins: They have they have a bank or anything there. They had no store. I remember they.

Sam Schrager: Had a.

Kenneth Wilkins: Meat market general store, dance hall and livery stable and, and the barber shop and the saloon or so. And I don't know what all that did out there.

Sam Schrager: This is the old Avon.

Kenneth Wilkins: The old.

Sam Schrager: Avon. Where is the old Avon located from Frozen Avon.

Kenneth Wilkins: I that's, it'd be.

Sam Schrager: just south.

Kenneth Wilkins: Southeast, a little just southeast of the old Avon, about maybe a mile.

Dorothy Wilkins: From one cemetery is no.

Sam Schrager: For any record. Any more of that or with, you know, buildings.

Kenneth Wilkins: No, no buildings left at all anymore. It's the buildings are all gone. And they're they're. They're farming over the land now.

Sam Schrager: And many people live right in that little town there mean.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yes, there were there was a quite a few houses and quite a few people live there. In fact, this the second Avon at one time there was 42 people lived there. Or now there's one that shakes there.

Dorothy Wilkins: Now are a lot more. The Avon there. Now there isn't anything there now, but they had a store and post office and.

Kenneth Wilkins: At one time they had do pretty good size stores there. At one time. I see. In here. Thank you, dear. In 19 six, about the time the railroad came through, and that certainly wasn't much there then.

Dorothy Wilkins: Was the name of the station down here. There was that.

Kenneth Wilkins: Venture.

Dorothy Wilkins: From the railroad and they come through, they named all of the little stations along by,

Kenneth Wilkins: Schools.

Dorothy Wilkins: Colleges, colleges started, Harvard. Yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: There was.

Sam Schrager: Princeton.

Kenneth Wilkins: Harvard, Wellesley, Yale there for Cornell. And then the, stations all after the colleges.

Sam Schrager: For Avon lost at Vassar.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, the post office, they long and then the station is called Vassar. But the post office kept the name of Avon there. They're supposed to have in the first lecture, the first house. It was in Avon.

Sam Schrager: That it park? Yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: It was down.

Sam Schrager: To.

Kenneth Wilkins: The Elbert Meyers owned. So I now I can remember that house for hadn't been too many years ago since that was torn down.

Sam Schrager: So Avon was a was really quite a big drawing place.

Kenneth Wilkins: For the country. Yes, it was you know, this it was the.

Sam Schrager: Was their family on every 160 men.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, at one time or another, there was there was a family on on just about every quarter section. And there were just a lot of people around this country are more than there are now.

Dorothy Wilkins: There were the school.

Sam Schrager: Was the.

Dorothy Wilkins: School.

Kenneth Wilkins: Where was it? Well, the first school was right over there by where the old church building is now. And when the railroad came through by, the railroad went right beside the schoolhouse. So they tore or they moved the schoolhouse and up on the hill.

Dorothy Wilkins: We had to do different rooms and everything here.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, but at first they were only one. when I started the school there, there's about 45 kids. I went to that school and in one room all eight grades and one teacher.

Sam Schrager: But I don't know who you feel more sorry for it. Kids are.

Sam Schrager: 40.

Sam Schrager: Five.

Kenneth Wilkins: Or 35 kids and one year.

Dorothy Wilkins: You just can't keep straight. All of them pretty.

Kenneth Wilkins: I started the school there in 1908, and the teacher that was teaching then died here about two months ago.

Dorothy Wilkins: I went over.

Kenneth Wilkins: Not do three months ago. Florence, Denver or, you know.

Sam Schrager: I knew over.

Kenneth Wilkins: And over she lived in Troy. Her husband had the first service station in dry over.

Dorothy Wilkins: Where he'd been and had the wrong lady.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. What do you remember about those early years? You spent school there?

Dorothy Wilkins: Maybe just down that bad?

Sam Schrager: Well.

Kenneth Wilkins: I don't know. It it was it was different than have now you know.

Dorothy Wilkins: Where any girl that.

Kenneth Wilkins: Already had never.

Sam Schrager: Used.

Kenneth Wilkins: The boys, especially they had day out and worked some much, you know, that time they got through the eighth grade, they were grown men. Some of them had a big old stove and sat in one corner real cold. They've all had to move up around the stove. Good heat through with that one stove.

Dorothy Wilkins: And the kids all worked out and tried to get wet. So the stove where you take your examinations and take them.

Sam Schrager: Now, the kids knew each other a lot better than they did later in the big schools, but it seems to me like that would be a pretty hard situation to figure out. Learning.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, you see it did you did. You wouldn't have any time at all just then with with individual kids. I see I'm down to the assigned lessons for eighth graders and they hear them all recite their lessons and so on. Why the they'd be gone and, you know, no time the little kids.

Dorothy Wilkins: So the kids.

Kenneth Wilkins: Are. yes, she the the big girls always had their teacher. See, they'd they'd correct papers and probably each teach the smaller grade because just one person just couldn't do it all by themselves. You know.

Sam Schrager: Were there many kids in school that didn't speak English when they started because. No.

Kenneth Wilkins: No, they they all they all spoke English. From the time I started the school, some of their parents couldn't speak English. Very good. But the kids all good, Great. Many of them were Scandinavians around this part of the country Norwegian, Swedes, Danish.

Sam Schrager: But those folks is hard working with. Some people say.

Kenneth Wilkins: yeah, they, they, they, they were those especially those people from those Scandinavian countries were sure hard workers workers.

Dorothy Wilkins: When they clear off this land by hand. I work with kids that do all of our work.

Sam Schrager: They have to clear the land. Which around here. I mean, was it just a stunt? Stunt or.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, for my men, we didn't have tumblers we'd we had at LAX and a grab hole and you'd grab that the small ones and farmed around the big ones. And it's all about the well, not too many years ago there's a couple of farmers down, one of them as the other one. Well, they said you got your crop in and yeah, they said almost only got nine stumps left.

Kenneth Wilkins: Just farm around this down there. You could burn them out or they dropped out, you know.

Dorothy Wilkins: this is fantastic. Now what you're saying. we used.

Sam Schrager: To do.

Dorothy Wilkins: In the way the threat and what is right nowadays.

Kenneth Wilkins: But this and I can remember my granddad trash grain with a flail and on the barn floor the big old canvas he laid out on the barn floor and put the grain on there and beat it out with a flail and pitchfork. Get the straw on the the straw of the cattle. And then you have the grain.

Sam Schrager: So what do you do with this grain?

Kenneth Wilkins: All grain to feed the horses. Money. When he worked, the horse was hard. Well, they had to have oats, so he i it out with the flail about.

Dorothy Wilkins: I just said.

Unknown Speaker: In my Hail Mary.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well he did the threshing. You see all of the horses were working hard and they didn't get grain then. And then he had the straw to feed the to the cattle.

Dorothy Wilkins: Referred to him. But the hay, all our hay grain and big stack like this. And then I remember the visionary about ten or.

Sam Schrager: One said that you first came here in.

Kenneth Wilkins: 1928.

Sam Schrager: And threshing machine was still going strong and now you remember you did you know Joe well?

Kenneth Wilkins: yes. Yeah, I, I knew him well. The old Jack Conroy and Mary.

Sam Schrager: Didn't have much of the logging operation.

Kenneth Wilkins: Joe Yes, he used to do a log quite a little bit. I think there's a picture of me right in here and, and around. Picture it don't just cry. And there are logging operations. There's a picture of Joe and Nationwide, they log somewhat different than they do now. Do they own all horses? Deck those logs and pile them up there in a pile?

Sam Schrager: Well, Joe and Lou had the they called it a halfway house right here. Early days.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah. Yo, yo. And he and his wife run that his wife was she was supposed to be a pretty good cook.

Dorothy Wilkins: That lived on the farm.

Kenneth Wilkins: Area. No, that was the daughter. Mary was the daughter and the Joe. And I think his wife's name was Lou. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker: Joe and Lou.

Dorothy Wilkins: Or is he the one that did he. And after only their own apartment.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. Yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: He used to make fun of the sweet Joe. He said the only difference between the nigger and the Swede. He said the Swede is a nigger. Turn wrong right out.

Sam Schrager: The black is.

Kenneth Wilkins: Then after they got back in dairy, the old banker's name was harsh. And the Joe, he said, you know, for a long time he an old man, ah, she said, was the only white folks in dairy. You said all the are Swedes.

Sam Schrager: And I take it harsh wasn't the Swede?

Kenneth Wilkins: No, Swede.

Sam Schrager: I say Joe drank a lot too.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, he did. He used to drink quite a little.

Sam Schrager: If you ever heard those stories about Joe, stand up to Marshall Used and Roy, right.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, I've. I've heard stories about the Joe Welch and and Krueger, Jack Sterban, how they used to do go on a bender and just about break it down like dry it and they tell a story one time they would and went to dry and and they were running their horses up and down the street and shooting the gun down there.

Kenneth Wilkins: And the old marshal come out and take a few shots at him. That was at night and all Joe, he was telling about it to them all they know the better and try to shoot a nigger after dark.

Sam Schrager: So that's the.

Sam Schrager: Sound. Like Joe didn't mind poking fun at his own color. No, no. Anybody else?

Dorothy Wilkins: Even though everybody except him just like that, they were white. Yeah.

Sam Schrager: That's what I've heard. How real? Real. Well, like they were.

Dorothy Wilkins: Except I was Mary Wells when we first came here around the. You showed me. She said, You don't think I have any white skin, do you? You show me your hands at all. Her hands are white and it's old. And her feet sure skews our So her feet kids. And they're pretty poor. I thought with from my dad working here.

Dorothy Wilkins: You can work with my dad. When he first went to work at.

Sam Schrager: Which she the the first black person that you you know.

Dorothy Wilkins: Well I kind of yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah. Well, the first first nigger that I ever saw.

Sam Schrager: So.

Kenneth Wilkins: Far as I know, they were the only Negroes in this part of the country.

Sam Schrager: That time. Was Joe really a strong man?

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, I don't know. This is a very strong. He wasn't very big. You are what you'd call a big man.

Sam Schrager: So I've been told that he was no arms of a couple other people told me that it was Chuck that was. But it wasn't especially strong.

Kenneth Wilkins: So yeah, of course, was a lot bigger than his dad. And I don't know how it would work for. For strength. But Joe really wasn't a big man.

Sam Schrager: Well, his Cuba Jack was pretty big. He was.

Kenneth Wilkins: He was a big man that when he was in working condition, he weighed £325. They said, Hey, they must have a fellow.

Dorothy Wilkins: If he's really strong. I'll say he was really strong.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, he was a strong man. And the the Joe wasn't a big man.

Dorothy Wilkins: Would they come around together?

Kenneth Wilkins: yeah, I've heard.

Dorothy Wilkins: Yeah. Talking about the crew together.

Kenneth Wilkins: They used to run around together, get drunk together.

Sam Schrager: And.

Sam Schrager: This Cougar Jack story and how he got his name here and called Cougar.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, I've heard that he was hauling cordwood with the demons sled, and they had sled stakes. The whole. The cordwood on that just fit in a steak pocket. And he killed a cougar with one of those sled sticks. I said, And that's where he supposed to have gotten his name to Jack.

Dorothy Wilkins: You know, to give him the address of somebody else. No way.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yes, I got an address of a woman and then and your sisters and brother. But I never knew her.

Dorothy Wilkins: George.

Kenneth Wilkins: That is George, your sister. As you said, she went to school with one of the the the younger the youngest boy. She went to school with him and tells about her in here that on killed over there and in the mine see that was just just across the ridge here and there's there's gold mines.

Sam Schrager: You know about the mica mica mountain.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yes. Where I, I afraid they're with the wagon all the supplies up and the building materials all the mica down. And my dad fainted there years ago. along about 1910 when he was used all up there.

Dorothy Wilkins: Know they used to have a, like I said, have been dairy farmers and.

Kenneth Wilkins: As during the war, they had they, when they run those mines or they, they used to cut the mica there.

Sam Schrager: But.

Kenneth Wilkins: When they first started those mines before they ever had any road up there, they used to pack that mike out on pack horses for they got a road up there.

Sam Schrager: Was it one man that had the in the mines all there.

Kenneth Wilkins: There were several, several people. The had mines in there. It was just a great many different the different claims that they what they call the Muscovite was the only one that ever really paid. It has had the best quality Mica, the years a list of all the different one Muscovite and the bent Noella the maybe Levi Anderson, the morning star sunshine Avon and one mine Nicole the Avon mine.

Sam Schrager: I realized there were so many it wasn't easy to mine.

Kenneth Wilkins: For the you know. Well, at first, at first they were just pit mining, open pit mostly. And that's where they got the best MICA It seems all they want. It gets very much depth. Why the the pressure on the shatters or the mica and that it isn't clear and the at first they they had an open pit up there and they just got a lot of real good make it great big books of it and and then all the time they've run it lately now during the war time when the government would pay a pay a subsidy and then the only time they can afford do they run it?

Sam Schrager: Was there much of a market for it in the when they were first mining it.

Kenneth Wilkins: When they when they first minded on they had the real good grade while there was a there was a good market for it. You know, they first the automobiles had come out, had the old side curtains and and they had the what they call icing glass. You know, they split that thing and and make the windows out of that.

Kenneth Wilkins: And then the heater stoves all had, I think, glass, fronts on them, a little window so you could see the flames.

Dorothy Wilkins: Then they would later use that market for they remind them, well that's what they put over and they.

Kenneth Wilkins: They, and they also also used it for actual grease and made real good actual grease. And then they had the wagons pass now and there's no, no demand for actual grease. So and then they I think they use in some in paint too of some kind.

Sam Schrager: Did the mines employ many people up there work.

Kenneth Wilkins: they had they had the at first they quite a few men worked up there but.

Dorothy Wilkins: There quite a few.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well I suppose they had 25 crew of probably 25 men or better up there When I first knew those mines.

Sam Schrager: 25 for all of them.

Kenneth Wilkins: 25 for the for the Muscovite and the others were had a few but the, the Muscovite was the only one that ever did really did pay.

Dorothy Wilkins: And that where you haul from you know.

Sam Schrager: All these miners just local fellas.

Kenneth Wilkins: Most of them most were just. Yes the local people from right around here they there were some Englishmen that came in here, worked in the mines that came here for that purpose. English miners at one time. But for the most part, they were just just the natives.

Sam Schrager: What was the social life like here, you think, in the in the early days? What social life?

Dorothy Wilkins: Well, I think they had better times. Time to do now.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, at the when I was small, they had what they call literary societies or if they had the old schoolhouse on every Saturday, they would have, either a program of some description or else else a debate. And they would great for debates and they'd have evading teams and, and they would choose a subject one one Saturday night for the, for the following Saturday, and then they'd have debates and, and, and of course, however they lunch and just an opportunity I think more to get together to visit than anything else.

Dorothy Wilkins: And apply social and then they had dances.

Sam Schrager: Do they have dances too in the schoolhouse when you were young.

Kenneth Wilkins: And I don't remember there ever had that fitness grew out of the dances in the homes or they had the big enough house, or they did have house parties and dances in the in the homes.

Dorothy Wilkins: And so on. Yeah, the party stayed for breakfast. This when you first came here. Yeah. Yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: During, during the Depression, you know, we had the, we had to furnish our own amusement then just same as these early homesteaders did when they first came here. Yeah.

Dorothy Wilkins: This house, when we first got it, had all folklore around the door when you just made a big circle and had a musician in one room. And of the time you couldn't hardly hear, but you would go around, shut all the door. We didn't do that.

Sam Schrager: Now, are you saying that that there was less you had to depend on yourselves more during the Depression for entertainment than, say, like during the twenties, before the Depression. Yes.

Kenneth Wilkins: yes. during. During the Depression. Why? You didn't have any money and you couldn't. You couldn't write your anywhere or or buy anything. So we, we just had to furnish our own amusement. We had baseball teams and house parties and things of that kind that didn't take any money, you know, because we just didn't have any. And no way to get any either.

Dorothy Wilkins: Where people visited nor, you know, locally they do now, there now you get the car and you know.

Kenneth Wilkins: You want to see your neighbor. Now you go to town, you see your neighbor on the street that.

Dorothy Wilkins: Came.

Sam Schrager: The was the depression during those years. Was it really were they really hard years for people around here to get by or was was it could you get by without any money. Okay. By trading that.

Kenneth Wilkins: You traded you traded around the community and we all had had lots do. Yes, everybody had plenty to eat. But you didn't have anything that money, you get kind of ragged sometimes because you couldn't buy any clothes, but everybody had plenty to either. If one person had a surplus and one thing why they would trade with the neighbors.

Kenneth Wilkins: And so everybody had had plenty to eat.

Dorothy Wilkins: Down on the road of the trading things or.

Kenneth Wilkins: There were some farmers that farm down here on marriage and their raised a lot of beans in that country that time. And so they couldn't sell their beans and they came up in this country trying to sell beans and come in here and wanted to sell me some beans. And and I thought it was, I don't know, the money to buy beans, but I said, I've got some winter pigs.

Kenneth Wilkins: How about trading me some pigs for me. fine. But they said we'll trade straight across, give you that could've been for a big sit down if you got. Well I wound up at £450 of.

Sam Schrager: Beans.

Kenneth Wilkins: And we gave in to the neighbors and we agreed. It means that the neighbors and I even sold some. We got $0.50 in cash for so.

Sam Schrager: He said.

Sam Schrager: That's.

Kenneth Wilkins: The way that £120, something like that. The say.

Sam Schrager: Yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: But that's the only way they had had to do that time was was the trade we had, we had lots of things sell we had a to sell gray all eggs sold green and cattle but it, it didn't bring any money. I sold £200 hogs, fat hogs for five apiece.

Sam Schrager: But.

Dorothy Wilkins: They carried a £5 can of cream from here. The know Raven is on his back now. There. Now I've been going down and bringing in the bag.

Kenneth Wilkins: They know they're in there and they see that before the the days of snow plowing and we had horses and you just drive the snow down. Do you pack it down Then in the spring when it's start with all my horses good and travel because they break through and they just couldn't go and we snowed in, we couldn't get out with them.

Kenneth Wilkins: And so I carried a five gallon organic cream from here down there, got dollars and $0.50.

Sam Schrager: For.

Dorothy Wilkins: When you could in the wintertime, you could just take out across the country, go right across the top of fences and all the horses and sleds. The snow was so deep, you know, you know, that's like now. Well.

Sam Schrager: You really don't have a snow.

Kenneth Wilkins: No. Well, you see, they there were no wind in this country because Denver was heavy and the snow just came in the fall and just lay there and and now then we'll get a foot or so snow and it'll thaw away. And then we'll get some more. It'll do the same maybe a dozen times during the winter. But we had got a few chickens during the Depression and we sold eggs or, downer.

Dorothy Wilkins: So those, you know.

Kenneth Wilkins: 3 to 7 that we got $0.07 a dozen for eggs and we had to pay $0.25 for the case to put them in 30 dozen case $0.57.

Sam Schrager: Them.

Dorothy Wilkins: On the Elk River. We had, we never did see the man we sold until we sent him up on the train.

Kenneth Wilkins: All the money we had as we got for ice cream and and you eggs, things like that. All of you. The eggs price were so low.

Dorothy Wilkins: You account for $11.

Kenneth Wilkins: I will yearlings for $11 for that.

Sam Schrager: That did a lot of people leave here during that time.

Kenneth Wilkins: No, they, they, they moved from the towns out here. Every area and every old shack that would hold the people was occupied because they could live cheaper here than anywhere else. And it just moved out of here from anywhere they could, anywhere they could find a place to live. It. A lot more people then and there is now.

Dorothy Wilkins: Home about every block, every 40 acres or by then before, or even if you think they live on 40 acres now. We thought we'd retire when we got 200 acres in cultivation. But that time you got the machinery and you couldn't even buy a mistake for a 60.

Sam Schrager: You think that? Well, you probably too young man to know what people were saying and thinking, but I imagine they must have foreseen that it was going to change the country lot when it came through.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, I suppose it did. And it did change the country, because then they started logging this timber and come in here with the with their camp and all those men. They had an awful, awful lot of men in this country. It took so many more men to log then and those now. I worked in camps that had way over 100 men in the camp now than they had probably 12, 14 different camps now then I know.

Kenneth Wilkins: Don't think there's over 100 men. No logging industry in part of the country now. They most had ten times the men that they have now. And it's it made a difference.

Dorothy Wilkins: When friends of it used to be a day, too. Yes.

Kenneth Wilkins: They do. Passenger trains a day on this railroad. And then they only had two coaches. And I rode that train more than once. Or you had to stand up all the seats to taken. You know, the only transportation they had either rode the train or you walked one of the other.

Dorothy Wilkins: And now hour or so, you train every so often. I don't know if I even the old fashioned train.

Kenneth Wilkins: Have a freight train now about maybe two, three times a week.

Sam Schrager: the Potlatch give much for timber that they got here from the farmers. No.

Kenneth Wilkins: No. They, they got it for just almost nothing and what timber they bought and then they, course they, they hired the men to come in here and Homestead do and then then return the land over the edge and then the homesteaders that couldn't make a living on their land. Why they'd, they'd sell out to the Potlatch for little or nothing and they got this land for just almost nothing.

Kenneth Wilkins: And when they bought Amber from the landowner, it was very, very low price. I don't know what it was, but it wasn't very much.

Sam Schrager: They had guys homesteaded right around in this country, right around here.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, I don't know here, I think. And more up around Bovill, up in that country where they they told me that they hired men to do Homestead Farm and then they'd buy their rights as soon as they could get a room up on.

Sam Schrager: Get most of the guys living here, start going to work in the camps.

Kenneth Wilkins: Then. Yeah. yes. After the camp started. That's the way that these little old dump ranchers would call them. They'd have 40 or 80 acres and then they would work in the camps, and that's where they lived, and then just gradually improve their places. But they couldn't make a living on there on the places hardly. And they wouldn't have any enough land in cultivation.

Kenneth Wilkins: But well.

Sam Schrager: After they came in here, Potlatch was this land still more used for grazing and for cattle than it for, just growing grain.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah. Yes, it was I think. Well, I know there were, you know, more cattle in this country then and there is now. Every, every landowner had their cattle and there were so many more people in there than there is now that there are more cattle raised here than there is the present time. You know, they when we first came here, there's very little grain sold at all cattle and hay.

Kenneth Wilkins: They had a warehouse down here at Avon and that warehouse would be piled with Bayleigh and Paul just filled in the rafters. And then later years they wouldn't have any hay in it at all. It got to be all grain and.

Sam Schrager: We're the camp's the main market for the cattle, or did they get shipped out of the country someplace like Lewiston or.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, they would, there would be cattle buyers come here and buy the cattle and first they used to drive them out before the days of the trucks. They'd come in, buy the cattle and, and drive them out the front. I don't know why they drove over the railroad or they drove them and then after they got trucks rather than the first, they dropped them more than I can remember cattle buyers coming over to my granddad's and all.

Kenneth Wilkins: And then you'd have maybe 30, 40, had a cattle sale by the whole bunch and just start down the road with them.

Sam Schrager: You know where they come from, these cattle.

Kenneth Wilkins: No, I don't know where they came from or Omaha. They or they drove the cattle do they must driven them out here from Troy or someplace to the railroad I suppose, and shipped them. I wouldn't have any idea at almost half to the Spokane.

Sam Schrager: What about the summer range for the cattle? Was there a lot of range? yeah. Different people using it all.

Kenneth Wilkins: All range. There were no restrictions. Anybody that wanted to bring in cattle or any body that owned cattle just turned them out. They just had the run of the country. When we first came here, milk cows was the same way. Everybody had a and now cows and and they'll come in the morning, run them out on the road at night if they could find them with the and sometimes they couldn't even find it.

Kenneth Wilkins: Just rearrange.

Sam Schrager: Where were they range. Mostly from around here. What would the ranch be. What would be the the the woods and the. Yeah. Would you use Meadows would know.

Kenneth Wilkins: Very well the and the the road they just run down the road and then the very little of this was fence. The only fences they'd have would be around the cultivated land. You know, if you.

Kenneth Wilkins: You owned land that wasn't why you didn't. Most of them didn't even have fences. And that was all, all open range.

Sam Schrager: What kind of fencing did they use in the early days?

Kenneth Wilkins: Early days was all rail fences, split rail fences, and then later they got a wire horse. But I never had any real fences after I came here for salt wire. But my granddad, he had his whole place fenced with rail fences, all this cultivated land.

Sam Schrager: I've heard it said that there was a lot of coal, you know, a lot when the railroad came through, that it really changed them. I think around here there were a lot of guys just working on the railroad bunker then and things like that. There was a lot of gambling and drinking and the whole country was pretty wild and wooly for a period of time.

Sam Schrager: Is that to say.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, they have any, any country or, or there's no lumberjacks and they all miners I think was about saying they were they were pretty pretty wild some of them. And.

Sam Schrager: You know, did you, were there many guys that would come by who were coming in who, like, have been riding the rails for tramps?

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, I don't I don't know if you'd call them tramps. That's the way they did a lot of these old lumberjack travel. They just travel a foot down the railroad tracks, you know, And only they would never be a day go by the hole in the summertime you didn't see somebody go on foot the railroad track with a bedroll on it back, going from one camp to another or else heading up or down or either that or coming back from down after it went down, spent all his money in back broke, going back to chance to go to work again.

Kenneth Wilkins: But there was a lot of that. People just walked the railroad track.

Sam Schrager: Was there a big difference, you think, between the the lumberjacks and the local boys likely self were working in the camps as far as, what what would you do with your money and.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yes, I think there was you know, they, they all know lumberjacks, professional lumberjacks. They'd go and work in the camp maybe for three or four months or maybe longer and never a never get out of camp. And then they'd go all their money and go to Spokane or Lewiston or someplace. And, and then a week or ten days or they'd have it all come back.

Kenneth Wilkins: The camp sick, drunk and half brothers and sick and and have to go back to work. Make more money would never leave.

Sam Schrager: You know.

Kenneth Wilkins: And these local people around here, they all had these little places and probably a family around the places they'd be out working in the camps and make money enough to live on, you know, during the winter. And stay home and work on their places. And so they would they they wouldn't go and blow their money like they were lumberjacks.

Sam Schrager: What do you think the local people in those days thought about Potlatch? Do you think they were more grateful for them for providing jobs than they were? And they were unhappy because they weren't paying money for timber. And it was a very mixed feelings.

Kenneth Wilkins: I think so. I think there were a great many people, of course, that they were grateful for the just the work and all that. But at the same, they they knew that they were being taken, you know, and and so I suppose it was more or less a mixed feeling.

Dorothy Wilkins: At that time. And we're having an epiphany now and again.

Sam Schrager: would you tell me that story about after shooting the.

Kenneth Wilkins: Shooting in English?

Sam Schrager: Carol, I heard that story before. It's such a good one.

Kenneth Wilkins: They are married and they wanted and lived. Right, right. Close together. And they always hunted together and they never had a cow. That was in the past year. But the cow gotten out of the pasture and the neighbor's wife, she looked down.

Sam Schrager: And saw the.

Kenneth Wilkins: Animal rolled down through the brush and thought it was an owl. So she told her husband, they said there, there goes the milk. And he said, Will you call Arthur and tell him where to go? And I'll go and see if I can chase it out. Doing so, Arthur went where they told him to go and he'd just go off and I shot to death.

Sam Schrager: So I.

Kenneth Wilkins: Thought it was an elk.

Sam Schrager: That was

Kenneth Wilkins: that the I've, I've had to drive for 15 years to go something like that.

Sam Schrager: With a reputation for being a good.

Kenneth Wilkins: Arthur was a he was the best shot I think in this whole country and, and a real good hunter. And you said you were just a real good hunter. Know you're there was in the air about these old homesteaders that the government bet you 160 acres of land against $5 that you can't live on the land for five years without starving.

Kenneth Wilkins: And it's about the that the truth the.

Dorothy Wilkins: Fence and from her you this.

Sam Schrager: The hot water drinking.

Dorothy Wilkins: Thing forget that put you on that table.

Sam Schrager: That's hard not to get your voice on there too when you talk so that my wife, she.

Dorothy Wilkins: Doesn't have a happy.

Sam Schrager: Marriage.

Dorothy Wilkins: But he's waiting for your telephone.

Kenneth Wilkins: well, I don't know. I don't know what I could tell you about it. He. He was. He was the general superintendent when I first started to work. And then I can't remember how many years that he was there before Naugle took place. Fellow, the name of Noll became the superintendent and.

Sam Schrager: When you were growing up, besides the lumbering, the main work that you did?

Kenneth Wilkins: Yes, I know when I first started it work out, I worked in the woods and then later worked in construction work on government dams and but mainly mainly would work. There got to be several sawmills around the country and I worked on them to.

Sam Schrager: Work at several.

Sam Schrager: How did you wind up started for now.

Kenneth Wilkins: I worked in the woods and then I worked for the for the government building or construction and then I went to work for my dad, who had a a general store, not 30 miles of satisfaction, a little town there. And then I bought an interest in that store. And then after a few years, I got the asthma and hay fever so bad that I had to I had to get out of there.

Kenneth Wilkins: And so I didn't know how to go right to do so. I came back here where I was, where I was raised, where I did, and then hay fever and asthma didn't bother me here. So I came back here and and it wasn't anything much else to do then but farm. So I started in the farm and that's the reason I came back here.

Kenneth Wilkins: I was, mainly on account of my health and.

Sam Schrager: In the 20.

Dorothy Wilkins: Eight.

Kenneth Wilkins: 1928.

Sam Schrager: That you got into farming at a good time before the Depression.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah, just before the Depression and the we got the had about due three years to get started before the Depression hit barley.

Dorothy Wilkins: Farm equipment and the other horses and everything that for $500 and that's all I needed at that time, you know, later on I digress.

Sam Schrager: What did you go in with Started farming as far as the amount of equipment that we would have?

Kenneth Wilkins: We had four horses harness the power of her grooms, hay, machinery, mower and so on and everything. Just about everything you needed to farm with and.

Sam Schrager: Not what.

Sam Schrager: Really.

Sam Schrager: Did you need around here?

Dorothy Wilkins: Well, I never lived in a number of the kids.

Kenneth Wilkins: Then her, her dad was a was a longer do and I worked with him in.

Unknown Speaker: The woods and.

Kenneth Wilkins: I knew her when she was very big.

Dorothy Wilkins: And then we moved to Spokane and then when we lived in Fairfield for a little later, then we came up there with him again from there on.

Sam Schrager: Where did you get? Very down?

Kenneth Wilkins: No, I was still in Fairfield. We got married. We moved here right after home very long afterwards.

Sam Schrager: Did you get your ring when you got married? Did you get around three times?

Kenneth Wilkins: Yes. Three times. We got married in Fairfield and. And then worked where she lived with her home. Then we came down here to visit. And this we got it.

Sam Schrager: Again.

Kenneth Wilkins: Three different times.

Dorothy Wilkins: And there were so many people here. I don't know where it came from or have any idea, but this house I covered in the door, we had a door there and were in the next room when coming from around this dining room for people. I've never seen them before and I remember seeing them since. Some of them were.

Dorothy Wilkins: I remember there was one blind lady and I was passing out candy bars and I didn't know that she's blind. And somebody said, Well, pack your own hands. I say, So, you know, I lose you up or anything. But they set off dynamite. We had these really trees after you notice that big tree there on the corner? Well, all of this over here was and over here was those great big trees.

Dorothy Wilkins: And there was two right out that grew like this. We put the dynamite between the two, broke all of the windows on that. That house, it cracked. But anyway, we were figuring, I know, I guess that was the last one then. Well then my sister, she married not too long afterwards and they didn't break when we were very.

Sam Schrager: Young.

Dorothy Wilkins: Crackling through us. You know.

Sam Schrager: I think that's a custom they should make given up.

Dorothy Wilkins: Well, sometimes they get carried away. They all around here, they, they well, I know this the last few years. I guess they have to every people around.

Kenneth Wilkins: They know.

Sam Schrager: It's just the last.

Kenneth Wilkins: Last few years.

Dorothy Wilkins: There same I was the last time.

Sam Schrager: That I.

Sam Schrager: Leaving there was a very strong community here in the early days.

Dorothy Wilkins: We had our paper author courses. I think Avon is a closed group anyway, and the majority, of course, a few people moving in now that are well, a lot of them are coming from California. And I really don't want Miss know where it's different. And I think it's getting more like this now that the original people that I've been around with, they need help while they're there to help, you know, things like this.

Dorothy Wilkins: And it's always been that way here in this part.

Sam Schrager: I would just wonder whether it would be harder without having a real town like take a place like Troy or Dear Town. There you it's very natural place to make people come together. But a place like Avon, which is really almost a ghost town.

Dorothy Wilkins: Well, now see, we have a our ladies club have the church down there. We don't use the church.

Kenneth Wilkins: Anymore because they were church building.

Dorothy Wilkins: And the building we had for the club and we have to redo the year. We had had Thanksgiving and Christmas. I mean, close one of the other or both of them. And we had 100 people.

Kenneth Wilkins: Here just inviting the whole.

Dorothy Wilkins: Community invites, everybody in the community, so they can get acquainted and have.

Kenneth Wilkins: A have a big V.

Dorothy Wilkins: Separate the club usually for the turkey or maybe, you know, me and then everybody else, they find that then on decoration they are gathered here at our place together down there, and that's all the time or time. And we've had people come home from people that he has heard of, and I heard of them before when they first started.

Dorothy Wilkins: And course now this last year they changed it around so that you don't know when they have it. I mean, some people come one time from another, but this is as large crowd as ever had, you know, had 21 before. Of course, the weather was nasty.

Kenneth Wilkins: But first time we well, they and they come on Decoration Day and they meet up here in the cemetery and they come from different locations around the country town of Baker, Spokane, California, and all over and and hadn't seen one in over at least a year. And they they'd been around and talk and visit and they hate to leave.

Kenneth Wilkins: And so I suggested that the following year why don't we have a picnic dinner or we can visit a little and they thought that is a good idea.

Sam Schrager: The.

Kenneth Wilkins: Next year. Then we had a picnic dinner here in our yard and we had 90 people here and then we've had one every year since and neither here or else down at the old church building now and then.

Sam Schrager: It sounds like it's still a quiet community. And then.

Kenneth Wilkins: The people.

Dorothy Wilkins: That.

Kenneth Wilkins: Moved here in the early days, a lot of them, they come back here to the cemetery on Decoration Day.

Dorothy Wilkins: Leaving a lot here. We had 65 and then four come later and I don't know when they were counted, they might have been 69 versus them. Again, we go to Pastor Glen going Fathers Day one week we had this pond. You know, this has been real good for the kids. I spend a lot of time. So kind of and now irrigation works there.

Dorothy Wilkins: Very good. Even sooner or at least I am going to here.

Sam Schrager: It was an accident and I'm here in with Snowplow and a guy drown. Is that true? Yeah, that's right. Here. What happened?

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, they they really don't know what happened. They think that the they think that they had a little exhaust pipe on the truck. There's three of them in the cab of the truck, and they think there's a leaky exhaust pipe and they got gas. That's what they think. And they do a they had a patrol. They were blowing snow away and they didn't have any antifreeze in it.

Kenneth Wilkins: And the night they brought it in here and parked it where they could get water to fill the radiator the next morning and the next morning, the three men came back after that patrol and drove down the road with that drug and just drove right off into the barn, upside down, right in the through the ice.

Sam Schrager: This is hard to believe.

Dorothy Wilkins: Now, but this was the sports.

Kenneth Wilkins: And so they think they the no reason why they should have driven off the road except that they thought they might have been gassed and.

Dorothy Wilkins: Might have died before that because they didn't have any water. I no, they don't.

Kenneth Wilkins: The according to the coroner, he didn't drown, but that either killed when the truck overturned or something. They didn't. What?

Sam Schrager: They were three men in the car.

Kenneth Wilkins: Three men in the cab.

Sam Schrager: Well, only one man was killed.

Kenneth Wilkins: Yeah.

Dorothy Wilkins: One was, one was his uncle and the other is Joe Ballard from Dover. He's the one that but he's had, he had had heart trouble and I don't know, he might have had a seizure or something like that because they said have water in John. But that was the funniest thing. You know, that morning the snow was quite deep and I got accounts about in front of a pass and right down to the corner down there, there was a big pile of gravel like car and you were down seven or seven men over the park down there and looked up and saw this truck coming.

Dorothy Wilkins: And you heard a noise and then stepped around the gravel piles. Look, no truck here. It was upside down in the water right in there. I was on the pond, you know, and just drive straight down here and so I was in the kitchen. I was over in that corner and I remember working and it seemed like something told me to go to the door.

Dorothy Wilkins: So I, I walked in the door and he was yelling, You hardly yelled. You tell me to call somebody on the phone, you know, And I didn't know. I thought it might be arson or it might be the neighbor down here. And I didn't want to call a neighbor. Was he upside down in the barn? So I'm going to call.

Dorothy Wilkins: And Paul is down here. So I call him up and back four days out. He just we had four got to run to the shop there and the lariat rope there and we got the lariat real good. Went down and broke the ice off around the door and they did open and they could see get down in the water.

Dorothy Wilkins: Go ahead if I hear or we could see him. Got him. So we got him out first and then the balls, the foot was stuck in them. Pretty hard to break the hammer here. And he was a very big man. He must raise about 200 and something, I don't know. And anyway, we had dinner and they cut the spring in the neck.

Dorothy Wilkins: Anyway, were referring. I didn't have it, so we had to get down there and pry with your shoulder and get the ball. But it's in the papers. And he told time after time that he didn't dive down in the well.

Sam Schrager: Were these guys in? Were these guys just in the water. Yeah.

Dorothy Wilkins: Well the.

Sam Schrager: Was there an air pocket in the camp or.

Kenneth Wilkins: No. They just turned upside down and then the wind just broke out and the cab would just pull the water and I jumped out the the under part of the truck and then I had to jump on the ice to break the ice to get the door open. The door opened and they got the first man out and and I pulled him out and he was able to climb and he climbed up on on top.

Kenneth Wilkins: And the second man, his foot was caught and I pulled him up out of the water and I couldn't lift him any farther. And when I let loose of him, I down he went under the water again. And so then I pulled him up the second time and put the rope around his arm. And through the other end, the man that was on top and he held his head up out of the water and I couldn't get his foot loose.

Kenneth Wilkins: So I got down in the water and got shoulder right under his knee here, and I had to hold the truck and just pulled it out by main strength and got him out. But the third one, he he was they had done it without.

Dorothy Wilkins: Getting more pressure. Yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: You see, he was, but the coroner said he didn't have any water in his lungs. And, and my uncle said that he was in sleep. He said long before we ever got here. Said he sat in the middle and said he would sleep in it. And so they thought that it was the fumes from that exhaust that that it affected them, their colors in there run off the road.

Sam Schrager: And what a freak accident.

Sam Schrager: I know.

Dorothy Wilkins: And terrible. And then the next day when they come to get this thing out and little girl he had a combine with the truck running truck over and anyway he parked up on down there and all at once or there he started down this way and back up there and here you get going down the hill. And he ran back and he said, I'm going back to see that truck go up over our house.

Dorothy Wilkins: And we didn't see Leo at all anymore, you know, because that's all there's another one. But what's in the door was opening and knocking down there. So anyway, it didn't hit the snow bank. I guess what caused it to look like burnt or you know, we can't remember now. And then they come down and we got strange on the, on the truck, it was in the water and we, we got up this room and he got out on the ice and he put his foot down that ice to break off here And you're going to see I got there and I can't cross all ice breaking right behind him.

Dorothy Wilkins: Your heart is so stiff and I don't he was going to drown because I didn't think to make it and did okay. But all of this all together. yeah.

Sam Schrager: After what had happened.

Dorothy Wilkins: And so we had him here in the house. And first thing I thought doing is getting a hot coffee, you know.

Sam Schrager: To.

Kenneth Wilkins: Got him out. We brought him in, brought him in the air to warm up all my.

Dorothy Wilkins: Burned up button and the quilt and quilts and everything else with them on the stove. And we wrap our guys in in warm acid.

Kenneth Wilkins: In that ice water that long.

Dorothy Wilkins: And so then I got this before I gave it to him. I got thinking that if they were just in our water would be fine. But yeah, they may have been injured. So yeah, with this thing going over, I can tell you the worst thing you do is get sterilized. So he didn't live in die, died from down there, from your husband?

Dorothy Wilkins: I didn't know. You want to find out? One guy was spitting on blood. You know, I could have had a.

Sam Schrager: That can be bad for your during.

Dorothy Wilkins: The course of their business in the water. And so then that was an immediate deal. But how.

Sam Schrager: Long? How long between when that truck went over and when you got them out of the camp, do you know?

Kenneth Wilkins: it was just just minutes. I was be.

Dorothy Wilkins: Right there sitting all.

Kenneth Wilkins: Day laying the ground. And just minutes those days they were there under the water, all three of them.

Dorothy Wilkins: But see this? The farm is built different than it is now. It was right straight down. We had bunk.

Kenneth Wilkins: Bulkhead of the bulkhead and logs across it, across the face of it, and it was straight down. They just drove out over those logs and and the truck just turned bottom, dried up and dropped down the.

Sam Schrager: What did you do with the rope when you got it?

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, I took the rope, you see. And that second man on the this foot was why I couldn't lift him. And I put the rope around his arm and do the other fellows on, on the truck and, and he held his hand up out of the water while I got his foot out. Or he would he would have drowned if it hadn't been for that.

Kenneth Wilkins: And it got him. But he was just almost gone anyway. You and he couldn't help himself. We just had to pull him up on there for work.

Sam Schrager: And what year was, is when this happened, you know.

Kenneth Wilkins: I can't remember.

Dorothy Wilkins: Yeah. So. And I can.

Sam Schrager: Tell you.

Kenneth Wilkins: That I couldn't believe.

Dorothy Wilkins: I pretty.

Kenneth Wilkins: There were no plow on the truck and but they just when they when they started down the driveway up there, they just started gradually veering over to the left and just looked like they just deliberately drove off in there.

Dorothy Wilkins: Well, because that was really was the driving one, you know.

Kenneth Wilkins: Just looked like they deliberately drove off and.

Sam Schrager: Think.

Dorothy Wilkins: Maybe they did. He said that after thinking about it and saying now they just gradually went off like that was starting to maybe that's what happened rather than we said.

Kenneth Wilkins: We can't remember anything after it turned into that road that there you know, that's the last it.

Sam Schrager: Would make sense for that to begin or start to go on fumes. You wouldn't.

Kenneth Wilkins: Know it. He said he can't remember a thing after they turned in, said they can remember turning in the driveway up there and in it to laughed. He remembered leaves in the water.

Sam Schrager: Yeah, Here and here you go. Wilkins dived into the icy water, opening the submerged door, and the overturned truck.

Kenneth Wilkins: Didn't dive and I'd jump down there. The bottom of the truck was just above the water and I jumped on it and hung on to the truck and jumped on the ice till I got the door open. I went down in the water up to here and got it open, and then I had the one. I couldn't pull it out.

Kenneth Wilkins: I had to get clear down in the water and get my shoulder underneath his knee and and hung on to the truck and pushed Foley's lady out. But I didn't never dare to dive in the water.

Sam Schrager: boy.

Sam Schrager: Did you. Did you know what you were doing or was it was it just instinctive without even.

Kenneth Wilkins: I knew what I was doing or.

Sam Schrager: I mean, you reasoned out.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well, in now, so but when I saw that truck upside down, I knew the I didn't know how many were in there, but I knew there was someone in that cab. So the first thing I thought about getting them out, I to grab that lariat rope and run out there and jumped out on the thing and.

Sam Schrager: Is there anything you can think of that I haven't asked about that I should auto some things I.

Dorothy Wilkins: Can. Yeah, a lot of funny things like dumb things to do by listening. I get.

Sam Schrager: That. I don't I don't.

Kenneth Wilkins: Know of anything that more or could.

Sam Schrager: One of those funny stories and probably the best for her than anything else usually they stood the test of time those stories or else people wouldn't.

Unknown Speaker: Remember now now.

Dorothy Wilkins: From the sense of some more that you.

Kenneth Wilkins: Think I or it was too vague. You see, he was in here before. Before the country was surveyed. They didn't have a disagreement. Really. They the man that took the homestead next to him, they they was trying to decide where the where the line would be. And the the there's a great large tree that grew down there on the meadow.

Kenneth Wilkins: And and this man is they said now when it surveyed he said that tree will be on on my land and my granddad said no. He said, I don't believe it will. He said, I believe the line will go just the other side of that tree and it just right close to that tree. The tree just happened to be on my granddad's place.

Kenneth Wilkins: So I knew from that that they homesteaded in here before the land was ever surveyed.

Sam Schrager: I wonder how they even know where to put their place. Well, is your body?

Kenneth Wilkins: Yes, it is. I wonder. Do that. Do How in the world they could tell or of course, I suppose they just measured out the 160 acres and and that they claim for their for their homestead, I suppose. I don't know how they would do it any other way.

Dorothy Wilkins: From back, from.

Kenneth Wilkins: You know, I, I don't know just how they would do it, but now the man that homesteaded right below him, instead of instead of taking a square 160 acres he had, he wanted to get as much of that meadow land and the creek bottom as he could get. So he he had the three forties right down the down the creek and then another one off to the side.

Kenneth Wilkins: And so they they evidently had the choice of how they could lay out their land and not.

Sam Schrager: That.

Sam Schrager: Was, that was the bottomland really sought after.

Kenneth Wilkins: Man. yes. Yeah. The open meadow land is what they wanted, the scattered timber and the these creek bottoms because they would raise more hay and they were easier. So that was what they were what they were really after.

Sam Schrager: Yeah. Grandfather too. Yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: So now he had the, the, the father's homestead the of this little creek right almost at the foot of those old mountains over there. And that's what they were looking for was open timber.

Dorothy Wilkins: Trail for those, I mean the wild hay.

Kenneth Wilkins: yes they had.

Dorothy Wilkins: That.

Kenneth Wilkins: They cut hay there with the sides before they ever had steam and more. Well they cut that wild hay with it.

Dorothy Wilkins: We have that now. Are there. We think we have this afternoon. Yeah.

Sam Schrager: Did you ever hear that Mary Wells was. I have heard it. She was valedictorian and very.

Kenneth Wilkins: Very you know, she that was she. I don't I don't think they ever had a high school. I know they didn't when she was growing up.

Dorothy Wilkins: Of course, when I knew.

Sam Schrager: It was her daughter.

Kenneth Wilkins: It could have been her daughter. She had a daughter that Mr. Right.

Dorothy Wilkins: Or she may have been.

Kenneth Wilkins: I know she may have been.

Sam Schrager: What did you start to say when you knew her? She was.

Dorothy Wilkins: Old. Yeah. She was quite older or quite. Well, seem to me like, you know, lady for a name or. And then she started like, cooking for us. That's Christmas Sugar cookie. Great. Because remember those.

Sam Schrager: Did she worked.

Dorothy Wilkins: For. No, no.

Kenneth Wilkins: These newer she used to cook for different. I don't know she cook for Louden can't.

Dorothy Wilkins: Go here they can't use her on her. I can remember I.

Kenneth Wilkins: Think she cooked for her dad on his log.

Dorothy Wilkins: Well that could have been I been there. I tell you, that was on the fourth of the father's or somewhere during the winter. They have a camp down there.

Kenneth Wilkins: So I don't know Joe Long in that country.

Dorothy Wilkins: It was. I remember because I remember cooking, cooking for.

Sam Schrager: I think I should get going actually to both.

Kenneth Wilkins: Spent time I and I know there.

Dorothy Wilkins: Now I joined.

Sam Schrager: Her.

Kenneth Wilkins: Well there was a everybody enjoyed the same as every other little town you know about the only excitement they had was to go watch the passenger train come in and everybody would walk over to the Defoe one that we train came in and there was a fella in town that young that thought of us quite a ladies man, you know.

Kenneth Wilkins: And so he made it a habit of going to the station when the train came in. And so my uncle and another fellow, they dressed up like women and they went over of time and they hid across the railroad track and the tie pile. And when the train pulled in, well, they climbed up the step from one side down the other, like just got off the train.

Kenneth Wilkins: And and this one young fella, he he asked this, this man if he could direct them to the town. And they said, yes, yes. He said I'll, I'll show you where he is. And so he started walking over towards the hotel. One got on one side and one on the other. And when they got to this, this bridge, it went across this creek.

Kenneth Wilkins: But they just grabbed him and threw him over in the water. You see.

Sam Schrager: They.

Kenneth Wilkins: See here, they see there's the hotel here, There's a railroad station. You see that that bridge there? When they got right over here, they just drove.

Sam Schrager: Over his door. But through town.

Kenneth Wilkins: And they lost a little square house right there. That's where I was born.

Sam Schrager: Are there any events that happened at Avon that are that people, old timers, remember, think that happened because we haven't. You're the only person we ever talked to from.

Kenneth Wilkins: I can't I can't remember any.

Dorothy Wilkins: Where you were. What is the one you don't like? But. Clemens.

Kenneth Wilkins: what about the man that murdered his wife?

Sam Schrager: I've heard that story.

Kenneth Wilkins: Or Clemens. Yeah.

Sam Schrager: What's the what? How is it that you that you have? Well, and.

Kenneth Wilkins: His and his wife had a argument or a fight, and she left him and she went over to the neighbors and stayed all night. And the next morning she got this neighbor man to take her back with the team in the buggy to get her clothes. And they drove up into the yard and he was helping her out of the buggy and her husband shot her from house, shot her in the back as she was getting out of the boat and killed her there.

Kenneth Wilkins: And and the neighbor or he jumped in his and left just as fast as he could. And so then this this guy was going to commit suicide and he had a rifle and he he put rifle under his chin and and going to shoot himself. And then when he leaned over to pull the trigger, why the course the he turned his head like this.

Kenneth Wilkins: The bullet come right up outside of his face here and and didn't kill him. So then he went get the butcher knife and cut his throat, but cut his own throat. So when they found him with that, he crawled.

Sam Schrager: Around the floor and.

Kenneth Wilkins: Blood all over everything and shot himself through the side of the face and cut his throat.

Sam Schrager: The this the man that the neighbor that brought him back, was he schoolteacher? No.

Kenneth Wilkins: No, He was he just a farmer. The farmer that lived there. He was here. He was I think he might have been related a schoolteacher because he was a schoolteacher with the same name. His name was Ogden.

Sam Schrager: I have heard that story from the Frank Roman.

Unknown Speaker: I think, you know, and.

Kenneth Wilkins: This this lady that I gave her name and address, she and her sisters, friends of this lady that killed and this woman, she was, I guess she got afraid of her husband anyway. And and oftentimes she gets these girls to come in and stay with her. They or do. And said one time this Bill Clements told these girls, he said, you said you girls think you stay around here, that you me from killing my wife.

Kenneth Wilkins: She said he said, don't you know that it'd be just as easy to kill two or three as it would one? So they never went back.

Sam Schrager: Anymore.

Sam Schrager: And they lived there for very long. This man.

Kenneth Wilkins: Clements, I really don't know how long he lived there. Quite awhile, I guess so I don't know how long he lived there.

Sam Schrager: It was a long standing threat.

Kenneth Wilkins: yeah.

Sam Schrager: Yeah.

Sam Schrager: I guess in those days they didn't wouldn't split up very easily like today. I mean, you'd think nowadays in that same situation you.

Kenneth Wilkins: Would see just this, well it probably didn't have any place to go and I, I didn't have much choice.

Sam Schrager: Well, I've heard that. What I've heard is that divorce, you know, being a divorce person, was just disapproved. Yeah.

Kenneth Wilkins: yeah.

Dorothy Wilkins: Now, this is.

Kenneth Wilkins: All I had was a rare thing then, you know, for the divorce now.