Image provided by: The Willamina Museum; Willamina, OR
About The times of Willamina. (Willamina, Oregon) 1972-1974 | View Entire Issue (June 13, 1973)
P aso 2 WILLAMINA TIMES, Willamina, Oregon, Wednesday, June 13, 1973 . John Riche behind "The Times" wins award John Riche, 11 year old son of Jim Riche of 378 Oak Street, Willamina, recently received an award for the outstanding entry in the Smoking and Health Pos- terama, sponsored by the Oregon TB and Respiratory Disease As sociation. His poster was of a large nut with three wrenches on it and it says “ Don’t get wound up in smoking.” He was the Winner in the school, the district, and was third place winner in the state. A swarm of bees gave would-be letteY senders a little added challenge when the insects decided that the post office was as good a place as any to settle down Wednesday afternoon. By the time the bees decided to move on, no stingings had been reported (not even by the nut with a camera who tried for this close-up shot). To the Editor: I enjoyed your description of the frog hunt via Skunkhollow, reminded me of a couple of in cidents that happened to my hus band twenty odd (very odd) years ago, that are better not describ ed here - he’s pretty sensitive at times. Since the above men tioned happened to him he dis played a horrible shortage of sense of humor - I thought it was sidesplitting at the time. Our first summer here had a ' couple of “ times to remem ber,” especially for us as new comers. We arrived on June 20th three years ago, the log building was here,some - four to be exact - half finished cabins and forty acres of land. Out of this we built a coffee shop and four rentals, in this area this is a gold mine during the summer season - and a real killer be cause of the lack of good help. It took the first year to make the place even presentable, the second year for us to see what we could do with it and about two weeks in March of this year for us to decide we didn’t want to put in sixteen hours a day serving the tourists when the original idea was to sem i-retire. May I say right now that operat ing a cafe, cabins, and camp ground just ain’t the most relax ing way to live. We are in the interior and there is no place to even get a cup of coffee for miles - many miles - each direction. You can’t get lost here either, the road runs north and south and that’s it; it’s a lovely valley, the climate is such that we can grow any thing. I think 2- degrees below was as cold as it got last win ter and then for only a few days. It stayed around zero and 10 de grees above for three or four weeks but no one thinks anything about it. Oregon is by far the most beautiful state in the Union and British Columbia, our part, is surely the loveliest spot in Canada. Our first summer we had, a bit of bear trouble; since we are about half a mile from the vil lage we see more wild life - some of it is pretty wonderful. There’s a bear trail to the lake at the edge of our place - the south side - and we’ve seen as many as five in one evening. When the huckleberry crop is good we seldom see bear but that first summer there were no berries, so the bear came into the village to rob the fruit trees - and houses! One young housewife found one in her kit chen, you didn’t leave those skunks nearly as fast as she floated out of her house, inci dentally the bear tore her kitchen apart. Then one dear soul left his car window partly down and a box of groceries on the front seat, the bear broke the window out and was “ bottoms up” hav ing lunch when the owner remem bered the groceries. If I remember correctly there were 12 or 13 killed in the vil lage and one here at our place, it was either our dog Heidi or him and Heidi was was too young to die so the bear had to go. Especially since they were both trying to get in the No. 1 cabin with me, and threes a crowd any place when one is a very angry bear. So much for that. Last summer no bear, now again Gary Drill honored reports are beginning to come in - last night our little girl went after her twin goats up be hind the house and came in • flying low to report one - her first this year, now she wears a small bell on her belt so they hear her coming, an old sow can get pretty nasty if she has a cub or two with her this time of the year. One of her class mates nearly got it a couple of days ago at the water reservoir- it’s very foolish to fool around with them at anytime but espec ially so just now. The bear was close enought to swipe at him and that’s too close. Another black was sitting in the middle of the neighbors garden last week, so it looks like another interest ing summer. Our garden is large and lovely and the deer think so too, it’s a fine thing when one has to throw stones at the deer to chase them away - come fall it will be a different story, believe me. You are allowed two deer and that deer hamburger we had this evening was very tasty, twice as tasty when I get to the store 40 miles north and see what the price of meat is! It’s an awful thing to go to town and not find a thing to buy except some coffee and a few staples. ,We pretty well raise everything we really need in the food line and are happy doing it. Pamela just brought in her small bucket of milk, the dairy goats must be tied close to the cabins each night and the kids put in their shed because of the bear and of course, the coyotes are thick. Ever hear them sing when the moon is full, beautiful! The grouse are ruffling their drums in the bush behind the house near the base of the moun tain, courting season is on. There are so many things to write about if you’d care to plough through my miserable handwriting. I have a typewriter around here someplace - maybe I’ll locate it by next winter. I’ve picked marel mushrooms, wild asparagus and wild straw berries, saw a blackbird’s nest with two lovely eggs, found some gorgeous lilacs on an old home stead, and found more wild greens to eat than enough. We even tried the bracken fern which one of my favorite authors, Euell Gibbons, says tastes like aspara gus - maybe it does where he lives but brother, 1 can think of lots of things that taste better than that stuff! Yuk! We’ve planted a young orchard and with luck will have plenty of fruit in a year or so. There are approximately 140 people in the -village, nearly everyone has his garden things; things grow so well here and it’s a long way to the corner store. This is enough for now and if you happen by Farm ers Market at Bellevue, will you give Bob a message for me?. When he found we really were leaving Sheridan he made a very smart remark about how we’d get our supplies- I quote him, “ Two days by dog sled, and three by canoe, to the nearest store!” Believe it or not we go by car, but this letter will go by 'pony express; tell him things are looking better all the time. I hear there’s something called radio going to be available any day now. W. T. Foreign Correspondent Roberta Kowin by Mrs. Kenneth Shetterly It was of great interest we read of Gary Drill having been selected as vice-principal of Central High (Independence- Monm outh school district) to be come effective July 1, 1973. He was selected from a group of 16 prospects. , Gary is a social studies teach er and wrestling coach, and has been in the district for eight years. The son of Mr. and Mrs. Doyle Drill, Gary was born and raised, in Willamina. He attended grade and high school here and gradu ated from high school in 1960. For five years, he worked at the U.S. Plywood plant while getting through college atOCE. He grad uated and received his bachelor’s degree, continuing on to earn a m aster’s degree. Gary is married and has two small children, a son and a daughter, and their home is in Monmouth. Congratulations, Gary! We are proud of you and know how pleased and proud your parents must be. We wish you continued success. Who knows? You may even sur pass your great-uncle, professor Harry Drill, who was Willamina’s first principal and went on to become a great educator. ssss Editor and Publisher The Willamina Times is published every Wednesday at Willamina Oregon, entered at the Post Office at. Willamina as second class matter. 1 The local subscription rate is $2 00»per year. A ll correspondence should be addressed to Willamina Times P.O. Box 127, Willamina, Oregon 97396. Honesty survives by Vance Welty Thursday evening, while waiting outside the fire hall for a meet ing of the Fourth of July com mittee, Tom Allen and this writer were approached by a boy who appeared to be about 11 or 12 years old. He was holding a wallet and asked if we knew who it belonged to. He said that he had found it near the fire hall and that he couldn’t find any identification inside. Allen checked around and found that the wallet belonged to Fred Greb. He found his driver’s license tucked away inside. None of the money in the wallet had been taken. The boy was already leaving on his bicycle when the owner was discovered, and we just had time to ask him his name. He said it was Vincent Ordaz - - and was gone. .We haven’t been able to find out anything about Vincent Ordaz since then, but felt that his ac tion deserved mention, at least. by Vance Welty After conversing with a friend not so long ago, he commented that I have weird hobbies. Non sense. -- Doesn’t everybody slosh around swamps after frogs, crawl around stream beds trying to catch crawdads and hunt with a flintlock? No?' Well, maybe I do have weird hobbies. Among those items we got back from Medford, alas, my old muzzle-loaders were not in cluded. Now, collecting old guns is not considered weird, but ac tually shooting them is something else! , . You guys who go hunting with a modern bolt-action, high-pow ered rifle call yourselves sports men. Ha! Why, with a rifle that has sights that are properly aligned, a bullet that is nearly guaranteed to go off and a rifle that shoots more or less where it’s aimed, even I might have a chance of hitting something! But try your luck with an old flintlock sometime. Now THAT’S sport. Even if you happen to get within a few feet of a nice big buck, he still has a better than even chance of getting away. Let me explain. First, you have to load the darn thing. Unlike the modern prac tice of sliding a bullet into the chamber, the flintlock hunter lit erally has to start from scratch. First, you dump the black powder down the barrel. Not enough powder, and the bullet will barely get past the barrel; too much, and you’re likely to taunch your self into orbit. We will now assume that you have poured in the right amount (the odds are against it -- I used to have a powder measure, so that after a disaster, I could measure how far I went wrong); You must understand that one requirement for proper loading is the possession of three or more hands. Now that you have the ' powder down the barrel, you are holding the musket upright while putting the plug back into the powder horn, while at the same time you are sliding a cloth patch . into your mouth and reaching for a lead rifle ball. If you’re a purist like me, you molded the balls yourself, and they are every shape but round. You now take the wet, sloppy patch out of your mouth and place it over the muzzle. Then you place the rifle ball over it and squeeze the whole mess into the barrel. The ball itself mustn’t touch the inside of the barrel -- that’s why the patch -- and the patch has to be wet to keep every thing good and tight. Now comes the fun part. You take the ramrod and you ram, slam and cram as hard as you can until everything is packed as tight as possible. You know when you have reached this point be cause your hand hurts something awful. So now it’s all loaded and you’re ready to shoot, right? Wrong. You’ve barely begun. You now tip the musket up and hope that everything you jammed into the barrel doesn’t fall out. If it doesn’t, you can proceed to prime the pan. To do this, you have to lift the hammer back to half-cock and raise the strike plate to reveal the pan and touch ' hole. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lucky. What you’re trying to do now is to pour enough powder next to the touch hole to ignite the charge inside without using so much that it takes your face with it when the whole thing goes off. Now you clamp the strike plate back down. If you don’t do this, 1. the powder will fall out and 2. the thing won’t shoot. Next, you check the flint. If the edge has worn away or if it isn’t clamped tightly enough, it either won’t give a spark or it will fall out. However, assum ing that the flint is all right; you are now ready to cock the hammer on back and shoot. Would you believe people used . Larson receives M aster's d egree Leslie Larson received a Mas ters degree in Social Work from Portland State University at com mencement exercises on June 9 at Washington Park, Portland. The Masters in Social Work degree represents two years of professional training in social work. He did his internship in the Polk County Mental Health Dept. and the Delaunay Institute for Mental Health, Portland. He graduated from Willamina high school in 1961, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Larson, Willamina. The Pest heaven ageratum an d ^b crinkly Have you noticed the terracing going on at the Belliveau-Herz- bergs on Ivy and the new look at the Cook residence on the way out of town toward Wallace Bridge? Both places are look ing very nice, as I am sure all of you will attest. Congratula tions friends for taking the Clean- up-Fix-up campaign seriously. We are trying desperately to do likewise, but our short weekends are surely making it difficult! Are you gals still saving your Flav-R-Pac labels, I hope? I spotted my friend, Luella Nice, this past weekend and asked her about it and she said the handi capped persons surely are and certainly would appreciate any help we can give in that re s pect. The labels may be left at Nice’s Electric shop and she will make sure they get to the proper place. You gals who have asked the name of those two border plants in my edging, I found them. The blue-lavender ones are blue- leaved ones that haven’t bloomed vet are verbena - in mixed col ors, hopefully, royal carpet by "congratulations graduates for ail your 12 years of school now completed, and a red rose to our close nieghbor, Anita Kilgore, for earning the award I wish I could have won -- citizenship! coul That is a special one to strive that, juniors? for, get sympathy to Ruth, Jack Our and the other Members of the Myrtle Fendall family and the Flvnns of Sheridan. Just the other day I dragged out some ° Ctures and among them were two pictures «I Myrtle when she was crowned queen of Willa •na’Q first Old-Fashioned Fourth of July celebration. She was a sweet little queen and we S T all miss her. I was proud 7o share her name and know she “ glad to be at rest up there. May 0od bless all.^ __ThePegt f to fight wars with those things? A friend, while watching me load up my old monster, commented that if I were ever in a battle and had to go through all that rigmarole, the enemy could cas ually walk over and stomp me to death before I ever got off a shot. He was right, too. But now that the thing is loaded and primed doesn’t mean that you’re home free. Now is the time for the ol’ guessing game “ Will it or won’t it?” You never know if the thing is ac tually going to fire until after the trigger is pulled -- some times several times. But le t’s suppose that it does. You’ve just squeezed the trig ger and the hammer has fallen, striking a nice spark and blowing a nice cloud of sulpherous smoke in your face. There is now a harrowing waiting period to see if the charge in the barrel will go off. Meanwhile, you have to keep the barrel aimed at your target and sweat a lot. When the thing actually goes off, you can relax. It will be at least a minute or more before the smoke clears and you can see if you hit anything or not. There is a certain peace of mind in knowing that you probably didn’t so why worry about it. Whether you hit anything or not, you now get to take a cleaning solution and swab all that black crud out of the barrel. This done, you get to start all over again. Doesn’t that sound like fun? In earlierdays by Lee Perkins EARLIER DAYS June 9, 1938 May distribution of benefit checks to jobless workers insured under the state un employment compensation law found McMinnville claim center for Yamhill County, receiving $16,497 for 2.1 per cent of the total for the state. A few claimants, whose unem ployment was broken by tempor ary work periods have received , their 19th checks. Average a- mount per pay chpck for those whose claims have been paid up for 1938 was $12.01. The main topic of discussion at the City Council meeting this week was the regulation of sprinkling hours. It was stated that sufficient pressure could not be obtained by water users on the hill when all hydrants in the city were in use. It was finally de cided to regulate the sprinkling hours of each water user to three hours every other day.. Hours will be in effect from 6 a m. to 7:30 a.m., and from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Citizens on the hill will be allowed to sprink le these hours on the days des ignated on cards which have been distributed by the water commissioner, G. W. Linton. Downtown users will sprinkle on the days that the people on the hill are restricted. These hours will be in effect for the months of June, July, August and September. By order of the common council, viola tors of these hours will be den ied the use of city water. If additional shortage of water oc curs by carelessness of water users, only two hours use on the designated three days will be permitted. The Willamina Commercial club met in regular session in the basement of the M.E. church Monday noon, the Ladies Aid serving the lunch. Wm; Jarvis made a motion which was passed that petitions be drawn and circulated so that the Bell mountain road might be improved by the county. A motion was made and passed to the effect that the club fin ance a joint dinner meeting with the taxpayers of the New Grand Ronde district for the purpose of discussion the unionization of high school districts. Miss Gladys Surgeon, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. L. W. Surgeon of the Hillcrest community, be came the bride of John B. Hen derson of Willamina at a quiet ceremony in Newberg Monday evening. Rev. E. W. Winn of Newberg performed the cere mony in the parsonage there. The young couple are making their home here for the present and are receiving the congratu lations of their many friends in and around Willamina. The Willamina brick plant is now operating with a crew of over 40 men. Early this week clay was ground and prepared for the kilns, and shipments are being made regularly. O. K. Edwards, manager of the brick plant, states that efforts are being concentrated on the manufacture of fire bricks. One of the finest deposits of fire clay has been obtained and it is reported that the manufac tured product will not be ex celled. Mr. Edwards believes that this fire brick will become equally as famous as the Wil lamina face brick. Mr. M. Petersen has kale plants for $1.00 per M; cabbage plants 10 cents per dozen. A no. I. Distinguished Indian visitors from the Crow Indian reservation of Montana were Mrs. Robert Yellowtail, wife of the superin tendent of the Crow Indian r e servation, and Mr. and Mrs. Joe Medicine Crow and son Joseph, who is a senior at Linfield Col lege, paid the Wm. Simmons family a visit here at Grand Ronde. The Jefferson Review, a week ly newspaper of Marion County, appreciates the writings of M. Petersen’s philosophy in the Wil lamina Times. From around the house hints: Wire paper clips may be used very successfully to hold pleats in position when pressing a skirt. Twine used in tying bundles should always be dampened. It will tie much tighter and will not slip when knots are made. Unfortunately a man doesn’t confine himself to laughing in his sleeve. He laughs out loud and makes an enemy.
