OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2016
Depression-era program preserves
rare recollections of the pioneers
D
on’t we all wish go back in time and
pay more attention to our grandpar-
ents’ stories?
In the age before television and other
forms of mass entertainment, family gather-
ings often centered around reminiscing about
personal adventures and origins. No doubt
there were exaggerations and mistakes, but
those old tales mostly were grounded in fi rst-
hand experience. A basic rule of gathering
folklore is to work back as closely as pos-
sible to the source — it still may be imper-
fect but will come nearest to the unvarnished
truth.
A dedicated Mason with a masonic tal-
ent for memorizing long passages, Grandpa
Bell was loaded with spell-
binding yarns from his
decades as a coal miner and
rancher. I recall just dribs
and drabs of what he said
— for example, climbing
into the tipple above a mine
shaft to free a jammed cable
from which dangled a unstable load of TNT
that would have blown the miners below to
atoms. Without overplaying it, his language
conveyed the commonplace terror that was
intrinsic to underground mining.
Having even just that one story in his
own words would be a treasure, at least to
my family, and a testament to the everyman
courage that built our still-great nation.
Stationed on the remote Columbia River and missing his family, homesick future president Ulysses S. Grant, center in top hat,
is said to have dried out in Chinook following an epic bender.
Federal Writers’ Project
For many Northwesterners, little-known
narrative riches are readily available — or
in some cases still waiting to be mined —
in the fi les of the Federal Writers’ Project.
A Depression-era employment lifeline for
about 6,600 white-collar workers, one of its
meritorious efforts here on the West Coast
was interviewing and preparing oral histories
of fi rst-generation settlers, people who were
grandparents living in the 1930s.
In Washington state, the highlights of
these interviews were boiled down and made
readily available in three volumes published
by the Washington Pioneer Project in 1937
and 1938. (See tinyurl.com/ToldByThePi-
oneers1, tinyurl.com/ToldByThePioneers2
and tinyurl.com/ToldByThePioneers3)
In Oregon, reading most Federal Writers’
Project interviews requires a visit to the Ore-
gon State Library and the University of Ore-
gon; with rare exceptions, the fi les haven’t
been put on line.
Here is one Astoria story I was able to
fi nd, a recollection by Dan Cummings,
retired brakeman on the Astoria and Colum-
bia River Railroad:
“I was very good on logs in those days. I
had been a logger and I was quite nimble of
foot. There happened to be a regatta at Asto-
ria, with a fi fty dollar prize posted for the
winner of a logrolling contest. … They got a
pair of boots from somebody at the sawmill
and gave them to me. Half the caulks were
missing, and besides they were worn out and
hardly any good at all.
“It was a light cedar log we were to roll,
and I got out there with my heart in my
mouth. I had never rolled with anybody
like that fellow. But he was too confi de nt,
because it wasn’t long before he missed his
footing and in he went. Well, the contest was
two duckings out of three, so he climbed
back on and we went at it again. I knew I
could win easy this time because he was wet
and I was dry. He couldn’t move as nimbly
as I could. In he went again, and I collected
my fi fty dollars.”
Accepting congratulations from another
Kjeld Enevoldsen Collection
Pacific County’s current courthouse in South Bend, pictured here under construction in
1910, housed records spirited away from the old county seat in Oysterville in the dead of
the night in 1893. It cost $132,000, which was considered wildly extravagant at the time.
brakeman, Cummings confessed he didn’t
win because he was the best roller, but
because he couldn’t swim and was terrifi ed
of drowning.
Gen. Grant in Chinook
Among the rich pickings available on the
Washington side is “Told by the Pioneers. ”
H ere are a few favorites, along with some
context:
• Agnes Louise (Ducheney) Eliot of Wah-
kiakum County: “While Rocque Ducheney
and wife lived at Chinook, Gen. Grant was
sent there to recover from an attack of delir-
ium tremens. He stayed in their home. He
shook so terribly he spilled his coffee all
over, so Grandma Ducheney took him into
the kitchen and fed him herself. She was the
doctor and midwife for that whole coun-
try. Grant loved children and used to pick up
( one of the babies) and carry her about but
he was so unsteady he could never be trusted
alone so grandma always walked with him.”
Ducheney was an interesting character, a
Hudson’s Bay Co. store manager who bought
company sea Capt. James Scarborough’s
claim at what is now Fort Columbia State
Park for $1,250 in 1856, starting an early
salmon-packing business. His wife, Mary
Rondeau, was the granddaughter of Chinook
Chief Comcomly. The hard-drinking Grant,
victorious Civil War general and screw-up
president, was stationed at Fort Vancouver
from September 1852 until early 1854 — he
grew his famous beard there — and was then
transferred to California. So the dates don’t
quite match up in Eliot’s account, though it’s
possible Grant stayed with the Ducheneys at
another Chinook residence before their move
to the Scarborough property.
• C.O. Rhodes, whose father homesteaded
in Pacifi c County in 1866: “When 12 years
old I had an exciting experience on a fi sh-
ing trip with my uncle on the North Palix
river. … In those days, 1887, there would be
tens of thousands of these fi sh in these shal-
low streams. Well, it was then and there that
a fi sh got me. … Not being content to stand
on the bank, I crawled out on an old slippery
log that projected out into the creek some 10
feet, right among the fi sh. I picked out a good,
big one, and did I hook him! He landed me
right off that log among all those fi sh. The
water was only about 2 feet deep, and there
were fi sh over me, under me, and on all sides
of me, and as fast as I would gain a footing,
down I’d go again with fi sh splashing salmon
eggs in my ears, eyes, and mouth.”
Rhodes also recalled “rounding up cows
and calves at milking time and many an old
black bear did I see. They were harmless
unless accompanied by their cubs, then they
were not to be fooled with.” This is still true
today — Pacifi c County is endowed with
amazingly docile bears.
• George Wilson, Pacifi c County: “It was
in 1890 that six ‘promoters’ came to Oyster-
ville, and I had the honor of sailing them to
South Bend in a sail boat called the ‘Indona’ …
It was not long until the town had grown to be
a quite important place, and all kinds of busi-
ness was started. Being located near the cen-
ter of the county, the people wanted the county
seat moved there from Oysterville. There were
no roads then, and all travel and traffi c was by
water and it required two steamers and a scow
to move the courthouse records and courthouse
material to South Bend. I helped to move them,
and owing to the bitter controversy over the
matter, it was moved by night.”
Nowadays, county government and oys-
ters are about South Bend’s only remain-
ing industries. Were it not for its spectacu-
lar courthouse, it would be tempting to move
the county seat back to Oysterville.
One of these days, I’ll make a trip to
Salem and Eugene and see what gems are
buried in Oregon Federal Writers’ Project
records. The project’s most famous writ-
ers are a pantheon of 20th century literati,
names like Ralph Ellison, John Steinbeck,
Studs Terkel, Saul Bellow and John Cheever.
It’s irresistible to think the rich and gifted
language in their books is a direct refl ec-
tion of the thousands of unique stories they
absorbed during this sensational exercise in
capturing American memories.
— M.S.W.
Matt Winters is editor and publisher of the
Chinook Observer and Coast River Business
Journal.
Private Collection
Putting together log booms like this one across the river from Astoria near Knappton, Washington, a
century ago required strength, coordination and lots of practice. Famously, logrolling was a com-
petitive recreational activity in which two men balanced on one of these floating logs and spun it
underfoot, with whoever was thrown off losing the contest.
DAVID F. PERO, Editor & Publisher
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