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Simmons continued from front page.
4 OCTOBER 15, 2002
"They're wild, you know," he said, scooping
up a kitten. "I take them in.
I don't like to hear them out there. They cry
they're sickly a lot of times. I had to crawl in
the black berry bushes to get this guy," he said,
petting the kitten.
"As youngsters," continued Simmons, "We
were very active. We just went out. We didn't
care about the weather, we didn't care about
clothes - we were just rambunctious. Only
when it was extreme cold did we stay in. And
then we just had to get out."
Don's younger brother Leroy Simmons, who
is a manager at Spirit Mountain Casino, recalls
that Don was always out in
the woods fishing. "He'd go
to Agency Creek or Fawn
Creek and come back with a
knapsack full of fish -50 or
60 trout," said Leroy.
Because he spent so much
time as a child outdoors,
Don tells me, he developed
a deeply ingrained love for
the Grand Ronde region.
"I loved it here. I loved the
woods. Back then there
wasn't any roads through
there. That's where I spent x j
most of my time as a kid. It
was sort of a coping mechanism," Simmons said.
"It was almost like you had to get out of the
house to get away from my dad, it was crazy.
When he went on a drunk, he went for a month.
You didn't want to look in that room he was in,
or even smell in there. He'd break every win
dow in the house. It was awful. If it wasn't for
my grandfather, we'd had no place to go. He
saved us.
My grandfather took us to school, to church,
gave us money... one time; he took us to a Port
land Beavers game on Vaughn street. It was
always good to be in his house, because it was
normal. You ate three meals a day. If you was
rowdy, you got spanked. Not very often, but
you did. I always have good memories of grow
ing up in Grand Ronde. Fond memories. Ex
cept the drinking, of course," Simmons said.
Don's grandfather, William Edmund
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Simmons, and his grandmother, Suzette
Norwest, had a house right by Spirit Mountain
they built in 1909. Suzy and his granddad
were married their entire lives. When Don's
grandfather died, he gave the land to Don's fa
ther, who sold it for drinking money. His grand
father also owned land across the river and by
Cosper Creek, but it was the same thing. First
the land was logged and then sold.
"It was sad because my grandfather loved
those places and wanted his grandkids to get
them," Don said. "But in the end we never got
nothing."
To make ends meet, the Simmons' would of
ten pick hops or prunes or whatever was
being harvested at the time.
"They didn't have Hispanics back
then, so it was mostly us Native Ameri-
cans who did the pickin'. We stayed in
cabins. Actually, it was pretty nice. On
your time off, you could play cards, or
there were boxing matches, or you could just
hang around. But it was hard work. Tough on
the hands. If you didn't have gloves, which we
didn't, it would turn your hands this sort of nico
tine brown color," he said. "Hops grow high up
on a vine and are kind of soft and fluffy. You
put them in these big bags and try to keep the
leaves out. We would work all day, till it was
too dark to work. We didn't make a hell of a lot,
but it was okay."
Other times he and siblings would collect
bottles to make money.
"We'd take a sack and walk these roads all
around here and pick up bottles. None of the
roads were paved back then. We'd trade them
in at Speck's. It's still there, but it's called Sea
way now."
They would give the money they earned to
their mother, and she'd buy things they needed.
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Simmons Family 1949: The Simmons' children in Grand Ronde, 1949. Left to right are: Donald, Claudia, William, Sampson,
Leroy (being held), and Walter.
Things like kerosene, for their lamps, and but
ter, for cooking. "Things you had to have," Don
said.
Don's mother did a lot of cooking. "As scarce
as the food got, we was raised on good home
cooking. We ate a lot of natural foods, what
ever was in season. And we always had deer to
eat." Simmons said.
Don would go hunting with the old-timers. It
was a big event because the deer meat meant a
lot to them.
"Those old guys would always shoot a deer,
dress it and eat its liver. And not a word was
said. It was given to you and you just took it
and ate it, because they all did. It wasn't for
hunger, it was a ritual," he said. "Those old
timers, they taught me more than my dad," he
said.
In 1959, when he was 17,
Don joined the Marines. He
was in for four years to the
day. "It was good for me,"
Don said.
After he got out of the Ma
rines, Don said, he began to
drink more and more.
Don spent most of his time
drifting around the West coast, doing jobs as a
roofer and getting by however he could. He
was married twice and divorced twice. Alcohol
was a constant setback.
"I drank for damn near thirty years," Don
said. "It was rough."
Don went to jail several times over the years.
He was almost on the border of going to the big
house down in California.
"As crazy as it seems, I almost wanted to be
locked up... to clear my head," he said. "You
can't clear your head if all you're doing is drink
ing." Eventually he wound up on Seattle's Skid
Road, living in cheap hotel rooms, or his car if
he had one. He worked in part-time labor pools
for money, and hung out in seedy bars. He
drank the cheapest wine he could find.
"Nothing ever lasted," Don said. "I'd get a
good job, but somehow I'd blow it. It was al
ways such a letdown, so I would just drink
more," he said.
"One day," Don said.
"I was laying up under a
bridge in Seattle, drunk.
I was drinking
Thunderbird, that's
what I was down to. I
had three quarters of a
bottle... I looked up and
saw the Space Needle. I
said T can't do this any
more,' I poured out the
Thunderbird and went to
an Alcoholics Anony
mous meeting. That was
the last time I drank.
Three quarters of a
Thunderbird, I poured
out. It was April 5, 1988.
I call it my AA birthday."
This time, Don did all
the right things. He
went to AA meetings, got
a sponsor and began to
recover.
He sobered up and felt
better than he had felt in
his entire life. His whole
life changed. He was
happier. His health
started to improve. Now,
he doesn't drink, doesn't
smoke and looks forward
to each day. "I'm
healthier now than in
any other time in my
SI
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