APRIL 15, 2003 SMOKE SIGNALS 7
!G Cokedl Up The Good Life
busy.
dogs, made a big bonfire and kept a
.22 rifle with her, too.
"Dad would make me practice with
a cracker box and see if I could hit it,"
she said. "My girls are excellent shots.
He always trusted me to take care of
myself and the other kids. I guess
you'd say I was an old tuffy. I could
handle horses, haul wood, split wood,
anything. Even a drag saw (mounted
on a wooden frame with little tiny mo
tor an d steel dogs to hold the log steady
as the saw went back and forth.)
"It was hard work, but that was the
way you'd earn your school clothes,"
she said. "It would just tire you out.
You had to really scrounge through
berry vines and everything else."
When McAbee was 14, she got a job
as a live-in baby sitter with the
Goldschmidt family in Eugene. At
that time, they owned a furniture store
called, Rubenstein's Furniture. The
baby boy? Future Oregon Governor
and U.S. Secretary of Transportation
Neil Goldschmidt. "He was a ram
bunctious little guy (a toddler) at that
time," she said. "Not spoiled, but he
wanted to have his way."
During the summer when she was
14, thanks to a Ms. Joaquin in the
Indian Affairs office here at the Tribe,
McAbee got a job washing dishes at
the Spouting Horn Inn on the coast
at Depoe Bay. It is to this job that
she traces her lifelong interest in res
taurants and other services.
The list goes on to include Gillespie's
Restaurant in Valley Junction (where
for a time she and daughter, Groshong,
worked different shifts at he same job),
Birchell's Restaurant at Fort Hill, the
Bonanza Restaurant in Grand Ronde,
Kimberly Quality Care, a nursing ser
vice in Salem, the Cushman Hospital
in Tacoma. Her work ranged from
washing dishes to cooking pies to man
aging restaurants to serving the eld
erly as a home health aide.
Sometimes, she took patients back
home to where they were born and
raised. One time that meant a trip to
Rock Springs, Wyoming. Another
time to Flaming Gorge, Utah.
"I loved it," she said of the traveling.
But even working here at home
could be something of an adventure.
At Bonanza, she recalled, "(Oregon
Governor) Tom McCall ('He was a
sweetheart,') would call on Friday
night and come in on Saturday with
Ron his driver and pick up (my) pies.
I made 125 pies a week, double crust
apples and berries. Lots of cream pies.
All our cinnamon rolls."
"(Oregon Governor and U.S. Senator)
Mark Hatfield used to come into
Gillespies (he always had cinnamon
toast and tea). (Oregon Governor) Bob
Straub ('apple pie and ice cream or
cheese') used to come into Bonanza. He
was Governor at that time. (Oregon
Governors) Vic Atiyeh and Barbara Rob
erts used to come to pow-wow functions.
(Atiyeh )'d be friendly with the staff."
"Everybody loved the Bonanza," she
said. "There was lots of comraderie
with all the mill workers. It was a
friendly place." It also drew television
anchorman Mike Donahue, meteorolo
gist Phil Voelker, maybe five or six of
them altogether, who would "always
sit in the same place" and have "ice
cream and coffee and pie."
"I've been very fortunate, meeting
dignitaries. I've had a very interest
ing life, a very busy life," said McAbee.
Herron remembers a different Bo
nanza. "At Bonanza, when she would
come home, just dead, just wore out, I
knew she was tired. I'd do all the iron
ingone time, there were 21 pieces
of uniform to iron you just did it
because you knew what a hard worker
she was, and there was no way she
could do it. She'd soak her feet. I knew
how bad her feet felt. I would give her
a pedicure. She had calluses on her
feet. I'd cut them off and rub her feet
and she'd be so happy after that. She
had such a hard life. Nobody will ever
know what she went through in her
life. I just don't ever want to see my
mother in pain."
Her memories of early Indian cul
ture are general. "We just called it,
'the Reservation.' I heard my grand
mother talk about it. A happy gather
ing, I think, to get together."
She came quickly back to the per
sonal. "I never did hear anybody,
grandmother or uncle either, say one
bad thing. They were very grateful
people for what they had, and what
they could share.
Today, her favorite singer is George
Strait. And other than the news, prac
tically the only television show she
watches is CSI: Crime Scene Investi
gators. It is Groshong's favorite, too.
Tribal Crew Finds 125 Pieces Of Shuttle Debris In Rain, Wind And Cold
i- r
i'i-
Shuttle continued from front page
John Herrington, a Chickasaw
and the first American Indian
in space. Herrington spoke
about his experience and had
a slide show on his space walk.
"I learned more about a
shuttle that I ever thought I
would in my life," said Tribal
member Jake McKnight, the
only Tribal member on this
crew, but one of many, ac
cording to Clift, playing a
part in the shuttle search.
(Most searchers were also for
est fire fighters because so
many of the processes are
similar and Clift reported
that as many as 50 percent
of the nation's fire fighting
crews are also regularly In
dians.) For the shuttle project,
Duff was among three women
in the crew of 19, which was
about average for the entire
project. About 15 percent are
women, and that also holds
true for fire fighting crews, according
to Clift.
The orientation also warned them
against unacceptable behavior (a
$250,000 fine and 10 years imprison
ment for stealing a piece of the shuttle;
no photographs except inside the tents;
and no talking about what had been
found to prevent rumors and specula
tions), but, said Duff, "we were all there
to do the job."
Search and Rescue managers were
there to make sure the crews under
stood and followed the gridding proce
dures, but the crews were so good at it,
according to Clift, "Search and Rescue
had nothing to do after the second day.
! -4
,' "-
3 )
ST
St -Ul
V. hill! hit.
J J i''Jn'Mt",
'L
Vi,'
..I mi.
IT'"
- j
' 4 Si
1 " .
Bill Borck, Jeremiah Spencer, Shane Harmon, Brandy Duff, Joshua Clift and Tribal member Jake
McKnight (from left) enjoyed an experience they'll never forget. They recovered pieces of the
shuttle Columbia recently in eastern Texas.
We knew what to do and we did it."
Workers were divided by divisions,
each of which had six strike teams,
and each strike team had two 20-per-son
hand crews, two two-thre person
EPA crews and one NASA represen
tative. The Tribal crew was among
one of the 20-person hand crews.
"You screamed when you found a
piece," said McKnight. EPA and NASA
representatives came over, located the
find with a GPS (global positioning sys
tem) tool, labeled it and carted it off.
"We were furthest west," said Clift.
"We found the smallest and lightest
pieces that dropped off the shuttle
while it was still flying."
"They were really really light," said
Duff of the shuttle tile pieces the crew
found.
The crew walked about 10 miles a
day along their grids, covering 700
acres. "They never expected us to find
as much as we did," said Clift. "We
found as much in one day as they found
in the previous two weeks at the camp
we were at. The organization was very
efficient," said Clift.
Clift carries in his memory today
"pictures of people with rainwear go
ing through the briars and you name
it and coming out in tatters. That's
how bad it was."
Others had memories as well.
"There were fire ant mounds every five
feet," said Harmon.
Somebody told them, "If it don't bite,
sting or poke you, it ain't from Texas."
Somebody ran into a cottonmouth,
according to Clift, who then heard
that "it met an unfortunate demise."
"It was just wet. You had wet feet
all the time. The ground was really
saturated," said McKnight.
"It was really windy," said Duff.
Of the fourteen days there, "the
second day was gorgeous," according
to Clift, and two days they were off
for snow.
"Those were our cribbage days," said
McKnight. "It was too cold to nap."
The food, as Jeremiah Spencer re
membered it, was "always beans."
Duff remembered, "frozen burritos
for lunch."
"The mesquite brush had thorns
five-six inches long," said Clift. "For
one person, they went through the
bottom of his boot."
Tents were put up on a cement
slab, and so many were so close to
gether that an illness they called,
"camp crud" ran pretty quickly
through the crews. "You could hear
it all night long," said Clift.
When they left, about 27 percent of
the shuttle had been found. The
project had set about 45 percent as a
goal. Many will continue working
through mid-April.
The Tribal crew left at a good time,
however. "All the planes were tied up
with spring break," said Clift, "so they
flew us back first class. We had the
jet that the Rolling Stones had just got
done using. It had couches and a bar.
It was like being in a living room."
"They took care of us pretty well,"
said McKnight.