Henry Geschwill Oral History Interview, December 15, 2017

TIAH EDMUNSON-MORTON: Hold on one... alright, now we're rolling.

HENRY GESCHWILL: Henry Geschwill. Born November 14, 1936.

TEM: We are at your house in Salem, and it is December 15, 2017. I am Tiah Edmunson-Morton, and we are here to talk about your family and hops. Let's start before we talk about your dad coming here, you were born in Oregon. Were you born in Mt. Angel?

HG: Right.

TEM: Yeah. And you have three siblings? You had one brother and two sisters?

HG: Three sisters.

TEM: Three sisters.

HG: Yeah.

TEM: Were they all born in Mt. Angel, too?

HG: Yeah. My oldest sister and I were born in Mt. Angel. My second sister, she 00:01:00was born in Silverton. And my brother and my youngest sister was born in Silverton. And that, well, I don't know where to go from there.

TEM: [Laughs]. So your dad was farming by that point, so you were born into the farm. That was what you knew from the moment that you...

HG: Yeah, Dad was farming at that time in the Mt. Angel and the Woodburn area.

TEM: Okay.

HG: He was on a rented property in Mt. Angel and in the process of purchasing the farm in Woodburn he lived in Mt. Angel, and he went back and forth until the 00:02:00house was built. That house was built in 1941.

TEM: In Woodburn?

HG: In Woodburn.

TEM: Okay.

HG: He came here in '24, and he migrated out of Mt. Angel, well, I don't know. He worked on a railroad, he worked in the lumber camps, he worked in factories, just to get a picture of the area, the country, to see, and he pictured it real similar to his place in Germany. The rainfall, the weather and all of that was real similar. His mother-in-law's contact of him... and, see he had two 00:03:00brothers: one he lost in the war, and then he had, one was killed in Wisconsin. That was during the time of the war, and his mother wanted to get him out.

TEM: Oh, get him back to Germany? Or get him out of Germany?

HG: No, get him out of Germany. His father was already gone, as far as I know. He, when he did finally settle down it was mainly a green operation. He didn't get into hops until 1946 or '47. Because his father... what interested him in 00:04:00hops because his father in Germany raised hops.

TEM: Did his father only raise hops in Germany? Were there... I know here people who raise hops will also have other crops. Was his father primarily a hop farmer in Germany?

HG: As far as I know, he was. Dad never talked too much about Germany as far as farming... they didn't live on the farm in Germany. They transported by horse and wagon to the farm. They never lived... he lived in... the house was in town. The cattle and the houses were on the bottom, and they lived on the upper part 00:05:00of it. He didn't go back until his mother died, because he was the executor of the will. So he didn't go back until 1951. And then he was gone 6 weeks.

TEM: That's a long time to be gone.

HG: Well at that time the traveling wasn't the best. He didn't have 747s [Boeing 747], and all you had was a boat. So it was, it was a long trip. After that he 00:06:00went back by plane, but that time he didn't.

TEM: So at that point you had-all of your siblings had been born.

HG: Yeah.

TEM: And what was a typical day like for you all on the farm? I imagine that your dad leaving for that long you had to pick up some slack. But what were the things that you did just generally on the farm?

HG: Well, milk the cows and take care of them. Dad did have hired help that run the farm for him. When he left to Germany he didn't go until fall.

TEM: Oh.

HG: And then, so it was just a matter of taking care of the animals, but as far as field work, that didn't come about until around April and he was already home. But, well, between getting the cows milked and taking care of the hogs and helping Mom with the chickens... that was about it and then going to school. Other than that, it was a scary time.

TEM: To have him gone?

HG: We didn't know if he was coming back [voice breaks with crying].

TEM: Oh.

HG: That was the hard part. But you know you're gone so long and they might not let him out, you know.

TEM: Well, I imagine communication was difficult too, so it's so different now where there are so many ways of sharing where you are or what's happening, but then it seems like it was certainly more difficult.

HG: Yeah. It was. You overlook a lot of it and look for the better side. He's 00:09:00went back four different times.

TEM: After that first trip?

HG: Mm [yes].

TEM: I can imagine it really had changed so much since he'd been there too, that so much had happened.

HG: Yeah the city grew over there and he sold the property and sold it to the city. Because I was never there. My sister, oldest sister, was there and there was a freeway went through the homestead of my dad's. Anyway, my mother during 00:10:00the wartime and the surrounding, aunts and uncles and doctors and whatever, because of the war they rounded up a lot of different things that they needed and sent it there, which they needed-vinyl material, sewing stuff. I don't know what Mom all boxed up, but she boxed up a lot of stuff and sent it because she felt it was in need for Dad's parents or his sisters. He had two, three sisters there yet. One of them was in Switzerland, and she couldn't get out until after the war, and she was the only one that ever came to Oregon. She came twice. The 00:11:00others, you know they didn't come. But things went on and the farm grew.

TEM: So were they, did extended family continue to farm in Germany? Or was farming...

HG: Dad never talked about it. They had ground, from what I gathered, he'd only tell you what he wanted to tell you. What I gathered when he was executor of the 00:12:00will and he had to either... I know that he sold the property that was in town to the city. The ground that they farmed, I don't know. I don't know. He never did talk about it, but he didn't bring from the proceeds of the property, he never brought to Oregon. It all stayed there. Either he'd give it to his sisters and then distribute it from probably nieces and nephews. Because he had one sister that was in, I think she had a boy, and I think he was out once-Maria. 00:13:00She was in Switzerland, and I think some of that went to her. But otherwise, his bringing anything home, no he didn't bring any of the proceeds home. And then I think he traveled four different times over there, and finally when it was all said and done then, and, well, he was getting older and traveling was getting a little hard. My mother went once, and boy you got to know where you're going over there because the train don't wait.

TEM: [Laughs] That's what I've heard. It runs on time.

HG: Yeah, it just slows down and you got to get on or get off. She went once and 00:14:00that was enough. My oldest sister was there and I wasn't. I was at that time going through a lot, see I was... see my second sister was an airline stewardess, so she got rates for Mom and Dad to fly, because during that time I was in the Navy and I didn't get in on a lot of that. I never went over there. I know... I ain't saying I didn't have any interest to go, but when I was in Navy I put in my time there and when I got out, well, wanted to settle down, I guess, 00:15:00you know. But things weren't all roses either.

TEM: So let's rewind to when your parents met. So your dad came in 1924. By '27 ish... if that's three, four years, had he settled back in the Mt. Angel area and met your mom by that point or had they not met yet?

HG: No. Dad got married in '32, wasn't it Mom? What's she doing...?

LORRAINE GESCHWILL: I think so. I think that's what it was.

HG: Yeah, married in '32. He was gone for three years, and his mother did not know where he was. She got a hold of the sponsor in Mt. Angel and told him, he says, either find him, and he has to settle down or he has to come home. For some reason, I don't know, he settled down. He didn't want to... maybe it was too rough to go home. But he worked in 47 of the 48 states at that time when he settled down. He generally had a pretty good feeling of the Willamette Valley that really was real similar to his former in Germany.

TEM: And had your mom, did your mom grow up in the Mt. Angel, Silverton area?

HG: No, she grew up in the Molehill area. How they met, as far as I know, it was a barn dance and she was pretty young. I think she was 19 at that time. Anyway, Dad had to, his mother said you either settle down or come home. She had enough of this, because she lost contact of him and he wasn't much for writing. Any of the letters that were sent back he had to write them in German. He went to the 00:18:00Mt. Angel abbey and he'd have it write the letter and then it was sent there because they didn't understand English, and I know when they got a language barrier in there it's really hard to communicate because... see Mom, I would've probably picked it up too, but see Mom didn't understand it because... and Dad didn't speak much unless he was with somebody that spoke German, then he would speak some. Otherwise, he didn't speak it. He had to learn English because 00:19:00that's the only way he could get along with farming. He had to learn English. He did a real good job of it, because he had a little slang to it, but you know he got by. Got by real good. Because Mt. Angel was a German town at that time. Everybody in there was German and he got, well, the priest in Mt. Angel up there in the Abbey there was a lot of German up there so he communicated up there quite a bit. So, well, he got along fine.

TEM: So your grandma's uncle was in Mt. Angel still at that point? Am I 00:20:00understanding that he's the one that sponsored your dad to begin with?

HG: Mm-hmm.

TEM: Was there extended family from your grandma besides this great, great uncle that had settled in the area?

HG: No. My grandma in Germany was a Fallarbor and my great grandfather that was in Mt. Angel was a Fallarbor The only way that I can get that divided up because of the family and how they married out is how I got related to different ones in 00:21:00the area. My mother was a Snack, and her father was from Nebraska. So they migrated into, well, my grandmother on my mother's side was a Hammer, her name, when they migrated into Mt. Angel. Everybody was pretty much a farmer, the Hammers. Dad, he, Dad ran a farm out on the outskirts of Mt. Angel, the Kronenburg place. That's where two of us were born. The other three were born in 00:22:00Silverton. The farm in Woodburn was Fallarbor. That's how he-the place wasn't going anywhere. I guess the boys didn't want to farm it, so Dad took it and that's where it is today. It's the main farm. It's Woodburn, Gervais area, and Mt. Angel area is where the ground is all centrally located. But Dad, well, he got into the hop business in, I think it was he planted in '46. He harvested in 00:23:00'47, which, well, there was, you know, that was all hand-picked times, you know all wood-drying and everything. We didn't get a hop machine until 1950. I think it was '51 he got it. We went-we had to come up with so much money-we went day and night that season.

TEM: To get the machine, to pay for the machine, yeah.

HG: To get the machine. That was only a percentage of the machine, and then 00:24:00after that every year Dad had to, I think it was set up for 20 years. Then when it was finally paid off, then here he comes again he wants to see us a new one. It would've been a different style. It was more of an upright machine at that time, so brother and I purchased that one.

TEM: Can you describe the difference-so it's the Dauenhauer was the first one.

HG: Mm-hmm.

TEM: So what's the difference between an upright and a Dauenhauer?

HG: Well, the first Dauenhauer was a dragline. It was nothing but a bunch of drums were the hops went over the top and then they weaved around between-there 00:25:00was two sets of drums. There was one on top and one on the bottom. Then the hops would go through, and Dad felt there was less shatter with the dragline machine than it was with the upright. That was his feeling, but a lot of that is weather related. But anyway... and it was, there was more help needed because you had to feed it by hand. It's, I don't know, but anyway.

TEM: Was it in the field? Or was it one that was...

HG: No, it was a stationary...

TEM: Okay. So they're both stationary. Okay.

HG: They're both stationary machines.

TEM: That was what I was trying to figure out whether one was in... something that's happening in the field.

HG: Well, when Dad advanced from hand-picking to machine-picking, yeah, he did have a portable machine but, wow, that was so slow. I mean, it, I still remember we had 15 acres down there in the bottom and it took two weeks to pick those 15 acres. It was pretty slow. Then that's when he went to the stationary, Dauenhauer stationary machine. Well, yeah, it, the vine speed of that one was around, I think it was 5 vines a minute. Then when we went to the upright it 00:27:00was, well, it was advanced and the cleaning part of it was better, the unloading part was a lot better, and we were running up to 15, 16 vines a minute. So it was advanced pretty good. Then after, well, that was the one that brother and I bought in 1970. I think it was '71 or '72. After we got it paid off we rebuilt it. We rebuilt the dryer and we rebuilt the hop picker because, well, the 00:28:00breweries were getting and the dealers were getting a little touchy about... see the hop house was old style where you laid a kiln and then you burned it with wood and you kept all the heat, there was the fans that pulled the heat up were up on the top in a tupelo. The moisture in the hops was hitting the ceiling and for some reason it was coming back down, and they claimed we were stewing them. That's when my brother and I, we rebuilt that. See, that was in '90... the earthquake was in '95? '93 or '95 [sic 1993] we rebuilt it. And we opened it all 00:29:00up when we were running gas then and the fans were on the bottom. When it went up the moisture kept going. It didn't hit the ceiling and come back down. It kept going. So we rebuilt that, and then two years later we rebuilt the hop picker and brought it up to standards of what the new machine that they were building. It was a little long, it had a little longer grisly in them. So we brought the machine up to the latest. We put another cleaner in it and then another set of dribble belts so that increased our picking. So we were picking around 18 vines then.

It isn't that you can pick 18, of certain varieties you can pick that many, and certain varieties you got to get down to 6 because of... you know they're a little tougher picking and you want to get as many off as you can because, but that was... but as far as shedder or petals or anything like that, well, they don't want to buy them, so we had to disconnect all the petal part of it off. The Dauenhauer machine at that time was...evidently Florian Dauenhauer was a short guy because everything was low. So when I rebuilt it, I put two feet into 00:31:00all the framing and brought it up to where you could walk through without hitting your head. Because I remember when something was going on and you got to run upstairs and take care of it, when you hit one of those crossbeams it lays you out. We raised it up to where you could walk through without getting hurt. Because it was getting to a point then that OSU [Oregon State University] was kind of, well, there's been accidents. So they were getting pretty tough on, because that machine when it went in it didn't have the guards at that time. We wanted it all guarded, but still it wasn't guarded right. So they got pretty 00:32:00touchy about it. So when we rebuilt it you didn't have to crawl up walls to take care of something. You had cat walks and stairways and then even the shedders that were exposed on the walkway you had to get those down to a half inch. It's understandable when I started. I did get all the paperwork that I could from OSU it's just, and then the stairways had to be so-so. The steps I think it was within eight inch, and then you had to have railings on them because there was problems. We had a problem one time when we were unloading, not the latest but 00:33:00earlier, unloading a kiln we had a Spanish boy up there and he was taking a kiln off and he as backing up and he backed off. It so happened I was walking back to the balers to see how things were going back there, I mean the hop house was full. When I walked in I heard a noise and I hollered at the balers and they opened that up and went and dug him out, but he was... he was fine. We saved him. We got him out. Got him some fresh air, and that was his last day. He didn't want any more part of that. Well, I can't blame him either because you know well he would have suffocated. That's when a lot of things got changed. So 00:34:00it's, I ain't saying it's foolproof. We put a lot more guards in it. We buried all the trash conveyers are all buried in the floor so you can walk around there and everything is you got clearance to where it's the safety part of it, but still there's always a problem some place.

TEM: So when you were, I guess, my math says you were about 10 when your dad would have built the drying house. So at that point could you... you might not 00:35:00remember this because you were 10, but were there regulations around how you built drying houses then or...?

HG: No. No there wasn't. No. The only, at that age, when that was mainly hand-picking my job was to supply water out there to the field and move the toilets to where they were needed and then when the hops came in, usually Dad didn't ever start laying a kiln until he had 150 sacks of hops. Then he started 00:36:00laying it and my job then was to drag those sacks in for him and dump them where he wanted them. Because you don't just pick up and thrown them. They had a way of laying a kiln that, I mean, there's a lot of work in it. That was my job then. As far as drying, no you had guys that dried them, because he was using slat wood and then the baling part of it they held off as long as they could because when they dried a kiln of hops at that time there's a trick to it. Sometimes it might be a little on the tough side or it may be on the dry side, 00:37:00because when they did dry them they always went in and re-forked them just to get air through all of them.

TEM: Before they baled it.

HG: Before they baled.

TEM: Like when it seemed like everything was done then they would re-fork it.

HG: Yeah. And they waited as long as they could baling unless it was absolutely necessary, but they waited as long as they could baling because they wanted to put moisture back in the hops and that way they get more weight out of them. That was usually done in the fall. I think the hop picking part was done and so they did it in the fall. But when the later pickers got in there and picked hops you couldn't do that anymore. I mean we had to partition a wall between the 00:38:00drying wall and the dry hops because of the heat coming from that wall because they didn't want them warm because they had to cool, and we had to cool them for 24 hours before we can bale them. Then we had to get them down to 8%, you know.

TEM: So the drying and the cooling was happening in the same building?

HG: Mm-hmm.

TEM: And then storage...?

HG: That went to a different building.

TEM: ...to a different building.

HG: Yeah. Once they were baled they were wheeled out and put into another building. They were set in rows but not touching each other. There's a little space because they had to, you don't want to, if you touched them they would 00:39:00heat up and you got to treat a hop bale just like you would treat a hay bale, everything goes through a 21-day cycle, and so does hay. When we handled hay it was always, we handled everything, when we stacked it was always on edge. We didn't lay it flat. We'd put it on edge. Some of those hay seasons were, you know, it got overcast and you got rain and you got this problem and that problem, so before the next crop comes off you got to get that one baled up. It's a lot different now.

TEM: Did you ever have a fire in the storage? Or scary moments where a fire was starting?

HG: No. No we didn't. But when, I won't mention any names, but when we were asked, there was a fire in the Willamette Valley in two different places: one in St. Paul and one in Woodburn. I won't mention no names, but we were asked to help out. So we did. And we picked them and we put them on the drying floor and we started the burner and we asked the guy who owned the hops, I says, "When you 00:41:00determine they're dry you shut it off." So he did. We were, he had a, well, I don't know how much in detail you want to get into this thing... he had a helper. Anyway, in front of those burners we had a screen because the belt that brought the hops from the picker up to the dryer was within the vicinity of these burners. So, those belts would have a pedal or two on them and they would come off when the belt returned, and this burner would pick them up. It would 00:42:00have them against the screen. Well, this helper, she took a broom and swept them off. Well, a lot of times they go through the burning process of that thing and then they're red hot. So I seen what... for some reason I was there... and I'd seen what was going on, and I asked her not to do that. She says well all those pedals are restricting the air to come into the burner. I says, yeah, that's fine. But I says don't do that no more. Because I actually convinced it in her head, I says once that pedal goes through that burner, I says, it's red hot. And then she got to thinking and she says. "Yeah that's probably true." But during all of that process of picking those hops that time the insurance company that 00:43:00he had because of his operation had burnt they don't like to pay. So they were there and they went through that hop house and they picked it apart and they found charred boards so that's when and the guy did, the insurance company did pay off for what he'd lost there at home. But it woke us up, and that's when we decided to rebuild the hop house. We did, and yeah it was... I can't believe we didn't have a fire, but we didn't.

TEM: Well, and the operation at that point. I know fires were more common in 00:44:001900s, 1910s, but the operations were so much smaller. I can't imagine at that point how large the operation is and what it's like to lose that much.

HG: Yeah it's, well, you know you invest a lot of money into something that you only use for a maximum of 3 weeks and then there it sits. I mean sure you carry insurance on it, but you know these old hop houses a lot of them were just, you use the same foundation and the same walls, and you just kind of rebuild. Try to bring it up to where it's a little handier. When you do that you're still 00:45:00dealing with wood, and then the type of wood, you know, it might be a little green, then you got this air pressure coming up through there and the heat, you know, dry them out, and pretty soon they shrink up and you got heat and everything coming through between two boards, and that's when you get into trouble. But when we rebuilt that, it was mainly all pretty much brick and steel. I can't say there's no wood. The catwalks were wood but it's, I think it's a lot safer now. We don't use the wood floor no more and we still drag a 00:46:00cloth with the-see all those older ones were wood floors, they had two-by-two slats in them. So it was more maintenance with the old floors if you, and then the next thing is to get it done. You got to take care of things when, in that time and usually you watch the electrical pretty close. I know this machine I rebuilt, it's still there today, that was rewired when I rebuilt it, it all got all rewired.

TEM: So then you have the danger of the fire because you're heating stuff up, 00:47:00but then there's the danger of the electric causing a fire too?

HG: Right.

TEM: So making sure that you're looking all over it?

HG: Yeah, right. And, well, progress, a lot of that makes you change because when you get into electrical, you don't just hook up a bunch of wires up and start motors and hope for the best. They use different solutions to driving motors. They got the slower starts on them to where it don't just start up and then the chains start flying and all of that stuff. These machines, the one we 00:48:00had, it never had a slip clutch. The only thing done are, beside the use a flat chain... and he says it'll break. Well, yeah, it did that. And but then as years go on you know where he had twisted chains you'd put in gear boxes and you would use a roller chain. Well, roller chain is a hundred times stronger than flat chain, and when you start that motor you just don't want it to take off because...then that's when you'll put a slow start in it because you'll hit the switch, and then it'll gradually start, and it's a lot better. But yeah it's, there's no slip clutch in those machines. It's just things have to either break 00:49:00or something. That's about all you can do.

TEM: So were you interested from that very early age in the way that machines worked? Was that something you were drawn to naturally early on?

HG: Yeah. It was because a lot of the changes in the machine we're running today was... I not necessarily engineered it, but I wanted to eliminate a lot of downfall or problems that could happen. Because when you got 15 guys coming to work, and this includes the field crew and the hop picking crew, you know 00:50:00they're there to work. If you got a breakdown that maybe lasts an hour, you can't tell them to go home because you got to pay them. That's what I'd seen, so I tried to eliminate any possible problem that would create that. I ain't saying we didn't lose time, but it wasn't that long if any.

TEM: So when did you start making repairs? When did you start getting in there and, I guess, learning but also taking over more responsibility for that?

HG: Well, I was doing that already when we had the dry vine machine. I was in 00:51:00there, Dad had an operator hired to run it, and I worked with him. That's when I, you know, helped and got the idea of what makes this thing do what it's doing, and this one's a little shorter.

TEM: That finger.

HG: That finger. I got it in the wrong place.

TEM: [Chuckles].

HG: That's when I got interested in it, and one day I talked to a guy when he quit then I run it and it, you know, at that time you had to adjust belts 00:52:00because of moisture and everything but I did, in working with him, I followed pretty well the same procedure, and things worked real well. The machine today really when I was done, when I rebuilt it and was done with it, you didn't need a guy with a pocket full of wrenches to run that anymore because all the belts, I had a v-belt vulcanized in the middle of the belt, and I had a semi-pulley in the center of the pulley that tracked the belt to keep it strait, because when 00:53:00you go from night to day you got moisture and if these hops going on a belt, if they go too far on one side then that belt will shrink up and then it'll move. So I eliminated all of that by vulcanizing this v-belt into those pulleys and yeah everything works fine. I did that to all of them and it mainly helped us with the sweeper because you know when they sweep up all they want to do is sweep up, you know? If it gets into a belt, well, it'll probably come out. Well, it sometimes does and sometimes don't. So that was the reason for that v-belt in the center, and I think a lot of the machines in the valley, they are that way. 00:54:00It seems to go along a lot smoother because all you're doing is walking around and just kind of looking you know and just see that everything's going the right direction [chuckles].

TEM: Well, it seems like you started at this really interesting point, though, where machines are coming in, that transition from people picking, it being much more hands-on, hands-based, that you were there at that turning point...

HG: Yeah, I was there at the start.

TEM: ...that switch point. So it was probably great to learn as things were being developed, too, I imagine that transition...

HG: Yeah. It was. I mean you know it was a way of life on the farm. Dad had 100 00:55:00acres at that time full of hops, and you know if you got that many you got to get it in your head that things got to get done here. You're putting a lot of hours, time, and money into this crop so you, and you only got... really, on those early variety hops, you only got about 16 days is to get them picked and off of there, because once they're ripe, then they start going the other way. Those breweries don't like to see a tainted hop. Then you got to keep... it was 00:56:00pretty much a kind of a rule of thumb when spraying had to be done and when things had to be done later in the year as we hired a consultant to come out and check them. You know you'd get spots in there were the mites would pick a corner or an area, and so we had a consultant come out and watch that and things went a lot better because you know you do something, and then, really, the guy saved us money. Instead of just going out there just spraying for mites, we didn't have to. Then there's a cycle in there that they watch because they claim predators 00:57:00would come in and clean a lot of that out, and they don't want to kill the predators so they watch it and let us know when to spray it, and it worked out a lot better. If they're doing it today. I don't know. I'm sure they are because you got a lot more money invested in it today than you did then, because you're talking $11, $12 an hour help. You either pay the piper or you don't get nothing done because these guys are here and all they want is money, so you got to pay up. But now they're having trouble with this migration thing, and I don't know. See I been away from it for about 14 years so I ain't saying, you know I'm glad 00:58:00I'm not in it, but it's a different ball game. It's more paperwork. The state is watching you a lot more. There's different chemicals that you used to use you can't use. It's a tough road. Now we got powdery mildew, and you got...about every 10 days you got to take care of that. It's altogether a different way of life.

TEM: Your dad was there when the Oregon Hop Growers Association started. What 00:59:00role did the Growers Associations, and I guess later the Hop Commission, play in this communicating different expectations or... kind of... I don't know... translation of state rules or federal rules? Was that part of it, was that there was a support organization that was external to the farm themselves?

HG: Well, actually, I think I'm following you with what you want to know, the farmers weren't making any money at this hop business, so they created what they called a Hop Order where they all grouped up and they would reduce the acreage, only grow, I think one time we were down to 75% of our base. There was three Hop 01:00:00Orders and early... none of them really worked. What happened when you get cut down to 75% you'll go out and buy base. So what you're doing, you're just adding more misery to this whole thing. It got to the point to where you can't raise hops for 35 cents. Finally Dad he just says no, he says I can't do it. Because they were out begging him to contract his hops. He says I can't. I'm going in the hole. Then yeah they come up with this 75% base, reduce it down to 75%, but 01:01:00when he got different ones that go out and buy base, well, what are you gaining? You see. It just... it's the same thing as this dairy buyout. You probably heard of that buyout, to where one dairy would, a government would pay in so much for his quota and then the next one would buy more cows and that didn't work either. So finally everything went to pot and, well, we couldn't grow them for what they were wanting us to... what they wanted to pay for them, so they, things turned 01:02:00around. Because you can fiddle around with these breweries, if they don't see any hops down there in the pipeline, they get awful nervous because they got fulfillments to... they needed hops you know to fill their needs, so then the price changes. And that's really what it's doing today. The hop market did come back, and then they were short, and then you were asked to plant more, and there was a period of time in there that, yeah, you made some pretty good money at it. The best when I'd quit... when I retired out of there, my nephews took over, now 01:03:00you got craft beer and they're buying green hops, and dry hops and all of that stuff, and it changed the market quite a bit. Actually the hop price got up to about, the spot market got up to $12 a pound. But you know, I said, oh boy, we're going to plant hops. Well pretty soon it goes the other way.

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: But you know the breweries that pay $12 a pound they got that all back. They 01:04:00didn't lose no money. They got it all back. Really, now, the pipeline's full. Because you know years ago we only had two varieties: we had the early hops and we had the late hops. Now you got about, oh golly, I bet there's 18, 20 varieties out there. There's... and the worst part about it, they want... Oregon State works with different varieties of hops down there that the breweries, you know, all like to try. So they'll find a grower to raise those things, and he will, and then they change their minds, and so that variety goes out, which here in the valley it takes 3 years to get a full crop.

So that variety goes out, and then they bring another one in, so you're in and 01:05:00out of this whole thing all the time. It's... not saying, you know, if you're in the business, you just got to get adjusted. It's a matter of just adjusting. I have a lot of respect for how Al Haunold, do you know him? Yeah, he's the one that developed the nugget hop and when he had it in the greenhouse, he got powdery mildew in it, and he burnt the thing down. Even the clothes that he was wearing he burnt them. He got rid of them. Then he developed a strain in that variety to resist powdery mildew, and he did. You could plant magnums or 01:06:00anything next to it that's real susceptible to it, it wouldn't get them.

TEM: So having nugget next to something else, it wouldn't...?

HG: It wouldn't get it.

TEM: Oh.

HG: But now, today, see that whole cycle from what he developed, the mother part of that, it went down. Now they get it. So they got to spray them now too. We raised nuggets at that time, nuggets and Willamettes. We didn't have powdery mildew at that time when we were raising those. Somewhere along the line it got started. I don't know if it was Washington where it got started and I told the 01:07:00dealers, because they come out every summer and have field days, and Lorraine [knock on the door and discussion in the background].

LG: I thought I heard it before, and I thought, well, it's not.

HG: They have field days-tell them I'll catch them later [speaking to LG]. I think it's Beth-anyway they have field days and I begged the dealer, I says, don't.

LG: [Door opens] Yes.

JIM: Hello, how are you?

HG: Oh that's the insurance man. I begged them, I says...

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: Hi Jim [speaking to insurance representative]. I says don't have a field day because that powdery mildew, I mean birds can carry it, vehicles can carry it, 01:08:00and it's on your shoes and it's everywhere and I says, please don't bring any field crew out here. Anyway, but, I don't know. They knew all the problems it would create. But they did anyway, and anyway we got it. Germany fought that for years. They've had powdery mildew for years. We got it and then I think Idaho got it after that. That's another thing in the checkbook that you got to buy. It's another chemical you got to buy to resist that. If you don't take care of it, it's a group thing now with all the surrounding growers, that if you don't 01:09:00take care of it right they get it bad. So it's real similar to this filbert blight. Some guys will do a wonderful job of that, and take care of it. And there's some of them that as long as theirs produces 10 nuts they're going to...ugh. Now you get all these filberts. So it's an ongoing thing now, and I think it's going to get worse. I think. I got the feeling. Because the state is restricting a lot of these chemicals that are good chemicals you can use because, you know, see we can't use, we used to use sulfur.We can't use that no 01:10:00more because chemists are out there that they can detect that in a hop sample, and they can detect any chemical that you use to control... whatever's out there you're controlling they can pick it all up. There's... I mean it's, which in a way you know it's good. You don't want to put something out there that affects the public, you know, that's... the public is what determines the sale of everything out there.

TEM: You need them.

HG: You need them. Yeah. The same way with this beer, you know. The public determines the variety of this beer. If they like it, they'll buy it. But if they don't like it just goes down so what do you do? You change varieties. Now 01:11:00they got this craft beer now to where you make it the one day and drink it the next day. I think it's... my feeling is it's dying out. I got the feeling.

TEM: Well is there a practical implication, like from a machine standpoint, of having different varieties? Do you need to have different equipment as new varieties are being produced? Or is that not a big consideration to...?

HG: No, no. Not really. The only thing the growers have got problems, they want to cut back on the labor. They got machines up in Yakama, they're stripping machines, they go out in the field and they strip the hops and it has elevated 01:12:00into a truck, and then that truck is brought into the machine, and you mainly don't use the picking cats the machine. You take that all out, and all you use is the arm picker. The trouble here in the valley with that machine that strips those hops in the field is the soil. It's not like up there in that sandier soil. And you need more headland. We get weather down here that could be so wet that it wouldn't be possible to run one of those things because it's a kind of a big thing.

TEM: So it would get stuck? Like the soil, it just...you just couldn't go through the soil with the machine?

HG: Mmm-hmm. So, we're still doing it the old conventional way. I think there's 01:13:00a different machine in the valley, they call it the wolf machine. I didn't see it operate, but I think Dauenhauer is selling that one. I think Dauenhauer's machine has got too overpriced to where couldn't afford it, because they were talking millions of dollars, and couldn't afford it no more. Really, I don't know where they get that in it because all it is is iron. See I rebuilt that one out there. I actually took it all apart and took the cleaner out, took the 01:14:00dribbles out, took the main machine out of there and just reset it to where you didn't have to crawl from A to B. I put room in there to where you could walk around. Dauenhauer put a machine in a metal building that was attached to the building, and it was noisy. See, when I rebuilt that I took the building, well, I took the whole thing apart, and I put up a building, and then put the machine in the building in an area that had, an area where it had room and it had room up above. They had everything tied to that thing.

It was impossible. And it's a lot quieter today, and I put in more catwalks, 01:15:00mainly out there where the track is, where they were unloading, because I had to put in another unloader, and I put platform all the way around that to where you didn't have to crawl the walls to get up to take care of a problem up there. Then when it rained... see Dauenhauer had a lot of open area on the tracks, and when it rained those rollers wouldn't roll. Between the oil on the track and the rollers, it wouldn't roll. So you were crawling the walls to get them things moving, because if there's a guy there at the transfer you know helping him to get down the main chain. So it was when it rained it was not so good. Now that's 01:16:00all closed up and everything is a lot better.

TEM: How did your... was your brother attracted to the farming part? I'm curious about how people land in roles in farming families. It seems like big families, so that means different personalities, that means different talents, but then you also just have work that needs to be done. So how did your family settle out in the roles that you had in those earlier days?

HG: Well, being as I was the oldest... see there's 8 years difference between me and my brother...and being as I was the oldest I carried on more responsibility. And he was involved in it. He was involved in the drying part of it and the 01:17:00bailing part of it and getting the hops delivered to the dealers, wherever they were supposed to go. My whole thing was the mechanical part of it to where, you know, kept machine up to date and everything what needed to be changed was changed. Watched the bearings and everything. That was my responsibility of it and then all the elevators and everything. Including a lot of it at the baler, too, but as far as, you know, taking care of like the baling and the drying was 01:18:00mainly his responsibility. We went two shifts day and night and he was mainly daytime and I was at night and I usually when I was at night I took care of both the drying and the machine. I had a guy and the machine but I was overseeing both ends of it. I didn't like it. Not that I didn't like drying it, but see, if you're in a machine area to where if something is wrong and has to be taken care of you get grease on your fingers and see we didn't have, I dried hops, my 01:19:00brother dried hops the way my dad did, and that was mainly feel. If you're walking around with a greasy chain and you go up there decided to see how the hops are getting dried. Yet it's not so good, you see, because... but they got different ways now. I think there's an electronic thing now they put in there and all the way around it that determines the moisture and everything. But I still like the old way. The dealers are real particular in moisture. So they want it right at about 8%. You can over dry them and you can under dry them. So 01:20:00the way they're doing it today I think it's more acceptable to want the dealers to see that percentage because I know some years they changed that. But you know if you over dry them you're just taking dollars out of your pocket because you know it take more... so I think the advancing in this electronic thing is a lot better.

TEM: The dealers would change the percentage that they preferred. So it might be 9%, it might be 8%.

HG: Yeah, it could be 9%, or it could be 9.5%. It depends where the other end is, what they want. You know they might want a little tougher. As far as getting 01:21:00drying, no you don't want to go below 8% it just takes it out of your pocket. You don't want to do that, so. What they're doing now with it. I don't necessarily help out there too much anymore. I was asked to go to another dryer and I see the way they're doing it. It's nice. It's a nice thing. I, well, there was a kind of health problem out there, and I was asked to come, because this boy has to go up to Portland for radiation and, so I kind of stepped in and you know, well, the day he goes he isn't there at all, so I have to spend a little 01:22:00more time during the day. Other than that, I usually, maybe about 2 or 3 hours, that way he gets to go out and do other things and get out of there. So I just help 2 or 3 hours a day.

TEM: That has to be interesting for you to go back. So you had been gone for 14 years, obviously not completely gone, but...?

HG: Well, you know, it's something you grew into and you get away from it you miss it. The other thing is, well, I don't know, they still think there's... you're useful, I'd say. You know, so. That way you don't have to crawl in the 01:23:00corner and curl up, you know, there's still a little bit of anxiety out there. And you miss it. You do miss it. I enjoy the smell of them. I know every whenever they change the variety I'm out there pulling the petals off those things and smelling them, and they're all different. They're all different. But they're... the higher alpha ones I like because they, especially that nugget hop, that was... well, we grew, yeah we grew those, and, I don't know, the smell of that nugget hop is pretty much on top. It's a nice, nice hop. The Willamette, 01:24:00which is mainly a glorified Fuggle, only it's seedless to when Dad raised them it was a seeded hop, but the dealers or the brewers claim all they're buying is dead weight. They don't want to pay the weight, you know, buy the weight so they want seedless. It was a kind of a tough row there for a while because there was a lot of male hops out there along the riverbank and along the brush corners and along ditches and fence rows that unless you got that all cleaned up you couldn't have a seedless hop. It was tough. But they, you could get down to, I 01:25:00think, 1% or 2%, which ain't too bad. Yeah there was a lot of cleaning up to do then because they didn't want to pay for that extra weight and years ago that's where the money was.

TEM: That sounds, like, trying to get rid of hops, I mean you have one little piece of rhizome left it seems like that was a... that's like getting rid of blackberries.

HG: That's true. Well, you know that old Fuggle hop was a nice-looking hop. It had size to it. It had a core in it that, you know it was a nice hop. Then when you take the males out and it goes seedless it gets a lot smaller and I don't 01:26:00know, it don't smell right anymore. Now they don't even want to even raise Willamette's anymore. That was Anheuser-Busch's main hop was the Willamette. I don't know if there's even being raised much any-if it's raised at all. Not around here that I know of.

TEM: What about red vine? Did you ever raise red vine?

HG: Yeah, that was the earlier variety that we had them down there in the bottom and it was a red vine. They didn't produce like the others. But still you could make more money with that red vine that you could raising wheat or barley or whatever, you know, it was more... but we ended up taking them out. It seemed 01:27:00like the dealers get a little more touchy with that, and so we took that variety out, and we went to... I think that's went into nuggets that time.

TEM: So were they harder to harvest? Is that what I'm remembering? That it was harder to get the combs off, or they just didn't produce as much?

HG: They didn't produce as much.

TEM: Oh.

HG: But still they made good money for being there. It got to a point to where the trellis was going bad and everything, so we just took them out and cleaned it all up and then replanted. We planted, yeah, that was planted back to Willamettes and we raised those for quite a while then Anheuser-Busch, they 01:28:00didn't want them because that was their main hop was Willamettes. And it was a nice hop. But you know you got to go with the flow, otherwise...

TEM: Who's going to buy what you're going to sell?

HG: Yeah. I know we put in Cascades one year and I think we had them in there 3 years, which was a nice hop. And that was another variety later on that wouldn't get powdery mildew and then pretty soon they didn't want them, so we had to take them out, and now they're raising them again. It's... I know what I'd seen when 01:29:00they were picking them there's a lot of seeds, but I guess they're nothing, but I know it's a lot of seeds, but you picked up the seeds there was nothing there. There was no heart in it. It was just a kind of a shell, you know. There was nothing in it. And the test came back seedless, so, that's all you got to work with [chuckles].

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: Because I kind of ask all the time about the pick, because we were down to 0% and 1%, and so... and I think you could go to 6%, but anything below 6% was 01:30:00another cent. How it is today I don't know, but I know the way these machines, well, the hops have got more machine area to go over to where you can separate the, you know, the stems and the debris out of them real good, so you can get them down to 0%, even without throwing a lot away. Because I watched the return elevators that is coming off the cleaner and that's going into the trash, well, I ain't saying you don't see any, but it's pretty slim. Between the cleaners and dribble belts, which help. Dribble belts came in when you got rid of the ladies 01:31:00back on the belt. That's when the dribble belts came in. We were running at that time... yeah, we were 5%, 6% leaf and stem.

TEM: So that's when people were by the belt picking out, like, hand removing things that weren't hops. I've seen pictures of that, like it's along just a big conveyer belt.

HG: Yeah, there was usually 6 ladies on there, 3 on each side, and they would pick out the stems and we still got, yeah, 4% or 5% leaf and stem. Then the dribble belts came and it kind of... walked, well, you could walk a lot of that out of there, and it helped. I advanced the machine today. I got it up to 2 01:32:00cleaners and 2 dribble belts, because when that was put in Dauenhauer was only doing one so then when I rebuilt it I made it bigger, the building wider, and built another cleaner and dribble belts. All it is is iron.

TEM: So now that there are larger farms, not necessarily more farms, but larger farms, I know something that you mentioned when we talked on the phone was there just wasn't interest or demand for factories to make equipment. Do you think that's changed now that there are more factories to make equipment, or are people like you still making adjustments based on what their needs are?

HG: No, you see, that hop machine, well, the hop machine and the dryer and the 01:33:00baler it's... there's no company out there that'll take that because it's just a certain area that it's used. It's not... you know here in the valley where you got this grass seed, sure they got a swather, and they got a baler, and they got tractors and all that stuff. But that baler can be used for different crops. You see where this hop picker, that's it. That's all it is. It's three weeks, usually around 21 days is about maximum on them, and there it sits. The only 01:34:00thing you can use those buildings for is you maybe park some machinery or truck in there and that's about it. As far as the equipment it takes to raise those things, that's pretty well a grower. He builds all that stuff. This here stripper that's being used up there in Yakama. That's a grower. He built that. And the top cutters that go out there, yeah the growers come up with all of that. I built two. This one you see in the picture here. That was the first one.

TEM: So that's the picture of you next to the, I don't know if you can see, 01:35:00well, there's your dad. This is why it's good that it's audio so you can't see me leaning across the camera. So the picker is that up there at the top that you're standing next to, it's above your head?

HG: Yeah that's the cutters.

TEM: There we go. Now we can see.

HG: No that's the cutters up above. That's the ones that cuts the...

TEM: Right up there. Now I can see the...

HG: See you're all within range of the whole thing. You're sitting right here, and you're steering it, and it goes through there.

TEM: Oh, yeah, now I can see.

HG: It worked fine. We used that for a number of years. But if you had to do 01:36:00anything to those heads, you either had to get on a ladder because this is all the way down now... and kind of dangle around out there fixing something and hoping you don't fall off, or be on a trailer or something, and fix it because I ain't sure how this one was...but one of them, I changed one of them, I put chain knives on one of them and thought that was the cat's meow, but the chains they get loose. And then these arms are... there's cylinders on there where you can move in and out.

TEM: These two, the ones that look like the triangles sort of, those can swivel in and out so they can go like...?

HG: Yeah, they can go out. The one that I, well, after that one, then the newer 01:37:00one that I'd built, all I got was components, component parts. I got the axel and I built the frame and oil tank.

TEM: There's a note on, I think it's actually written on the slide, there's a note about the oil tank reserve. Why is that notable? Why would we note that in this picture?

HG: That's the oil tank, yeah, because everything on here was hydraulic.

TEM: Oh, okay. Okay.

HG: It was all hydraulic run. These heads were hydraulic run. They had motors on them. Then you had the cylinder and then the drive that drove it was hydraulic, so it was all hydraulic run.

TEM: So the oil tank is an indicator that everything is hydraulic.

HG: It had to be... it pumps... I don't know how many, two or three pumps on there so it had to have a lot of volume. That's the reason it's so big. But, no, the one I built after that one, when you let it down, these heads will go all the way to the ground, within four feet of the ground. And the operator comes down with it. I don't know if... it's designed off of a loader on a tractor is the way I designed it to where they would come down, and then you could be 01:39:00standing here and you could work on them right here within eye level of them. The operator would come down with it, and then he could crawl out of there and there was a platform in the back that he could walk and come down off the ladder. But it made it easier you know. For any repair on those things it was a lot better, and then the operator liked it because it would bring him up within eye level of the wires. Even though he had to lower it a little to go underneath the crosswire, it would still come back up. So the operator that run'd that liked it real well.

TEM: So then you could see. I can imagine that it's less stressful in a way 01:40:00because you can actually see what's happening.

HG: Yeah. No, it was a lot better. I didn't use any of these components at all. I changed the heads. I think there I used disc, and then if you see right here there's two spiders. They're kind of set at an angle and that's where you kept the wire is in there, that way the disc that was ahead of it was cutting the string. But those two spiders ran in there.

TEM: So were they holding it? So they were holding it...

HG: Yeah, they're holding it. Now that's different. There's a, oh, it's a kind of an auger affair that when you get up to that wire it augers it to an area, 01:41:00and that way it holds it in there pretty good.

TEM: So what about this one? The picture of... there are two pictures with your dad. Can you describe what the...It's yellow? It's black and white. We can't see it's yellow. But what is this machine?

HG: This is a post row crowner.

TEM: I'm going to lean so I can see. There it is.

HG: That's a post row crowner. It's all hydraulic operated. This over here is a counter weight because all your weight is out here. This, yeah, there's a 01:42:00cylinder here that raises that up and down.

TEM: So that's right in the middle?

HG: Yeah. When this guard comes up to a post this will all swing back. There's a... what it is, it's a big disc and then it's got cutter blades bolted onto the disc, and this is the motor that drives it right here.

TEM: So it's like this sort of circular sphere up by the pipes, or the hoses.

HG: Yeah, yeah. This is just a hydraulic motor and there's a valve in here that 01:43:00when this rod or circle hits a post it energizes this valve, and it'll move this head back. It won't just move it back, it'll move it back as long as this is touching it. It'll go to a point. That's the reason this wheel is here and this wheel is back here, because that head has to go in there to clear the post totally.

TEM: So this is a big time and labor saver because then you're not having to cut by hand.

HG: Right.

TEM: Yeah.

HG: You still got to do a little cleanup but it's not as much as, but it does 01:44:00help some. [Papers rustling]. Yeah, this wheel here is back quite a ways so this whole business will get in this frame, because it pivots right here.

TEM: So it sort of on the right by the right tire.

HG: Because you're within a 7 ½ foot row, so you have to keep that all within 7 ½ feet. This is the oil tank for this motor. And then part of this is plugged in a tractor for raising it up and down.

TEM: What else is going on in this picture? What are some of the things that are... I can see the hops are in the back, right, that's the edge of the field?

HG: Well, this is the corn planter and I don't know...

TEM: So the green... it's right above the oil tank in the picture?

HG: That's a four row, well, I'd say call him a corn planter or a bean planter. What he's doing up here, I don't know. He's up here on a... see that looks real safe, doesn't it?

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: [Chuckles].

TEM: I'm not going to say it made me nervous because it was a long time ago, but, yes, I wouldn't want to be standing on that to lean over machine.

HG: He's doing something out there on that loader. To tell you the truth, I don't know why he didn't lower the motor, you know.

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: I don't know if that's me or not. I don't think so.

TEM: Well, we know what you were wearing, so.

HG: No, I don't know.

TEM: But you were talking about that we could possibly date the photo based on 01:46:00how many rows there were.

HG: Yeah, the four row.

TEM: Yeah.

HG: See I think that's in the '80s. Because from 4 row it went to 6 row, and I also kept that planter for a period of time because we raised cattle, and we made silage every year, and the chopper that we had wasn't designed to go down a 01:47:0030" row, it was designed for 38", so I kept that for a period of time. Then because our chopper was 2 row. But, no, I don't know what's going up there on that lower. It was so long ago.

TEM: Did your dad stay active in the running of the farm? Was he still really involved until he passed away?

HG: Oh yeah. We kept him involved. We actually...even when Willie and I took over and we still told him what was going on. Asked any input on it and he says, well, he says, that's your choice now what you do. He says, I'm out of it. But 01:48:00anyway, even though he retired we still grew his crops. Even when he was in the nursing home he was a farmer. My mother was too. She, because...holy smokes, we had to come up with a few dollars when they were in the nursing home. Dad wasn't so bad. He didn't have the health problems my mother did. My mother had a stroke. My dad he just had dementia. With his social security and a little more, he managed alright. But Mom, yeah, that was expensive. But that's why we kept 01:49:00her. She was a hop grower, and we kept her at it.

TEM: What about your sisters? What were their roles? What would they have been doing at this time in the operation of the farm?

HG: Not... my older sister was married and gone. She worked for a doctor here in Salem. My second sister was an airline stewardess. And then when she married she went to Bellingham. She lived in Bellingham because her husband, he was a salesman. She actually moved, they moved him, he was a salesman for DeWALT saw and he got moved, oh, golly, I don't know how many times. Finally she put her 01:50:00foot down, she says that's enough. They settled in Bellingham. That's where she is today. I talk to her every couple of weeks. My oldest one, well, we got, she calls me about two times a day. She's got oh, she's kind of going blind. She ain't totally blind, but she don't drive anymore. Sunlight hurts her eyes, and I think Bob does most of the cooking and taking care of everything. And then my youngest one she's battling health problems. My oldest sister she talks about it. She talks to her about every week and she doesn't know if I can... she says 01:51:00I don't know if I can believe her or not because when it first came about with her health problems Lorraine and I and my youngest daughter and son-in-law went to see her, and she only had six months to live then and that was six years ago. So I don't know. I heard she was in the Portland hospital here. He had to go there. But I think you know in a lot of ways she's fine. She came to my 80th birthday party we had. She came. But I don't know. I try to keep contact with 01:52:00them. You know? I talk to Louise quite a bit. Beth calls a couple times a day. Because that's all she's got to do because you know she can't get out, she can't drive, she can't do this. And so she communicates with different people, and that kind of makes her day.

TEM: Oh I bet.

HG: Which is fine. She talks a lot about the past. I'm going to show you something if you got time [footsteps receding].

TEM: Oh yeah. I'm just going to get-I'll get my camera out so I can take 01:54:0001:53:00pictures of what you're showing.

HG: That's me on a tractor.

TEM: That's, oh my gosh, how old are you?

HG: Oh, probably 9.

TEM: Six? Nine?

HG: Oh here it is. Here's my oldest sister here riding that tractor.

TEM: Oh, there she is! I couldn't see her.

HG: It ain't a very good picture.

TEM: Oh, look at that! Oh, and look everyone is

HG: Yeah, they're all... I think Louise is back here, my second sister.

TEM: Oh, let's see if we can... maybe... I think she has her back turned, right?

HG: Mm-hmm.

TEM: Uh-huh.

HG: This gentleman here, he's the one who took care of us a lot, him and his wife, when Mom and Dad went on vacation or what's the word... he would come out and he would stay with us. He had a lot in common with my Grandpa Snack, my mother's dad, because they both understood horses I guess. But this is Killian 01:56:00Smith. There's my dad there. And then this is Pat. You can't see her very well, but she's in there.

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: Pearl Gibbons, Gene Hastings. Then there's Louise. These pictures came about... in fact, The International [Magazine], came out and took pictures of different things on the farm.

TEM: Oh.

HG: This is a 16-pound mushroom.

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: That was a...

TEM: Oh my gosh [laughs].

HG: I don't know if she's driving by-Lorraine and I were married at the time, and we were living over there on the highway, and she was driving by, and for some reason she spotted that and she came in. I never met her. Anyway, I guess she took it. I don't know. I wouldn't, I wasn't about to eat...

TEM: That's a lot, yeah...

HG: Evidently she understood mushrooms because I think she took it with her. And that's fine... but, I keep a lot of, I'm trying to think of the date on there, 01:58:00sorry, I try to keep a lot of clippings, not only of, you know, farm related but Navy. I was in the Navy and I keep a lot of that because I was there during the Korean War, so it...

TEM: How long were you in the Navy?

HG: A little over three years.

TEM: Wow.

HG: Yeah. I boarded that thing in San Francisco, and I asked my oldest sister, my mother didn't have any use for that... she thought that was the end of me going on that thing. But anyways, she didn't have no use for that, but I asked 01:59:00my oldest sister one time, well, I was already out... you know you get out in the middle of that ocean or pond or whatever you want to call it and you don't see nothing for 30 days, you know that's... and I asked her, I says, what was... well, when I was out there I kind of thought what would my mother think? So I asked Pat. She said she hated it. She hated it. She just didn't have no use for that.

TEM: Because she was worried about you?

HG: I guess so. I guess so.

TEM: Yeah.

HG: I enjoyed the time I was on there. You don't get very far in a day, but...

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: But it was enjoyable to see that part of the country and all. You see, 02:00:00because we went... Pearl Harbor was usually the first stop, and that took 2 weeks to get there from San Francisco. I was the boat maintenance, and I was in charge of the utility boats and the personnel boat, and when we would get there they would leave two of us off because there's work that had to be done on these boats. Because then they would go out and maneuver for about a week or two and we were in there so we had to go down to these places and get something done, and we just finally give it up. They were Japanese on there that time. They were so irate and disrupted that we just turned around walked out of there because 02:01:00they were mad, you know? They lost. So we didn't get nothing done. Really, I don't know. Well, it was one of them that, yeah, see we anchored out a lot and then we had to use those utility boats to transport the sailors from the boat to shore, and it took three: it took the operator, engineman, and a lieutenant to run this thing. The lieutenant had to be on there. And just one of them when you would put this thing in reverse the motor would die, because when you come up to the dock you kind of reverse it and the turn your rudder and kind of swung over 02:02:00to it, and it would die all the time and that was one problem we wanted to take care of, but we couldn't get it done.

But anyway, then I had lifeboat duty and that's nothing, well, it ain't very much, it ain't much of a, it's just a lifeboat is all it is. Anyway, we lost six pilots the first cruise, and we'd have to go out and look to see what we could find because I think the poor boys they were antsy , just coming out of flight school and I think they blacked out, I don't know for sure what they... but they blacked out and they hit... you hit water with one of those things going 3-or-400 miles an hour that's bad news. Anyway, we would pick up what we could, 02:03:00and usually it was a little bit of clothing, but that was about it. And we'd bring it in. Then we had services on the boat, and we'd put weight on it, and they were buried at sea. But we lost six of them boys, and that's a pretty hard thing. Second cruise we lost two, I think. Lost two. But my watch on that thing for four hours, usually from midnight to 4:00, when I was a helmsman on there. That's where I did my duty for the, you know, I was helmsman on that thing and man, that was about the boring-est job you could get, because you had to keep 02:04:00that within 10 degrees because you could bring it over so many degrees and then you had to get, before it got there, you had to bring her back because then it would go too far, so it was something else.

TEM: But you had to pay attention, you couldn't...

HG: Pay attention, yeah.

TEM: Boring, but also you had to be focused.

HG: Yeah.

TEM: Did you ever dock? Was that... did you dock in Korea? How far did you go?

HG: No. We went...we usually hit Pearl Harbor and then we'd go to Japan and then we'd go to Philippines, and then we'd go to Hong Kong and then at one, the last cruise we made we were in Alaska. And boy you knew it when you got there. It 02:05:00wasn't dark, it was kind of crystal. Kind of, oh, you could see the shoreline but you could see like, it was icy. But wherever things erupted actually my parents knew more what was going on than I did, because we weren't told anything. We left Japan, yeah, the second cruise we left Japan and that's when the Japanese got independence, they got their independence. Boy, I don't know... 02:06:00something all erupted. They loaded those planes up, they put that thing up... I think we were 100 miles out from what I heard, we were 100 miles out and they caused a problem and we turned that thing around and got the planes loaded and got them in the air. This one buddy of mine, he wanted to go home. He said, "What's happening now?" I says, we're going to turn around and shoot a Jap." He looks at me and says, "No, I don't" [laughs].

TEM: "I want to go the other way" [laughs].

HG: They backed off and everything was fine. But we had the planes in the air and 32 of them. So they all had to come back, and it was good and it was bad. 02:07:00They'd come in with those, they had 4 cables they had to catch. Usually it's best to catch the first one. But then one of them, I don't know what happened, but he ended up going like this and ploop, went in and we lost him, so...

TEM: What an incredibly different environment for you to be in. I mean, having grown up here.

HG: Yeah.

TEM: As I look around and there are trees and there's farmland just over to go to that, I imagine that was a strange adjustment to be on water.

HG: Then go into that... yeah, it was different. I couldn't get adjusted to like 02:08:00going to shore in that environment because, see, it stunk. And the odor was bad, because I think a lot of septic system was in the ocean or going into that creek or whatever it is.

TEM: Oh.

HG: See my brother was in, and he ended up getting a staph infection and he fought that for a long time.

TEM: Was he in the Navy as well?

HG: Mm-hmm. But he was in a repair ship. But some way or another he was over the side. They were scraping rust or paint or doing something and he fell off of that plank and into that mess, and he got a staph infection. So, my duty on this 02:09:00thing was good. I didn't have to go over the side or anything like... I took care of the boats and the utility boats and the lifeboat. Lifeboat's really interesting to run. It's all run by belts. So many belts one way or so many belts the other way. It was interesting. Always had the feeling that some people can... I always had the feeling that everybody should do that for their country. But I was lucky to get on that thing, and Mom didn't have no use for it. She 02:10:00just, I think she sat and cried.

TEM: Did you think about staying in the Navy, or was it... at the end of your three years did you feel done?

HG: Well, I did, but Mom changed my mind. She came down when... she knew more than I did about what was going on, and she came, and I think her and my sister came, and she says you're coming home. She says that's enough of this. So she talked to another boy that was, he was from Gresham, and Mom gave him orders, she says, you make sure that guy gets on that plane. So I didn't have a choice, you know? That's another adjustment you got to get use to again, you know? In 02:11:00there you don't do the thinking. They think for you. You just do what they tell you. You get home, and Dad could see it too that... not saying I was brainwashed, but I didn't have much to say. I think they worried a lot about it for a while, but it got, you know, you go from one extreme to the other and things happen. So... yeah I keep in contact with one of the boys. I called him this morning but couldn't get him. He lives in Colorado. He worked for Coors 02:12:00Brewing Company in Boulder, Colorado. And we kept in contact for years.

TEM: Sort of ironic. He would work at a brewing company and then you grow hops?

HG: Yeah. It is, isn't it?

TEM: You were two sides of the same thing.

HG: Yeah. But yeah. My daughter's got that for me. Yeah it's not, see this is New York town, and then when I got off it went to Burmington and it was changed to CVS which was all helicopter, and then it went back in commission again, and then it went out. It's actually in North Carolina. It's just a tour ship. You know, you go through it. I think maybe 3,700 of us on that thing.

TEM: Wow.

HG: Yep. I was on the fan tail part of it. Yeah. We had one guy that's all he did is make coffee, and he count him-forty perks was it. You got to 40 perks, shut her off. And that was like taking a spoon and drinking it, then. But that's all he was allowed to... you had to count him. That's all he did all morning was make coffee.

TEM: That's an important job, but I tell you, that's probably also not the most exciting of all tasks.

HG: We had first class, second class, and third class in our division. They were all mainly bosses, and they always had coffee cups. And he washed the cups and 02:14:00made coffee. They would bring down a bag of day-old cinnamon rolls or something. They'd bring them back. You see the fantail was the dumping section, so it's where they dumped. But you couldn't dump when you feel like it, you had to be in shark area to do it. So they'd bring them back there, well, those rolls, all you had to do was dip them in coffee and they were pretty good yet. Had them. Had a whole sack of them, a whole sugar sack full. Yeah, so... I'd like to go see that thing, but maybe someday.

TEM: Well, it's wonderful that it's still in use that it's not just sitting in a 02:15:00shipyard somewhere, but I think that the power for people of being able to be on that sort of ship gives you an idea, a sliver of an idea of what it would be like to be out.

HG: Anything that goes on, like December 7th, boy I got to watch every bit of it. My dad couldn't. He would not watch a war story or a picture. He couldn't do it. But I watched Pearl Harbor and then December 7th, it was a little different this year, but yeah I watch them. I got tapes, so yeah. The era that it is now versus when I was in there it's all totally different. Those things are big now. They're a lot bigger. We had both-we had the jet and the prop planes on there and we had steam catapults which you know those jets had to be going over 100 02:16:00miles an hour to stay in the air and the steam kind of pulled this... it depends how the plane was loaded, but otherwise it shot over there and they just kind of banked to the left and set down. And he'd crawl out and stand on it and we had two helicopters on each side of it when they were doing that, so he had him out within seconds, but the plane was gone. But those old prop planes, they managed pretty much to get off of there. We had a mail plane that came in once a week.

TEM: So you weren't married then?

HG: No. Nope. No, I wasn't married then. See I didn't get married until '59. So, yeah...

TEM: Have you guys always lived here?

HG: Here?

TEM: Mm-hmm.

HG: No. I lived, when we first got married I lived where this lady found a mushroom, right on 99, right off on 99 about two miles south of Woodburn in there. And then when Willie got married then Dad wanted me on the farm, because he went to town, and I think that was the worst mistake he ever made.

TEM: To leave the farm?

HG: To go to Mt. Angel, to move into town. And I told him, I says, you don't 02:18:00want to do that. He says, yeah, he says, it's time. I says, well, why don't you build a house out here? No he didn't want to do that. They went. Went downhill ever since. Ever since he's been in there he just. Well, you know, you walk out of the house well, you got a neighbor there, you know, and then he drove. He drove out to the farm every day, you know? He had his route. As he got older, you know, he... the neighbors all knew him and knew which route he took and they just, they seen him coming they just give him the best room they can, you know? Because he sometimes need a little more room than they had. But no problem. He 02:19:00had a few dings with his pickup. We straightened them out so the cops wouldn't get suspicious of anything. Finally one day he got up at midnight, put on his clothes, and walked out of the house and the sidewalk ended, and he went down. And a cook at the golf course seen him. She stopped and went across the road and to Ms. Olsten they called in and took him to the hospital. They took him to Silverton, and then they transferred him over to Salem.

Willie and I went down that morning when we found out to see him and these two 02:20:00interns, they were boys, they were men, or interns, he wasn't cooperating too well so they got a little rough with him. And when we seen him he was mad. And I've seen him mad before, too, but boy he was mad. Anyway, one of them says you know what that is over there? He says, yes, it's my son. Well, anyway, he wasn't allowed to go home. He was in the hospital for, oh, probably 7 days. But he wasn't allowed to go back home. So then he went in... Mom was told to put him 02:21:00into the nursing home, and he just went downhill. Because that was the end of the road for him. Then he was in there 2 years and then my mom, I think she went in a year later or two years later. She had a stroke and she went in. I think Dad went in... Pat and I were talking about that. You remember the... that was the earthquake in Mt. Angel?

TEM: Hmm-mmm.

HG: That was '95 [sic 1993]. Dad was the last one buried out of there when that 02:22:00earthquake hit, because it hit that church pretty hard.

TEM: Oh really? See I grew up in Eugene, but I was in college at that point. I think I was gone, so I think I wouldn't have heard local news.

HG: That was '95 [sic 1993]. So he... I think that was the earthquake was in '95 [sic 1993]. Two years later Mom died and so, but we kept a farming. I know the accountant didn't like it, but I says, I don't care what you like. You know we had to come up with money to keep Mom in there. That wasn't cheap. I think that was costing us $7,000 a month. And that adds up. They had long-term insurance. I 02:23:00think they only had two years, which was standard at that time. Anyway, so we took care of them.

TEM: How did your dad, or did your dad hand down knowledge to your nephews who are now running the business? Was there... how did they learn? How did that happen?

HG: No, Dad didn't hand down anything to them. He was already, they were in college, I think in college.

TEM: Oh, right. Because they're probably around, they're my age... so, okay, that makes sense, yeah.

HG: Anyway, they were in college and then when they came out they worked on the farm for a period of time, and then, well, things in the estate changed because I think, well, my mother disclaimed a quarter of a piece of property and anyway, her one quarter went to the two boys, and the other quarter went to my three girls. Because she had to disclaim it because of the state tax.

TEM: Yeah.

HG: So, they had 90 acres and they thought, well, they're going to... they wanted to farm. So Willie and I just, you know, give them some acres, and they raised strawberries and then they kind of went from there, the one of them, got into greenhouse, you know, flowers and stuff. Still that was just seasonal. Still farming. So they kind of went on and, see I was still there then. See I been up here 14 years. So then, see my brother he stayed there, but I don't know 02:26:00I kind of got out of there because they had ideas that I didn't like. And I thought, well, they're not my kids, but they always come to me with their problems. Because I was the oldest, and it seemed like anything that got done out there was kind of related onto my part of it, so... but then...so Willie stayed there because he's kind of into cattle and raising hay and doing different things. So he stayed, and now he can't do anything. He can't even, he 02:27:00can't even drive. He's, all the years I was down there from the time you seen me here to the time I quit I was in the shop. Well, I did a lot of the plowing. But I was in the shop on that cement floor and it did get my back. But I never was operated on. Doctor told me, he says we'll get you one of these days. I says, well, I'll be careful. Okay. Well, it happened to me twice I had to stay down for 10 days, and he explained to me what it was. He says you take an inter tube and you blow it up. He says there's a weak spot in there, and he says it'll 02:28:00bubble up. And he says, that's what's happening, that's pushing against a nerve. And he says, all you got to do is stay down, use moist heat, for 10 days, get the swelling down. And then he says I want to see you. Well, I did it, and that did it. To this day I never had it, but my brother he's... I don't know what happened. He was a tough one of the whole time because he was outside a lot. He did run a chainsaw which I think didn't help. But he got a problem in his back, and he went to the doctor, and they operated, and he wasn't getting over it. 02:29:00Well, it ended up there was a chip in there, and they operated the second time they got it out, and he was doing real good. You know, when you feel good you do more. Well, he was down helping them on an irrigation pump, and instead of pulling down on a pipe wrench, you know a chain wrench, he was lifting up and it put pressure on there. And that did it. Now today what they want to do is put a, well, they wanted to put a plate back there, and he wasn't all enthused about that so they got a magnet that charges to...does something, he showed me, it's 02:30:00right here. It's about that long and about that wide. And it's supposed to be on his back. And it's, I guess you can adjust it. It's no cure. It's just a stimulator so he can get along. He can't drive because, well...I ain't saying he... he drives, but he's not supposed to. But can't do nothing.

TEM: Yeah.

HG: And there's no cure. I don't know. I really don't know. I was there one day, and he showed it to me. If you've ever seen a patch, a boot in a tire, that's what it looked like. He can't lay on his back. Driving. Well, he drives, but 02:31:00he's got to be careful, because it's supposed to be on his back. So I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. So I guess he goes, what I understand, he goes over to the shop morning and at noon. And other than that, I don't know. But he's not so good. He's 8 years younger than I am, and I'm 81.

TEM: Well, it's probably good to have that routine that... I can imagine that, for both of you, the rhythm of the year and the seasons and the routine, that would...

HG: Yeah.

TEM: That adjustment to "retirement."

HG: That's no fun. I, actually, I started repairing tractors, you know antique tractors, down there on the farm I think. I repaired one, two, probably three down there. And then when I moved up here, then I built that, and then I repaired here. Then I don't know you know I had them all done. I had them all running. I had them in parades and all that stuff. Then you park them and they go to pieces. Especially carburetors and mags and stuff. They go bad. I got a 02:33:00hold of Carl, this was a little over a year ago, and I says, you appraise those tractors, and I'll get rid of them. So he did and, man, I just... someone might spend quite a bit of money to get them back on their feet again. I got two down here I'm going to keep. I got one of them I got yet to sell, and that's it. Then I got some equipment on the farm that I got to sell. But my second daughter's got her name on the one down here and the other one I'm going to keep. With all the girls who've got, even my grandson, well, I gave my grandsons tractors and 02:34:00my daughters two of them have got tractors. But the middle one doesn't, so she gets this one.

TEM: You have three daughters right?

HG: Three of them.

TEM: And are they all in the general area?

HG: Pretty much. One of them, I think the oldest one lives an hour away. One of them is on the nursery down there, overseeing her nursery down here. She's fifteen minutes, so...not even fifteen minutes. The second one's over in Monitor. I talked to her this morning. She called yesterday too. That earthquake?

TEM: That's what I heard [laughs].

HG: Yeah.

TEM: One of my coworkers said there was an earthquake outside of...yeah. Like 02:35:005:30 a couple days ago?

HG: Yeah. She got hit with an earthquake. I guess it went through there Mt. Angel, Monitor, Mt. Angel. And I think into Woodburn a little bit, and I think Salem. But I didn't feel nothing here. I don't know.

TEM: I didn't feel it in Corvallis, either.

HG: You didn't? So it has hit up here, before I got here, I heard it and '95 [sic 1993] when we had that one down there in Woodburn, that was a pretty stiff one. We had, that's when I was rebuilding the hop house because years ago those hop houses were mortar and brick and then the building set on top of them, on top of the brick. But when we decided to rebuild that thing, we already had the 02:36:00building off so that saved the walls they did. We had to pull them together a little bit, and there was a few cracks in them, but we pulled them together and saved them.

TEM: That's good timing.

HG: But we had that big building off of it, otherwise it would've been... it would've been on the ground because I had Woodburn construction put a steel building all around it at that time. And I kind of think the metal structure as around it already. I think. That's been so long ago, now. But, and that was the best thing we ever did to that hop dryer because, see Dad built that way back in 02:37:00the '40s and yeah, and I think there was a lot of dirt in the mortar. It wasn't good. It was. Because we patched and we did a lot of patching to it, and he was at the point to where I think he laid some of the brick, and he was no brick layer and, because you can see it only had two at that time.

TEM: Oh I see the brick going all the way up.

HG: Yeah.

TEM: Yeah.

HG: And this is the smoke stack for the wood burners because underneath those 02:38:00kilns were pipes, and that's what you heated was those pipes. Then there was... up here is a fan, and that pulled the heat up through the hops. So every day we had to brush those pipes off. There was, well, I was trying to think how many pipes were in there. There was eight, three, six rows. You don't see them because they're underneath that floor. And we'd have to broom them off because the fans were up there and they'd pull the heat up. And this was the exhaust part of it. See he burnt slab wood, which was pitchy wood, he got it from the Molalla saw mill. And boy that gets hot, that old slab wood.

TEM: Where did you feed it in? Was it going down there?

HG: Mm-hmm.

TEM: Yeah.

HG: Mm-hmm. Yeah there was a, I think there was two stoves, one for this quarter and one for that quarter, and that was the dryer guy who took care of it. The wood was actually stacked right kind of in this area. And boy that was a, well, you had to keep it within 150 degrees, so you can't get it, you don't want to get it too hot, so it'd take a pretty good drying guy to do that, because that 02:40:00whole slab wood with pitch and all that, that stuff is darn hot. But yeah.

TEM: Well, I'm glad you kept these. [Phone rings in the background] These are fun things to look at. These pictures are so, it's so nice for jarring your memory, even from the 1980s, I think.

LG: Hello? She hung up. It would've been Pat.

HG: Now my best memories of this thing is the day Dad told me to take that thing down to Donald, to Cromwell? Remember he was a fabricating guy down there. 02:41:00Anyway, and I never asked him why. I hung onto that thing and I took it down there.

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: All the way from Woodburn to Donald and when I got there that was the... but today I wish I had one. Because I think Grosches got one and Fulberts have got one. I think Fulberts had two and I think Grosche got one of them because he was raising, I don't know, there was some variety that he run through there, and I didn't use it last year. I think the year before he used it. So it's... yeah. But Fulberts had two I think at one time. There was a lot of them around back then. In Yakama I see pictures where there's 50 or 60 of them in a row. They had 02:42:00a lot of them. Well, that was the start of the hop picking business, but yeah. This was built in '41.

TEM: The house?

HG: The house, yeah. Dad built it. This place is still standing over here.

TEM: So it's the building behind the picture of you on a tractor?

HG: Yeah. That's still there. We own that farm now. We bought it. Yeah there was 02:43:00a lot of hard times and a lot of good times on that farm. It, see Dad at one time raised flax and I rode with him, we hauled down to the state pen [penitentiary], and we got down there with a load of flax we had to go in this little building because they took it from there, then and convicts or whatever unloaded it. And I asked Dad, why can't I go back there? He says, you don't want to go back there, and he says, I hope you never end up back there [laughs].

TEM: What were they doing with the flax? Were they processing it?

HG: Yeah.

TEM: That was work duty?

HG: Yeah, war duty. Yeah, they really I think North Dakota raises it for the 02:44:00seed. There is some stashed up here in Scotts Mills, you know, up above Silverton. They can't move it. Because it's a, I think, the wrong guys can get a narcotic out of it. There was, well, the state pen had processing equipment down there to process this into fiber, and so did Mt. Angel, and so did St. Paul. It's quite a process. I kind of remember it when I was in high school, or no, 02:45:00see grade school I went two years at Mt. Angel and six years in Woodburn, so I would have seen it as a freshman in high school... processing flax at Mt. Angel, and it's quite a job. I mean, it's all chucked. They soak it, they set it out, it dries. Oh it's something else, I don't know. That is, well, it's all gone down there. I think the vats are still in Mt. Angel down there in the flax plant. The Kraemers are actually processing berries down there in that end. Put a processing plant. We got a farm west of that that Willie and I bought, and 02:46:00then we bought part of the [UNCLEAR] place. And then the [UNCLEAR] place. So we got, so that's what we got over in Mt. Angel. The rest of... it's all Woodburn and pretty much around Woodburn. This, I have it here... [footsteps receding]. Dad was pretty much in The International at one time. This book ain't the best. 02:49:0002:48:0002:47:00You know what anhydrous is?

TEM: Hm-mm [no].

HG: Anhydrous ammonia, it was injected into the ground, and the heat temperature of the ground is what released it. This is Dad's farm.

TEM: Oh, Okay.

HG: Yeah, that's the farm.

TEM: Oh, you know I feel like I've seen pictures in the archives of them doing some testing probably around this era. OSU researchers doing testing. There's a huge hill full of like dead rats, that they're showing how many have been killed with the ammonia. I thought that's what it was.

HG: Yeah, that was...

TEM: Oh, and then, huh. Interesting.

HG: Yeah you could put it in in the fall of the year and it would tie up with 02:50:00the soil until the heat temperatures got up, and then it would release. Now we've used it in wheat. That was planted in the fall, and then in the spring we went in and put that in there. It kind of tore the field up pretty good, but wheat turned out. And we used it in the corn and we used it in the hops. But really I think if you go east of the mountains you'll see it there, but around here you don't see it no more.

TEM: So it was more of a fertilizer. It wasn't... and how you were using it was fertilizer, not as a rodent killer.

HG: It was kind of an ammonia effect.

TEM: Lots of things have changed.

HG: That's for sure. With this, I don't know. I guess somebody was driving from 02:51:00Salem to Woodburn and they spotted this. They actually, this is in the barn lot area doing it. So, but it comes in as a gas. Trucks, they've got those tanks and then there's a gauge on there if it gets down so low. Then they'll come in and fill her up. Bring the pressure back up. But this is on Dad's place. Yeah.

TEM: Lots of equipment. Lots of changes.

HG: Lots of changes, yep.

TEM: Well, thank you for talking to me.

HG: Mm-hmm.

TEM: I always like to give people at the end of interviews a chance to say anything that they thought I was going to ask them a question about that they could answer. Was there something that we didn't touch on that you thought I would ask you about?

HG: No. There's probably, hmm... there's probably more here that...I don't know if you're interested in it.

TEM: Oh, you know what, I read this. About the, so like three different people sued.

HG: Dad, Killian Smith and BJ Wellman

TEM: So this was as a result of the dealer not paying for the hops that they said that they were going to buy.

HG: They were mildewed I guess. See all they had years ago was DDT or whatever, I don't know what all they had. And, well, the reason, well my dad in particular 02:54:00took it to court is because he notified them during their growing season of the problem that he was having and the hops were short, and they told him to go ahead and finish the crop. And he did. And then when it got time then they rejected them, and that's the reason he took it to court, because if they would have said, well, you know, we're not going to use them, well then he would have quit. But they told him to keep, to go ahead and finish the crop because they were in need. So that's why those three were.

TEM: Yeah. No that was one that... and there's I don't know, half a dozen articles that I found in different papers reporting on that. Well, and it seems like that's at a definitely contentious time, too, between growers and brokers. 02:55:00There are times when it's easier and there are times where it's more difficult.

HG: Yeah, because many... I mean, you had your whole life in that crop, and $20,000 is a lot of money.

TEM: Yeah.

HG: So, yeah, he kind of talked about that at different times because he went to high court, and...

TEM: Did it go to the Oregon Supreme Court, am I remembering that right?

HG: Dad, according to what Dad said, yeah, he said it went to high court. And he, and the judge in favor of 'em because they were told to finish raising their crop and that's the only thing they had for them.

TEM: Did they go all the way through drying and everything?

HG: Mm-hmm [yes].

TEM: And then they were rejected, and so it wasn't even just the harvest, but.

HG: Yeah, it tells you, if you read it, it tells you in here, where they, yeah, they were picked, dried, baled, and delivered to a warehouse in Mt. Angel. And that would have been the swamp warehouse, and it was on the north end. I remember hauling hops in there. They were, usually the buyer comes in and he'll check them and he would pull samples and send them to the breweries, and then they and a problem with them, and he says, well, we can't use them. Well, we wouldn't have did what we did if you had... too late now. So that's the reason 02:57:00it went into court. But as soon as BJ Wellman, and Gillian Smith, and then my dad. I remember Dad telling me, he says, I told the lawyer at that time, he says if you win the case, he says I'll pay you so much. If you lose it, you get nothing. Simple. Because he said I don't have nothing.

TEM: Yeah, it's tied up in this.

HG: Tied up in there. He said if you can win it, he says, I'll give you... I forget, he told me too what it was. I don't remember. But he says, if you lose. Too bad buddy. He says you don't get nothing. Well, how simple.

TEM: Yeah, and it's not long after this too that the Grower's Association forms 02:58:00and it seems like that is in reaction to farmers wanting to take back more control over this very thing, that it can't just all be the brokers and the dealers saying this is how's it going to be, that there has to be more control for the people who are actually growing the crops.

HG: He had one other incident, too. He was asked, well it was two growers asked to pick a hops that weren't matured. And so they did. Dried them and baled them and the dealer rejected them. So the grower came after Dad, he says I want you 02:59:00to buy them hops. And it kind of went on for a while, and Dad had ways of finding out things. Because a dealer says they're not salable, you can't sell them, because they were picked too early. Anyway, Dad found out that he did get 10 cents a pound. Well, that's all he'd needed. And there was two growers, one of them picked half and the other one picked the other half. That was the year Dad got horned by a cow and he ended up in the Silverton Hospital.

What he was doing, he was moving these cattle across the road, and this cow had 03:00:00a calf, and anyway, Dad went in to control this cow and he just knocked him down. So he ended up in the Silverton Hospital and the other grower went to Dad and told him, he says, let's drop this case. He says I don't want anything to do with it. So Dad with the condition he was in he didn't have a choice, so he dropped it. But he found out that he did get 10 cents a pound. But it causes hard feelings against people that he knew well.

TEM: Yeah.

HG: So Dad wasn't much for backing down. You know if he thought he was right, you know, he didn't want to back down. Well, you can't blame him, he came into a, you know, coming in from a country to this country and farming, they see him of what he's doing a lot of jealousy gets into it. The neighbors have actually told him he's going to go broke. The way he says, the way you're going at it you're going to grow broke. You know the funny part about it? They went broke. They did. The one generation retired out of it and the kids took over and gone.

TEM: Was it because he had been here for farming the same land for so long and he came in with different ways of doing things and that was...?

HG: I can't say he was doing different ways of doing things, it was just this farm that you see here, that was one wet piece of ground. Dad was plowing one year behind this barn and he had to come in for something. He had a John Deere tractor. And it was sitting there idle, and when he went back out there it was buried and it stuck. It'd likely vibrate and just settle down in the mud. He was 03:03:00stuck. So that cured him of John Deere tractors, and that's why he's International.

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: And then he didn't like the noise. It was a wet piece of ground. Actually, where this house sat was the wettest part of the ground. All of these buildings were on the south end of this lot, way up here. And he moves the barn, some other shed, and the house down and he had to go through a draw and he says the only time I got to do that is in the winter time. You know, it's wet [laughs]. And this [shuffling papers] this barn, the center part of it was sitting over 03:04:00here. He moved that over there and then he put sides on it. Those beams in that barn, it's still standing today, are hewed beams. Hewed. The rafters are round poles. And when they put those hewed beams in there, they used wooden pegs. They soaked them, I guess, and you dried them.

TEM: So then they expand and it's tight.

HG: Yeah.

TEM: Interesting.

HG: But that barn's standing today. But he had to move it. It was north and 03:05:00south here, but now it's east and west. He had to move it over there. And that was done in the wintertime. That wasn't some fun [laughs].

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: You'd put a jack under there and it just goes down, and put some boards in there and you know. The only time you got time was in the winter.

TEM: That's what I was going to say. You have time. Nothing's growing except the ferns and the trees.

HG: Well, I asked him, I says, well, I asked him and I didn't ask him because you know when he got his mind set on something that's the way it is, but why didn't you leave the barn where it's at? Well, it's too close to the highway, he said, for one thing. Because 99 is right there and it was too close. But I know it was a useful barn for many years [chuckles].

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: And he had to move it. But that's still there today. If you go down 99 wherever you would go into Woodburn, you'll see it to the right. There's a brick 03:06:00house there and then there's... there's a little apple orchard, and then there's a brick house and then there's a farm lot. That's where this tractor is, is at wherever that, the one that was pulling that anhydrous machine. That's the lot and then there's the barn. Because is the...

TEM: Oh is it that one?

HG: Yeah.

TEM: That one, yeah.

HG: Yeah. And you'll see this barn is red. Yeah.

TEM: Well people built barns to last.

HG: They did. You bet they did. And you know I ain't saying they didn't have saw mills, but you... a beam, and these are 12x12s you had them out, and it takes a guy with some knowledge, you know, to overlap and set them. And then pin them. 03:07:00So you know that's quite a job, because, really, this barn I knew of it before Dad moved it. It had a... the cows were on this side and the horses were over here and the center was open, and that's where the hay wagon was, and they pitched hay up on both sites, loose. And it was up off the ground because there was a ramp to it. And that was a kind of a neat barn. But he had to change it. So, well, you know. Well, that was getting to the point to where he didn't use horses no more. And so he tried to, you know, build it to utilize this day and 03:08:00age, and because he had cattle in there, he, we used to milk a lot of cows and, well, really his...grain was so cheap that they run it through the animals. That's how they got their money back. Either through milk, you know, or that way because he wasn't getting... if you raise grain and take it to the warehouse to sell, you wouldn't get nothing for it much. So it all went through the animals. That's the reason they had so many milk cows. Because the milk went to Mt. Angel creamery and we separated a lot of it and then Mom she raised a lot of chickens 03:09:00and skim milk would go to the hogs, because you had to try to keep his butter fat up, you know, because that's where he made the money. Milk cows a long time. He'd get me up at 6:30 in the morning to milk cows. And that's when we were living here. And when you crawled in bed and got that bed warm and he hollered at 6:00, 6 o'clock to get up and milk cows, you stuck your foot out, and if it was cold you pulled it back in. Finally after the third time he was getting a little riled. So you made the best of it and got up. And he helped, too, you 03:10:00know, but we had about 16 cows to milk and... then at night after school then I had to clean the barn... but we always had one ornery one in there. Because that was all hand milked. We didn't machine milk. We had milk. There was always that one of them. She knew when the bucket was just about full and she'd kick that sucker every time. Oh man. Talk about not only me getting mad, Dad was mad, and everybody was mad. So I don't know if he ate the cow or not [laughs].

TEM: [Laughs] Yeah I feel like probably the cow wasn't going to change her behavior.

HG: No.

TEM: No.

HG: [Chuckles] Yeah, we put cow kickers on them and that seems like when they fought the most when you put cow kickers on them. You know what they are, don't you?

TEM: Huh-uh [no].

HG: Kind of a cup like this you put around the backside of the cow right where the joint is, and then there was a chain that went to the other side and then there was a reach in there between, and then you pull that chain through and then that held the cow from kicking.

TEM: Oh, from, yeah.

HG: And if you get it too tight, they didn't like it. And if you get it too loose, then we had more trouble. So, but it was a way of eliminating some of it, but it didn't get it all. Poor old cows. We had, yeah, we had about 16 of them. Dad helped me in the morning. It was before school.

TEM: I remember some of my early interviews with growers I asked, well, so did you do afterschool activities? And I can't remember who it was just looked at me and said, well, no, we went back and worked at the farm. It was what you did before school. It was what you did after school. That was it.

HG: Yeah, normally, yeah in the morning you took care of what you did and then in the evening, yeah, you cleaned up the barn because the cows had to come in. See Dad was in the field, so that was all us kids. Well, me, especially, to get that thing cleaned so the cows can come in because they stay in all night. So that was that and then if that was taken care of, and he needed me some place 03:13:00else, well, then so be it. Because we got home at, school was out at 3:30, and usually springtime, and Mom would be down at school picking me up because I was needed at home because, you know, the weather was nice and things had to get done and so I was out there. See my brother, he was too young. And my oldest sister did a lot on the farm. She was in it like in the hops even during the growing season like if they were tying them together or doing some kind of stripping or doing something. Her and two other ladies were in there. And they, 03:14:00well, they had a lot of fun out there, you know? And they could always tell when Dad come out there to check on them, because he smoked a cigar. They smelled a cigar and then they went to town [chuckles]. But he'd always have to walk out and see how things were looking, and they'd get a whiff of him, and [laughs].

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: But that, enjoyed it, they were two... they were part Indian. Well, she told me two, she still talks about them. They were the nicest people. Those three were in the hop yard doing whatever had to be done and so...yeah Pat still talks 03:15:00about it today. She picked a lot of strawberries and berries in her grown up years. Plus she stayed up with my Grandma Snack quite a bit because Grandma was an outdoors person. She had a lot of chickens and she always was cleaning eggs or doing something so Mom would send Pat out there to just kind of clean house, you know, get things cleaned, and because see there was, I had two uncles up there plus my grandpa and grandma. And then Pat she was, yeah, she was in high school part time, you know in high school, but in the summertime you know she was up there. It was during her high school years and well I didn't go up. I 03:16:00didn't go up much. This gentleman here, him and his wife took care of us a lot when Mom and Dad were gone.

TEM: Yeah, Pearl

HG: Gibbons.

TEM: Gibbons?

HG: Yeah. He actually farmed this farm for 30 years. He rented it for 30 years, and he farmed it, and Dad bought that in '49. So he just stayed on with Dad. But he stayed with Dad until he actually, well, he's there sacking hops, and when 03:17:00Dad got the hop machine in he sacked hops off of it. And I helped him during that time because when we got 600 sacks, then Dad and another guy would usually lay the kiln. And then after, well, the hops that were in the kiln were already dumped so when they got those within control and laid the way they wanted, then I drug them in and dumped them wherever they wanted them. They had to have I think 600 sacks because Pearl would mark, write it down, that way it would finish the kiln. Because you don't want to do one halfway, because see it would 03:18:00settle and then it would dry different. So when he got 600 sacks, well, then they start laying that thing and the hop picker was still going and I drug them in there. Boy I used to get. I didn't have gloves. I used to blister these knuckles with that sack.

TEM: How far did you drag it? How far was it from? I guess different distances.

HG: Well, probably from... see he was sacking right about in here so you'd drag them about there to there, and they knew where they were.

TEM: So inside.

HG: Oh, probably, fifty feet or so.

TEM: You were pointing at the picture of the drying house?

HG: Mm-hmm. That's where you took them to. Took them into the drying house, yeah. Yeah, they would, he never tied them. They were hop sacks. You know what a hop sack is.

TEM: Mm-hmm [yes].

HG: They're a pretty good size. And he's bring them up to where you could fold them and kind of put a rack in them, because we didn't tie them. Well, like this guy right here, because when they moved them onto this wagon they were laid with the flap down to where it was locked down into the other one, that way they wouldn't open up. Because these aren't tied either. See then you had to put them on that elevator, and they'd go up, and there it was quite an extensive 03:20:00operation. It took help, and we had...this is before the Spanish. A lot of this was done, well, we called it that time as "winos." We'd go to Salem and pick them up and they'd come out.

TEM: John Annen talked about that. Going up to Portland, too, that it was like a bus.

HG: Yeah. We... Dad raised pole beans and Wilber Amon had a bus, and we'd go to Oregon City and we'd pick up high school, grade school girls, you know, kids, come out and pick beans, and see I was already in high school and I was a good 03:21:00friend of Tom Unger which his mother and dad had a funeral business in Mt. Angel. And Dad liked him. He says, he says, he always told me, he says, when you need help you call that Unger boy and he's a good help. So I called Tom and says, asked him what he's doing. He says, really, nothing. I says, we're getting in a load of Oregon City girls down here to pick beans. We need help. I'll be right there [chuckles].

TEM: [Laughs].

HG: Anyway, we'd kind of cheer them along, you know, help them pick beans and 03:22:00everything so that way they come back. And I visit with him today. He had the business for a while, and then now he's retired. He sold it and he's retired. Mother and Dad had that in town, in Woodburn [recording cuts off].