H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest Site Visit Group Oral History Interview - Part 1, September 22, 1997

(Begins in van on way to pick up Ted Dyrness in Tangent, Oregon, in route to H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Interruptions and competing noises with interview during recording noted parenthetically; regular parentheses () for background/scenario, brackets [] for data/explanations.)

Bob Tarrant: [Telling story about flying experiences in Alaska. Heavy traffic 00:02:0000:01:00noise obscures most of the conversation - which starts after picking up Dyrness] Morning Ted!

Ted Dyrness: (Climbing into the van) Morning! Ahh! Everybody's there, huh? Oh, now I've got my boots, and pictures. What are you guys doing?

Al Levno: We're telling war stories. (Laughter, general conversation, traffic noise)

Roy Silen: [Discussing regeneration efforts on the Andrews] Every spot we had on the Andrews was reforested within 10 years, naturally reforested. [Silen noted that ranger had standards calling for reforestation within 5 years, and this led to artificial planting efforts on the Andrews, even in stands that were naturally regenerating.]

[Lengthy conversation obscured by freeway traffic noises, including discussion 00:10:0000:09:0000:08:0000:07:0000:06:0000:05:0000:04:00of Mike Savelich, logger who did projects at the Blue River/H.J. Andrews EF in 1950s/1960s.]

Dyrness: Whatever happened to Mike Savelich?

Silen: I don't really know. I don't know how long --

Dyrness: He got all the contracts, didn't he?

Silen: He was a good poker player, and he worked it out where he got those contracts. [HJA timber sales in 1950s and 1960s.]

Dyrness: Is that right? (Laughter)

Silen: Let's see, he contracted with Associated Plywood, and as I understand it, he [Savelich] had a quite a thing going on. [Discussion of how he would bid against other contractors on timber sales, and he would raise the bid higher than other loggers wanted to go.] He always ran up the price on all these other 00:12:00sales. He'd go in and bid up, as he was a good poker player, and he'd never get stuck with the sale. He would always bid the price up a little higher than some others really wanted to pay, and then he got out of the bidding, and so, he made a deal that he'd get all the sales out on the Andrews, and Associated Plywood was fine with that. So, that's how he did it.

Geier: So, nobody else bid on it?

Silen: I think Mike Savelich got all the bids [many early timber sale bids at HJA - 1950s/1960s].

Geier: Huh.

Silen: There was no collusion you know, just - (Laughter and conversation continued, obscured by highway noise.)

Tarrant: [Discussion about National Advisory Commission visiting Andrews for a 2-week field trip]. That was the National Advisory Commission, when they had, I 00:13:00remember, the publisher of the Saturday Evening Post, that's how long ago it was - [Conversation obscured by road noise, includes discussion about ranger at Blue 00:17:0000:16:0000:15:0000:14:00River who was interested in research: Bob Mealey.]

Silen: [Discussion about Mealey's work with Hank Gratkowski and cost-cutting 00:20:0000:19:0000:18:00measures to lay out timber sales.] We were doing it at about half the cost normally required for timber sales.

Geier: Because there were fewer people doing it?

Silen: Well, for one thing, (unintelligible discussion about location of logging 00:22:0000:21:00operations/landings and roads). Well, that would be Hank! (Laughter)

Geier: Did he have a reputation for giving managers a hard time?

Silen: Yeah. (Unintelligible discussion about rapid speed at which he and Hank 00:23:00were working, usually without assistance.) It was very difficult, very fast, kind of work.

Geier: Why did you work at such a fast pace? Were you trying to get other research done?

Silen: Well, I decided - [Unintelligible--likely to "go forward with sale and road layouts"]

Geier: But the district didn't supply you with manpower to do it? [Timber sale layouts]

Silen: Well, you've got to remember that the biggest motivation for doing all 00:24:00this was [Willamette National Forest Supervisor] Bruckhart, and he was only interested in providing the cut [timber]. When the experiment station [PNW] requested to establish the Andrews, it was going to come out of his cut [Will. NF territory]. And so, he insisted we would be cutting a lot of it. But, the 00:25:00sustained annual cut was about 60 million [board feet]. (unintelligible-road 00:26:00noise - subject focused on observation that this level of cutting would have required Silen to lay out over 180 million board feet, rather than 60 million per year he laid out to achieve a 20 million bd. ft. cut).

Tarrant: [Discussing closing ceremony at Wind River Nursery.] This work on the 00:30:0000:29:0000:28:0000:27:00alder strip at Wind River, and the scientist who had his family distribute his ashes over the Wind River Experimental Forest. Tarrant mentioned this in passing [and in jest], to Ken Wright, that he thought that might "distort scientific readings of nutrient cycling." Wright took him seriously, and tracked down the opinion of several other people, then reported back to Tarrant that he didn't think it would have an appreciable effect. (Unintelligible discussion on other aspects of Wind River EF, road noise.) (Unintelligible name of Forest Service employee) and her husband, in 1947, went directly from the wedding reception to 00:31:00Marys Peak that same day, as they were lookouts up there that summer. That was what she wanted to do, but they went up there. Last time I was up there, all it was, was a couple of guys standing there looking at the ruins of the facilities. 00:32:00[Unintelligible conversation due to road noise; some discussion of Marys Peak 00:33:00vandalism issues]

Tarrant: [Discussion of Blue River Ranger District locale vs. old location at 00:34:00McKenzie Bridge, and whether they were going to go by the old plumber's house.] Do you recall the old caretaker?

Silen: Hmm?

Tarrant: Remember, we found the dead guy that day?

Silen: Not that I can recall.

Tarrant: You don't remember that?!

Silen: No, I don't remember that.

Tarrant: Well, we were coming in to go up there and we went by that, there was a big estate where the logs -

Silen: Oh, yeah.

Tarrant: Yeah, they had a road, and some Californian, an old fella, as caretaker. We came by one morning and he was lying on the ground in front of this bench, and so we stopped and asked ourselves, "Is he dead?" His hands were clutching a Bayer Aspirin tin, which had white pills in it. I don't know whether 00:35:00they were aspirin or not, but I remember that, and I said, "He's dead." He'd had a heart attack and fallen off the bench. Do you recall that? Huh?

Dyrness: You think you'd remember that! (Laughter)

Silen: I don't remember that at all. (Laughter) Are you sure I was there?

Tarrant: Yes sir. Yes sir. Because, there were some flies starting to fly around his face, so we picked him up and carried him back behind a couple of trees and put him in the shade. He had a black mackinaw, we laid that over his face, and I said, "We'll go down and talk to the plumber. [Ray Bromberg] He'll know what to do." So, we stopped at the plumber's, and told him what had happened, he got a 00:36:00strange look on his face, and said, "There'll be two more in the McKenzie Valley before this is over." [As in reference to superstitious belief about numbers and events] You don't remember this? You remember anything about the Andrews?

Dyrness: This sounds like fiction. (Laughter)

Martha Brookes: Yeah! What were you on?

Tarrant: We went on and he called the state police, coroner, or whomever. You don't remember this?

Silen: No, I don't.

Tarrant: The latest part of the story, and I'm not making this up, like this guy who writes the column, "I am not making this up." (Laughter) So we went on, and we were laughing about it, eventually. It was kind of a sobering thing, but we went up to the woods, we were laughing about superstitions, and there being "two more in the valley." This is where I can't get too specific, but it was a matter 00:37:00of days, I was reading the paper, and two guys had lived together somewhere --

Silen: Yeah, I remember, Bromberg had three guys. I remember that.

Tarrant: -- they had gone down to Springfield somewhere and bought a TV, with a big long antenna, and brought it home. It was after dark, and they were walking around the yard, both of them holding this antenna to find the best antenna location, and touched a power line.

Dyrness: Ohhh! Both of them died?

Tarrant: Yeah, both of them died. You don't remember? The old man, was laying dead.

Silen: No, no [Remembering]. Yeah, I know who you're talking about.

Tarrant: He was in his fifties? Well, you think hard on that, because we did that.

Group: (Laughter)

Brookes: I think he didn't want to remember.

Dyrness: Yeah, well, some things you block out.

Tarrant: And the joke was, you were known around the community as "the plumber's friend," Bromberg's friend. Known around as the plumber's friend. (Laughter) We stopped right there, he came out as was having breakfast. He came out, got all serious, and said, "There'll be two more."

Silen: Well, Bromberg is the guy who went [to some restaurant] where I ate all my meals. I had breakfast and supper there every day. (Unintelligible discussion about roadwork)

Tarrant: Later on, I got a chain letter from [Bromberg?]. I was to accept this trout fly he had in there, and send to five other people, trout flies of my own 00:39:00that I liked. I can remember that. That was the closure to that.

Silen: Was it a good fly?

Tarrant: No, as I remember, it looked like one that had gotten in between the seats there. (Laughter) Well, that made a bigger impression on me than it did on you, I guess!

Dyrness: Remember the time that you, Jim Trappe, and I were having a beer at Silver Lake? And a fire broke out? Remember that?

Tarrant: Uh-huh.

Dyrness: And as I remember, you took over and were in charge of the fire.

Tarrant: Well, I remember very little about that. (Laughter)

Brookes: Now they're trading!

Tarrant: Was that the time where we switched over, ran into a bunch of guys from the Oregon Game Commission, they had a camp up on the ridge, and they'd shot a nice, succulent little deer, and they invited us to come up and meet them there that night and have dinner with them.

Brookes: Oh, no!

Tarrant: It was a barbeque, and so, I said to Jim, you get our gear, and maybe I'll do something. Maybe that was all involved in this fire? Do you remember that part of it?

Dyrness: No, I don't remember.

Al Levno: You're going to have a hard time with this, Max [Geier], all these "mythical" events happening! (Laughter)

Tarrant: So, we went up this rotten road in their rig, because it was getting way up on a ridge somewhere. We had a nice dinner, we're sitting around the campfire, it was getting about time to turn in, and I said, Jim, where's my bedroll? He looked at me and said, "I don't know." I was stuck up there on this 00:41:00ridge with no bedroll, and this guy said, "Well, you get the tent." It was a tent where they just had gear, the weather was cold, and he said, "There's a saddle there, you can put your head on, and here's your blanket." He gave me a damn horse blanket! (Laughter)

Dyrness: That's kind of cool, huh? Oh, boy.

Tarrant: But God, it was cold.

Silen: The coldest I ever got working for the Forest Service, was just after 00:42:00WWII broke out, and I was, I don't remember, I was on the North Bend, where the dam is now, and the Forest Service was trying to save money and make lighter gear. Anyway, in trying to get lighter gear, they were testing paper sleeping bags. (Laughter) I remember, Harvey McFarland and I were given the task to go up on this lookout and sleep there that night in paper sleeping bags. (Laughter) And, we found a flat spot under the tower of the lookout and crawled in our 00:43:00paper sleeping bags. They crinkled, every time you moved, they went (paper sounds, laughter), and it got cold. I wondered how I would make it through the night, and Harvey said, "Roy, are you cold?" I said, "What do you think?" (Laughing) He said, "Can I come in and sleep, tape the two bags together and sleep with you?" That's how we made it through the night. (Laughing) It was too cold.

Tarrant: You know, they thought they could use them for fire crews, things like that, and they had those around for years. Why anyone would want to use them? 00:44:00[Unintelligible conversation, road noise, laughter] Was it not you Roy, that about a year ago, you wrote this editorial about how you were at the lookout and there was a rattlesnake?

Silen: Well, I had a rattlesnake, but I don't remember?

Tarrant: Put the mouse on a string and then --?

Silen: No, no. That wasn't me.

Tarrant: Okay.

Silen: No. [Unintelligible/road noise, discussing experience with rattlesnake at 00:46:0000:45:00fire lookout, went inside to get a 22-rifle, came back, rattlesnake had left, shot at rocks, never wrote story about it.]

Tarrant: Well, this was just before the war, and the newspaper had an editorial a year ago or so, about this. (Unintelligible/road noise, discussing story of 00:47:00how a person manning a fire lookout before WWII attached a mouse to a string, let it go, and it ran under the lookout, and then yanked it out and caught the snake that had eaten the mouse).

Silen: I remember this guy named Floyd Wilkinson, who eventually became in charge of the BLM and was a ranger at the time. I called, and said, "I got this rattlesnake outside, you got any suggestions? I've been thinking about what's the best way of approaching it." He said, "Well, you put out a plate of milk." (Laughter)

Dyrness: What did that do?

Silen: I didn't put any plate of milk. [Laughter/road noise, unintelligible, 00:49:0000:48:00fragments of story about how Silen stored 15 paychecks that got eaten by mice in 00:50:00his trailer before he could cash them, and discussion of U.S. Forest Service Washington D.C. office officials who visited the Andrews to fish on the McKenzie, and play poker with Roy at his trailer].

Geier: Did these Washington office guys stay at the bunkhouse [Blue River R.D.] when they came up, or did they stay at the motels up here?

Silen: They stayed at the motels, but I think sometimes they were in the field. At the time, the summer crews were eating their meals, there was a kitchen at 00:51:00the camp, and they had no problem with the meals, [unintelligible/road noise, 00:52:00discussion about trail going up side of the valley, conversation about raptors 00:55:0000:54:0000:53:00and fishing on the McKenzie River.]

Silen: [Discussion of efforts to save main stem McKenzie River from dams by river guides.] They were very well-organized. They were well-enough organized so 00:56:00that they prevented a mainstream dam down on the McKenzie River. The man who was president at that time was [unintelligible -Eisenhower or Truman]. They proposed several dams, I forget how many, but they proposed enough so there would be a series of gates on this river. That was starting through Congress, and these McKenzie River guides, I guess there must have been 7 or 8 of them, they decided this was going to affect their business, and they should do something about it. 00:57:00What can 7 or 8 guys do? Well, they can write old customers, President [Herbert] Hoover, Secretary of State [Henry] Stimson; they went down the list, wrote these letters, and the Corps of Engineers just gave up. [Laughter, road noise, 00:58:00unintelligible conversation about fishing.]