J.B. (Bev) Bielman Oral History Interview

J.B. BIELMAN: I'm Bev Bielman, or J.B., whatever way you want to call me. I bought this place in 1950 for $6,950. Right now, according to Starker Forest, their timber cruisers, right up here, there's over 500,000 feet, board feet of timber. I was born in Seattle, Washington, November 20, 1917. I'll be 98, pretty quick I'll be 98 if I make it that far. I feel like I'm going to. In started grade school in a little town that nobody's ever heard of, I don't think, name of Bucoda, Washington. It's not far out of Centralia. I and Madgey, we went back there, they have a reunion there every July so we took it in this year just to go up there. Let's see, didn't stay there long and we went to Tenino, Washington, which is 4 miles north. From Tenino, Washington, we went to Hermiston, Oregon. We stayed there one year because it got to 35 below zero that winter and my mother says that's all. We left. We went to Beaverton. That's where I finished school. Then, on, after high school, I have a little logging story that's kind of unique, I think. It happened on the Siletz River. Right up from Kernville, Kernville's right on the 101 there. It involved what I call hand logging. It was my falling partner's job with me, we talked this old fella out of his big spruce trees. He had some not far off the banks of the river. So, we cut them down. That was no problem. That was our job, anyway, with hand falling. We bucked them in logs and we borrowed some huge log jacks. These big things, you know, but these were hand, by hand. It was a slow process, but we jacked them into the Siletz River and rafted them down to the mouth of the Siletz River. There was a sawmill in those days, gone a long time ago. We rafted those together and when the tide was right we floated them down to the river. It was to the sawmill. Collected our money, which wasn't very much [laughs]. I know that. That was my hand logging experience.

In the late '50s, I put this dam in, which created the pond that you see on my right. I don't really remember the exact year, but I think it was late '50s. Right here not far out I just about got the Cat stuck. Oh, it was close. This was a natural basin to begin with. That's why I decided to build the pond here, and this creek, this is 1 of 2 creeks on this place. The other one's on the other side of the buildings. It's a bigger creek, but it will go dry in the summertime, and this one only went dry once since I was here, and that was 1977. It was a dry year, and this one dried completely. Now, it's got a lot of trout in there. They are native cutthroats. When this went dry in '77, the water went way down, turned a muddy color. I thought, oh, I'm going to lose all my trout, but believe it or not I never did see one floating belly up. I don't think I lost one. They are toughest trouts there is. They are really good ones. Then we got a neighbor here. Well, this one of two ponds. There's another little pond on the other side of the house fed by the same creek. I used to have quite a few ducks in here. I had as high as 25 at one time, and I used to feed them a lot. Of course, I don't now because there's none coming in here. I kept a few wood ducks once in a while, but not very many of those even, not anymore. I guess that's all about the ducks. I used to have a hobby of restoring these old Oliver tractors. I have 4 of them. This is the smallest one of the four. It's an Oliver 60, a little 4 cylinder. It's got a tricycle. It's got the two little wheels in the front. This is the prettiest one of the bunch, I think. Of course, now I kind of give up on this hobby business on account of my age. The rest of the tractors, they're all, all my Olivers are born back in the '40s. I forget what years. '45? '6, or '8, somewhere along in there.

This is the site of a wedding that took place back, oh, probably in the '80s, let's say that happened then. But sad to say the wedding didn't last very long. They're divorced, but it was quite a wedding. I got it all on videotape at home. It turned out perfect. This is also where my second wife's ashes are scattered. She wanted to be right around this big stump. She liked this place, especially. So, her ashes are here. She was born in 1914. She died in 1997. That stump, I made that in 1952 along with, oh, several old rough ones that was around here. There was a market firm in those days, and my next door neighbor lived over, he had a little Cat and he took them way down on Beavercreek Road and we loaded them out here. Here's something about this stand, in 1990 we had a blow come in from the west. This is the west here. It come right to here and took down all 3 or 4 loads of logs, right in where we're standing. Right in here. Also, some of my neighbors over there-I logged his at the same time. But, look around Gary. See if you can find any root wads.

GARY BLANCHARD: No, I don't see one.

JB: You don't see any root wads? What do you supposed happen to them?

GB: I think you probably cleaned them up.

JB: I don't like the sight of roots, so I got mad. I got my Cat in here, I piled them up, and I burned the whole thing. There's not one.

GB: Well, I can understand why the folks wanted to have a wedding here. This is a beautiful spot.

JB: Yeah, it's a good spot. You know Leroy Smith?

GB: Yep.

JB: Well, his father had some workhorses and he had a wagon. The bride that got married here and her bridesmaids, he brought them from Beavercreek Road in that wagon up to this spot in that wagon. I got that all on tape. It's a pretty good tape. But, this stand of timbers is one of the best. Partially it's thanks to Starker Forest, because they taught me how to thin. This was way too thick at one time, and I took out a few loads of logs and got it thinned down, and now there's over 500,000 feet that we're looking at around in this pass. They made an astounding growth through the years. There are a few yew trees in here, one is right here. I think Gary's on now. There's more down this draw along with the cedar. There's one stump down there that's unique, and in fact it's got springboard holes in it. It's a small stump. It isn't very big and why those fallers bothered to put springboards in that is beyond me. I've done a lot of hand falling and one that small, we'd just whack a little undercut with the axes and cut it down by the time we had these board holes in it.

GB: How old were you when you started logging, Bev?

JB: When I started logging? I was, let's see, that was in 1933. I was going to high school. It was in the summer. I worked for my dad cutting cedar timber for his shingle mill. He had a shingle mill at Brightwood up towards Mt. Hood. That's where I started pulling the buck and saw and found out I could do it all day long and never get tired. I wish I could do it again.

GB: Did you have other relatives that were involved in the forestry business in some way or the other?

JB: I had an uncle, Uncle Jim Ross. He owned part of the shingle mill and, well, my dad he was just part-time. He had shingle mills, but mostly he had car dealerships, mostly Fords. He started with the Model T Fords in the '20s where I started grade school in Bucoda, Washington. A lot of years ago [laughs]. 1922 I think it was when I started grade school.

GB: We're on the Brush Creek Road on the Norton Hill tree farm, Starker's Norton Hill Tree Farm. About 35 or 40 year ago you and your partner, Dick Daugherty, logged here.

JB: Yeah.

GB: You set the stage for this nice young stand we have here.

JB: In fact, right down there, there's 2 big stumps. I bet you I made both of them.

GB: I'll bet you did, too.

JB: Yeah, right there. You can see those two. Oh, there's another one over there, and I think another one down there. They was big and they was rough, if I remember correctly. They went to WOW in Eddyville where they had the best skinner that I ever saw, for the logger anyway, not for the mill owner. That was Harry Lagathy, wasn't it?

GB: Harry was the mill owner, I think, at that time.

JB: Oh, was he? I mean a mill owner.

GB: But, you know, I think maybe the price that he paid compensated for the scale you got, too.

JB: I'm sure it did.

GB: Because he didn't pay very much.

JB: No.

GB: But he took logs that nobody else would take.

JB: Yeah.

GB: They were big limbs and real coarse grain.

JB: Coarse grained, yeah.

GB: A lot of pit seeds in them.

JB: Yeah. Of course, we didn't have any loading machine to load those big logs, but I put down the brown log and pushed them on the truck.

GB: On a rollway.

JB: On a rollway, yeah. I wish I could remember that little guy's name again that hauled the logs. The scaler down there, you said, his name was Darwin?

GB: Darwin, uh-huh.

JB: Darwin. I've seen him down there scale a load and he went to the back of the load on the trailer end and get the diameters back there. He wouldn't go to the front. If you had a buck back you've got the big end of the log to scale, and that's unheard of [laughs]. But the Starker's liked it, I'm sure, and the B&D logging company, too, that's Bielman and Daugherty.

GB: Talk a little bit about Dick Daugherty if you would, how you became a partner with him.

JB: Oh, we started together before we ever got a track layer and started logging. We were just cutting together back in the '50s, around for this one, that one, and the other one. He was a bucker and I was a faller. We did that for several years. Finally, one time my back gave out on me. We was over, oh, let's see, on Decker Road. We was off of Decker Road there someplace. My back gave out and I couldn't even get upright. Daugherty had to help me into Philomath to the doctor's. Then we decided let's get us a Cat and go to logging like some of these other guys are doing and we'd done that. We started on the Rose, Clyde Rose's place, just south of Dan Farmer Tree Farm there on, up above my place where I live now in that drainage. Then after we finished that job, logging Clyde Rose's place we was relogging old stuff and we talked to Starker's asked him if they need any loggers and they said yes. So, they put us onto Dan Farmer ready to join him. We spent many good years with a good company. They treated us right and I hope we did treat them right, too.

GB: Well, you and Dick did an awful lot of good work for Starker Forest.

JB: Yeah.

GB: Just take a look at the young trees here.

JB: Yeah, there's a lot of-oh, this is real timber growth here.

GB: You guys set the stage for this.

JB: Yeah, this is good timber growing country. Just look down through here. You couldn't ask for any better, I don't think. We started getting back in the '50s just falling and bucking for the local loggers around Philomath and west of there, of course. We stayed together for quite a few years until, well, we got us a little Cat and started logging for ourselves. Because my back gave out on me and I had to get off the chainsaw for part-time anyway, and it paid off pretty good because my back got better from then on. It seemed like the older I got the better my back got.

GB: Well, Bev, we're standing on what the Starkers call the Steve Rice Heliport, because Steve Rice was the logger that actually logged this setting. This was steeper than you guys could log when you were here because you logged with your tractor. You guys did the bulk of the logging in that, I think in the '60s.

JB: It was the '60s, yeah.

GB: That's where a lot of those logs that we talked about going to WOW came from was this area out here. Of course, it's all been logged over and replanted.

JB: Oh, gosh, yeah. I don't even know if there's even saplings 40 years ago.

GB: No, these guys are all younger than that.

JB: Yeah. But it's sure been a growth since then. My gosh, look out here. Look trees, trees, and more trees. You have to imagine a little bit here, because this is supposed to be a springboard. Set it in that knot. On one end it had a metal piece, a kind of a half-moon circle. You get me?

GB: Mm-hmm.

JB: You put that in there, and you jump up on it. It was always working and level. Also, when you got on this, with your cork boost, you'd jump up and down and then pull your feet this way, you could move your board around the tree as you're sawing and working around the tree. You could move that board...

GB: Why were there-

JB: ...without having to get off.

GB: Why would there have been two springboard holes like that stump has?

JB: Well, this is too big.

GB: I see.

JB: You had to get back-that's a pretty good size stump.

GB: Well, we're on the Dan Farmer Tree Farm now, and that's where you and Dick Daugherty did a lot of work for Starker before.

JB: Yeah, over this way.

GB: Now that tree is older than you would have cut, though, isn't it?

JB: Oh, gosh yes. I see a lot of them in here. There was a big stand of old growth timber in here at one time years and years ago before I came in this country. It was cut by some other logger. I don't know how did it. Do you know?

GB: I don't know who the earliest loggers were.

JB: Oh. But there's another one there, stump there. As I was coming up the road I noticed a lot of them. It was a pretty good stand in here at one time. But that's how they work. You put them in there, you jump up on them, and you got away from a lot of timber bind. If you know what a timber bind is-it's a swelling in the wood and it pinches the saw. You get above that up here. Sometimes you go up 2 or 3 boards, high is what I mean, especially the spruce over on the coast. Oh, they was terrible for hard to cut. Daugherty and I started back on this tree farm in the '60s, I think it was sometime.

GB: Well, our next stop is going to be on the Rose property.

JB: On the Rose property.

GB: Right. And I think that's where you started. That's where I first met you, anyway.

JB: Right. Yeah. About the same time Daugherty and I started logging, you joined Starker Forest, didn't you?

GB: Mm-mm. That's perfect. I think that'll turn out good.

JB: Oh, I'm glad. To make a remark the timber has grown so much in the years past that I worked in here. It's surprising how fast it'll grow. Of course, Starker knows all about that. Everywhere you look there's a lot of fir trees. Okay, you want my full name? Well, I don't tell this to everybody, but here it is: I was named, my first name is Joy, middle name Beverly, Bielman (B-i-e-l-m-a-n). Now, isn't that an awful name for a logger. A big, burly tough logger and what a name.

GB: Did anybody ever give you any trouble over it?

JB: No. I was pretty athletic when I was in school. The kids back then weren't as big as they are now. Nobody ever started giving me much trouble. It's a good thing they didn't [laughs]. Anyway, my grandparents both came from Norway, and I don't know... I think my father was, he was part English. My real father. Bielman is a step name: Q. John Bielman was my stepfather. He took over in 1922, the year I started grade school. Okay, I fathered four children: 2 boys, 2 girls. The oldest son, Robert, he's in Brush Prairie, Washington, as of now, and he works in the city of Newburg. The City of Newburg hired him when the city of Portland got rid of Bob. Well, he worked for them for over 30 years and retired him, and the city of Newburg found out and they wanted him right now. So, he's working down there now. He'll be 69 here in a few days. He's doing well. The oldest daughter, Loretta's next, and she's in Vancouver working for a bus company. She's been with them for years. She started by driving bus, but now she's in the office. The next one down the list is Mary and she lives in Corvallis. She lost her husband, an OSU retired teacher, or you call them professors. Anyway, and she recently had bought 2 new homes. She lives in one and she bought one for her youngest daughter who has 3 children. She's going to provide for her, I guess. The young son he's in Ontario, Canada, on Lake Erie. He works in Buffalo, New York, which is just across the river and not very far from Fort Erie where Ron lives. He's doing well. He was out here not very long ago. Can I tell you a little story about what happened? He had borrowed my oldest son's car to run around with while he was down here. So, he had to take it back. When he took it back, why they were sitting around outside and the weather was nice up there, too, like it was here then. The deer started coming out. Believe it or not, the oldest son had a house cat. The house cat come out at the same time, and one of those deer come over and licked the house cat. I never heard of a thing like that happening. And they have pictures of it. I'm going to get a picture of it when they get it developed. I'm anxious to see that. That's about all of the children, except that I got lots of grandkids and several great grandkids, about a half dozen of them already. I'm getting to be an old timer, believe it or not.

I'll tell you the story about my last cutting timber by hand, and it happened up on Flat Mountain which is south of here a few miles. Anyway, there was a few old growth trees left up there, and Marvin Koone, you remember Marvin Koone? You probably do. He had charge of that anyway. Anyway, Flat Mountain, like I say, is south of here and it had an abundant amount of timber at one time. In fact, Corvallis Lumber put a railroad up there over from Dawson that way on account of it's too steep this side for the railroad. So, they had to get a grade out the other way and then come back to Corvallis. The lumber company was right there were Marys River meets the Willamette. It's quite an operation and at the time I worked up there, and the year I think was 1943. That was the year I moved over here from the coast because it was getting too windy over there. I was living too much time working. Well, we was up on the Flat Mountain here cutting a few big trees that was left and Marvin Koone, he had the authority to take care of things, and I was falling with a guy by the name of Joe Degear. Sometimes they pronounced it Deguire. I pronounce it Deguire, that was easier for me. He was a good old boy. He is probably gone now, because he was about my age. He had a son, too. Anyway, the logs went to Corvallis Lumber like I told you before, not on the railroad but it was on the truck because the rails were taken up and they were laying alongside the old railroad grade in '43 when I was up there. One trestle, I know, we used. They'd left it so a car or pickup could go across it. We went on this one across that to go to work. On this Flat Mountain where the timber'd been cut off and then they'd burn it, and then shearing years, why the brush or the deer, what the deer needed to eat was so prolific and the deer herds was terrific up there. In fact, back in those days I used to kill them out of season. Because I had a family to feed [laughs], and none of it went to waste. I remember taking my 22 rifle up there one day and during the noon hour I asked the guys, the other guys working there, I said, anybody want a deer? Some of them said yes, so I went out with my 22. I killed 3 that one day. We took them home with us. Nobody ever got caught, but it's a wonder we didn't. Like I say, it was the biggest bunch of deer I ever seen in my life in that country because it was just perfect for them.

When I was born, my name was Anderson, believe it or not, and his name was Joy. Why he passed that on down to me, I will never found out, of course. But, mother and him didn't get along and they divorced. In 1922, mother married Q. John Bielman, my stepfather. That was the year I started grade school, 1922. They had, between them they had a son and a daughter. My stepbrother's name is Kenneth Dayton. The family calls him Dayton, because mother had a brother by the name of Kenneth so they didn't get it mixed up some way or another. Anyway, Kenneth worked for Ch2m Hill. He was an engineer with them when they first got started back in the late '40s. Of course, he's retired now. But he put in a lot of years with CH2M Hill. Before I get too far along here, I want to start, thank Starker Forest for the many good years that they provided logging for me, because I enjoyed it, every bit of it. In fact, I enjoyed all my years of logging. I liked it very much, especially Starker. They treated me real well. They had good people working for them and they still have, I think. I met my first wife, Alice, in Oceanlake, Oregon, which is now, they call it Lincoln City and everything now. But it was Oceanlake then. That's where Mary, the youngest daughter, was born, years ago before I moved over in the valley here in '43. My nextdoor neighbor, Darryl Everett, he lived just east of me here. He had probably 100 acres. I logged, of course, on his place years ago and at one time I got some of the prettiest logs you ever saw. They brought $1,100, a thousand, overseas, you know. It was all export stuff. Real smooth and straight and fine grained. It was pretty wood. Old Darryl, he's gone. He sold the place to some Californians. They brought, built a new house and they are really enjoying it, a lot better than California. I bought this place in, the year was 1950. I bought it for little to nothing. Of course, then they thought I was crazy because all you could see was blackberry briars and this whole, you couldn't even see any water any place. The creeks were all covered up, but I took care of it through the years and still trying to fight the berries, but they still keep coming back. Now I'm getting too old to do much on the place, and I suppose eventually, unless somebody else takes over, where I'm leaving off or they got the muscle to do it. All I want to do, it seems like, is take a nap in the afternoon now. The old man's pretty tired.