Lostine River

I recalled a couple of stories told by my Mom and Dad. One involved a time before the three younger of us came along, where the Folks and three older kids were camping up on the Lostine River, in Eastern Oregon. Penny recalled the following:

"I don't really remember the entire story concerning the Lostine water bucket incident. I do remember there were two logs that Mom or Dad would balance across and dip the bucket into a deeper part of the river to get clear water. All I remember is Mom standing between the two logs with water up to about her knees dripping wet and Dad laughing, laughing, laughing. Mom said "Oh, Neal" in a sorry for me voice and then NEAL! in a stop that nonsense voice. On this particular trip I remember several incidents: Rick (Sig?) casting into the river and hooking one of Dad's ears in the process. What a nightmare that was for Mom to cut off the barbed end to get the hook out! Let's face it, Mom was a squealer in the face of injury. The kids (3 older, I don't think you younger ones were born yet, but perhaps you just didn't make an impression? Ha, Ha.) having a bath in a big round tin washtub with water heated over the fire. Hiking and seeing deer poop and Dad saying that we were making so much noise that we had scared the poop out of the deer. (I mean, really!) Gathering periwinkles on the rocks at the edge of the river to fish with. Then we went to Chief Joseph days and stayed with Aunt Marylou and Uncle Red in town in a travel trailer. I think they ran a hotel or something and this trailer was behind it and we slept in it."


Rick adds some more detail:

"Yes, I certainly have some recollection...the trailer actually was part of Aunt Mary Lou's living quarters at the time...we set up an army tent and slept outside (most of us did...maybe Penny slept with Merrill inside?) We were quite young...probably 8, 6 and 4 years old, but could have been slightly older. We had pancakes with syrup and bacon every morning...I remember the breakfasts best, except for the huckleberry pies. We all picked huckleberries and Mom actually made pies somehow at the camp...I remember them as being fantastic!! I was young, but remember the huckleberries as being huge.

Penny got stung by a bee while we were picking and Dad carried her around for quite a while. We saw many more bees and Sig and I ran around like idiots...if it hurt Penny the pain would probably kill us...she was a BIG sister! Sig was small and Mom had to hold his hand some of the time when we crossed logs, etc.

When Mom fell off of the log into the river, it was in a fairly deep hole where the river coursed into the bank at an abrupt turn in the river. The water was up to and above her mid-section...between her tummy and her neck. She screamed so loud it scared us all. We didn't see wildlife in the area for two days!

We were in an old '47 Chevy car. I was the one that Dad was teaching how to fish and cast and I caught Dad's ear instead of a fish. Mom cut the line-end off of the hook and pulled the cut-end back through the hole. Dad never wimpered and never got angry...just kept telling Mom that "Ricky really caught a big one!". His ear bled profusely.

We were driving to camp from Enterprise one evening and a HUGE buck walked out into the road and just stared at us...so close we couldn't see his legs over the hood of the car. He was completely in velvet and Dad was really excited to for us to see him.

An older couple was camping near us and they were extremely nice. Mom finally had to tell us kids to stop going over to them. They gave us some fish one evening and with the ones Dad caught we had a very nice fish-fry. I remember seeing Dad cut the heads off and Mom frying them (the fish...not the heads) in camp. They were boney little trout, but very tasty. Mom cooked them until their tails were crispy and the tails were Dad's favorite. When we kids found that out, Dad didn't get many more tails as we all wanted them to be our favorite part too!

There was a crew working on a pole project up near the present Forest Service cabin and since there weren't any modern shears in those days, there was a faller and a "pusher"...a man with a very long pole. His job was to push the lodgepoles over in the right direction so that all of the poles fell the same way. Dad took us to the project and let us watch for quite some time. It was great!

We went to the Chief Joseph Days parade and carnival. The song "Purple People Eater" was popular then and Boise Cascade had just purchased a new Wagner log handler. They had "dressed" the Wagner up as a "Purple People Eater" and the head (grapples) were pretty impressive to us kids. The parade was down the main street of Joseph. The song was written by Shep Wooley and was a hit in 1958, so I was maybe 7, Penny was 9 and Sig was 5? It seems that we were younger, but the song pretty much sets the time frame.

I remember going down the mid-way with Dad and Mom and they had a shooting range set up in a tent...just a backstop with no protection at the sides of the tent (can you imagine how that would go over now??). A guy was really burning through some ammunition and Sig and I wanted some souveniers... we both grabbed some spent shells before Dad could stop us and both of us burned our fingers with the hot shells.

We went to the rodeo and a bull threw the bull rider off, turned on him and ripped his shirt clear off of him with his horn. As I remember it, he turned and his horn went in thorough a gap between buttons and ripped the shirt off. Mom screamed so loud that everyone around us looked at us instead of the guy that lost his shirt. During the same event a bull jumped the rodeo fence at the gate and ended up in the parking lot. A friend of ours (Dennis Johnson's dad...I think his name was Bill) was sitting in his car with the door open and had to quickly close the door of the car when the bull came running by. We never did hear how or if they caught the wayward bull. Sig and I were pretty sure that we would grow up to be cowboys and rodeo stars."

Great stuff! I love it!! SEND MORE!