OLD TIMER'S TALES OF OREGON

We came back and we loaded the stuff out of the big boat, and shot them both over. That day we got down to Howard Creek. Glen went down and looked at the creek, and I did, too. 

I said, “I don’t think we can make it with that big boat loaded, we’d better load some of it out.”  Glen and I hunted and fished and camped, and we never had any words.  Both of us got a short fuse.  We never argued about much. 

I went down and looked at it and I come back up there and I said, “I don’t think you can make it!”

And Glen says, “Shove it off.” 

I said, “You’re going to drown yourself.” 

He shouted, “I said, shove it off!” 

I said, “Well, if you want to drown yourself, go ahead,” and I just gave it a shove.   And he turned end for end three times in that canyon.  He couldn’t control the damn boat with it drawing twenty inches of water! Well, after a time Glen come back. Now, when he left, he had a cigarette in his mouth.

I said, “Glen, what did you do with that cigarette?” 

He said, “I guess I swallowed it!” then he said, “Start packing that pipe down the river. I don’t know if I can shoot that through there loaded.” 

So we unpacked nineteen hundred and fifty pounds of galvanized pipe and shot the boat through there and then repacked all that pipe. That wasn’t the easiest thing to do.  So after we shot them both down there, we loaded the boats back up and went on down the Rogue.

So by and by we run into these three hobos near Galice.  They had the leg bones off an old doe and they was trying to make soup.  There was no meat on them bones.  They were starving. 

So they said to Glen, “We’ll go with you if you just feed us.” 

So he give ‘em a dollar and sent them back to Carpenter’s store at Galice.  You’d pay a dollar for a sack of potatoes.  Well, that wasn’t very much groceries for three more guys.  So anyhow, we got to Tyhee Bar and unloaded that boat.  Shot it over and took the bathtub out and set it out on the bar and lined the boat back over and then loaded part of the stuff out of the big boat into the little one and then shot them both over.  We finally got to Howard Creek Canyon.  It was pretty rough in there. 

That’s the only time we unloaded.  We went back and loaded the little boat and went on down to Black Bar where we killed a deer for our supper.

Next morning somehow Glen got up and it was still dark. We didn’t have no bedding at all. Just a piece of canvas or an old quilt – you could see daylight through it.  So, I woke up early that morning and one of those hobos was wrapped in a piece of canvas and had his bare feet in the water!  Glen cooked breakfast but I didn’t get to eat.”

Glen said, “Well, I’d better take care of that deer.”

After a bit Glen said to me, “Bill come over here and look at this deer.  I don’t think we want this.  It looks like it’s full of cancer.” 

So I went over there and looked at it and I said, “No, I wouldn’t want that.” 

Then Everett, came over and looked at it, turned around and lost his breakfast. 

So anyhow, we went on from there and finally got to Meadow Creek just below Horseshoe Bend.  That night at dinner we had a little bit of rice and a little bit of oatmeal and I cooked it in a gallon bucket.  I can remember that like it was yesterday.  That’s all we had for supper. 

So I said to Glen, “I’ve gone as far as I’m going without anything to eat.”

Glen says, “What are you going to do?” 

I says, “I’m going to Mule Creek tomorrow and get some groceries.” 

He says, “That’s twenty miles down there and back.”  

And I said, “So what?” 

So I took a backpack the next day, and Everett went with me.  We went on down to Mule Creek.  Now, a couple of guys had come up – Hank McFarland and Lou Hostedler.  They were two carpenters who lived here in Grants Pass. 

They looked at us and asked,  "