Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: June 23rd, 2014

In the spring of 1946, I broke my arm when I fell off the horse.  Later that year, Phyllis was born.  That time mom was in the hospital for just five days and pop got an old friend from Markus to come stay with us, that was Bertha Bedinger.  She stayed during the day and then pop was home with us at night.  She got out there early, too.  Bertha was a lot of fun.

Pop got the whole place in order except for the part where the cow and the horses were.  That spring also we had a huge picnic and the folks got a bull out there which was killed and butchered and there was a big picnic.  The meat was all cut up at wrapped by Mr. Keltner the butcher and he did it all for the hide.  We had gotten rid of the pigs by the end of 1945, too.  I shed no tears over that.  those were great big stinky porkers and they were rather fearsome.  Mr. Keltner took care of them, too, for the hides.  In the early summer, our dog, Jeannie, went missing.  She had had two litters of pups, in one litter there were fourteen pups and Jeannie could not take care of them all herself and so mom fed them milk with an eye dropper and they all made it.  Later we had a similar experience with a pigeon.  It had broken its wing and we fed it milk with an eye dropper, nursed it back to health, and it eventually flew away, although it had become rather tame and returned to us periodically over the next three years.  But Jeannie had been poisoned, we assumed it was salmon poisoning, that was a typical way people got rid of dogs that they did not want.  We were crushed.  We got another Saint Bernard, though, and again named it Jeannie.  It was a docile, wonderful dog that eventually died of old age, but it never had any pups.  At the end of 1946, though, the cow dried up and we ate Bossie, or as mom so delicately put it, we traded the cow for beef, which was technically correct but it did lead to the wrong conclusion.  At that point, pop decided he did not want another cow.  So, he dammed up the outlet to the swamp and we decided to put fish into it.  It was a beautiful lake.  We got the fish from Mr. Gorst in North Bend.  He was one of the early pioneers in aviation, what brought him to North Bend is beyond me.  He was a tinkerer.  He had started an airline company and eventually that company merged with three additional companies.  The articles of union were drawn up and signed in North Bend and the new airlines was called United Airlines.  You can look him up on the internet as well.  He had started a bus company that was eventually taken over by Greyhound, I believe, and there was the bus that ran between North Bend and Coos Bay called the Gorst and King bus company.  He had also decided to try raising trout for sale, more efficient than going out with a hook and line, but he wanted to give that up and so we got his trout and put them into the lake and also we put a number of gold fish in there that we got from Mingus Park.  In early 1947, pop completed his golf course and so the place looked almost like it was going to look for the rest of the time we were there.   We had also gotten rid of the horses.

In 1946, we also came down with the old fashioned measles during that summer.  They were awful.  We had gotten over the chicken pox and they were no good either and now the old fashioned measles.  We got all the old child hood diseases.  The measles had started out with septic sore throat (now called strep throat) and then came the measles and for Bob, came rheumatic fever and for Dory, she got pneumonia.  Mom took her to the hospital, she was delirious, I still remember that, and mom prayed that if we could get through this, she would built a shrine to Mary.  Well, we got through it all and pop did build the shrine to Mary and put up a trail from the swinging bridge to the shrine with the stations of the cross on them.  I honestly do not know where mom and pop got all their energy, but they were starting to rely on the heavy lifting  on Bob and me.  About then, we took over the wood gathering, which turned out to be a huge job because we needed hot water for everything and we only had hot water if the fire was burning in the house.

But the place was beautiful and the old Coos Bay Times (now The World) came out and did a cover story on us in 1947 and it was printed in the Oregonian and then nationally in the Parade Magazine.  That was a horrible thing for us.  In the year 1948, not a day went by when we did not have at least two cars come down the rode and expected us to show them around.  Pop was in his glory, but it was up to Bob and me and Louise would also tag along, to show these people everything.  We never could get away from people.

Another thing, we had so many picnics out there, they played croquet, volley ball, badminton, went swimming, golfing, it was amazing, we never had a moment’s rest.  The Perrys also loved horse shoes and pop was the best of the lot so he always played with old Mr. Perry.  That way, Mr. Perry could beat his sons, sons in law, and grandsons.  He got quite old but always pitched his shoes, but eventually had to walk half way the distance to the peg and his sons, sons in law and grandsons would all be screaming, pappy, you can’t do that, that is against the rules, but he walked up and pitched his shoe.  One time another old friend of the family came out and his wife kept track of the number of ringers they threw and came up with the figure that they were throwing over 60% ringers.  Pop was good, he was a good athlete.  He had no cows, no garden, he had a paradise that he had made and he competed with all comers and it was up to us to support him in all these.   To be continued.

After getting rid of the cow, pop had the opportunity to finish the place as we all eventually knew it.  He wanted to be able to have outside masses and so the folks got the big statue of the Sacred Heart.  It was big and heavy and it was up to pop, Bob and me to set it up.  We pushed it over to the top of where the hill fell off sharply and then the plan was to lower it down by ropes.  Well, that thing was so heavy that it burst the ropes and plunged all the way to the bottom.  We were afraid that that was the end of the statue, but remarkably, it survived, we took out the angels and carried them up to where it was supposed to be and then spent the rest of the afternoon pushing that statue up to where we could finally set it up.  The first mass that was said was for the 8th grade graduation in 1948 where Mary Ann was a member as were the original football team of pop’s.  Father Greene officiated.  That came off well.  It came off so well, that the parishes of North Bend and Coos Bay asked to have the parish picnics out there and so the lake was drained and pop had a bulldozer come in, paid for by the Knights of Columbus, by the way, and bulldoze out a softball field.  The place was finished.  The fish that were in the lake were huge, the biggest trout that I had ever seen.  Bob and I said that night we would come down the next day and get them, but the raccoons beat us to them and we did not get a single fish.

Pop was in his glory.  He loved to compete and the summer of 1948 we had the Coos County Badminton Championship out at the house and he won that.  I can still see all the people that were out there playing, they are engraved in my mind, all young and athletic and vigorous, full of life.  They loved it and pop was on top.  Bob and I could hardly wait until we could start playing with him, but as it turned out, that time never came.  His athletic days were coming to an end.

By this time, pop was the straw boss at Pacific Fruit.  It was the largest wholesale food distributor on the West Coast at the time and second biggest in the nation.  It was the precomputer days so the office staff was large and there were about 50 working in the warehouse and out selling and delivering.  Pop at one time or another had pretty much the whole football and basketball team of Marshfield High School working there during the summers.  They would have to unload large cars brought in by the freight trains and pop always took the nastiest job, that is he would get into the train cars and they would set up a human chain taking the produce to where it had to go.  So, for instance, with watermelons, he would be down on his knees pitching out the melons to the next guy.  He would come home and he would have “water on the knees”, that is big puffy knees full of that watery substance, he could hardly walk.  I can still see him coming home and going into the living room next to the stove, mom would be cooking, Bob and I would have had the wood stacked on the porch with a bunch of wood next to the stove and the fire in the stove roaring.  He would put one leg at a time into the bucket filled with water, take a razor blade and make a slit just below the knee cap and drain the water and put a bandaid over the slit.  The next morning he would be just fine, head over to PFruit and do the same thing again.  His knees just wouldn’t take that kind of punishment in the long run and in old age, he suffered from that, he could hardly walk.

The parish picnics went off very well and everyone loved them.  The bishop came down and said mass, alcohol was not allowed, the bishop would get down on the floor and play with the twins, Ann and Angela.  We had three such picnics, 1949, 1950, and 1951.

An old classmate of pop’s also was there and asked if they could not have their 20 year reunion there in 1950, so pop said yes.  the fellow said they would have a little alcohol but they were all old enough to do it appropriately, no worries there and so pop said OK and mom agreed.  Well, as usual, pop, Bob and I worked like crazy getting the place in order setting up picnic tables, the picnic was catered so all kinds of good food came and they said we could have as much as we wanted, and then the people started coming.  They had at least two kegs of beer, the most alcohol that I have ever seen in my life, wine, whiskey, gin, you name it, and the whole group started to finish it off.  Mom wouldn’t let the younger kids out of the house.  Nobody ate any of the food, Bob and I went down and brought up enough food for our family.  Around six it was time to go home, but the people were all so soused that nobody could find their way to where their cars were, besides some of them were sleeping out in the bushes, I have never seen anything like it.  No man nor woman ever stopped until they saw the bottom of the bottle and there were many bottles that needed to be looked into.  So, what happened was, pop stood up by the house and Bob and I went out looking for the folks.  We found them all eventually, brought them up to the house, pop would check which of the couple was the soberest, put that one behind the wheel, close the door and send them on their way.  Remember this was the good old days and the police were much more understanding then.  If you were really drunk and could hardly see the road, you were told to get home and be careful and sleep it off.  Nowadays, the police are not nearly so understanding.  You might even lose your license. 

You can see how much better things were in the good old days.  Mom was furious.  Never again, she swore, and there never again were big reunions out there.  A clean up crew had been hired to cart everything away.  They found most of the liquor bottles, not all, and the place was left spotless.  But at this point, the place was the way you all remembered it.  There was also a big parking lot “over on the hill”.

To be continued.

Dory and Louise pointed out something that I had left out.  When the bishop came to say mass at our place in, I believe, 1950, the ladies from the altar society all said they wanted to pitch in and make an elegant breakfast for him.  Mom put down her foot and said, no, she was the hostess and would do it herself.  As it turned out, the bishop so loved playing with the baby twins that a delegation from the KC-s came up at least twice to tell him that he had to come down and say the blessing so they could get started eating.  In those days, you could not receive communion if you had eaten or drunk anything after midnight.  The mass was about 9:30 so the bishop was starved.  The next time the bishop came, the time was different.  That would have been about 1960 and the ladies wanted to do something special, I think it must have been an afternoon thing and they did not think mom had anything nice enough, but mom one-upped them.  She did not talk about that much later, but she was pretty smug.

1948 was a year where a lot changed.  The cow was gone, the place had taken shape.  Phyllis was now part of the family, a little girl who was born clean.  She wanted everything to be just perfect.  Dory taught her to talk when she was little, she talked early, of course, and as Dory talked with a lisp, she taught Phyllis to talk with a lisp and so out of Phyllis came Phiddy, Laurie had already become Dory.  Actually, when Phyllis was about five she suddenly said, I don’t have to talk that way and said her l-s.  I remember once when she was about two and she decided to comb pop’s hair, and she put water on the hair and more water and finally somebody said, where is that water coming from and she pointed into the toilet.  Poor pop could not get into the bath tub soon enough.  She washed the dishes for mom and then was incensed because mom had to rewash the dishes.  She felt the bathroom needed cleaning up and so she put baby powder all over it.  Actually, she was right about the baby powder.  When Rich was born, we stayed with Aunt Mamie and Uncle Heini.  It was close to pop’s birthday and so when Louise, Bob and I visited mom (nobody under six got to see her, but I was ten, Louise was six and Bob was eight at the time so Louise squeaked in), she gave us some money to buy pop a present for his birthday.  So we went to the local five and dime store, it was called Fourier and Kailey, right there on the corner of Virginia and Sherman Avenue catty corner across from the Coos Bay Hotel at the time, and so a nice lady waited on us.  I said, pop likes to play with us and so we bought him a kite, Bob liked to garden and he noted that pop liked to garden as well and so we bought him a trowel, Louise said pop liked to tell us stories and so we bought him a little book, I still remember that book, it was Peter and the Wolf, a great little book.  We read it until it fell apart, Bob used that trowel for years, the first big windstorm that came up, we flew that box kite clear up beyond where the Messners now live and it crashed and that was the end of that kite.

The summer before that, the house was getting too small.  A ship had run aground and to get the ship afloat again, it had hung up on the bar, the sailors had thrown huge amounts of lumber overboard, and I think half the townsfolk had gathered up lumber including us, and pop got some more lumber in addition.  So, we built that addition that was to be the boys and girls rooms.  Jack and Leona Lapp had retired and so that great big picture window in the girls’ room was the window from their store.  We also took the big slide that he had rescued from the old Central School in Marshfield when it had been torn down.  I still remember that he used butcher paper for the insulation, which was definitely better than old newspapers which is what the people usually used in those days.  The old children’s room became the utility room.  Bob, pop and I worked a large part of the summer on that one.  I remember how hard we worked.  It seemed like there were a lot of projects that Bob and I worked on.  Working for your father tends to be particularly exhausting, what is more the father pretty much works you into the ground and that is the way I remember that.

The next summer, the towns decided to deepen the entry to the harbor into Coos Bay and so they blew up the entry way at the bar.  That took much of the summer, too.  Naturally, when you set off explosions like that, the fish are stunned and so come to the surface.  That spoiled me for fishing.  Jack Lapp had a small boat and we would put two wash tubs into the boat and like everybody else in town, we went out there, scooped up the fish.  It was marvelous fishing.  In fifteen minutes after the explosion, we had two wash tubs full of fish.  Nothing was illegal in those good old days.  Mom and I leaned the fish.  We ate a lot of fish that summer, much to pop’s disgust.  He was not a big fish eater.  We got ourselves big shears, cut off the heads and tails, slit open the bellies and cleaned the fish.  We got real good at it.  Probably not as good as Phyllis who once worked in the cannery, but we were not bad.  There were all kinds of fish, too.  Mostly Perch, of course, but a goodly number of flounder, tom cod, red snapper, and a number of other fish, some of which were identifiable and some not.  We never got a salmon, though.  I was told that salmon sink under these circumstance, I do not know that for sure, but it may have been the time of the year when that took place and the salmon were just not running.  At any rate, there were striped bass.  I have never done that kind of  fishing since.

To be continued.