Back Again, After a Short Break

I think I've written before that the family moved 'across the valley' in about 1960,  but really we moved from above Crouch on the Middle Fork of the Payette River [below on the first map, where it is marked Logue Home - near the present-day Terrace Lakes that wasn't existing at the time of our move] to a leased cottage site on the South Fork of the Payette east of Garden Valley [on the second map, by the present-day Garden Valley airport].  See the following maps.

The top of the first map is pointing west instead of North.  These photos are courtesy of the Garden Valley Chamber of Commerce.

I've also mentioned that my father purchased a house that had been used by the sawmill company for mill workers.  When he secured the leased cottage site on a 99 year lease, he decided to move the building to the new home site via logging truck.  As the truck crossed Smith Creek (the road just went over a culvert that channeled the flow of the water), the truck slipped off the road and the house slipped off the truck.  They had a difficult time getting the house back onto the truck so they could haul it the 8-10 miles to our new place.  I wish I had a good photo of this house.  My dad had to tear off two bedrooms to fit the house on the truck and it took him several years to add those rooms back (along with an in-door bathroom).  I still remember all the cold days having to make that trek outdoors to the outhouse.  And even after the bathroom was added, we kept the outhouse cause whenever it was extremely cold in the winter the pipes would freeze and with such a large family you could never guarantee the bathroom was going to be free when you really needed it.

Eventually dad and the older boys succeeded in adding on two bedrooms - after several years of them (the boys) sleeping outside on a mattress under a canvas tarp in the summers and inside an camp trailer in the winters.  [Being the only daughter - my sister was ten years older than I and had moved out long before this time - I remember spending at least one winter sleeping in the attic on a mattress with barely enough room to dress because you could not stand up all the way up there.]  The camp trailer was purchased for dad to take to the woods in the summers when he was logging in a part of the forest that he could not drive to easily from the house (which was most of his logging jobs).

Cyril and Gerald in front of camp trailer, c. 1960

 

The trailer parked in the woods during the summer.

Sometimes my brothers and I would be able to spend a week in the woods with dad while he worked.  It was fun wandering around in the woods, but we had to be careful because there was logging activity going on - trees falling, caterpillars climbing up and down hills, logging trucks racing up and down the roads.

It is almost Thanksgiving (here in 2011) and as I was going through old photos to try to find something of our old home I came across this photo of Thanksgiving dinner in 1964 or 65.  Around the table, starting directly in front, in the blue/red plaid, is Roger, Adrian, Cyril, Timmy, Christina (on one of her rare visits home - she was living with Great-Aunt Kate at this time), Gerald, Dad (carving the turkey), Mom (can only see her arms), and lastly Great-Aunt Kate (in her late 80s at this time).  I am the one taking the picture and to whom the empty chair belongs.  Missing is my oldest brother Tommy.

The turkey was one of about a dozen that dad had raised that year.  I'm surprised there was no birthday cake on the table, as Thanksgiving was usually a birthday for one of us - Dad's on Nov 27, Gerald's on Nov 26, mine on Nov 28, and Mom's on Dec 6.  So this was a big holiday celebration of us each year.

So have a Happy Thanksgiving and may your blessings be many.