Logging Camps

Not being a youngster, my memories are mostly all from many years back. I grew up living mostly in logging camps, or small towns. We rarely lived anywhere that we had electricity or running water. I recall living in Tidewater, Oregon, which was 30 miles from Astoria. When we went to town, we would park the car in a covered area and walk about a mile to our house. If we had groceries, we would leave them by the covered barn area and the camp would send a speeder, on the railroad tracks, and pick up our groceries and bring them to the camp for us. Can you imagine doing that today? If you did, you likely would have no groceries left.

The school I attended was a one room school house with a very large pot-belly stove near the entry. We had all 8 elementry grades in one room, and there was a total of 11 students in those 8 grades. It took some concentration to study when the teacher was talking with one of the other classes.

To get to school my brother and I had to walk the railroad tracks to the school building. It was probably about a half mile, but when it snowed my brother, who was just a first grader, couldn't walk the tracks by himself, so Dad would leave work and come home to carry him to school. I would trudge behind him so that I could step in his tracks and not have to make my own path. When we got to the school building we would be pretty wet, so the teacher had us sit on curved benches placed around that big hot stove until we were dry enough to go to our desks. I recall that we thought that was a lot of fun.

It was nice living in those days. Parents never worried about where their children were, or what they were up to. There was no place to even get into trouble. Some may think we missed out on a lot of things, but we made our own fun and built memories that are still strong in my mind. It was not easy for Mom's who had no power for washing machines or other nice appliances, and some times had to walk a long way to get water when the summer sun dried up our usual source of spring water.

Now that I have all the conveniences of modern day, I can think back on days like this and smile at the wonderful memories that were built by living in remote areas.