Willows 1947-66

Hot summer days, long dusty roads and a passing pickup truck were the familiar scene in the country side surrounding Willows.    It was usually a farmer going to town to buy parts for a broken down piece of farm equipment or more fuel for the tractor and probably a cold beer too.    Summers here were hot and usually in the triple digits by afternoon.   The foot hills west of town were brown and susceptible to wild fires.   In the summer of 1960, with the north wind blowing a power line failure ignited a range fire burning up livestock, miles of fences and ranch buildings in the hills all the way to the south county line.  As kids we either stayed in the air conditioned house, outside under the sprinklers or at the community pool during the summer.   It was so hot the flies didn’t even fly during the day.  At night when it cooled down into the 90’s the bugs were out in full force.  The only creatures that gained weight were the spiders, some as big as our hand.   My mother was not fond of living here and would say, “the next stop after Willows is Hell”.    After leaving the University of California at Davis in 1947, my dad took a job in Willows with the Production Credit Association, a farm loan company.    There was just the three of us then, including myself at the age of three.  All my other five siblings were born in Willows.   We originally lived in a small two bedroom house on Villa Street, just on the west side of town.    With a growing family dad built a large adobe house on 10 acres out of town in 1952, along County Road H.  Over time dad became a field representative for the California Rice Grower’s Cooperative and eventually got into rice farming himself.  During my teenage years my summers were spent working for my dad and another farmer, when my dad did not have enough for me to do.  The work consisted of irrigating crops, operating farm equipment, and maintaining it.    Much of what I learned was by the trial and error method. 

By late fall the rain would arrive and for the rice farmers who had not harvested all their crop they were in for a muddy ordeal whenever the weather permitted them to return to their fields.   Soon thereafter the ducks and geese would arrive from the North Country, darkening the skies as they settled on the unharvested rice fields of the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge purposely planted to keep them from eating the farmers’ rice.   When duck season opened the hunters would gather along the railroad tracts adjacent to the refuge or in nearby fields to shot their limit as the birds would leave the Refuge.  It sounded like a war zone at times and would continue into the winter.  My dad had an equipment shop and 150 acres of rice just northwest of the refuge.  He had constructed a couple of blinds made out of redwood lumber and placed them in some levies where hunters could conceal themselves while hunting.   Every year we would look forward to the arrival of Great Uncle Dan from San Francisco and going hunting with him.  There were more ducks and geese in our home freezer than I care to remember. 

Winters were wet and foggy.  The Sacramento Valley was famous for the Tule fog, so dense at times the geese would land in the streets of Willows unable to navigate the skies.   Highway 99, a two lane highway was known as Blood Alley for all the head on collisions during this time and even when the weather was clear.  People drove like there was no tomorrow.     

In the spring time the hills were green, farmers were plowing their fields in preparation for planting and the weather was pleasant with occasional showers.   A few of us kids from grammar school would ride our bikes six miles out to the hills and fish in Willow Creek on a sheep ranch, where the rancher caught us trespassing as he spotted our camp fire used to cook the fish.    He let us stay, but told us to ask for permission next time at his house down the highway.  About five miles east of town were the gravel pits, where the county road department had extracted gravel for paving roads leaving many large pits that filled with water over time.   Some of the pits were used as the county dump where we would make the monthly garbage run.   Everything you could imagine was thrown in there and burned.   Some of the gravel pit ponds were a popular fishing hole for us kids.    

The business section of Willows, along Highway 99, consisted of auto dealerships, farm equipment companies, part stores, and fuel and fertilizer distributers.   Willows had a Sears, J.C. Penny’s and a Southern Pacific passenger train depot, which all disappeared by the late 1950’s.    The town had a couple of grocery stores, schools, a movie theater, bowling alley and its fair share of drinking establishments.  One that remains is a stand up bar that was called “Rabbitt’s” where people could drive up, park their vehicle, order a beer or soda and drink at a standup bar.   As a kid working with my dad I can remember him stopping there for a beer and buying me a soda.  In all my travels since I have never seen anything like it.   It has relocated off Highway 99 and is now called “The Last Stand Bar and Grill”. 

In 1966 Uncle Sam drafted me into the Army.  A few years later Interstate 5 was constructed west of town and the businesses along old Highway 99 faded away as motels, gas stations, fast food joints and restaurants sprang up west of town to serve the Interstate traffic.   The freeway is less than a quarter of a mile west of our old adobe house.  While I was in the service my dad got out of the farming business due to financial problems, sold the 10 acres with the house and moved to Stockton.    After the Army I could have returned to Willows and worked for a friend of my dad who was a rice farmer, but my interest was in forestry.   Looking back it was a good decision not to return to Willows.   

Today the adobe house is still there, surrounded by a housing subdivision on what is now called Humboldt Avenue.  All you can see of the place from the freeway is all the green trees around the house, just like in the early days when pioneers on horses could see the willow trees adjacent to a pond that was an oasis in the arid valley plains that is now called Willows. 

The Paper War

 After spending 25 years working for the government, the most annoying task was dealing with all the paper work. In the beginning of my government career, I was assigned a mail basket where I received my time sheet every two weeks, or a letter from management on policy or conduct. The most I would receive was maybe 2 pieces of paper per week. By the time I completed my 25 years, I lost count of what I was receiving PER DAY, including both hard copies and e-mail. On the average it would take me an HOUR per day to go through all the incoming stuff. Much of it was junk mail - personnel items dealing with minorities, updated or revised manual supplements that I had nothing to do with, notices on upcoming meetings, surveys on some issue of the day, conduct in the coffee room, or the need for more money to keep coffee in the pot, etc, etc, etc. Other items of more importance, included notices of due dates for some kind of report required from me, a drafted letter from my supervisor wanting my input, or some form in need of having the blanks filled-in. 

It was a daily challenge to keep ahead of it all. A lot of this stuff became so overwhelming, that I would ignore some of it. Much of it ended up in the waste basket. Some of the items required by a certain date were never completed, and never missed by those making the request. One of the most amusing forms was the Negative Report. The actual instructions for this report said, "if there is nothing to report use this". I had a good time with this form... Even the bi-weekly attendance report, required at the end of each pay period became a challenge.

In order to keep my sanity, I would utilized a sense of humor at times. Since my primary job dealt with contract administration, I had to document all agreements, contract changes, acceptance of contractual work, and notices of non-compliance. This was documented on a form called the Inspection Report. This form produced four copies, one of which would end up in the head office. Once or twice a year, I would make out an Inspection Report describing some kind of enormous contractual change, or a list of major infractions on a particular contract, none of which ever happened. About half of these I never got any response on. Of the others, I would receive a phone call from the head office wanting to know what's going on. I would inform them that I was just checking to see if they were reading these things.

Mike Burke

Eugene, Oregon

The Wedding-Oct 7, 2000

 

THE  WEDDING  OF 

Celia Scott & Mike Burke

When:  4 PM   October 7, 2000    (Subject to change without notice)

Where:   Cloverdale Chapel & Meetinghouse   -   2.5 Miles east of Creswell on Cloverdale Road at the corner of Danstrom and Rogers Road.

How:   Quick & Simple  (If Mike has any say in it)

Reception:   Behind the Chapel -  Chips, dip and cake will be provided.   If you hanker for anything else - bring it!

Attire:   Men:  clean pair of jeans, shirt, and shoes or boots, no mud please.   Ladies:  the  same  goes for you, or fancy dress ok too.

Seating:   Anywhere you want.   (Back pew reserved for Mike, in case of feeling faint)

No gifts please,  we've already got enough stuff.  

                   

Tree Planting

 Another story from my days in Orleans for your reading enjoyment on a wet day. (First rain here in 14 days)  This might bring back memories for some of you old tree planters.

My first couple of winters (1971-72) on the Orleans Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest involved working on a tree planting crew for about a month.    It was not our favorite job since it was usually wet, cold and miserable working conditions.   There were six of us, including a young forester who was the foreman.    We were expected to plant 500 trees/day/man.   We had to wear rain gear most days and it didn’t seem to matter as we got wet anyhow from rain dripping down our necks or from the sweat of our bodies.   The tool of the trade was a hoedad, a long handled tool with a long straight blade used to make the hole to stick the tree seedling into.  It was also used for grubbing out a planting site when necessary.    After arriving on the job site and loading up our tree bags strapped to our waist, we proceeded to space ourselves about 10 feet apart and began planting trees.   The forester would return to the truck on days it was raining.  This did not sit right with one of the older crew members, a log scaler who went back to the truck and told the forester in a threatening manner that we are all here to plant trees, rain or shine!  The forester reluctantly joined us.  At noon we all retreated back to the truck, consumed our lunches, loaded up our tree bags and resumed where we left off.  

The units that were assigned to us were plantations that had been previously planted, but the survival rate was poor and plantation surveys showed these units inadequately stocked.   The newly logged and burned clear-cut units were put up for bid for tree planting contactors, where they could usually plant a thousand trees/day/man.   Contractors were assigned a Forest Service inspector, who delivered the tree seedlings from a freezer unit on the station to the job site and followed the tree planters inspecting a certain percentage of the planted trees for proper spacing, poor planting practices, better known as a J or L root and how well the trees were compacted in the ground.   For a week I was assigned as an inspector to a contracting company with the name of:  J & L Root Company.   This crew was made up of ex-convicts, who had been in a state conservation camp operated by the California Division of Forestry.   Whenever I came across a poorly planted tree it was reported to the crew foreman, who in an untactful manner informed the member of the crew responsible for this.   At times I thought some of the crew members might resort to their old ways and do me some harm.   At the end of the day we all went our separate ways, the crew back to their camp and me back to Orleans, thankful to have survived another day.