March 9, 2009

Its Just Nostalgia

Big Timber

I grew up in a rural area about 5 miles east of Orting on the historic mainline of the NP railroad. 50 years previously the timber man who operated here called this place Arline. They had a railroad siding here, a post office and a 1 room public school. The timber man built his first mill about a half mile north in 1897, but when it got to difficult to drag the logs to it, he moved south a half mile and started cutting again. These trees were huge, and even 50 years later, when I was growing up their stumps were still there and some I remember as being enormous. Most of them were quite rotten and had red huckleberry bushes growing out of them. I’d drag a ladder to them to be able to climb up and retrieve the juicy ripe berries. But the story goes that before the railroad the trees were a liability to farmers trying to raise crops on the land. The trees shaded their crops when they planted among them, and when they cut them down they became a disposal problem, with fires burning for months, just trying to get rid of them. But the hop industry needed land and clearing it became imperative. They’d work all winter trying to clear an acre or two so they could plant in the spring. It was a big job before D-8’s. By the time my family came along in the early 1940s, the big trees were all gone, but stumps were still there. Starting in 1946 my dad started building greenhouses, and every year or two he’d go buy a case of dynamite and we’d blow stumps.

One of the fun things about printing history is the pictures you get. Not only do you collect pictures for the books, but once some of the older people found that I collected old pictures, for the history’s sake, they’d give me their collections. Because I was interested in the area’s history I was loaded down with old pictures. Now I have albums filled with old pictures and with the advent of digital imaging, I’ve put most of them into digital files. The picture that illustrates this blog is one that was taken in 1899 about 2 miles from where I grew up. It’s hard to believe now that trees this size were the norm, but this is what covered the land before the timber men arrived.

Drop by one of the flea markets, or festivals where I’ll be at this spring or summer and take a look at my prints. I think you’ll be impressed. Currently I have over a thousand historic prints, with my logging collection being the larges single category. See ya, Steve