The Vacation of a Nobody
July 22, 1888How a clerk in a wholesale is enjoying himself
A visit to an Iron mountain within thirty minutes ride of Portland interest again clients of a Day’s Oaths.
In the wholesale house where I am employed everybody from the wagon boy up to the office manager, gets ten days vacation during the summer at the firm’s expense only they don’t allow more than one or two off at a time. The boys all insisted that I should have the first vacation, which I take to be real kind of them. It is something of an honor to be the first of a large house to get off like delivering a salutatory at school. I delivered on once. It began:
I greet you with my welcome presence here. And but you wait, for you have naught to fear-
And a good many people thought the principal of the high school wrote it for me, but I made it up myself. Ben Srontenburg who works next door to our store says the boys made me go first because it has rained so much that the trout streams be no good for a month yet. But he is jealous. They didn’t get any vacations at his store only on the night of the Fourth.
Last summer Ben asked Mt. Silystein if he could get off for three days to go to the Sandy. Trade was dulland for a wonder Mr. Silystein said he might. Ben was so encouraged that he asked him if his time would go on while he was away. Mr. Slystein replied: “Yesh, my boy, your time will go on, but your pay will stop.” So it makes Bennie ill-natured when he see any of us are off.
This is my first year in the house and my salary is fixed at $7 a week, which calls for some economy in my plans. I had decided on the —-ckamas; but I saw a party who just returned from there and they report the water to the four feet up high for fishing. And then it came almost like an inspiration to me to make my headquarters at home in Portland, and go out on boat trips here and there as I felt inclined I bought a nice seeresucker sister and a grip-neck with a long strap to go over any shoulder, which are quite becoming to me, and make me look every inch a tourist.
I thought I would try Oswego first and it only cost me .25 cents for a roundtrip ticket. You cannot see much of the country from the narrow gauge on coaches-unless you are hunch backed. Except the homes around the slaughter houses and these are little signs of water barrels. Where to Buy your Stones and tinware becasue the window blinds won’t raise up higher than your shoulder. But if you slide way down on the edge of the seat and lean your head aside you can get some beautiful views out of the windows on the other side of the coach.
When we reached Oswago I was annexed at the immense buildings and engines of the Oregon Iron & Steel Company. It makes a fellow feel as though there were bigger men in this country than he thought there was. I asked the clerk in the office if I might view the work. He said I could but not to climb up on anything. I ——- think I acted like a young man who would climb up on things I don’t think I was dressed like a young man who would go drinking smoke greeks and furnaces, and I informed the clerk in another and impressive way that I should not climb anything upon the premises.
After going through the works and looking at the company’s new town of Oswego, which is rapidly building up. I examined the one road. It looks like a thoroughly built track and runs three miles up the side of a steep mountain. ——- —- sen-ton locomotive was just ready to start up with a train and the engineer noticing probably that I was a tourist kindly invited to the on to the ——-. I would have a splendid nice trip only the cab was very hard and small and there was but one little hint of a seat and jsut as we started a young woman one of the shriner’s wives came aboard. She weighed about 180 pounds and before I could give her my seat she plumped herself down on my lap. She had bought some groceries and had all the prime glassware that came with her baking powder in her arms with other bundles. There was a pickle dish sugar bowl them fancy tumblers and a lamp in stock in an immense pitcher. The prize being awkward to hold. the young lady squeezed down on the end of the seat between me and the cab window and in struggling to move my legs so the blood would circulate once more. I knocked the glassware out of the window with my elbow. We were going over a trestle—- about ninety feet high and the infuriated young woman at once started into push one out of the window after her shattered prizes, then as suddenly went off into her —— binding breath between her screams to prophesy that her husband would break my neck in seven different ways, the moment we reached the mines. The excuse was I had to pay her for the ones that cost her two bits and she had the baking powder left.
Peace reigned again but as the young woman showed a disposition to nestle down in my lap once more I asked the engineer who put me off and I walked the rest of the way to the summit.
My neat little imitation alligator skin gripsack was mashed out of shape and I felt generally demoralized but soon recovered my spirits. It was a great comfort after such a waste of my fresh air and to realize but I was the employee of a generous enough to allow my salary to accumulate during vacation.
I made friends with a very well informed boy at the mines who seemed to be the only other sound and engaged this series as my guide for for a very reasonable sum. I could hardly realize that here within thirty minutes by rail of Portland. I was on another mountain and the improvements there under headway new one bunkers boasting engines, batteries of ———- and the new tunnels were all on a scale with the great works at Oswego.
There is but little expense or trouble about draining these mines. Steam is carries down into the tunnels from the bailers outside and the water is pumped from the various levels and forced through pipes to a large tank on the very apex of this mountain which in turn again supplies all the water used on the locomotives. The stationary boilers and elsewhere. It is like making a cow drink her own milk which my Uncle William did at the state fair with a scrub cow. He taught her to like milk and then gave her all her own and that from two toher cows. It made her give a wash tub full at each milking and he took the prize for the best all around dairy cow in Oregon and sold her for $160 tot he cashier of a break in Salem who was an amateur farmer.
The view from the summit to which the water is forced is simply grand. I doubt if portions of as many countless can be seen from any other point in Oregon below the snow line. For the boy who had lived there since childhood, painted the landmarks out to me so that including the Cascade ranges countless where peaks were visible we could see Crook, Wasco, Linn, Maren, Washington, Clackamas, Multnomah and Columbia counties in Oregon and Cowiltz, Clarke and Skamanian Washington territory. It was a solemn and majestic to put in this mountain from whence the eye could see so far was iron all the way down to the root of it. If I had the time I could with a fine description of life see of the dim far away hills etc. I wrote such a piece ——- — —- ——- —- —— ——- – —— ———————————— —- —- —————— —editress left it out and substituted a poem of her own entitled “Portland Artists.” The first verse was:
Oh why doth the painter paint at Mt. Hodd
Like the hound on the tiger’s track?
Ah! The snow of his bald head awakens her art,
And she murders the hump on his neck.
The foolish girl might better have put in my piece for several of her teachers had pictures of Mt.Hodd on exhibition in the windows of the art stones and some of the other verses of the poem made them so mad that they marked her down in all her studies for the res of the year so that she barely passed.
My guide wanted me to go down into the mine- I think he said one slope was in 1300 feet. But it looked most too dark and dismal down there and besides I would have probably ruined my new mister. It sounded pleasanter to stay outside and look over into Crook county.
The busy little narrow gauge squirms around the foot of the mountain and the beautiful lake that supplies the O.I. & S. Co’s works at Oswego with water lies in the valley. The boy wanted me to go down to the lake and fish. He said it was just filled with black bass-the offspring of a single bucketful emptied in five or six years ago. I presume he meant carp and he said “never fooled with no exciting fish.” However, I thought the climb back up to the Ore rend would be more than any sort of fish were worth.
I never saw so many young grouse as on this mountain. The side talks are so steep that no one can hunt upon them and being covered with blackberries they make a fine breeding ground for grouse and pheasants. Not being hunted they are quite tame. I noticed coming up on the engine that they would hardly kep out of the way of the wheels.
I asked the boy if he ever shot any birds and he said he did not have to for he caught them in a sort of netting made out of an old salmon seine and pieces of condemned wire rope. He said the engineer when they were not hauling one- would allow him to hasten this netting in front of the locomotive; and as the train-going down grade- would disturb the coveys of grouse here and there along the track. some would not rise until the engine was right on them and two of three out of every flock would get entangled in the net. He said the day before he caught nineteen half grown grouse- plenty big enough for the pan and two young owls.
I returned to Oswego just in time to see the 6:10 P.M. train pulling into the station with every coach crowded, but I managed to secure a seat. A great many employees of the Q. I. & S. Co. with their dinner buckets in their hands got on the train here. They hold commutation tickers and are getting off all the way down to Portland. The route from South Portland to Oswego is virtually a street of Portland.
The seat in front of mine was occupied by a young traveler for a Portland hardware firm and a young fellow from near Sheridan, who had never been in this city. As we passed Fulton I notice the drummer was making the granger believe we were now in the heart of Portland. The great number of pleasure marriages and of gentlemen driving down their readers gave an intro of life to the scene that helped keep up the illusion. A large powder house was pointed out as the city jail and the dreamer transformed the orphans’ home into the High school building. He said the old greater works by the bank of the river was where custom house and the elevated walk leading out to it was the “bridge” The young farmer said he had a cousin working at Welder’s mills, and so he wanted to find him he said the drummers told him he was right there now and pointed out the small mill near the front of Lincoln street. It was so difficult see out of the windows that the granger could hardly find out he had been deceived. But a windmill agent who sat near and heard the whole conversation- as anybody in the coach could gave it away to the farmer as he was going out of the car. When he found out he had been made sport of I think it hurt his feelings for he pulled off his coat and yelled out to the drummer to “hold on till he showed him the new circus grounds.” The last I saw of them they had fallen down backwards over a pair of hadn trucks and a policeman was coming on a run down the incline.
To-morrow I shall take a nice quiet little trip either to Vancouver or Seltwood. I am pretty tired and don’t want anything exciting to-morrow and I think now it will be Vancouver.
source: The Morning Oregonian
location: Portland, Oregon
_notes: The article was very difficult to read and was transcribed as it best could.