Remembering Oregon's 1957 Centennial

Oregon passed its 157th birthday last Sunday as a member of the Union- albeit pretty quietly. I didn't see any fireworks, nor did I hear bells ringing or cannons going off. It was just a quiet time without a tremor.

In 1957, however, it was a different thing. I was living in Bend making a living logging with Bob Couch and a bunch of his crew converting the old Brooks-Scanlon railroad right-of-way between Sisters and Bend into a logging road, making it safe for those hefty logging trucks with their eight-foot-wide bunks that hauled logs from Green Ridge to the mill in Bend.

I was still wet behind the ears as an Oregonian, having rolled into Bend on my Harley Davidson in September, 1951. On the onset of the 1957 Oregon Centennial a "law" was passed that any adult male without facial hair would be sent to "jail" for a day as a penalty for not honoring Oregon's 100th birthday. So, I grew a beard, but not liking all that hair, I went for a l-o-n-g, waxed handlebar mustache.

In those days, Brooks Camp was a thriving community with loggers and families living in the quaint houses gathered in the juniper, ponderosa pine and Peck's penstemon - a wildflower that I never dreamed would someday be celebrated as a threatened part of Oregon's flora.

Couch and crew would gather up on the site every morning at about 7 a.m., and we'd spend the day widening the old railroad right-of-way, clearing the broken ties out of the way, removing trees, adding cinders and leveling the roadbed.

To keep us entertained, Bob was always signing the old Johnny Cash song "I Walk the Line" at the top of his voice, so loud you could hear him above the growling of the Cat D-8.

I'd show up on the job driving a new BMW three-seater with the entrance door on front. Often, at the end of the day I'd find it perched on a stump after everyone had left, and have to drag it off without busting it up.

Then we'd all come into Sisters and have pie and coffee in a place across from where The Gallery Restaurant is today, and the hilarious conversation would go on how I got the BMW off the stump. It was in that old coffee joint that a scheme was hatched that I was completely unaware of: my handlebar mustache.

On the last day of the job, and coming on Christmas, Bob announced we had one more day to go, then we'd have our last coffee and pie and go our separate ways. That evening, as we stepped into the coffee shop I heard scissors snapping. One of the guys (his name has faded away with so many of those other wonderful memories) came toward me with malice in his eye, heading straight for my mustache. "Oh, no you don't" I said, backing away.

"OK," Bob said, "the guy who can hold Jim gets to cut off the mustache," and the game got into high gear. It took me a while to fight off the guy with the scissors and get him out the door, and as I turned to go after the next guy Bob got off the stool and said "Aw, hell, this is going to take too long" and got me in a bear hug.

Bob Couch was a mighty husky man, consequently, there was nothing I could (or dared) do. As result one of the guys snipped off one side, and of course, with a great roar we all went home laughing, me with half a mustache.

The next day, our very last day on the job, I asked the woman who cooked those delicious pies if she'd leave a banana cream pie under the counter for me - and we winked at each other. Yep, you guessed it. As we were leaving the coffee joint that afternoon I said to Bob, "Bob, this has been a wonderful time (and it was!), I'd like to give you a Christmas present in a way of sayin' thanks."

"Oh that's really nice of you, Jim," he said, "let me have it." And I did, but when that banana cream pie hit him smack in the face I was movin' out the door as fast as my 30-year-old legs would take me. Unfortunately, I never saw Bob Couch again; he went off logging in Colorado and then went out among the stars while he was living there.

But every time I hear, "I Walk the Line," I remember the Oregon Centennial and those wonderful days of working with Bob Couch, and working on my FAA Private Pilot Rating with Pat Gibson at the Bend Airport.