Story told by Richard Burton, 1999
I first started taking vacations to Oregon in 1966. Before that, all I knew was life in the city of San Jose and one month a year on the farm in Escalon. I fell in love with the state and its rural lifestyle. I was lucky because my wife and four kids loved it also.
The company I worked for transferred me to Eugene. I bought a few acres on Lost Creek where I still live today. On the place, I’ve seen salmon, trout, deer, elk and lots of pheasants. Once, there was even an old toothless bear that wandered through and a mountain lion the neighbor and I had to chase away. That will get your blood pumping! I still eat fresh vegies in the summer. I’ve raised rabbits, pigs, turkeys, chickens and a calf every year for the family meat supply. I supplemented by hunting every fall for deer and sometimes elk. One animal I’ve never had, or would ever consider, was a milk cow. When you have seen Grandpa Swagerty milk 80 cows twice a day, every day, you have to draw a line in the sand.
On the Burton side we can trace the family back to the1776 war. He was on the wrong side of course. From England to Australia to Portland, Oregon. In fact, Dad’s older brother’s middle name was Heber, the doctor who delivered Dad’s grandfather. From here they bought a ranch near Gilroy where Dad was born.
I think it was 1970 when Grandpa Swagery paid me a visit up here. (It was the first summer after he married Lilly, you can check the date.) He told me he had spent his teenage years around Eugene and worked as a logger.
I asked him if he wanted to go to the Pioneer museum to see the old logging equipment or look up old high school yearbooks, but he wasn’t interested. What he did do was ask questions about the area: Did it still flood every winter? Was the big mill still in Springfield? Do they still float logs down the McKenzie river? We took a few trips around Eugene and he pointed out places he remembered. He only told me one story and I had heard a little bit about it before.
In high school he and his brother Wilbur had been pretty good baseball players. Wilbur pitched with both arms and Grandpa was a catcher. One day a scout for the old Cincinnati Redstockings stopped by and offered them a tryout. The brothers made a pact that they would play together or not at all. When Wilbur found out he would have to pitch on Sundays he backed out. Fifty years later Elmer was still mad at his brother for ruining a career as a major league player.
The day before Elmer and Lilly left we took a trip up the McKenzie river near where he worked logging as a teenager. We walked down to the river and he put his hand in and waved it back and forth. I had seen him do this before, once at Lake Tahoe and another time on a fishing trip to either the American or Feather Rivers. I thought he was testing the temperature of the water. This time I was close to him and I heard him say “Yep, that’s it.” Then I realized he was not testing the water but he was shaking hands with an old friend.
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 