HomeMy Public PortalAboutWarfield, LaVerneti
Laverne Warfield
with Joe Bennett
and Doug Jones
May 4, 1976
Psge 1
DOUG "Today's date is May 4, 1976. We are conducting an interview between Mr.
Laverne Warfield and Mr. Joe Bennett for the purpose of recording oral
history. This interview is being tape recorded at Mr. Warfield's residence
west of Cambridge. The time now is approximately 1:30."
JOE "Vera, the first thing I'd like to know is something about when you was born
and where and so on."
LAVERNE "I was born in Pullman, Washington, October 12, 1906. I was just a year and
a half old when they came here."
OE "Can you tell us something about your folks? Where they came from."
LAVERVE."They were raised up there in Pullman. My mother was raised up around Moscow
country. My father was raised around Asouten. They farmed up there two or
three years. They had to ford the river once or twice coming down. They
homesteaded about six miles east of Midvale."
JOE "What year was that ?"
LAVERNE "That would be about 1907 ieO8."
JID "ghat caused them to leave that country up there? Do you have any idea ?"
LAVERNE "They was ready and they'd heard about this new country down in here. I guess
it was the call of doing something on your own. They come down here and got
cheap ground. I never did hear my folks make any remark that they was sorry.
But I've heard the matte the remark that they left an awful good country. It
was hard for them to get hold of grouse up there. I have no idea what you
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LAVERNE "could buy it for. But I imagine twenty -five dollar an acre would be about
right."
JOE "Then they came down here and started raising wheat here."
LAVERNE "Yeah, wheat and cattle and milked a few cows. I remember my sister and I
hauled a lot of milk. It was a family farm. We kept adding on as the home-
steaders dropped out because they couldn't make a living. I think he owned
when he quit, this isn't official, but I imagine around fifteen hundred acres."
JOE "How many brothers and sisters did you have ?"
LAVERNE "I was the only boy and I had three sisters."
TOE "Were you the oldest one ?"
LAVERNE "I was the oldest one in the family and I had a sister that was just ten months
younger. She's down at Midvale now. My youngest sister passed away a year ago."
JOE "Who owns that land now ?"
FRTE OClay Sutton owns it."
1109 "You owned it one time ?"
LAVERNE "No, I had another place that joined it and I sold it."
JOE "Did you farm your father's place there for a while, too ?"
LAVERNE "No, I never did. He sold it to a fella by the name of Bob Finney that came
in here from Washington. He stayed a few years. I'll say this, in order to
make it in this country, I think you've got to know a little abmout the farming
of it and it takes a few years to learn how."
JOE "What kind of wheat did you raise there, Vern ?"
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LAVERNE "Mostly kingens club and forty - four."
JOE "Kingens club is what they used to raise up around the Palouse Country. That
was a winter wheat."
LAVERNE "Yeah, both of them was a soft wheat."
JOE "Now long did you farm over there? You farmed over there quite a while, didn't
you ?"
LAVERNE "I farmed there I guess about fifteen years. We bought this & kept that a
while and thin we sold that."
JOE "Who owns your place now ?"
LAVERNE "Clay Sutton, the Sutton boys. I believe it's Wayne Sutton that owns it now.
He had some property up in Long Valley, too, Clay did."
JD E "I noticed on the map he had a piece over there in Beaver Meadows."
LAVERNE "He had some ground, I thin, when that resevoir went in that country,too."
JOE "When you first started farming, you farmed all together with horsei, didn't you ?"
LAVERNE "Oh yeah, I was gonna quit. I just didn't like that 4;00 in the morning,
wrestling horses in the dark of night. 'Then I bought a tractor."
JOE "What was the first tractor you bought ?"
LAVERNE "You wouldn't believe it but it was a Model M, Allis Chalmers, a little Cat. I
owned two of them and the last one I think is still in the country, yet. I'm
not positive but it was a year or two ago. I put in all winter studying on
that, which was the best tractor then all. of them. I decided on that one
there. I was never sorry."
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JOE "What dealer did you buy that from ?"
LAVERNE 'Ken Steck. He just come in as dealer, him and Lawrence Lee."
JOE "He was my neighbor there in Long Valley. He come in there with six mules."
LAVER17E "That place was probably given to him, wasn't it ?"
JOE "Yeah, Frank Wills gave that 160 there to Mabel. That Brush place when he
bought that, he and I were going to go but that for taxes. There was three
hundred and sixty -five dollars worth of taxes against it. Thomas said he was
gonna buy it, Hogue said he was gonna buy it and the fella that had the mortgage
on it, he was gonna buy it. So I wouldn't go and Steck said will you let me
have enough money to buy it? I said you bet I will and I gave him my check.
He made one bid of $365.00 and bought that 160 acres. He kept it two or three
years and sold it.for seventy -eight hundred! That's where he got his start.
I didn't think it was possible and the guy that had the mortgage on it just
stood there and let him buy it."
LAVERNE 'bf course Steck is not with us any more but I always did think an awful lot
of him. He was a good ccsaanunity fella and he wasn't afraid to try something
new."
JOE. "Did you buy one of the first little AC's ?"
LAVERNIE "Yes, I sure run a bunch of horses down there, right in their pens. I had
some goad horses. It was king of a,funny deal because there wasn't too much
cash involved. I treded horses and a note to the bank, I guess. I know when
they brought that tractor out and they want!d to shcwthat off. So Ken got on
Page S
LAVERNE "it and headed up over the hill and it was pretty early spring. That country
up there gets them soft spots. He fell into a hole and just buried the whole
outfit. We walked off and it was two weeks after that before we ever got it
dug out; He was gonna show me how it could go up over the hill. I think I
paid fifteen hundred and eighty dollars for that Cat when I bought it."
JOE "You farmed quite an acreage over there for quite a while."
LAVERNE "Yeah, we run,I guess, around six hundred acres. We run around a hundred head
of cattle and raised hay. I built up a hundred and fifty, two hundred ton of
hay and here come a short winter or we'd be short on hay. There's no money in
that, Joe."
JOE "Where did you go to school at ?"
LAVERNE "I went out to Happy Hollow. That was south of where we lived. I graduated
from the eighth grade from there. It was a -two room schoolhouse at that time.
While the weather was good my sister and I drove to Midvale and went to high
school. Then mother moved in with us in the winter time and my dad backed.
Then in the spring we moved back up. Either drive a buggy or ride a horse
back in. There was no school buses then, Joe,!"
JOE "That country was pretty well settled up then at the time you started farming ?"
LAVEPdi*E "Oh yeah, it was settled up and they was starting to break out. I started buying
just 160, 200 acres in a spot. You might say they'd starved out and couldn't
make it."
JOE "That was dry land."
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LAVERNE "Yeah, we learned how to live with it, Joe. We raised on an s•rerage of eight
to ten bushels of wheat per acres on an average year up to about twenty,
twenty -five bushels. Just your better methods of farming. When I quit
farming down there he was fertilizing."
JOE "That helped you quite a bit didn't it ?"
LAVERNE "It did, yes, outside of your real dry years. Sometimes it made me wonder
it didn't hurt us. Fall grain, yes, but if you can't use it in the spring,
well, you know. This nitrogen requires so much moisture or it'll have a tendency
to burn."
JOE "Did you try to raise anything else out there besides grain and hay, Verne?
LAVERNE 'bh now, we tried some peas and it wasn't too satisfactory on our better
ground. We tried a little flax. Tried to experiment on things, it wasn't a
paying deal."
JOE "The flax didn't do any good."
LAVERNE "No, and we didn't have no karket for it, tither."
JOE "I raised some up there a couple of years."
LAVERNE "It's kind of like thet safflower. You could raise it here in the valley but
there wasn't any market. There's no market, I guess here. But there must
be quite a demand somewhere, that oil is pretty expensive."
JOE "Yeah, we tried that over there."
END OF SIDE ONE
Page 7
LAVERNE "That little AC combine come in when I was set on getting a corabine. So I
went up into Cul de Sac area and watched one of these little AC combines
working. I decided that that was the way out. So we got one of them. I was
one of the first to buy one of them. I think that fellow on Manna Creek got
the first one but I think I got one the same year. When they was selling those
things with the rubber beaters that knocked the grain out of the cylinder,
them old boys said it can't work. But it did and it worked for everything.
Alsfala seed, peas, anything you wanted to put that little rat into. Every-
body runs a combine now. Some of these guys that run a combine today, E'll
tell you. That little combine, anybody could operate one. Then everybody
begins to copy that. They've got the self - propelled, we had a couple of
self - propelled here. I think we've seen the best off all this."
JOE "I always thought I was glad Ilived when I did. I don't know what the politicians
are going to do with us."
LAVERNp "I don't know. According to the past four or five years I feel awful sorry
for my grandkids and my kids because they're making lots of money but they
can't save it. There's people moving in that I have no idea how they're
going to make any money. There's no industry here, our saw mill is gone. But
yet, they're coming in and retireing here. They can retire cheap here. In
your area too, I think there's a lot of retirement going on up there with summer
homes and things. You've got too much snow up there to retire year round unless
you really love that snow!"
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JOE "I think even some of those guys that were snowmobilers two or three years
ago are getting kind of tired of it. I think the skiers, they stick with it
as long as they can."
LAVERNE "I suppose so but all out kids have snowmobiles and they go out of Boise to
get their kicks. I was to start with, down deep, I was against it, my feelings.
Then after time went on I'd rather see them put their money into something
like that. You've got so much to do, Joe. You've got so much energy and you've
got to get away from that. They get a big kick out of taking weekends and
going up and snowmobiling. They didn't ski. You know skiing isn't the
cheapest."
JOE "No, it used to be cheap when I made my own skis and walked up the hill and
slid down."
LAVERNE I've often thought it would be nice to have a snomobile put you back up the
hill so you could slide down."
JOE 'Yea i f T d had enjoyed
d one of those snowmobiles back about 1920 I could've en o ed
it real well."
LAVERNE "You could've chased coyotes wit th them* too w,_.
'JOE "Yes, there was lots of coyotes at the time. Are there suite a few here ?"
LAVEPM 'bh yeah"
jJOE "You get so you see three and four in a bunch now."
IILAVEPJIT 'but at the Solen ranch and this country in here, Crane Creek and in that
country, there was twelve hundred in there the last I heard, That's suite a
lot of coyotes."
JOE "Well, you and one of your sons raised sheep."
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LAVERNE "Yeah, my youngest son was in with us here, We raised purebred sheep and we
done well with them."
JOE "What kind did you have ?"
LAVERNE "Suffolks."
JOE "That's the black faced ones."
LAVER2tE "Yes, we took them to California every spring and attended the national sale.
We sold some pretty high priced rums. But I think he kind of thought there
was an easier way of making it and I think perhaps he could be right, too."
JOE "Sometimes you wonder, though, whether the easiest way is the best way."
LAVERNE "Yeah, you're right."
JOE "But whatever satisfies you, I think."
LAVERNE "You've got to be happy with what you're doing or you can't do a good job."
JOE "Was that the reason you quit of did the coyotes give you a hard time ?"
LAVERNE "Yeah, I think that we were having a lot of coyote trouble and we wasn't
being able to do nothing about it. I don't think that he was too in love with
the sheep, though he did like cattle. But as far as I'm concerned the money
for us was in the sheep. We sold one ram for twenty -one hundred dollars. We
shipped ewe lambs back east, a hundred dollars a head. Up till last year we
still got calls. I had a call this spring from back east."
JOE "But they aren't raising as many sheep here as they did."
LAVERNE "No nearly as much. There are a few little bunches around. They just had a
sale in California and I've been trying to find out how that sale was."
JOE "Lo the Sutton boys have just cattle ?"
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LAAVERNE "Yea, the Sutton boys are all cattle. I think their boys are in with them,
too, I believe. That is Wayne's two boys: and they run his cattle and they
raise some grain and hay."
JOE "They raise all their own hay there, don't they ?"
LAVERNE "Yes, I think so. I don't know how many cattle they run but they've got quite
a few cattle."
JOE "Did most of this land in this country to to cattle ?"
LAVERVE "Yeah, stock. Especially the drier land."
JOE "They quit raising lots of wheat."
Id07-M "Oh yeah, very little anymore. There's places where they used to try to get
by with a hundred head and there's five or six hundred on now."
JOE "They bought the other guys out for the land."
XURNEE "Now you take that old Week's place out here that used to be the old Dunn
place, the Dunn brothers raised nothing but meat. The young fella on that place
is Doug Wells and they sprinkler irrigate. There are several places out on
the hill they've got their big sprinklers running it. They're putting in more
of that all the time. That's what my boy is doing now. I don't know whether
I can tell you exactly but I know pretty much. He figures out what size of
sprinkler system and how much water per acre. I think they're getting these
sprinklers down now, Joe, to where these suckers will go right out in the corner.
I don't know how they to it. You know anything about that ?"
JOE. "No, how often do you have to irrigate that wheat, just once ?"
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LAVERNE "I imagine, Joe, if they can get a goad water on it at the right time. I
don't know about those sprinkler systems."
EUD OF SIDE TWO
JOE "I got a map from the Corp of Engineers years ago and they were going to put
the Cascade dam in and they was gonna put that darn in at Little Lake. Then
they was gonna put a dam in at Round Valley and run a tunnel through at Round
Valley to come through down there at Scriber Creek in Garden Valley. They'd
have a twelve hundred foot fall for all that water. They were gonna flood all
of Round Valley. That would have made a lot of power. Then they was gonna
use that water to irrigate that Boise Valley with and take the water down to
Mountain Home."
(break)
LAVERNT "Cambridge that wasn't the original name, Salubria was the town. Then:vben
the railroad come in Salubria was off the railroad so they had to put Cambridge
here. Kind of like Donnelly and Roseberry."
END OF SIDE THREE
LAVERNE "How about CB radios ?"
JOE "All the kids in town is getting them."
LAVERNE "that's gonna happen ?"
JOE "I read a letter here the other day in the Statesman. It was a guy from Mountain
Home and he run a shop. He said if they don't straighten up they'll close it
dourn, the goverment is gonna have to close it down."
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DOUG "ghat do you mean'straighten up' ?►'
.R?E "TOO much a leaks g too much ►, vulgarity, Y, too much talking that isn't necessary
and all that stuff,
LAVERNE "I heard something about that, too.,,
JOE "They don't have enough channels and they get on there and they don't have
any regard for somebody else,"
DOUG "So the air waves are crowded ?"
)OE "Yeah, they're crowded."
OUG "Have you lived in this house since you came to Cambridge ?"
AVERKE "Yeah"
�E "It doesn't Seem that long, does it ?"
RS "Yes, it does!"
"Last summer I got the worst Jolt when I realized how old I was, I was d own
there at Lake Fork drinking coffee with Clint Colenbaugh, he's a vet over
and his wife, here
He said, 'Joe you remember Donna's dad." I don't know whether
You remember the Brian Motor Comapny of Boise."
VERNE "Yeah"
? "Well, he was a brother of Henry Ford's and he had that fox farm at Yellow
Pine and I described the old man. She said, 'Oh Joe, that was my granddad,' I
said, 'Oh, your dad was that skinny one that drove the sports cars,
was him,' Sure mademe feel old,
I'll tell you that!" r Yeah, that
ERNE tell you, Joe, the worst trouble with an old house is starting n
g on it
Page 13
LAVERNE "arid you put a thousand here and two thousand there. Pretty soon you've
gotten to where you've got to stay with it."
JOE "I know, we did that with out old house."
LAVERTiE "We built on all this back here, the celler and all the washroom and stuff in
there. We put A furnace in here. Last fall we put that thing in there, that
fireplace. So we got another thousand into that."
MRS
"And you've
still got
an old house."
JOE
"That's what
we did at
our old house but I still kind of liked the old thing.
It burned down, it got hit by lightning about three years ago."
LAVERUE "I think I remember them telling about that."
,JOE "There was three boys, Joe Eld and couple other boys were staying there. If
they'd got up right when it hit they could've put it out. What it done, it
didn't burnrall the circuits out but it burnt the pump circuit out. I got
about a four acre pond right there by the house. It had plenty of water in it
to put it out easy enough, if they'd got right up. They didn't get up till the
smoke drove them out. Jerry Ikola and he had a terrible time getting the other
two awake. They'd have burned up."
DOUG "Who was the third kid, Joe ?"
IJOE "Roger McClure."
ILAVERNE. "Well, they still got your old place, don't they ?"
JOE "Yeah, just a little bit of it. What belongs to Joe, where the house is. The
house was his and he pr*.'near cried when it burned. He said, 'That's the best
house, the fire went out in there and got 200 below zero and never even froze
Page 14
JOE "the pipes.' We did a lot of work on that house and Joe liked it real well.
They had an old stove in there we left. It was an electric stove but it had
a trash burner on the side. You could cook on that trash burner. Them boys
just loved that stove but they couldn't get it out the door. In the back end
where the stove pipe went on it was cast iron fastened on there with bolts.
They didn't have time to get it off and that wouldn't let it go through the
door. That thing set in the front door when the house burned down. We heard
it, oh it shook houses in town, that bolt that hit the ,;house. My wife and I
both woke up and I said, 'I hope it didn't hit the horses or some of Warren's
cattle.' He had some cattle right across the read and it killed one of them.
So in a few minutes onathe neighbors called and said you old homestead is
burning. So I got up and looked and I could see some car lights over there.
I work for the Southern Idaho Timber Protective Association and I heard the
number three pumper coming. I could tell it was our outfit. My boss, he had
it and I figured he'd get over there in time to save the garage, which he did.
So I went back to bed. I asked my wife for a tranquilizer and went back to bed;
She said, 'Aren't you going over there ?' and I said, 'No, I'm not going over
there, I lived over there too long.' So the next morning I got up and looked
out and said, 'Well, it all burned down.' 'Well, that's what you wanted it to
do, wasn't it ?' I said, 'Yes, I did.' The only thing is it killed all them trees,
tle spruce. That was the bad thing. I think there's three trees left, there's
a tamarack and a spruce and a black pine."
Page 15
LAVERNE "Is old Deinhard still around there ?"
JOE "No, he died. His wife died, too, last winter."
LAVERNE "What happened to his estate? He had quite a bit of stuff over there in the
valley."
JOE "He got rid of it. He owned the 120 acres about across from where he lived
and there was about forty there where he lived. He got rid of most of his land.
He owned two lots, I think, in town. He sold the last of his ranches to Simplot,
old Jack. He willed the whole thing to his former daughter -in -law, in fact it
was Mamie's grandson's ex -wife. Mamie adopted him and he got married and
had five kids. He run off and left them. So he left this to the woman for the
five kids but he didn't even will Mamie the house. Sow way they had an
agreement of some kind that she wasn't to claim some of his property and he
wasn't to claim some of hers. She had plenty of money afterwards because all
the last stuff they sold, *he got half of it, He owned an SO up there where
the airport is. I know he told me he give eight dollars an acre for it and
sold it for two hundred thousand. AnywM he left it to these kids and she was
very bitter about it, well you couldn't blame her. He didn't even leave her
the house she lived in. That was his wife and they'd been married about thirty-
six years. The reason he did it was because he wanted to leave the property
to her children, not her grandchildren. Bill got mad at all of them right at
the last minute before he died. He got mad at Louie and Bertha. He wanted
to go down and buy him a condominium in Boise. For some reason they didn't
Page 16
JOE "want him to, why I don't know. Anyhow, he went to town and they took off
and went to Boise to look it over and never took him and it made him mad. So
in his will he left it all to Margie Ann, that's the mother of these five
kids.. They're great - grandchildren of Mamie's. Mamie ovyned the hotel and
she sold it to her oldest daughter, the McCall Hotel, But they hadn't never
paid anything on it. Mamie died on them and I don't know how they did. They
must have it settled because we got a letter the other day from Kathleen,
that's one of Bill's grandkids. She lives in southern California. She wrote
and said she hadn't wrote because her and her.husband had seperated. She
thought she would build a couple of houses to sell. She got money to build
a couple of houses because they finally got it settled. She finally got to-
gether with lawyers Blanche had hired, that's Mamie's granddaughter and Mamie
had hired. Then Mamie got sick. She said they didn't even know what the
circumstances was. So her and one of these lawyers went out to inventory
what was in the house. This lawyer said, 'I got to go,' and she said, 'You're
not gonna leave me out here alone are you ?' He said, 'Whatever you do is all
right with me.' So I think they finally got it decided so maybe they would
call it quits and just settle. We haven't heard from Margie Ann, She got
awful mad about it. He had quite an estate. He had a good many hundred thou-
sand dollars stuck away somewhere. But Mamie, now I talked to her sister,
and she tried to quiet Mamie down, She hated them all, but before she died
we had the kids call her and they all got reconciled."
.
Page 17
JOE "Bud Wilson took us for a boat ride one time and there was one of them little
water spouts in there. He run over it and when we hit that damn thing that
boat damn near filled with water. That thing spread out like that, just as
big as the boat. Boy, he headed her right for the bank. That boat was full of
water and he said, 'I intended to give you guys a thrill, I didn't intend to
drowned you. "'
LAVERNE "Where wasryou at ?"
JOE 'bn the Snake River, by Pittsburgh. This darned whirl pool. Heck it wasn't
two feet big around when I seen it last. The first think I know, ka -bang, and
we went into the qdarned thing. That big boat, one of them with the front
end up like that, ya know. I thought I was gonna drown."
LAVERNE "A bear got in and killed a bunch of his bucks and he come over here and said
he had to have some bucks. I happened to have five bucks and he bought them
right now. He said, 'Can you deliver them over the river a certain day ?, and I
said yes. He said, 'I'll pay you for it.' So we took them over and we kept
wondering if he'd be there when we got there. But he was watching for us in
an airplane, he flys airplanes. He was right there in a few minutes. This boat
had quite a long snoot on it."
END OF SIDE FOUR AND INTERVIEW