Painting in Corvallis

It won’t be long now and we’ll be on our way to Texas. Going to make that our winter home. At least for now. But the weather has been good here in the Willamette Valley. We have to turn on the furnace in the morning to get the chill off and run our little ceramic heater for awhile before we go to bed, but that’s about it. It’s one of the challenges of our lifestyle. It ain’t like living in a stick built house with gas, or electric that you can set and forget. We have to be attentive to our fuel levels and power usage or we’ll run out of propane or blow a fuse. Not that we’re willing to change with anybody. I just mention it in case you’re curious.
It’s been good here at Oregon Fish and Wildlife in Corvallis. We’ve done some painting and office work for our keep. Two OSU students are doing a wall mural and we painted the customer lobby to match. We have a nice spot near a pond all by ourselves. We’ve been feeding the birds and watching the bunnies. Jade, the cat, enjoys both. We get to hear all the animal stories of people who come into the office with problems or questions. It’s been interesting. One of our jobs was to log in deer teeth that hunters voluntarily sent in. We’ve seen lots of animals, unfortunately, most of them are dead. Cougars and deer mostly. Somebody brought in some kind of foreign deer, kind of albino looking. I get sad when cougars are brought in. But apparently they’re not endangered or on any kind of list out here. Richard, the biologist, says they are even expanding into previously lost territories. That’s why they come in dead. A big one was brought in last week. 120 pounds! Huge feet! The biologists check them all out and then cut them up to destroy them. We never know what we’re going to see in the dumpster or see laying around outside the labs.
We are staying on property that used to be Camp Adair. Camp Adair was a WWII US Army infantry training site. There are a few buildings left and we’re right next to a 100’-150’ smoke stack that was part of the incinerator. Rumor has it that the area is haunted! We haven’t been bothered yet. But then, Halloween is only a few days away. There were four Divisions that were trained here and all saw extensive action in Europe. I can’t recall all the numbers but all of the divisions were in action starting in 1944 and lasting maybe 180 days, give or take? I believe the lowest number of casualties I saw was 900+, but the average was 1500 or better. Anyway it would have been well over 3000 in 6 months. Funny how times change huh? Another little factoid. Camp Adair was built on a town called Wellton or Wellberg or something like that. It was one of two or three towns under consideration for training sites in late 1941. On December 8, 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, the US Army came to the schoolhouse in Wellton(?), and told the townspeople they had until noon to vacate the town because it had been chosen as a training site. I haven’t heard that children and grand-children of Wellton(?) were suing the government in attempts to become rich because of all the indignities heaped upon them. Times do change! My point is……………. Well I’ll let you figure it out. But I am proud to walk around old Camp Adair. I don’t know that it’s haunted, but if it is, I’m in real good company.
If I walk past the smoke stack and by the old supply room about a quarter of a mile I come to the Santiam Christian school football field. The last two Friday nights I’ve walked over to see the SC games. This is 3A high school football. Schools about the size of my Alma Mater, Grandview Heights, Ohio. That’s 400-500 students total in grades 9-12. But they’re pretty good. Last night I left at halftime when the score was 41 to 0. They played Creswell and I was talking to a pastor who had a son on Creswells team. He said they were a little short handed this week because two of the star players were off on hunting trips. I expressed my surprise and opinion. Another parent nearby had the same opinion as I. The pastor was a little more diplomatic. But I guess it’s Creswell. By their community standards, going hunting may be the proper choice. Maybe they need the meat? Maybe the “stars” were avoiding the humiliation? But from what I saw, it would have taken a whole ’nother team of stars to compete with SC. And they even had an invocation before the game! Shhhhhh! And really not fair!
So we’ll be in Texas for a while. Then back to Oregon in the spring. We have positions lined up. We’re going to a Corps of Engineers park near Texarkana and do some volunteer work. Then we have a job at Oregon State Parks in Goose lake in April. That’s on the California border in eastern Oregon. And then we go right next to home in Oregon at the Fish and Wildlife District Office in Clackamas. We took that so we could spend some time getting rid of all our stuff in storage. This looks like it will be our lifestyle for the foreseeable future and there’s no point in paying storage forever. In July we have Rally’s in Oregon. The big National Rally in Bend and a Fish and Wildlife thing somewhere to be determined. And then! We’ll head back east to pick up where we left off.
So remember! If you hear an unexpected knock. It might be us, extension cord in hand.