Oral History - Ione “Pinkie” Adair, part 1 [transcript]

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:49:15 Sam Schrager: This conversation with I own a dare took place at our home in Moscow on February 24th, 1977. Her sister, Bernadine Adair Cornelissen, also took part in the conversation. The interviewer was Sam Schrager.

00:00:49:18 - 00:00:53:02 Sam Schrager: Wondering why. Why there were so many women here.

00:00:53:05 - 00:02:01:06 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: While the women went up there? Well, in the first place, they locater up through that private country, had a wife that wanted it came claim and sister wanted a timber claim. Two sisters it wanted to reclaim. And there was a couple of women here in town, with one in Timbuktu, names that we all knew. So when the locator had located this particular lake and that timber ultimately found at 49 Middle Country, and he took this bunch out to show them the country and the timber, and if they wanted to locate there, we could all locate there within a certain distance of each other, the UN practically a little colony by themselves.

00:02:01:09 - 00:02:22:25 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: So that’s the way we all happened to go up there. And I joined the branch of administration, and Mrs. and Mrs. Durham and Mrs. Taylor and Winifred Calkins and Kip Calkins, and then.

00:02:22:28 - 00:02:52:16 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Yeah. Oh. The following following us. And we located up there with Irwin Hansen and Art Larson went out with him just to be on the homestead with him. So we’d have company. And they were on one side and they were four miles and they have off on one side. And Mrs. Tyson was in three quarters of a mile.

00:02:52:19 - 00:03:28:13 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: That was the County Durham, and my homestead was about, four miles over on the other side. And Mrs. Taylor was over that way. And so we are we all got together. Is that just as a group and we take our trips up together. And it was a saving on tankers and so forth. So when you went up, when we all went together, so that was what else.

00:03:28:15 - 00:03:50:04 Sam Schrager: Ask you where we were? These were most of these ladies as self-reliant, as self-reliant as you were these other these women you. Well, they seem, it seemed like to be a homesteader. It took a lot of self-reliance. You know, you have to depend on yourself and your own resource.

00:03:50:04 - 00:04:29:05 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Had to depend upon yourself and the. But these others, of course, around surrounding you that were homesteaders or took up homesteaders all helped. If you needed any help or anything like that. And Mrs. Durham and I, and planned the winter together. I was four miles and a half from her place, and, so we decided that she and her daughter and I would live together that winter.

00:04:29:07 - 00:05:07:19 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And I would go back and forth to my place as I wished. And the result of snowshoeing, of course, mostly. And that’s the way we traveled. Then my father was afraid that something might happen, and that we’d had no means of getting word out to the outside that we ever in an emergency. So he and Mrs. Durham and I decided that we’d hire a man to stay with us that winter.

00:05:07:22 - 00:05:36:12 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And so my father made the arrangements with the man to the name it Carter. And Bill Carter said that he would trap that winter and, would then try to make up for any additional expenses that he would do or, or needed, and then he would go out once a month anyway to get the mail and bring it to us.

00:05:36:14 - 00:05:41:26 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And the rest of the time he would spend trapper trapping in that red the country.

00:05:41:28 - 00:05:49:20 Sam Schrager: Was he was he staying at the at the same at the same cabin with, that you and,

00:05:49:22 - 00:06:18:29 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Mrs. Durham and their daughter and I, that we were the three that were together and Mrs. Terusan, who was a millionaire here in town, had a cabin, about three quarters a mile from my place that day. She only spent the summers up there, let her sister run the business here in town, and she went out and started on the homestead, on land, energy question.

00:06:19:02 - 00:06:28:19 Sam Schrager: Or I was just wondering, did he, when he was there, did he have to sleep in the barn or was there sleep in the house? There was no barn there. He could sleep in the house too.

00:06:28:19 - 00:06:51:05 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Then he slept in the house with us? Yes. We had, I don’t know whether you know bear grass or not, but it’s a very wiry grass and holds up when you make a necessary. And we made an, full sized mattress, so he was over six feet tall. We made a full size mattress for him, and and this.

00:06:51:07 - 00:07:03:03 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And each day we would roll it up, put a blanket over it, and it could be used as a seat in case that you wanted extra accommodation.

00:07:03:05 - 00:07:07:16 Sam Schrager: Just a matter of bare grass. It was just a mat of bear grass.

00:07:07:23 - 00:07:46:27 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Just a mattress of bear grass. We made the mattress out of gunny sex that we had and then cut the very grass. Friday the mattress furring and that was that was his bedroom. And we had a bedroom across the end and the cabin, and I had a single bed, and Mrs. Durham and her daughter had a double bed, and during the day time we had fixed, and so they would, the double bed and fold up in the wall and, the way and the single bed was used as a seat during the daytime.

00:07:47:01 - 00:08:24:10 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Didn’t you have an attic in that place? And a second story had an attic in the front. And that’s where we kept, flour and sugar, things it would that the mice to have thick. We had an outdoor cellar and, we kept the canned goods in this outdoor cellar that the upper was the attic. We kept the flour and the sugar because that would be warm for the heat in the cannon, and it wouldn’t get solid.

00:08:24:12 - 00:09:00:27 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Can’t, harder when they got everything all ready to go up through the mail and, left early in the morning for it was like, only 28 miles out the Avery by trail. And it didn’t go back in the Clark year because that was a longer run. Took 45 miles to get in that way. So we went out the short way to Avery, and the mail was all sent to Avery, and he would go on and get it.

00:09:00:29 - 00:09:37:03 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Well, he got everything all ready and left early. And after he left, Mrs. Durham decided that she had to wash, and the extra soap and stuff she needed was up in the attic, and the only way into the attic was by ladder and the trap door. So we brought in the ladder and opened the trap door, and Mrs. Durham went up to the attic to get the flour or whatever it was that she needed.

00:09:37:05 - 00:10:22:05 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And but the time she got up there, the ice on the oven and length and the ladder broke off and the ladder went down, Mrs. Durham went with it. And as she went down she hit the end of her spine on the right of the ladder, and dropped us in a thing. Well, murder. And I didn’t know what to do, so we just grabbed up a bottle of camphor that was there and intending to put it under her nose, where she read it, and Myrtle miscalculated and put it on her eye on it, pouring rain down into her eye.

00:10:22:08 - 00:10:27:26 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Well, that brought Mrs. Durham to in one grand rush. We grabbed.

00:10:27:26 - 00:10:29:16 Sam Schrager: Her while she was.

00:10:29:19 - 00:11:06:00 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: In that condition and put her over on my den, and she lay there all afternoon just moaning, oh my tailbone, oh my tailbone. And nearly drove us crazy because we didn’t know what what to do about it until Carter got back. Anyway, we couldn’t send word out, we couldn’t do anything. And we neither one of us were going off and leaving the other one alone with the mother on the 28 mile trip, to town.

00:11:06:02 - 00:11:47:20 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: So we just endured it, moaning and, trying to keep her as comfortable as possible when, karega that then you could see that Mrs. Durham was in a very bad condition and then would have to be taken up to town. And so we waited for about a week until she got the feeling a little better. And, and then Carter took care and started up to Avery as the 28 mile trip where a woman would tailbone injured and on snowshoes.

00:11:47:22 - 00:12:16:25 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: So she got along very nicely until about the last mile and a half or two miles in the trip. And then she broke down. She just couldn’t go any farther, so practically carried her on in to Avery. And then they got transportation from Avery on the train and water down to t going on into Moscow. So we had her in the hospital for quite a little while here.

00:12:16:25 - 00:13:01:18 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: After that, she began to get better. Well, Merle and I were then left alone with just kind of her as companion, and, so we get along very nicely. But the next time you went up to a we to see how Mrs. Durham was getting along, and it left Myrtle and I alone, and, we were sitting, eating, breakfast one morning, and the cabin door opened, and in was the grizzly, funny looking little old yeller.

00:13:01:20 - 00:13:25:29 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And he said, oh, you’re here? We said, yes. Who are you? He said, I’m dynamite. and I said, you are. And he said, yes, they all call me dynamite. He said, I’m working on the railroad and on the tunnel, and I do the drilling the holes and putting the dynamite in. And that’s where I got my name.

00:13:26:01 - 00:13:56:26 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And I said, you do have another name. Don’t you need to? Yes. And Joe Chandler Harris. and he said, my mother got the name of Joe Chandler. Sound very nice. She’d been reading about him. And so she called me Joe Chandler. Harris. Well, he came in and he stayed. He said, and I’ll stay here until your man gets back.

00:13:56:28 - 00:14:30:19 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: So he stayed. We couldn’t say, get out. We had no means of pulling him out or anything. And so we said, all right, so he took the bed and then roll the bed that night. Then that was his bed until Hardy got back. Well, when Carter got back, then dynamite left and went over to, Larson and Henson’s tavern, and he spent the great part of the winter at the last minute Henson cabin.

00:14:30:21 - 00:14:34:09 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: But he was a funny looking fella with whiskers all over.

00:14:34:10 - 00:14:37:10 Sam Schrager: Was he staying there?

00:14:37:12 - 00:14:57:12 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: He we were so surprised. He said, I’ve been living in your cabin while you were gone. We said we knew somebody had been there, but we had no idea who or what. We said. I’ve been there, but he’s dead. When your man gets back, I’ll go on over to the boys. And that’s what he did.

00:14:57:13 - 00:15:04:17 Sam Schrager: Was he staying there to protect you? Was that the idea? Was he staying there to protect you? Was that his thinking?

00:15:04:20 - 00:15:21:26 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: we don’t know. We don’t have any idea. Was he just looking for a place to land? And he they. And he dove, landed and so we did a lot of blanket washing and all. When we got captured.

00:15:21:29 - 00:15:36:04 Sam Schrager: You know, he stayed at, at Elsie Fyles place, too. Yes. Because. Because I know Carol brink. what was mentioned that the, to me that she mentioned this guy dynamite.

00:15:36:08 - 00:15:50:20 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And she spoke about Dynamite Kid. Well, Elsie was a class on what they called, another branch of the little North bird called the Blood One. It it flew, went south and east.

00:15:52:09 - 00:16:31:29 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: It went south and east. And the potlatch went the other way. And we were on the, on the other side of the ridge. And Elsie, she was quite a character and you should have known her. She was delightful. she certainly was. She had one night we were, we were going on the trip. My father and I had been out there so long, the government decided I had to come into a trial.

00:16:31:29 - 00:17:03:19 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And Wallace and in order to get the trial at Wallace, I had to be notified to get out there. And there was no one in this tiny country that knew where I was or any location or anything. And so my father undertook to come, and notify me, which he did. And he left word that we would need a Packard to bring us out and that he would.

00:17:03:26 - 00:17:35:18 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: He walked up that 25 miles from Avery, a 28 mile, and then told me that I had to come in training for the trip. And so they got the Packard out and the Packard. IRA McPeek lived at Clark. Yeah. And he had been packing things with us for us so that he knew where we were and how to get to us and so forth.

00:17:35:20 - 00:18:19:19 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And he brought the horses up for us, and he brought a horse up for me to ride that, an Indian had owned. And he lost the race with the Indian. And the Indians were so mad they kept the, horse’s tail off and his ears right close to him. Well, the day that we started up with the factory and after my father got there, they put me on Jim the Heart or Bob went buzzing from called the horse Bob.

00:18:19:21 - 00:18:47:09 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Bob because of his Bob beard and this Bob Dylan and make peace. And you ride Bob because he is so short buddy. And he said, you ride up on Bob. Well, I had, taken cold a little while before, and I was subject to attacks of Quincy. And so they dug me up and everything they could find in the cabin.

00:18:47:09 - 00:19:15:02 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: It was warm, and I mounted Bob and we started all. Well, there’s one place that we used to call a little Lake Thelma. It’s a different name than that now and than that, and I don’t know what it’s called now, but at any rate, you had to go up a very high and very steep ridge to get up to the top and come on over into the thank you country.

00:19:15:04 - 00:19:43:25 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And we always in going up and under our horse’s tail and made the horse pull us up instead of riding because it was this way, it was so rough you couldn’t ride comfortably. we always were held on to or just tail. Well, I was on Bob, which had neither ears nor tail, and so I had to stay on the horse.

00:19:43:28 - 00:20:14:12 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And I’d been having the Quincy at the cabin and but not in a very good condition to be riding up there anyway. But we got to the what we call the, that the company. Runs the Hathaway cab, and it was the government cabin, and they had blankets and, and cooking utensils and heating and so forth of the cabin.

00:20:14:15 - 00:20:41:17 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: We got to the cabin that night and who was at the cabin? But, Elsie Vile. She and her then. Anybody home? Yes. I always give a you recorded you killed again. Did you understand me?

00:20:41:19 - 00:20:44:12 Sam Schrager: So you, You met.

00:20:44:15 - 00:20:49:19 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: He was. He was. He says, across the street. Across the street.

00:20:49:21 - 00:20:52:16 Sam Schrager: So, Elsie file was there.

00:20:52:18 - 00:21:25:00 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Elsie file and read through the. I suppose the be the wireless and that the make Pete was coming up to our place and she wanted to come out the crack. Yeah. So she walked from her place and, down to this terminal cabin because she knew we’d stop there. And she had with her a great big bow down and see, that was for protection on her cabin.

00:21:25:06 - 00:22:02:16 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Seemed she had this big build out, but she was at the cabin that night, and we got in and I had this enormous head of hair and that rain had wet the neck and the turtleneck sweater I was wearing, and the sweater was wet, and we couldn’t get out of the sweater. So my feet to one side, the package took one side, Elsie took the other, and they took my hair down.

00:22:02:22 - 00:22:43:24 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And this skin, this turtleneck sweater up over my head until they finally got it off. And I was made as comfortable as possible. Well, Elsie and I slept in one bed that night in a bunk beds in the government cabin, and, along in the night came the pack rats. And the Bulldogs didn’t like pack rat. So he started chasing you all around the house, in the cabin, all around the floor.

00:22:43:24 - 00:23:05:25 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And whenever the pack rat would beat the dog to get too close, the pack rounded up under the bed and the dog of every. You can imagine how much sleep went on in that cabin that night. We couldn’t come the dog down on account of the rat couldn’t catch the rat, and he couldn’t get the rat.

00:23:06:00 - 00:23:07:28 Sam Schrager: Couldn’t just kick him out of the cabin.

00:23:08:00 - 00:23:35:02 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And couldn’t. Says that they didn’t have any idea of going on the can dog. The dog. Yeah. Oh, no, it was cold snow deep outside, you know, put a dog out in the snow and leaving, especially a short haired dog like a bulldog. But we got up the next morning and went on in to track in Elsie with the dog and went with us, and we all got the crack, you say.

00:23:35:07 - 00:23:43:11 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: But that was the quite a trip that time.

00:23:43:14 - 00:23:50:06 Sam Schrager: Your father had come out all that distance by snowshoe, and he snowshoe out to the cabin.

00:23:50:08 - 00:23:58:25 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Yes. Snowshoes or. Well, because he was tired. Athletic person. but determined.

00:23:58:28 - 00:24:03:21 Sam Schrager: When you got to Clark, you still had a long ways to go to Wallace. Did you get on the train there?

00:24:03:24 - 00:24:36:01 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: No. Yeah. Oh, you had horses? I had a long ways to go. Yes. My father stayed there and with me for 2 or 3 days until I got my throat cleared out. And then we went on to ours and got there in time for the for the trial. They did. What county was that? The railroad had placed? and what do you say entries had filed on?

00:24:36:01 - 00:25:09:21 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: A lot of this was supposed to be railroad land in that section of the country, and they were given by the government certain certain townships and certain, what do you call it? Well, they had their rights. They the railroads had rights over certain townships in order to settle up this part of the country and some of those railroads, townships or rent filings, were over on my place and part of them were on.

00:25:09:21 - 00:25:29:06 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And Mrs. Calkins place. So we all had to go in for the government hearing, as well as that we could take the train from Tyco and make connections and get up two hours. Then it for the train.

00:25:29:08 - 00:25:32:10 Sam Schrager: Did you win that time? No, you lost.

00:25:32:10 - 00:26:11:06 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: That, I lost it, I lived there for 22 months and more and fought the fire and then? Then said the firemen, what the hell? And made the trips back and forth. But I lost it. We did the best we could. And Bert Nell French was a representative from Idaho back at Washington, DC. And, Burton tried his best to have it reopened and a new van put on, but they said no.

00:26:11:07 - 00:26:54:09 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And it wasn’t that. It was that I was over on the other, my location had gone over and that I hadn’t lived up. There is a sufficient length of time. They sent out one of these little, we call them patent leather men from Washington, DC and, patent leather human. They didn’t know a darn thing about timber, living in the woods or women or even living, and he’d come in, they’d look over your little cabin and say, it’s not a suitable habitation.

00:26:54:12 - 00:27:09:07 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And I had a little garden that night, raised radishes and led us out there. And, he looked in a garden that it says it’s not sufficient cultivation for a. And this said.

00:27:09:08 - 00:27:11:21 Sam Schrager: To your face. Yes. To your face.

00:27:11:28 - 00:27:40:04 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Yeah. Oh, yes. We didn’t mind doing it. Oh, that went on like that. He came in and he got This is Durham and this is Stories and Slaves and my place. And he got guns blazing right next to mine where she was located on one end of the middle, and I was at the other end of the network.

00:27:40:06 - 00:28:12:04 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: Our cabins were quite, quite close. So I had company out there and she lost hers. And I don’t know, there’s a whole bunch of Indians through there that that lost it on account of this man from Washington, DC that they didn’t think people could live under those conditions, although we were living under them. Well, during the fire season in 1910.

00:28:12:06 - 00:28:51:19 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: This, same man was put in charge of, a fire fighters brigade that was sent, into that part of the country. And, at that time, he had sent his report in to Washington, DC, and they canceled all of our homesteads out there, that we were still on a homestead because we didn’t know, but what it might be open or we opened at any, any time.

00:28:51:19 - 00:29:30:27 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: You never you never know when they were fighting it. And he was put on in charge of the fire fighting the game live sent up into that section of the country. And, one morning Mrs.. Mrs. Taylor, who lived alone about a mile and a half or two miles from this place, and then she was a little uneasy about the smoke there.

00:29:30:27 - 00:30:27:16 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: It didn’t drift in in that country. So she came over to stay with me. so not to be alone at her cabin in case anything should happen. While we were. There was a wreck with the door, and it was just burning daylight. I upside, and and Mrs. Taylor got up and answered the door. And there was this man who had reported all these homesteaders standing at the door, and he said that he was in charge of firefighting crew, and that they were trying to locate the fire which was causing all this smoke in this part of the country.

00:30:27:19 - 00:30:58:12 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And you want to know if there was a trail any farther east. So she told him the third trail that went by the east, and he said he’d take his crew and go over there. Well, we got up and dressed and decided that we’d walk over and see if they had found her cabin and if they were still there, which they were when we got there.

00:30:58:15 - 00:31:26:06 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And the men that were camping around the fire on the outside, some of them and some of them were inside of the cabin, and we’re trying to get something for breakfast. And Mrs.. Mrs. Taylor said that, she would help the men so she get busy and expand cakes and things for the men inside the cabin and outside the cabin.

00:31:26:08 - 00:32:06:21 Ione “Pinkie” Adair: And when they went to move on them to locate fire, they to locate the fire. Mrs.. Mr. Roach said to Mrs. Taylor, wouldn’t you ladies like to go on with us a little farther and get a meal for us at noon, so we’d have something to eat? And we said we would. And so we followed that.