Guest post by Jena Gilman.
I was out hiking on the Hanford Reach National Monument Friday and was able to follow the roadbed of the proposed NP Wahluke Branch for about a mile and a half a couple miles south of the point where Grant, Adams and Franklin Counties come together. Here are some photos. It was obvious that the rail had never been laid as there was no sign of discarded spikes or fish plates. The only hardware I saw were culverts.
Guest post by Martin Burwash.
The small elevator at Koren, WA, (just east of Othello on Hwy 26) is a natural for photography. Having never been painted or sheathed with tin roofing, this well weathered wood structure begs for detail shots.
From the "Grant County Journal."
December 12, 1976
Courtesy of Micheal Joyhaven and a friend, who recorded an interview with Mr. Lindhag a few years ago. Here is an okay transcription of the audio file.
Central Washington Grain Growers started out as a couple of small elevator systems, 3 or 4 receiving stations. And, at some point, they became before they were Central Washington Grain Growers, they were the Almira Grain Growers. They had branch managers, and they had a general manager. And, in 1963, my father moved from Hartline over to Almira and became the station agent for the Almira branch, where the general manager was also employed. And they had 3 receiving stations that they were responsible for out of Almira, which was Almira and then, Hansen and then Grand Coulee.
Grand Coulee was quite small. And, Hanson was pretty good size because it covered quite an area. And then Almira was pretty good size. It had a had a large flat house and, couple of, well, 3 large concrete tanks and a crib elevator that had a whole bunch of smaller bins in it. If you had something you needed to keep separate from the other grains, you could put them put that in those smaller bins.
And it made it easier to load them out and all that. In 1973, if I remember right, my junior year of high school, the company merged. It depends on who you ask. Almira Grain Growers bought out, Waterville Grain Growers.
Yep. And but if you ask the Waterville people, no. We've merged. So I don't know the real thing behind that. In any case, I remember because there was a chance that my father would be moved over to the Waterville office.
And that didn't turn out it didn't happen, so that was fine. I went ahead and graduated from Almira in 74 and, went on to the Air Force. About my 3rd year in the Air Force, I called my dad and asked if I could work during harvest for him. And he said, oh, I think we need a scale operator down at Hartline. Well, Hartline, next to Mansfield, Hartline is the biggest storage facility in the company.
And the second summer that I was there, we had a day of 435 or 40 truckloads. Come in during a harvest. That's good. And it was it was an amazing time. And if that had been my 1st year, I would have been completely lost.
But it was my 2nd year, so I knew what to expect. And there were times when I had 12 tickets out with the heavy the, grocery. Stamped on them. Well, then here would come another truck off one of these 12 tickets. So I'd have to put that ticket back in and that have 2 gross loads on there.
Then, oh, here it come the the, tear weight. So I have to remember, don't don't get mixed up on which one is which. The end would have turned out the same, but, again, each one. And, it was it was quite a quite a year that year.
But, in 1981, we brought you down from Spokane, moved into Judy's grandparents' house, and started a family down there. And I was working as a warehouseman. That's when I started full time. And, it went on that way. Well, I didn't weigh trucks anymore after that.
I was dumping them and making sure that everything was going where it was supposed to go. And, we put up a new elevator, there in Hartline. And I think that was about, I'm gonna guess, about 1983. Seems right. Maybe 4, the new place we called it.
And, just the year before we started the construction on the new place, we were putting grain on the ground. And we extended the auger, the screw auger, on top of the 2 steel tanks at, the concrete we called it. So it would carry on past and dump out into a prepared area on the ground through a pipe. And we had that pipe attached with about a half inch or maybe 3 quarter inch cable to a truck, an old GMC 1950 some truck.
And we drove away with it, got it up in the air, the pipe, and ran a shot of wheat through, and it didn't work. And our general manager, Scottie Watson, he was over there. Oh my. He was just about ready to tear his hair out. What are we gonna do?
What are we gonna do? It's okay, Scottie. We we got this. So we got in. We backed the truck up and and the grain that was stuck in the rusty pipes.
It came on through. Now let's run some grain through. And let it run there for about 5 minutes. And And it polishes that pipe up.
The the narrowest angle or the the lowest angle that you can efficiently run grain through a pipe is 28 degrees. This one was quite a bit steeper than that. So we didn't have to worry about that. But each time, we had to if if it was down for 2 or 3 days, it would get another color of rust on it.
So we had to back it off. The bush. Polish it up. Yep. And it didn't take long.
And then run it out here and then it would fly as far as we could fling it. And, and that was a fun year. Yes. So then another year, we had, built the new place, and the year that we used the, pipe out on the ground was probably 1980 2 or 3. It was pretty early because we had built a new place, and we had a huge bumper crop.
And we had to prepare a place on the ground across the street from that new place. And so we set up an auger for a pipe to dump into from the new place. And, one of the things that was kind of interesting because I had come from the air force as a sheet metal worker. I fixed airplanes. And I knew how to cut things to make them fit.
And my boss, the station agent there, he was having a terrible time trying to get the contour, the bevel right on 2 pieces of, u trough, to make it, make the exchange work right. And, I said, here, let me try it. And I will go, oh, okay. So I got the glasses on and the gloves on and I start torch. I just I never stopped.
I just made a one one cut. And I said there. And I got really, really lucky. And it fell into place like it was made in a machine shop. So how did you do that?
Best answer is no answer sometimes. There there it is. But we all get lucky once going on like that. Anyway, at the end of that auger that I had put in was a slinger with a I think it was a 50 horse 50 horse power motor.
And an endless belt. And I would go to work at 5 in the afternoon and I would start running wheat out of 1 of the tanks at the end and run it across the street and into that slinger and then throw it out there into a pile. And it was funny because the first load, it actually I could run it from the pit or I could run it from the tank. I ran a load out there with the slinger and it looked like a teaspoon.
It didn't look like anything at all because it had taken that 250 or 300 bushels and spread it out over a large area. But, anyway, I worked all night on on that. And, there were several nights I worked I worked 24, 23 hour shifts. It was it was a busy time. And, that year in a given in a given month, there's about a 172 work hours.
And I turned in 218 hours of overtime that August. Lord. Yeah. So it was a busy time, and I was happy to get some rest after that.
But, in 1985, my father passed away from his cancer, on February 18th. And the boss had moved me in. He left the office on Thanksgiving holiday. Never came back.
And so the boss says, I want you to go and start learning the books at Hartline or I mean, Almira. Excuse me. So I did, and I took the books over and let dad show me some of the tricks that he used in them and whatnot. And then, when he passed away, about 6 months later, the boss made my move permanent. And I spent 17 years there And, at one point, I had a one of the school teachers come and ask me if I could give a presentation on the farm bill.
And I said, well, if they were all farm kids., I think so. But I said, I don't think it would be appropriate to have farm kids and city kids listening to the various programs that pay monies out to farmers for whatever purpose. And, and he said, I never thought of that. So, yep.
I'm glad I did, and I'm glad I didn't. I did quite a bit of electrical work while I was there. The boss was always trying to get the very last hour out of a electric motor or what have you. And, I learned a lot, working on that stuff then too. I did some difficult stuff too.
I had to help, retrieve the body of one of my friends out of some grain, Orville, when he passed. And, so it wasn't all fun and games.
It can be a dangerous place. And once in a while, things line up. And if your number's up, it's up. But anyway, we made it through that.
But, you know, there's lots of lots of laughs. Lots of not so much laughs, but lots of good friends. And I got along real well with the farmers for the most part. And it seemed like in my experience, the farmers that had the most were the most critical of how I handled the grain.
Well, we've got a little dockage here. But the guys that had the least, you give them what their grain graded and they were happy and content to have it. And if you needed something, they'd give you the shirt right off the back. So, but, you know, that's human nature. And and I found out early then, when you're dealing with people's money, it tends to bring out the worst down.
And that's where I learned a whole lot about conflict resolution. You know, I you might wanna tell them one thing, but you can't. So you tell them something else. Try to commiserate with them and, and make the best of the situation, whatever it is.
And it was it was interesting too. For the first 5 years I was there, we kept coming up short on storage. I had to deal with, the Feds and they would come and they would do a very, very in-depth inspection and measurement of what I had for grain on hand.
And it was coming up short consistently every year of roughly the same amount. And so at one point, I asked the, the Fed, the inspector, would it be possible to come back and measure this flat house again, after we get it empty? He said, you know, that might be a good idea. So he came back, and we had emptied the flat house. And he measured the mark points in the flat house and they were off by about 3 feet.
So so he's measuring from this line on the on beams. Down to the surface of this of that and then takes that measurement less the overall, and that's how many feet of grain we had. Supposedly there.
And, he was using the wrong one. And so every year, it looked like we had less grain than we actually had. And, my boss was getting kinda, undone with me over that, but that really felt good when we got that figured out.
I built a new office there in 1991 or 92. The boss said, we had got a new boss.
His name was John Anderson from Wilbur. Really good guy. And he came into my office and my old office was nestled in between the flat house and concrete tanks and it had dead mice in the walls. And certain times a year, that wasn't too bad.
Yeah. But certain times a year, they stunk pretty bad. Well, they happen to be putting up a little bit of a stink that day. And he says, this is a pit.
And I said, yep. He said, let's put a new office up. Okay. He said, is there any lots for sale downtown? And I said, well, we can't do it downtown.
I said, I have to dump trucks and load trucks out of here fairly often. And I can't be leaving downtown to come and do this or they can't be calling me or coming and getting me to do that. So, I said, but I bet we could build right across. He said, okay. He said, draw up the plans, order the material, and we can build it.
So we did. And , Bobby Martin, I suppose you know him. He was working with us then. And, he was he was an outstanding carpenter.
And so he worked on it and, Bill Holtus, I don't know if you know him. He worked on it. Dennis, Jordan. Yep.
He was the superintendent at the time. And, we had the concrete done locally. Larry Short, Short Septic. And then I had a guy come out to dig the, hole for the sewer, because I couldn't cross the street, and the sewer line was across the street. So he was working on that.
They had a brand new backhoe, trackhoe, and, nice nice machine. And he just about beat it to pieces trying to get through the rock. And but he he did it. I was almost crying looking at that machine when he was done because everything was loose and things were bent and broken. But he got her done.
He said, that was an expensive job. And then, Larry came and, Larry Short came and set up the septic system for me and, and it worked just great. The, parking lot, I had good ground up to a certain point. And then guys would start sinking in the spring when the frost would leave.
And they'd sink. And so I had to run up to Spokane and buy parking curbs. And those things were pretty heavy. Mhmm. They were about 215 pounds apiece.
And, so I had I think I had 6 of them in the back of the truck, the pickup. And I didn't have anybody to help me. So there's the pencil pusher out there, packing those parking curbs and dropping them in place. I paid for that for a while.
But that that's kinda the way it is when you live out in a little places like that. You gotta move something. Just move it however you can.
Does this bring up any questions? I had college kids come work for me for the harvest or something. Was it 1985 when the train system from Coulee City to Mansfield? Did that close around the time frame? No.
It was actually before that. Okay. It closed. Oh oh, I see what you I see what you mean. Yeah.
Yeah. They couldn't they couldn't hold the C6, the grain cars on that track. It was light track. Yes. And they would have had to redo the bed as well as the track because it was not rated for the weight.
So, yeah, they they tore out the track and so I guess they sold it. And, one of the things that I got to do, it was about 1984.
Because one of the things I did was ride around with Orville and one other guy, and we picked up Grain car doors. Doors. Yeah. The coopering doors. And, we picked up, damn, thousands of those things.
And we took them over to Douglas County. And because they were still using the old grain cars and had to cooper them for each load, But then that didn't last very long. We did a lot of work and they used maybe 10% of those doors up. And then they closed that line and everything went by truck.
Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that's right. Yeah.
I had kinda forgotten about that. But, man, we were up at Reardan and Davenport and all the places because everybody quit using the old grain cars to the hoppers.
And I I don't know what else to tell you without a little How about one little piece of humor when the high school kids decide to climb the elevator in another night? Yeah. Yep. I had been there for several years and I went over to the office to make a copy of something, something like that. And I noticed a car parked back behind the elevator.
I'm going, no good going on there. So I called Daryl, the town Marshall. And he came over and busted them. And my future no no, my existing brother-in-law Larry and his girlfriend were there, Pam. Let's see who else.
Billy Schuler, Ray Boutine, Albert. He he got away. But, anyway, it was it was kinda funny. And what the company electrician, I saw him that next Monday. His son and his daughter were both there and they had signed a contract.
At school. Mhmm. And he was mad. He wanted a fight.
And he says, I hope you have a son someday. Yep. I said, so do I. Thanks.
He was he was not letting it go. And I said, you know what, Howard? You didn't get a phone call at 2 o'clock in the morning saying, we've got somebody that we don't really know who he is. Could you come look and have to identify your son on the slab? And that kinda made him ease up a little bit.
But, anyway, you know, you wanna play, you're gonna have to pay and you take a chance and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. So but we got along well, Howard and I. I tried to I tried to hire, Bill, his son, who had real bad hay fever. Real bad hay fever. And I said, if you wear your mask, don't take it off.
Don't take it off. Just keep your mask on. Well, the first day, it was hot like it always is in harvest. He took off his mask to say something and took one breath in and he was done. I had to haul him over to, his folks house and put him in the shower with the straight hot water running to give him some breathing relief.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I thought I was gonna lose him. It hit him hard. I said, well, you're fired.
But it was an interesting 17 years in the office and 21 years total.
And between my dad and me in the office, we put in 37 years there. That that number sticks in my head. Yeah. Yep. 37.
Time flies. And it was good it was good experience.
Courtesy of Blair Kooistra.
September 2020
Blair says:
"Had never driven into the substation at Taunton before. The road was always chained off and NO TRESPASSING signs and stories about an excitable owner was enough to keep me away.
"Now, no chain, no signs, and no respect by the kids whov’ve desecrated place over the years. The building and the mainline rest between trains; a dead freight is called at Othello, and the substation operator will soon crank up the juice so E-39 can head west for an overnight trip to Tacoma.
"Or so I imagine."
