Yachats Oregon Writer Rick Schultze

We residents of small coastal towns and villages on the Central Oregon coast all know some residents that have lived in them for decades. Being on the Western edge of the country these folks settled in what was once the frontier and in many cases the Wild West. It was before there was even a highway that connected the northern Oregon coast with the southern Oregon coast. It was way before modern devices such as phones and televisions became staples in everyone’s home, and walking was a way of life, not just a way to stay fit!

Sadly many of these residents have left us and their remaining population is dwindling, but it’s important to remember what these fine people were like and the way they treated their families and land. Their lives seem light years from lives today even though we still live where they began. One such resident was Bob Hays of Yachats who passed away recently at the age of 88. Born in 1920, he died at his Yachats home of 57 years.

I knew met Bob while researching for an article from remembrances he’d written for a collection titled “The Valley Called Home: The Yachats River Valley” by Joseph Carson and Vivian Stevens. He told me many stories and historical tales of his beloved Yachats and they were all fantastic.

I’m going to share with you one of his remembrances which appeared in “Groundwaters” ; a grassroots, community-oriented literary quarterly from Veneta, Oregon when his niece Judy Hays-Eberts was the Editor and Publisher. She set up the story and read it at Bob’s recent Celebration of Life. “Bob loved to roam feely though the wood of the ridges and hills of the Yachats River valley.” She said. “Trapping was a mainstay for the family through the years and in 1934, the boys, Bob and his brothers, built a log cabin up the North Fork of the Yachats River. The cabin was built to allow all of them to hunt and trap for the winter.” In that remembrance Bob wrote; “We put in a garden and camped out while constructing the cabin. Our food consisted of venison, fish, and vegetables form the garden, plus a lot of good biscuits that Dad whipped up for us. The cabin was located at the bottom of a steep hill. We went up the hill, fell the trees we needed, peeled them, and cut them into logs. Then we skidded them down the hill to the site. We built the foundation out of poles, and then rolled the logs into place by leaning two poles on the back of the cabin, and rolling them in by hand. After the walls were in place, we cut rafters from poles, shakes from a cedar log, and took 1x12’s from an abandoned building for flooring. The flooring was the only sawed lumber in the cabin. For windows, we went up to the cabin at the headwaters of Cummins Creek which Dad had built in 1916, and took those windows to use for our new cabin. We had to pack those windows for five miles on our backs. It was mighty tough work, but it was necessary to close in the cabin. The only items we had to buy were nails for the shake roof, hinges for the door, a roof jack for the stove pipe, and a roll of tar paper for the floor to keep the cold out.”

As I watched the assembled crowd listen to the story I realized how lucky all of us are to have had those kind of hard working, good people living here on the Central Oregon coast.

To reach Rick Schultze: email yarick@pioneer.net.