READ IT and SLEEP by William L
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Home where I was raised. Roundeau Ranch, Tygh Ridge, Wasco County, Oregon. READ IT AND SLEEP By William L. (Bill) Hulse I was born in Sherman County on August 4, 1920 to Roy Paul and Mary Jane Hulse. Dad was a farmer and storekeeper and mother was a schoolteacher. They moved from Sherman County to Tygh Ridge in Wasco County in the winter of 1919 and 1920. Mother had been doctoring in Moro with Dr. Poly, so she went back to Moro for my birth. Both my brother Paul and sister Janet were born in Sherman County. We lived on and farmed the old Roundeau Ranch, which had been purchased by Al- fred Dillinger. In the early part of the depression the ranch was lost to the Eastern Oregon Land Company. Dad eventually purchased it from them and then added the Murdock McLeod homestead. We attended Harmony Grade School, one and a quarter miles from our house. My grandkids would say “I suppose it was uphill both ways and through two feet of snow?” It wasn’t that bad, but we did walk. The school had one room and one teacher who was the janitor, nurse and mother hen to all of us kids. I remember one year – there were thirteen children in seven grades. There was no first grade that year. There were children from the family of George Hillgen, Walt Hillgen, Ellis Jones, Tommy Jones, Sid Baker, Clarence Garner, Joe McMurray and Roy Hulse. The teacher’s salary started at $50 per month and board and room. We had several local teachers: Beula Fraley McClean, Mary Sigman Hart, Opal Bene- dict Wiidanen and Frances Doud. We didn’t have organized sports like the children have now. We made our own fun and had lots of it. This was during the depression. We were all poor but we all had plenty of food and decent clothing and lots of love. Families were closer then, because there were less attractions or I might say, distractions. Life was good. We would have sleighing parties in the winter and all the families would get together every month or so for a potluck and cards. The kids would play and sometimes dance. Clarence Gardner played the fiddle and Dad corded on the guitar. As kids living twelve miles from Dufur, we rarely got to go to town except for church on Sunday. Going to The Dalles was a real treat. Our car was an old Overland with side curtains. Next we had a Model T Ford sedan with just one door between the front and back seat. Dad finally upgraded to a 29 Model A two door Ford. What a change it was to go from a one-room school to Dufur High School with ninety students, six classrooms, five teachers, organized sports and a gymnasium. When I first started to go to high school, the bus came from Tygh Valley and came across the ridge to pick us up. On the first day of school my junior year, I got on the bus and there was a new girl sitting in the back. When I saw her I said to myself “That girl is for me.” It was Lorraine Hood, sister of Joe and Slim Hood. I eventually got up enough nerve to ask her for a date. We went together all through our high school years. My only sport was football. I played in all but two games in my four years. We had a good team. Our goal was to beat Maupin. Beating Maupin was a successful season. I graduated from Dufur with the class of 1938, a long time ago. I sit here writing these memories at my house in Dufur on Main Street. During lunchtime at school I see high school students’ cars and pickups going by, many of them better than any of us had while in school. In fact, they are better than any car I had for two years after I got out of school. Times sure have changed and I sometimes wonder if it is for the best. We didn’t just run into town for a hamburger or a show. Our local drugstore had a soda fountain and an ice cream sundae was ten cents. I wanted to go to Oregon State College, but Dad said we couldn’t afford it. He said that if I went to Monmouth for two years I could then go to Oregon State. I drove down to Monmouth and was next up at the registrar’s desk when I thought about that pretty and very popular Hood girl. I knew that if I was gone other boys would be after her, I got in my car and same home and never did go to college. Work was not too plentiful, but I was lucky enough to get a job helping build a grain elevator on the river- front in The Dalles at two dollars per day. I paid one dollar a day for board and room. As work progressed I was paid three dollars per day. That’s $3 per day, not per hour. With this in- crease I could take my girl to a show once a week. The show and popcorn would cost about two dollars. I then worked on our family farm but my father passed away in the spring of 1940. I was just nineteen years old. That put my brother Paul and I farming in earnest. I married my high school sweetheart, Lorraine, in 1943. Brother Paul was drafted so I ran the ranch with one part time hired man. My dearest wife passed Dad and mother, Roy and Mary Jane Hulse. away in the fall of 1945 with Polio. Her death was reportedly one of the last deaths in Oregon from Polio. We had been married two years and nine months. Paul got out of the service and we farmed together for several years. I remarried in 1947 to Masil Harrison of Redmond, Oregon. We adopted two boys, Danny and four years later Davey. In 1952 we moved from Tygh Ridge to a small, irrigated ranch in Dufur Valley. We later sold that place to my brother Paul and purchased a ranch from Ed Wilhelm, two miles farther up the valley. Purchasing and renting more land, we eventually had 1600 acres per year of wheat and barley, 200 acres of irrigation, 400 head of cattle and a 40 sow total confinement hog operation. It was too much work. We later adopted a pretty little four-year old blonde girl, Mary Anne. Our boys were in a blasting cap accident which took our red headed Danny’s life and left son Davey totally blind. This was a very trying and sad time in our lives. I still have flashbacks of that horrible accident. Our faith in God helped us through it. I had the privilege of serving on our County Fair Board and the Dufur School Board for eighteen years. I was also president of County Cattlemen and County Wheat Growers. I was master of the Masonic Lodge in Dufur, president of the Oregon Wheat League, ten years on the Oregon Wheat Commission and a founder of Columbia River Bank. There had been two foreign mar- ket development organizations in the United States. Western Wheat promoted the sales of soft white wheat and Great Plains Wheat promoted hard red winter wheat. The two groups represent- ed at least twenty state grower organizations. Because of budget problems and some pressure from the U.S. Department of Agricul- ture, the two groups merged in 1980. The new organization was named the U.S. Wheat Association. Or- egon had the opportunity to nom- inate a person to be an officer in the new organization. As we walked down the hall toward the Janet, Paul and Bill Hulse first meeting someone asked who we should pick for an officer. Earl Pryor of Condon said, “Hulse has the time, let’s run him.” I did have the time as we had rented part of our ranch and eventually sold all of it. A 100 by 100 foot lot and house in Dufur was not all that time consuming. Earl never said anything about capability. I was elected Vice Chairman and the next year I was voted in as chairman and acting president. We had two officers in the U.S.: Portland, Oregon and Washington D.C. We also had offices in eleven foreign countries. Our budget was $12 million. My appointment could not have come at a better time as my marriage of thirty plus years was falling apart. During my time with wheat organizations I made fifty-four trips to Washington D.C. and lived there for six months in a hotel two blocks from the White House. I trav- eled to twenty foreign countries. I walked on the Great Wall of China and attended a state dinner in the Great Hall of the People, Beijing. I climbed inside the great pyra- mid in Egypt. My favorite countries were India, Taiwan, Korea and China. I traveled in Air Force II with Secretary of Agriculture John Block and helped to cut the ribbon on a new flour mill In China. It was not all fun and games. We promoted the consumption of white wheat and its by-products. Although it was a lot of work, it was a great experience for me as a per- son born in Sherman County, raised on Tygh Ridge, schooled in a one-room school- house with no college education. My undying thanks goes out to the many wheat people who supported me.