The farm that we lived on in Myrtle Creek, Oregon from 1960 to 1965 was bordered on one side by BLM land. There was a road that went through our property into this BLM land and it had a gate across the road to keep our beef cows from getting out. It was the entry into thousands of acres of timberland and great hunting and fishing. Up the road about a mile lived an old man named Mr. Craigett. He had a gold claim on a little creek called Rancheria Creek. His house was a one-room shack about 12 feet square. He had an outhouse for his bathroom, and in the house, he had a shelf with two pans on it, one was for washing his face and the other was for washing his dishes. He hauled the water in five-gallon buckets from the creek and poured the used water out just outside the door of his house. On the same shelf, he had a propane camp stove, and he also had a little pot-bellied wood stove that he could cook on as well. The shack was lit with a propane camping lantern hung from the ceiling. On the opposite wall from his wash bench was his bed and in the middle of the room was a small table and several chairs and he also had a rocking chair. The shack was built with 1×12 boards with no insulation, with no windows, and when you walked up to it at night light showed through the walls around every board.

Us boys would walk up there occasionally to visit him and listen to the cool stories he would tell. One time he invited us to go fishing with him, we loved to fish so we went with him. We walked up the creek a ways where there were some beaver dams that formed some fairly large ponds. In the ponds were swimming a number of salmon that had swum up the creek to spawn. Mr. Craigett had a long willow rod with a large 6/0 hook fastened on the end with some baling wire and tape. He slid the willow rod along the bottom of the pond and when a salmon swam over it he would snag it and drag it out of the water. After he got one he handed off the rod to us boys and we each caught one as well. That was the best salmon fishing trip that I have ever had. Mom and Dad didn’t know what to think when they got home and there were three big salmon in the kitchen sink. We had been corrupted by Mr. Craigett.

We always thought that Mr. Craigett was so lucky to live in such a cool house.