Two Years in Oregon

by Wallis Nash

The "box" house is built of boards set upright, and the cracks covered with strips of similar board, three inches wide.

The "frame" house is double throughout, the boards run lengthwise, and there is a covering outside of an outer skin of planking.

With the box or frame house comes the inevitable stove. The cooking and eating of the family go on in a lean-to room, and the living-room is furnished with some pretensions, always with a sewing-machine, and often with a parlor-organ or piano. Muslin curtains drape the windows; a bureau is generally present, and chromos, or very rough engravings, hang on the walls. The political tendencies of the owner betray themselves. General Grant, with tight-buttoned coat and close-cut beard, or President Lincoln and his family, show the Republican. Strangely enough, General Lee, with a genial smile on his attractive face, is affected by the Democrats. The followers of the greenback heresy delight in Brick Pomeroy, with clean-shaven, smug, and satisfied look.

DINNER AT THE FARM.It is not the fashion to carry provisions with you on journeys in Oregon. When meal-time draws near, and hotels are many miles away, you ride boldly up to the nearest farm, dismount, throw your horse's rein over the paling, and walk in. The lady of the house appears, from the cooking department at the rear, and you say: "Good-morning, madam; can I get dinner with you?" Unless there is grave reason to the contrary, she considers a moment, and then answers, "I guess so," with a hospitable smile. The next question is as to your horse, which one of the children leads into the barn, and then fills out a goodly measure of oats, and crams the rack with hay from the pile filling the middle of the barn. While your hostess adds a little to the family meal, you turn over the newspapers in the sitting-room, generally finding a "Detroit Free Press," or a "Toledo Blade," or a New York "World" or "Tribune," or a San Francisco "Bulletin" or "Chronicle," besides the local weekly. If you want books, you must take to the "Pacific Coast Reader," the last school-book, which you are sure to find on the shelf; unless you chance on a "Universal History," or the "History of the Civil War," or the "Life of General Jackson," or the "Life of General Custer," or a collection of poetry in an expensive binding, all of which signify that the book-peddler has been paying a recent visit.

Then your hostess returns, saying, "Will you come and eat?" If you go into the back room—where, generally, the master of the house and you, the visitor, and perhaps a grown-up son, or a farming hand, sit down and dine, while the mistress and her daughter serve—you will not starve.

In front of you is a smoking dish of meat, either pork or mutton, salted, cut into square bits and fried; rarely beef, more often venison, or deer-meat, as it is called here. By it is piled up a dish of mashed potatoes, and a tureen of white, thick sauce. A glass dish of stewed apples, or apple-sauce, and one of preserved pears or peaches, and a smaller dish of blackberry or plum jam, complete the meal, with the constant coffee, and generally a big jug of milk. The bread is brought you in sets of hot, square rolls, fresh from the stove. It is not always that you can get cold bread, and a look of surprise always follows the request for it.

Generally, a good supply of white beans, boiled soft, and with a slice or two of bacon, is an important item. Apples, and the best of them, too, you can have for the asking—too common to be offered to you.

This régime applies to breakfast, dinner, and supper, with but slight variations. I forgot, though, the saucer of green, sharp, vinegary gherkins, which the Oregonians seem not to know how to do without, and also the honey, and trout, which are the frequent and welcome additions to the meal among the hills.

My wife and I dropped in once to a dinner of this kind. We were sitting, cooling ourselves on the veranda, watching some pretty, black Spanish chickens scratching among the scanty rose-bushes in front. The farmer's wife came quickly out and addressed me: "Have you got your revolver?" I stared for a moment, thinking of tramps, and bears, and I know not what. "I never carry one on horseback," I answered. "Oh," said she, "I would have had you shoot the head off one of them chickens, for I've got no fresh meat." Inwardly I congratulated ourselves that our dinner did not altogether depend on my skill with that common, but, to my mind, very unsatisfactory weapon.

One of my friends bought out an Oregonian farmer, and paid him for stock and lot, including some fine fowls. Dropping in to dinner two days afterward, he found a smoking chicken on the board. I suppose he eyed it askance, for the farmer observed: "That's one of your chickens I killed by accident. I saw some wild-geese feeding on the wheat, and fetched the rifle, and that there foolish rooster got right in the way of the bullet."