As told by Tim Kerns and written by Ellen Stevenson

(Additional remembrances by Ellen in Italics)

Brother Tim said he and James spent a lot of time together. They were siblings only three years apart in age.

He remembers when Ellen was born in March of 1954; they ate a lot of corn flakes. Tim was ten years old and James almost seven. Mom was in the hospital for ten days, so Dad would take the boys down to the Haines store to buy corn flakes and animal crackers.  The boys even got prizes out of the cereal.

The house Dad built on the valley floor was where these two brothers spent much of their childhood. Tim said it was there that James threw a cap gun at him and it went through the window. Tim remembers Mom saying that was why they didn’t have a big picture window there. Instead she had Dad put in windows composed of small panes; they were  easier to fix and didn’t cost as much.

(James and Tim were reminiscing about this together over a year ago. James said he always figured it was Tim’s fault the window got broken. “If you hadn’t ducked, the gun wouldn’t have gone through that window,” James said. Tim then apologized for ducking and James apologized for throwing the cap gun.)

Tim remembers they played a lot of games together. As little boys they played farming. Their toy farm animals, tractors and blocks for fences, would be divided up and then traded during their game.

“Dad always got people going on concentration,” Tim said. James was really good at that. Beating him was rare. “We played other card games too, 7-up, Barnyard, 7-spot; but that was what you did, because we didn’t have TV.”

(Mom said Uncle Andy thought of himself as being pretty good at concentration and it really bothered him to have a four-year old boy, Jamie, beat him.)

Tim was also impressed by James’ memory of the cattle. “He had all the cows named and knew who their calves were,” he said.

(James kept good records on the cows too. I remember Mom saying that our herd was being used for research on calf scours, because the recorded information James had kept would put the state years ahead on their study. A state veterinarian named Dr. Erickson, a Norwegian fellow, spent quite a bit of time at our place about then).

“James was always quite a stockman,” Tim went on. “For years we didn’t sort the cows in corrals. Dad would have us do it on the road. One person got on one end and one on the other, and James would just quietly work them out of the middle. He could just work them back and forth as easy as could be.”

(Tim added that when he [himself] had to go work the cattle at the sale yard, he didn’t know how to run a gate. Dad had always had them do it on the road.)

Chip

“Then there was Chip,” Tim fondly recalls.  “I read that German Shepherds were supposed to be one of the smartest dogs there are and wanted one. So Mom said her Dad knew all about dogs, and she would write to him and ask him to get one.”

Chip came in on the train down at Haines, because we went there and picked him up from Mr. Carter.

 

(I was two years old, as Mom always told the story of my wanting to “take Chip back to Mr. Carter,” because he knocked me down with his tail).

“Mother named him ‘Chip’ because of the poker chips that were always lying around,” said Tim. “It goes back to how we were always playing games.”

Though Chip was Tim’s dog, Tim remembers that James was the one who really trained him, since he had sheep. Tim said James had to go out each night and get his sheep in when they lived on the valley floor, so he would train Chip.

     (I remember being impressed as a little girl of five or six years old, when we were renting the “K&K” [Mom called it that for Kerns & Kohler, it’s the hills just west of Baker City], and James told Chip, “Out and around, out and around.” The cows seemed a long distance away to me through the draw and on the next hillside, but Chip went out and around and got them).

Tim remembers James telling him how Chip died too. Tim was gone for the summer to Iowa during college. James told him Chip had arthritis and was discouraged. He said it seemed like Chip just ran in front of that car on purpose. (As I recall, the guys were picking up ties along the railroad tracks at the time).

Moving

Dad and Mom sold the place on the valley floor to Tuckers for $300 an acre around 1958 or 59. They thought that was a high price. “Lloyd Cole was hired to help us move,” Tim said. “The plan was to move into the old yellow house up the hill that wasn’t really supposed to be livable, and build a new one.”

This was the “Duncan” place Uncle Andy had first purchased in 1952 with plans of being a farmer. He bought it and a Ford tractor with all the implements, but spent only one summer there, before selling out to Dad & Mom and moving to Florida. The “Mountain Place” had been purchased prior to that. (Tim remembers Andy had a Food Tech degree from college and Mom said he helped developed the system of freezing Orange Juice. A major part of that was figuring out how to not have the rind taste included in the flavor).

Mac and Joyce lived on the “Duncan place” in the old yellow house when Brent was born; they remember it as a cold, drafty house. Tim recalls the family going to visit them one winter evening, when Dad slipped on the ice going through the woodshed, as he was carrying little Ellen. In his fall he landed on Ellen’s leg and broke it.  (I had just learned to walk, Mom said). That precipitated a “weather leg.” For years it would ache before a storm. (Mom told me there might not be a cloud in the sky and she would wonder why I was complaining about my leg. Then before the next morning a storm would come. On those nights, Mom would give me a teaspoon full of brown sugar for my “leg medicine,” and a hot water bottle to soothe it).

(The old yellow house is where we lived during the dry, fire summer of 1960. Dad had built a deck on the front to the east where we would sit and count the lightning strikes at night. It was also where we were when the Columbus Day storm hit and blew down big trees at the house).

Building the block house

Building the blockhouse where James and Marjorie have raised their family is a highlight of memories for Tim. He and James laid the blocks. Tim thinks he was a junior in high school, about 1961.

“Mother always wanted a block house,” Tim said, “because she worried about how wood could burn.  So she picked some special rose colored blocks, they got from around Nampa, Idaho.  Mom always wanted a concrete floor, I don’t know why.”

The driveway was to be unique too. Tim says that the “red, volcanic/pumice kind of rock,” was hauled from this side of Union by Leonard Huffman. (This was Rodger Huffman’s Dad. Rodger is at this time, head of the Animal Health Division for the Oregon Department of Agriculture. He still has a place near Union.)

Additionally, Dad had this red pumice rock poured into the center of the blocks after they were laid, for insulation. The mortar holding the blocks together was mixed right on sight with a cement mixer that worked on the back of a little Ford Tractor.

James’ main job was that of the “Striker.” He smoothed the mortar to a concave shape between the blocks on the outside to give the structure a neat appearance. Tim said he was noticing, even lately, what a good job James had done. “He did an absolutely perfect job of striking down,” Tim said. (Tim then went on with how his younger brother was always meticulous about his work. “We used to get into fights when rebuilding elk panels,” he explained. “James thought all the boards should be straight, I didn’t think it mattered. The cows had broken them all to pieces!”  I remember Dad saying James always tried to do a “perfect job” also.  And Mom simply told me “James is a perfectionist.”)

     What I remember during house building, is that sometimes James would play trucks with me on the gravel pile beside the house. I must have been only seven. The gravel pile was where the gas pump is now. It was used for mixing the cement.

Tim said occasionally James would take off from the house building project to check the cows. “He would take Chip and go off in the woods for a while, and I always wished I could go check the cows and go off in the woods.”

     Jerry Griffith reminded me of how James would play with us younger folks. We all came to enjoy “going for a hike in the woods,” because of James. He would take Brent, Danny, Jerry and I up on the mountain for a hike; like to “Lookout Rock.” It is a big, flat rock along a logging road above the Markle place. Trees grew up through the years to obscure the view from “Lookout Rock.”

     Hiking must be one of the things of common interest that attracted James and Margie together. I remember Mom telling me how Marjorie had her hiking boots and went to lakes with her Dad.

Tim recalls that in building the block house they ended up ten blocks short, so Tim was sent to Lime, Oregon in the 1955 International pickup to meet someone from the “outfit in Nampa” to get them. This was a big deal for brother Tim, because it was his first longer solo trip. The temperature was 104 degrees F., he remembers.

Dad had a problem with the posts heaving in the garage when it got cold. “When it froze in the winter the whole roof heaved up three inches,” Tim said. Dad had to go through and break apart the posts and supports so it wouldn’t heave anymore.

Hunting

     I remember once when my brothers both were hunting deer. I think James even shot one. I don’t know that he hunted any more after that. Jerry Griffith remembers him saying, “Do you really want to kill a deer?” when young Jerry grew old enough to hunt that is. James seemed to rather just watch the wildlife.

     (Note from James:  Yes, I tried to hunt as a teenager, but I never shot a deer.  One day I went hunting with my two brothers.  I was sitting between the two of them on the front seat of our jeep.  We were up by the Wilcox Ditch bridge, and saw a buck deer in the field above us.  We were all excited, and piled out of the jeep.  I experienced "buck fever."  I must have clicked off the safety on the gun as I was scrambling out of the jeep because as I emerged, the gun went off.  The deer bolted at the sound, and neither Tim nor Mac got off a shot.  My gun had been pointing up into the air when it went off, and Mac made a comment about the hole I'd made in the sky.  For my part, I was just sick inside.  What if that gun had been pointing at one of my brothers?  It might as well have been.  I'd been so full of the lust to kill something that I hadn't even been aware of flicking off the safety mechanism on my gun.  I could have killed one of my brothers, and I'd have had to live with that nightmare the rest of my life.  I realized then and there that a lust to kill is wrong, and resolved to never again let such an emotion grip me.  I never hunted again.)

High School and College

     James was junior class president in high school. That was a big deal and kept him quite busy, since the juniors put on a prom for the seniors. The musical play “Oklahoma” was also a major production that year that he was quite involved in.  Mom said he was later nominated for student body president and senior class president, but declined both.

     Though he went with Marjorie some in high school, they never got to go to a prom together.

     When James graduated from high school it was only natural that he went to Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. That is where Tim was attending school and Dad & Mac had graduated from there.

     He became a “Pledge,” at the same fraternity Tim had joined, but the life style didn’t suit him much. Mom said he just didn’t agree with the drinking and parties. One incident I remember her relating was that of how the older boys put a lot of salt in some coffee and made the younger “Pledges” drink it. “James stuck his finger down his throat and made himself throw up,” she said, “because he didn’t want all that salt in his system.” He later went to a dormitory for his housing accommodations.

     (That memory came back to my mind, because several years ago, Brent and Wes had some salt hungry cows get too much of the granular kind at once, and at least one died).

     When my brothers both went off to college, I suddenly became an only child. No more being chased through the house or snuck up on, and scared while locking up chickens at night. No more becoming suddenly terrified of a face at my bedroom window in the dark, as they scratched on my screen. (I was happily standing on my bed, but must have flown out of that room to the safety of the kitchen, before realizing what it was).

     The boys had to come home from college in October to work cows, and I wasn’t going to miss their arrival. I tied noise making devices, such as cans around the door, and slept in the living room close by the entrance.

     The two of them said they were trying to be very quiet and not wake anyone as they came in during the middle of the night, but to their surprise that wasn’t possible. Upon opening the door there was noise all over, and everyone woke up.

     During James’ second year of college he decided to drop out. “I  just can’t study!” he told Mom. Mother said “the draft was breathing down his neck and he missed Marjorie.” Mom also told me that though James said he could not study, that Harold Britton was glad he dropped out, because then Harold got one of only three A’s an instructor was going to give in the English class they were taking. Otherwise James would have gotten it. 

     When James came home from college, he helped Dad with the cows, joined the Navy and I believe the Church about that time; and played Christy Minstrel records a lot. It seems Mom wrote a letter to James nearly everyday when he went away in the Navy. I remember him writing back and saying he was glad to have joined the Navy and not the Marines, because the Marine boot camp was right next to the Navy one and they were always carrying guys off from their training workouts there.

     It seems that James and Margie got married when he came home on leave after being on the USS Banner, but based mainly in Japan. I don’t remember if their first home was on a base somewhere in the states or if it was Morocco Africa, but for a honeymoon, they went visiting relatives, like sister Jean. Then they were off together as a married Navy couple.

     “Marjorie is the only girl James ever loved,” I remember Mom saying. She told me, “He tried to date other girls but Marjorie was just the only one he ever loved.” (I only remember two or three other dates he had. Marjorie really always has been the only one).

 

Tim said I should add more here of what James did in the Navy. He said that, “Due to his superior concentration mind, they decided James should be a Russian Interpreter.”  To do this he had to get a top security clearance. I believe Mom said the government had people here investigating James, because friends told her so.

James got his orders to be on the ship, the USS Banner, about the same time as the “Pueblo Incident.” This really bothered Mom and Dad because the Banner was the “sister ship” to the Pueblo. They were called “spy ships.” The North Koreans had seized the Pueblo claiming it was in their territorial waters. They kept the crew captive for over a year.

Tim recalls that while feeding one sunny winter day,  he commented what a “beautiful day” it was. “But Dad didn’t think it was so beautiful,” he said, “because James was supposed to be on the ‘sister ship’ to the Pueblo.”

     Mom told me a story in her later years of how she was very worried about her youngest boy during that time too. She knew that the crew of the Pueblo were being tortured by the Koreans, and it was very unsettling to think of James being on the “sister ship.” It must have been extremely hard for her. Then she related to me her “experience.” She said, “My Dad came and sat on my bed, and told me James would be alright.” Granddad had left this world several years earlier. She was much comforted.

 

As it turned out, due to the “Pueblo Incident,” our leaders didn’t really know what to do with the Banner, so it stayed in dock at Japan most of the time James was stationed on it. (It seems Mom said he even had to be a military policeman some of the time there. I definitely remember him saying it was nice to be taller than the Japanese there, since people were packed into trains as tight as possible. “I’ll never squeeze one more cow on a truck again,” he wrote home.

Haying

Tim remembers bucking bales with James. Someone would drive a little Ford tractor pulling a wood panel or “slip,” and someone (Ralph or Denver Markle in younger years) would grab little hay bales with “hay hooks.” The bales were then stacked on the “slip”  three or four bales high for the full length of it, without even stopping. When the slip was full , they pulled up to the hay piler and unloaded the bales, one by one to be carried up the stack on this conveyor, chain-driven mechanism.

I remember either Tim or James being the “stacker” men on top of the hay stack, placing the bales just so; as Dad had taught them, to “tie” the stack together and insure it wouldn’t fall down.

     One of Mom’s Stories about her boys is that of Tim’s return from working for “Cherry Burl” in Iowa between his Junior and senior year of college. He had been exploring the possibilities of the occupation as an Agricultural Engineer, which he was about to graduate in. Mom said “he didn’t like it because he couldn’t get his hands dirty.” So upon his arrival home, the brothers apparently had a good wrestling match. James had been bucking bales all summer and was in good shape, but Tim hadn’t even gotten his “hands dirty.” It was the first wrestling match where little brother James beat big brother Tim, and the last one they ever had, Mom said.

     When Philip and I were newlyweds, and I was missing my brother, Philip decided we should go visit James and Marjorie in Provo, Utah. That is where James then attended college after getting out of the Navy and being on the ranch for a while. We didn’t stay long, but they serenaded us with Margie’s ukulele and favorite country songs like “Egg Suckin’ Hound.” Nathan was just a baby then, and we drove out to the Great Salt Lake, where Philip had to experience floating high in the salt water.

     As a last note, I must add what Mom decided about James and Margie’s family. She said, “I think the reason that James and Marge have so many kids is because God knows they couldn’t have a better home.”