By Janet B. Kerns

Elwin A. McCornack was born into a family of considerable achievement and pride.

All of his grandparents had come west, pioneers, and that was a real achievement in itself, as they had left the comfort of home and familiar things to challenge the unknown.  The journey was hazardous, whether "across the plains" as the McCornacks came, or "around the Horn" (the southern tip of South America), as came the Condons.

The McCornacks sought more opportunity and education, even though making a living from the land kept everyone busy.  Great grandfather Condon was an educated man, but although he administered to people in a religious way, he kept chickens, a cow, and surely a horse or two or three for transportation.

Great grandfather McCornack was in the Oregon State Legislature.  Great grandfather Condon was a Congregational minister and a teacher of Geology.  Dad's mother Ellen (Nellie) Condon was a member of the first graduating class at the University of Oregon, a Phi Beta Kappa who also taught at times.  Herbert Fraser McCornack, Dad's father, was a physician who had studied in the Eastern United States.  His Uncle Will was also a doctor.  His Uncle Eugene P. McCornack was a surveyor in his youth and ended up a millionaire as an Empire Builder.  (Drained Wocus Marsh west of Klamath Falls, for instance).  When Grandpa's hearing deteriorated as a result of practicing medicine out of Dayton (near Pullman), Washington, he returned to Eugene where he became postmaster and bought a farm where he planted fruit trees and raised hay, and, of course, pasture.

When quite young, such as seventeen, Dad worked on his Uncle Charlie Collier's surveying crew in the forests of those early days of the white man in Oregon.  He married at a reasonably young age, after having attended the University of Oregon for two years.  He told me he quit school because he didn't think studying the Greek language would help him to make a living.

After Dad married, he managed a prune ranch (orchard) for his Uncle Gene at Dundee, south of Portland.  He was briefly in the feed business in Portland and then went to Eugene where he and his cousin Walter McCornack established a sporting goods store in downtown Eugene.  This was known to me as a child as the "Gun Store."

His family had already begun to grow.  He moved "The Condon House" from Eleventh and High Streets in Eugene west to Jackson Street, near Thirteenth and just across from the Lane County fair grounds.  That end of the street had not yet been reclaimed from the swamp and consequently was a shallow pond during the rainy season, which was every winter.

Although at this time he had gotten pretty well away from the farm, having, of necessity only a milk cow, I should mention that he had a life-long love of dogs and horses.  Once while visiting us when Ellen was a little girl, the three of us went through Langrell's Museum which was at Haines.  He noticed some pictures of livery rigs on the wall, drivers on the seats of buggies pulled by one horse or surreys or buckboards pulled by teams of horses.  He reminisced that when he was courting Bernice, my mother, when she was teaching at Saginaw, he would hitch his dark bay horse, Major, to his red-wheeled buggy with black top (a snappy outfit), tie a red bandana handkerchief around his neck, pull his hat down low over his face, so he would look like a driver from a stable, and go to Saginaw, which was just a little south of Cottage Grove, to get her.

He usually had a team, for farming, and a saddle horse, when I was growing up.  He once remarked that he had owned horses of every color, but never two of the same color at the same time.  He regarded it as a crime to ride a horse without currying and brushing first.  I remember the horse, Major, but I believe the horse that was his greatest pride and joy was a red bay gelding he called Cal, for Caledonia.  He was extremely sensitive and nervous, but classy, with seven gaits, such as walk, trot, gallop, pace, single-foot, and canter.  The women who lived along Stringtown, which is what the county road was called when I was a kid, enjoyed seeing him ride by.

One of my earliest recollections about Jackson Street, I was three years old, is of Buffalo Bill taking me and my brother Rod for a ride in his little buckboard drawn by buckskin (Palomino) ponies.  This came about because our milk cow was dry (Andy was a baby) and our parents were getting milk from Mrs. Wallace, who I understood was a sister of Buffalo bill.  She lived in a fine house on Eleventh Street.  They had a stable for their milk cow and necessary horses.  Automobiles were just coming into use.

Dad rode a bicycle to and from the store, a distance of about a mile on paved streets.  The street car made regular trips on Eleventh Street at that time, too.

When they first went into the sporting goods business, Dad and Walter took turns going fishing and hunting with the sportsmen.  As time went on, Walter went out more and more and Dad tended the store alone.  He also raised Mallard ducks for decoys, as the pond was near our house.  And there was always a dog around, an Airedale, a Pointer, and a hunting Spaniel, although only one at a time, and sometimes he would keep a hunting dog for one of their clients.  Finally Dad had to have his lunches brought in from a restaurant as he was alone and couldn't leave the store.

Hunters and trappers came in from the Coast Mountains and from "up the McKenzie" River (Cascade Mountains) to trade in their guns for new ones and to buy ammunition.  Of course there were deer, which people ate, but there were also cougars and bears and other fur bearing creatures.  No coyotes west of the Cascades at that time, though.  Once a fellow brought a small, black bear cub in from near the McKenzie Bridge.  Dad and Mother put a collar around her neck and fastened her to a long chain.  She could climb a post and crawl into a box on top of it, for shelter.  They fed her milk from a bottle with a nipple on it, but always so that she was at the end of her chain as she was a real rip snorter.  She ruined a shirt for Dad and a pair of stockings for Mother.  I think she ended up back in the forest from whence she came, as civilization was not for her.

After closing out the store, Dad went to work in the new Bank of Commerce, the third bank in town.  The other two were the First National and the United States National.

When I was about five years old, Grandpa died, and shortly thereafter, Uncle Gene died.  My brother Terry was born about that time, too, and hemorrhaged at the navel when he was three days old, caused, I believe, by a lack of Vitamin K in Mother's diet.  They knew nothing about vitamins at that time; they also gave no blood transfusions.  The baby had lost a lot of blood and all they could do was give him the best care they knew how and pray.  It was touch and go for him, and Mother and Dad worked and worried.  Mother had no help and washed clothes by hand.  She was worn out most of the time, so Dad would gather up a laundry bag of dirty clothes and take them to the "Damp Wash," a commercial laundry.  They came home damp, to be hung on the clothes line or dried in the house.

We frequently had meals of bread and milk in those days.  Sometimes Dad would bring home a steak from the butcher shop and cook it by throwing it on the coals in the little wood heater.  This simplified housekeeping and gave Mother more time to care for the baby.

Dad had to quit working in the bank as, after having two operations for rupture and the afore-mentioned events in his life, he had what was referred to at that time as a "nervous breakdown."  He awoke at night in a great sweat with his night shirt and sheets wet.

I believe part of this trouble was brought on because at one time his Uncle Gene had made a will in which Dad was named administrator of the estate.  Later a cousin or two had graduated in Law from the University of Oregon and the lawyer cousin (or cousins) was named administrator of the estate.  This would not have been so bad had not a lot of the estate holdings been in acres of yellow pine timber, those magnificent trees, out of Klamath Falls.  The cousins would tell no one the appraised value.  Dad had to make the best of that, as he could, representing not only himself, but two cousins also.  He had thirty-two cousins, he once said, and I believe he was referring to the McCornacks.  I imagine he did a pretty good job, but the cousin and/or cousins became wealthy men.  I infer that their selfishness, and crookedness helped greatly.

Dad made many trips to Klamath Falls at that time to establish survey corners and attend to business there.  He left Eugene on the Southern Pacific train going south.  At Dorris, California he had to transfer to a train going to Klamath Falls.  The Natron Cutoff (the Southern Pacific line going over the Cascades past Diamond Lake) had not yet been constructed.

About this time Dad bought a Saxon touring car.  It wasn't exactly black, as all cars were in those days, being dark with a greenish tinge.  He drove it for several years but it didn't seem to be much of a car.  Once we all went to Salem in it to a picnic.  It helped us move into the country and was the family car.  It had side curtains and no heater.

After the estates were pretty much settled we moved out to Grandpa's farm as the house was vacant and the work had to be done.  Grandma had rented quarters in town while her house was being built in the Grove.  She and Grandpa had planted a great many of the trees there.  It was the spring of 1919 and I think the therapeutic effect that moving to the country would have on Dad was perhaps as important as any other reason.  We lived there until the place was sold, at which time we moved into the three-room apple house which became larger as Dad built on to it.

Anyway, Dad bought a few ewes to lamb out and he got probably a hundred White Leghorn chicks which he raised under a kerosene brooder.  He pruned the trees and cultivated the orchard.  He sprayed at the proper times and managed the thinning and picking crews.  Cherries went to the cannery by team and wagon.  Apple boxes were made in which to sell the sorted apples.  Peaches weren't much of a cash crop, and Dad finally grafted them to prunes, but one year when there was a bumper year for peaches, and they fell all over the ground, Dad bought some weaner pigs to clean them up and then put them in the Grove to eat the bumper crop of acorns that fell from the oak trees that fall.

He gradually acquired more ewes and rented more land until he was running three hundred head.  He lambed and sheared them himself.  He also got sheep dogs to help with the work, Australian Shepherds and Border Collies.  He even raised a couple of litters of pups.

He bought a little peak named Murray which was covered with Douglas fir trees.  He had it logged, and then to keep it from just going back to brush, he bought and ran some white Angora goats.  Their wool was much in demand at that time for making upholstery for automobiles.  As time went on he became busier with his other endeavors and gradually cut way down on the goats and sheep, finally going out of business entirely.

After moving to the country, Dad performed another task.  He cut down scrub oak brush in the Spring pasture, clearing the land.  Larger stuff made great firewood for the stoves, and he piled and burned the rest.  We, as kids, enjoyed the bonfires as Dad made them into picnics.  Terry was improving with a little color in his face and putting on some weight.  He was pale for several years.

Dad got his health back on the farm working outdoors.  He was a great believer in fresh air.  At about this time he clerked sales for the Bank, such as when a farmer or his heirs were selling out.  He knew everyone for miles around from the Pacific Ocean to way up the McKenzie River in the Cascade Mountains.  Some times he was in charge of the Bank when the president was absent, as he was first Vice-president.

Grandpa had been a founder of the Eugene Fruit Growers Association and Dad became a director.  He was a pioneer in co-operative marketing, being associated with the Pacific Wool Growers Association, headquartered in Portland, for years.  These co-ops were founded so the growers could pool their products and get a market for them.  He was President of the Wool Growers for several years and used to attend the annual meetings of the Oregon Wool Growers.  Those fellows who lived west of the Cascade Mountains didn't think much of Burns, Oregon in January.  They thought Eastern Oregon was too cold.

Dad attended meetings, being a co-operator, and was a loyal and enthusiastic member of the Four Oaks Grange.  It provided the social life for both him and Mother.  The members were the guests for the card parties they held, where they played 500.

Some of the meetings he attended were Republican, and when he ran for Lane County representative to the State Legislature, he won.  He stayed with politics as long as he cared to, ending up as the joint senator from Lane and Linn Counties.  His name was at one time mentioned in the public print as being a good candidate for governor.

When he was still in the Legislature the Bank closed in the spring of 1932.  He lost $2,500.00 which was all he had invested in it.  The bank president was a fellow named Claude Rorer who had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth.  He finally committed suicide by shooting himself.  Dad spoke to me about that later, pointing out Claude had always had things easy for him, but Dad had been brought up in a harder way and was able to take it and go on to other things.

He traveled a great deal, telling me once that he had crossed the United States by train forty-two times and it was only on his forty-third trip that he paid his own way.  That time he went to Florida to visit Andy and family.  Before, his way was paid by co-operatives; canners or wool growers.  He attended meetings with the Gerbers of baby food fame.  He had a certain amount of leeway in choosing his route, sometimes going by southern routes and sometimes going by northern routes.

During the big depression in the nineteen thirties he took a job checking on the welfare program in Oregon.  He went to every county seat and wore out a blue Chevrolet-six roadster on that job.

He became manager of the Eugene Fruit Growers Association after the manager died suddenly, with which job he was associated for ten years.  He made arrangements to retire after Mother had a stroke or two.  He wanted to be closer to home to take care of her.

He became a director with the Intermediate Credit Bank of Spokane, which job he enjoyed, going to Spokane by train once a month.  Incidentally, he drove a Plymouth car from the factory to Haines for us and a Ford pick-up from the factory to Eugene for Terry, ostensibly to save money.  I believe he took both of those trips because of a spirit of adventure and the desire to learn more about America.

After retiring as manager of the Eugene Fruit Growers Association and becoming a widower, he let a horse-logger log six acres of his land which he thought was worthless, being scrub oak and brush.  He cleared $6,000.00 on that deal and said to himself, "Now you tight old Scotsman, why don't you take that trip you have always wanted to take from where your ancestors came?"  So he went, perhaps across Canada by train as he did that once, and then across the Atlantic Ocean on the ship, the Empress of Canada.  He went to the farm where his great grandfather had farmed as a tenant.  He went to the graveyard where the four faces of the central tombstone had the name McCornack spelled in four different ways.  He went to the town in County Cork where his grandfather Thomas Condon lived as a boy.  There was a Condon butcher shop, and he went to a stone quarry where he was sure his grandfather played as a boy and developed an interest in geology.  Perhaps the place that touched him the most was going to the coast of Ireland where his "little grandmother" had told him that on a clear day one could look across the Irish Sea and see the clothes flapping on the line in Scotland.  She was his Grandmother McCornack.

There were a number of things in life which he particularly enjoyed:  horses, dogs, sugar, oatmeal mush, and steak.  He loved and appreciated his family, his wife, three sons and one daughter.  Although he never mentioned anything in my hearing about the stillborn baby boy Mother had in February of 1924, he once remarked that we never really know when a baby joins a family, so he mourned.

He admired his surgeon brother, Carlton Condon McCornack who was elevated to the rank of Lieutenant General before he retired.  They would go by horseback or car on fishing and/or camping trips when Uncle Condon was on leave.

With advancing age his health gradually deteriorated, but he followed his doctor's orders, even to giving up sugar.  It was some satisfaction to him that he outlived in years everyone in his family except his Grandfather Condon, the pioneer geologist of Oregon.

He never cared for flying and never did, but he loved to ride trains.  Said he slept like a baby the further away from home he got.  His problems were left behind; but the closer to home he got, the problems came back to mind.

Although brought up in the Presbyterian Church, his father's church, he was not a life-long church member and rarely attended church, to my knowledge.  He always shaved and put on a blue chambray work shirt and work trousers, clean, of course, to remember the Sabbath day, and then went to the pasture to salt the sheep.  I think he leaned more to the Congregational religion than the Presbyterian.  At the time he traveled so much he went to church every Sunday when he was away from home.  He always attended the closest one, and he stated that if the service was in Latin, a great deal of which he had forgotten, it made no difference, perhaps merely adding to the solemnity of the occasion.

After he had attained this splendid reputation, he once told me that when he was twenty-seven the best he could do was to get up and second a motion in a telephone meeting!  So he had the satisfaction of knowing he was a successful man!