Peggy Cook Tape 2 1
Q: March 12th, 1981. I am interviewing Peggy at her house.
Once again I am talking to Peggy Cook.
Is there anything that you would care to talk about first or
should we just go with questions I have for you.
A: Well, until I get used to it, I think we should go with questions.
because I would ramble all over the place.
Q: I want to start off talking to you about your grandparents. You
have said that your grandma came...you didn't know if she was born in
covered wagon
Minnesota or in a / , can you tell me anything that you might remember
from her, her experiences or her life that she might have told you about?
A: Well, she never talked much about her very young childhood but
she talked about grandma and her...', and her. . .grandpa and her homesteading
in Rose Valley and which the homestead was surrounded mainly by Indian
people and the nicknames that they gave them, and the kind of lifestyle
they lived as they lived in a tent there homesteading, That type of thing.
Q: What made her come here, did she come with her family.
A: The family.
Q: Sisters and brothers...
A: Yah.
Q: So her family had been in Minnesota and her dad came...Do you
know why he decided to..?
A: I have no idea.
Q: Was she willing...and her mom, were they..?
A: Well her mother must have been willing but grandma of course, had
no choice. She was either just born or born on the way out, you see.
Q: The reason I ask is because we re trying to find out about how
women felt about coming...pioneering because there s a good chance that the
idea was the men s idea and many of the women were very homesick and hated
to leave their friends.
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A: Well I think in their case though an extended family came out, it
wasn t just her and her husband. There were lots of brothers, sisters, aunts
and uncles came out like a whole clan type of thing.
Q: In a wagon train? Can you tell me the year that was?
A: Yes, it would be in the 1880 s sometime.
Q: Once again, you have no idea why they.. . ?
A: I would suppose for land and better jobs and a better life than
what they were having in Minnesota. That would be my assumption.
Q: And I meant that why didn t they settle someplace else...Oregon
, you know, why did they settle on Rose Valley?
A: Well, I think that they just fell in love with it when they saw
it and it is a beautiful place.
Q: What makes it so beautiful?
A: Well, it s close to the Columbia River, it s close to the Cowlitz
River, a lot of woods and they were loggers. The land was cheap and fertile.
A good reason for homesteading, very cheap land.
Q: Did your grandparents or grandfather do any logging in Minnesota,
or was this just something he picked up out here?
A: Well, I think they were a family of loggers, so it was just a
continuation of their skills that they had there.
Q: O.K. so, 'they might have moved here because of the logging
industry.
A: that could be.
Q: Did your grandma work?
A: No
Q: You said you were raised by your grandparents.
A: Yes.
Q: And they lived....How old were you when they passed on?
A: I was 16 when granpa died and 21, 22 when grandma died.
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Q: Were you very close to them?
A: Yes.
Q: Did your grandfather have any other jobs besides logging?
A: No, that's what he did all his life.
Q: Did he make a lot of money out of it?
A: No.
Q: Can you tell me who he worked for and...?
A: Well, mainly the gypo loggers...
Q: Which is?
A: Well a gypo logger doesn t work like, for a place like Long Bell
or Weyerhaueser, they go out and log their own stuff and then take it in and
sell it on their.. .
Q: In other words, independent.
A: You betcha. In those days they were called gypo loggers.
Q: Do you know why they were called this ?
A: Well, if you were in unions today and...if you were in a skill today
like I am in painting and you didn t belong to a union, they would call you
a scab. So it's the same idea. You have to belong to " the system". They
tag some kind of a name on you.
Q: Right. So did your father, or grandfather run into any problems
because he was an independent logger?
A: Not until in the 40s.
Q: And then what happened?
A: Then they tried to organize everybody, you know, you belong here
and you have to sign up here and give so much of your pay to this guy to
get a parcel of woods to cut down, you know, so they ran into that a lot.
And during the 40s he became a raftsman...he rafted logs instead of cutting
them.
Q: Why the change?
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A: Because you could work for several different people doing that and
not have to give them part of your pay. It was...rafters didn t get as
much money as fellers did, but still it was steady year around because they
always dumped the logs in the river and they had to be rafted to be sent
down to the ships.
Q: Well, when your dad was...grandfather...1 11 never get it together
here..When he was working as a logger, as the years passed did it become more
and more difficult for him to fell the trees, you know, in terms of less
trees around, or ...?
A: Not particularly less trees, but less trees available to gypo loggers
because they were bought up by Weyerhaueser or Longbell, Crown Zellerbach
and all of the big companies and they wouldn t let them in.
Q: Can you tell me any values you might have gotten from your grand-
parents, and if you would also tell me what your childhood was like?
A: Well, I would like to say that I got a lot of values from them
but then my lifestyle probably doesn t bear those out. But values as a kid
I can recall...I can go into that.
Q: Sure.
A: Prior going to school, we were taught to read to read from the
bible. The first book I ever read was Pilgrim's Progress. That kind
of thinking was in our home, a lot. Which becomes a burden later on.
Q: What, when you talk about religious thinking?
A: Yeah, P_ ethic, hard work, you know, you get your
identity by real tough work. The value system itself was if you meet
someone make up your mind you're going to like them, chances are you will.
And I think my grandmother, Edger Guest was a poet during those times
and grandmother was an uneducated lady, but her favorite thing for us
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kids at all times was a little poem that he had. Let me live in a house
by the side of the road, be a friend of man. And that has stuck with
me all of my life. I would say that is my biggest value right there.
Try to be a friend.
Q: So, are you a religious person then?
A: I think I m spiritual.
Q: Can you tell me something about that?
A: I do not care for organized religion. Although when I grew
up I was in the Salvation Army alot and they taught me music and I even
took training to be a missionary. But, I really think I'm more
spiritual than religious. Religion to me is form, and shape and
organization and structure and spirituality to me is every moment of your
life.
Q: Would you say that you believe in a supreme being?
A: Oh yes, I believe in god. I believe in Christ. I believe
in myself because of that.
Q: Your grandmother was French/Indian, your grandfather was
Norweign. Was there, did they get any flack for .
A: Not a bit, there was a lot of mixed marriages there. Alot
of the inner marriages as I was growing up of Indian and Whites. There
was nothing.
Q: The kids weren t called half breeds or whatever?
A: Well if they were, I wasn't aware of it.
Q: What were your grandparents relationship. Can you tell me
how they interacted with each other.
A: Warm and humerous. Dictatorial at parts, at times on my
grandmother's part. She was a firey woman. Very firey, and would say
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she was the matriarc of our family. Really.
Q: Can you tell me some things about your grandmother in terms
of things she did, her matriarcal, why she was a dominant.
A: Well grandpa spent a lot of time, this is because of the
physics of how he was gone so much. He would go up into the woods on
a train at night, on a flatbed thing, on Sunday night and not come back
until Saturday night. He would be home just one day a week. And so
she ruled the home, period, and him. Very much. Although he was an
independent man too, but grandma word was law when it came to the house.
She made her own soap, we spent hours just picking berries, we spent
hours fishing, we spent hours going up into the woods and finding nut
trees and gathering nuts. She spent alot of time doing volunteer work
although at that time it wasn t called volunteer work, helping the poor
which let me know that I wasn't poor. And yet we were terribly poor.
We never felt it, we didn't know it.
Q: was accepted?
A: No, it, she never thought in terms of us being poor. And
everyone she helped was probably better off that she was. But they were
poor, we weren t poor.
Q: Do you know why?
A: I have no idea, it must have been something in her background.
Q: What kinds of things, volunteer work did she do specifically?
A: She would go to the county hospital, take care of usually
older people. Make blankets for them, she would go to, we had what we
called then a circuit rider, who was a doctor, who rode a circuit around
to see people, and he would stop at our house and he would tell her
people that in this valley or over that hill that they needed certain
things and she would go around through the community and collect them
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and see that they got to them. She did those kinds of things.
Q: In terms of her, upbringing, that she is a native american,
did she miss her tribe, her family left behind in Minnesota as far as
you know?
A: No, I don't think so, because there were alot of aunts and
uncles there that were part of, that came out with her. She was a baby.
So she could not uh.
Q: But she basically lived in a white world?
A: White and Indian.
Q: What I'm trying to get at is how much of her being a
Native American was apart of her every day existence. Did she
recognize this as you know, someone who would be interested then
in finding out about their culture or did she
A: I don't think so, no. I think that probably the, which
is all inclusive for all the family is was raised with, all of these
aunts and uncles and so forth. Was, the big thing was how we would
live today and are we going to make it tomorrow. I think that s the
big thing right there.
Q: Do you remember any stories that your grandmother might have
passed on? Was she not an active talker?
A: Not really, and we were what you would call a warm family
but a distance family, aloof from each other.
Q: Not physically touching
A: Not physically touching. We worked hard, everybody worked
raft
grandma stayed home, I quit school at 13 to SK2? logs, my uncle who
I was raised with, my mother's younger brother, was two years older,
he quit at 15 to do the same thing. When I say work you go out in the
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morning at daylight you come home at dark and you go to bed. There
was not alot of family communication. Although everything was family
oriented. Now that sounds opposite but it's true.
Q: How do you fell about that?
A: I think it was a wonderful experience. In retrospect. Growing
up I was lonely a great deal of the time. And I'm sure my uncle was
too. And probably my grandparents. When you expend nearly all of your
energy to survice, that was what they were doing then, there s not much
left for the other things.
Q: Do you feel they were loving to you and towards each other.
A: Oh yeah, sure.
Q: Can you tell me about their children?
A: Well I can tell you about Ed, wlio I just absolutely adored.
years
He's two older than me. He lives in he died two years ago.
Has 8 kids in the same old place where grandma and grandpa homesteaded.
Then there was an uncle Bob whom I only met once, I met him once, yeah.
He was a fireman in California, and because of hard times my grandmother
gave Bob away to her sister to raise,' she had five kids and we weren t
making it. I wasn't there then, but they weren t making it, so she
gave uncle Bob to her sister to raise, so the family really didn t know
Bob. And then another uncle was a logger.
Q: Did she feel guilty about sending him
A: I think she probably did. Yeah I think she probably did.
Q: She she talk about him.
A: No, very closed mouth lady.
Q: a third brother.
A: He was a logger.
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Q: Did he work with your grandfather?
A: Yeah, all the boys worked together with grandpa.
Q: Any other children?
A: My mother, my aunt who is still alive. The only one of all
of them that is still alive. She'll be 71 this year.
Q: You said you were particularly close to one of your uncles
how about to your aunt.
A: Well I never say much of my aunt until I was 16 years old and
my grandfather died, because she lived in Bremerton. And then grandma
moved up to Bremerton with her and left me on the houseboat to finish
out a school year.
Q: Tell me about the houseboat. Did you live there?
A: Yeah, we d been there 6 years.
Q: And was where?
A: On the Cowlitz River in Kelso.
Q: Would you had been able to sail it or whatever.
A: Oh no, no this isn t a houseboat that is anchored to the
bank.
Q: How come they lived in a houseboat?
A: Well because in the late 30 s they couldn t pay the taxes on
the land and the county took the land away from them and the only thing
the grandpa could get was, he got this job rafting logs and the guy says
we 11 give you this houseboat and put it in your name, so we lived
in the houseboat and it was ours and up above us was the rafting
that we worked on everyday. So that s where the houseboat came in.
Q: How did you like living on a houseboat?
A: I loved it.
Q: What did you love about it?
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A: Well I like to work I was doing to begin with, I hated quiting
school, that really bothered me, that really hurt me, but we had to do it.
I liked to row and I liked to fish. I just liked it.
Q: You liked to be outside?
A: Yes, a whole lot.
Q: Did you ever hear anyone make any derogatory remarks because
you lived in a houseboat, not in a house.
A: Oh sure, there s two sides to the river in Kelso, the west
side and the east side. The west side is the poor people. You batch ya
shanty town, but either you acquire a thick skin or you become a loner
and thank god I became a loner instead of getting a thick skin.
Q: Would you say that the wealthier kids then, would
you or.
A: Oh sure.
Q: Were you close to your brothers?
A: No I didn t meet my mother until I was 12, and of course I
didn t meet my brother and sister until then either. Then I only saw
them maybe once a year.
Q: How was your mom. Do you know anything about your mom?
A: Yeah, I know quite a bit about her.
Q: Was your mom close to her family?
A: No, my grandmother took me, my understanding of this is,
that this woman where my mother was working in Portland, phoned my
grandmother and said that there was a baby going to be born, and grandma
went and got mama and I was born at their place in Kelso. And my
grandmother took me and told my mother never to come back again. And so
I didn t see my mother until as I say about 12.
Q: Can you tell me
A: How it happened you mean.
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A: Well, I was in my school room and this woman came in,
snockered out of her head into the classroom and said I want my
daughter. And the teacher pointed to me. I couldn t believe that
was my mother. It was a shocking experience, it really was.
Q: Because she was drunk.
A: I think so, yeah. And I didn t know the rest of her history
either. But and things I heard aunts say when they didn't
know I was listening, I hope she's not like her mother, you know, this
kind of thing, and then to see her like that, it was really shocking.
Q: I wanted to ask you, about your mother, your grandmother
took you in from your mother. Did your grandmother ever regret taking
you in.
A: I don t think so.
Q: Did you ever feel you were like a burden to them.
A: Well, I think I was a burden to them not for that reason.
I was a burden because times were hard, there was never quite enough
food, you know, I think for that reason. I choose to believe that.
Q: How about your childhood growing up. Would you characterized
it as happy or struggling
A: Struggling, and can't say it was happy no.
Q: What were the things that made it unhappy exsistence for you.
A: I never ever felt like I belonged to any place. That's number
one.
Q: Did your grandparents tell you, did you clearly understood
that they were not your parents.
A: Yes, but I didn t know I was illegitimate until I got married
and I went to put my name down and my grandmother said you can t use that
name, and I said why, then she told me, at 17. The history.
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Q: Well, you had met your mom at 12.
A: But, I had met my mom at 12, but grandma had given me, mama
had married Mr. two years or so after I was born. By the time
I was up using it as a last name, grandma had given me his last name,
which was not my legal name you see.
Q: You were telling me about your happiness or unhappiness as
a child.
A: Well most of my time was spent if I could find a book was
spent reading a book or rowing a boat or hiking or working. Very
little time with other human beings, or peer groups, very little.
First place I didn t fit in, I didn't have the clothes, I didn't have the
money, I didn't have the proper residence, you know that kind of thing.
Still goes on today with alot of people. I m sorry but it s true.
Q: Was your grandfather literate?
A: Yeah
Q: And your grandmother was not?
A: Yeah, she was not literate.
Q: So, can you tell me something that you might know of your
mother's life, her childhood, prostitution,
A: Well,
Q: And what you think, kind of woman she was?
A: I think she was probably the warm hearted woman I 've met
in my life. And it took me, I took care of her when she was dying of
cancer to find that out. To really find out who this woman really was.
Her childhood I think was enjoyable for her, they lived on a farm at that
time. They had the regular things of a farm, and I think mom enjoyed
that alot. That s what she talked about alot in her last year.
I think she was so much like my grandmother, so independent, that there
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was no way in hell that they were going to get along. Whether she got
pregnant in hometown where I lived and then went to the house of
prostitution, how that happened I have no idea, but my thinking is she
must have gotten pregnant, why I say that is just this year, I have
found out what my maiden name really was and that two blocks from where
they lived in this country lane was a guy by that name who left shortly
after. My oldest son did all of this for me. I just, it got to bothering
me so I phoned him and said would you be surprised if your mother was
an illegitimate, he began to laugh, I said don't you dare laugh at me
he says, no, it's wonderful to have a woman of mystery. And he went
through all of these things and he found that, so I really think that she
became pregnant while she lived with the folks. And then left because
of how that was looked upon in those years.
Q: How come you didn t know her name, if you took care of your
mom, knew her somewhat. How come your weren't ever told you.
A: Well that was after I was married. That she died.
Q: I know, but your maiden name would be something that she might
have imparted to you.
A: No, she didn't. She didn't talk about it at all.
Q: You didn't ask?
A: It was really hard. I never called mother, "mother" until
the night before she died. I asked her I said mom is there any, or I
said Grace, is there anything I can do for you, and she said I will
die happy and with no pain if you will just once call me mother. It was
very difficult. I'm mean not to call her mother at that point, but it
was a very difficult time. Mainly mom talked about her childhood.
Q: Can you remember anything that she said?
A: She talked about a horse that she loved, she talked about
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her brother that got sent away, that really hurt her. Her and Bob were
very close.
Q: How old was Bob when he was sent away?
A: I think he was was two years younger than mom, and he was
nine and so mom was eleven. She talked about alot of hurts, she also
talked about alot of people that were important to her when she was
growing up. People I never heard of course.
Q: What kinds of hurts specifically can you, besides her brother
being sent away. I m with that also did she then have the fear
that she might be next?
A: She probably did have that fear and that it did happen.
Either she went of her own free or grandma said get out.
One of the two. So that it did happen to her. She and her only sister
my aunt, never got along, ever.
Q: How come?
A: Well I don t get along with aunt Jack either. Aunt Jack was
almost blind when she was born and still has a great deal of difficulty
seeing, so she was really spoiled terrifically by the whole family.
Anything she wanted and to have done for her my mother had to do. And
if anything ever came up it was my mother that was wrong. It was that
kind of thing. I think she felt like I felt in grandma's home, like I
didn t quite belong.
Q: How about your grandfather, what role did he have in raising
the children.
A; I was pretty close to my grandfather. And I think he was
jHQOQ^E close to his two girls but not to his three boys. I m they could
go out and and do everything together, the boys, but tenderness
grandpa was with the girls I m sure. Cause he certainly was with me.
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Q: So would you say that you were closer to grandfather than
your grandmother?
A: Oh sure, he's the one that told me the facts of life, he's
the one that went and bought my Kotex the first time. He talked to
me about boys, grandma never did that. No way, you don t talk about
those things. Terrible stuff.
Q: So your grandfather was all more, human
A: Human
Q: He was a little easier to get know and love.
A: Yes.
Q: So when you were born, ok, and as a young person you were living
through the depression. Can you tell what the Depression was like for you
and your family?
A: Well, it was alot of scrounging for food, alot of times.
WPA times, if you were lucky enough to get on it. Little yellow, blue and
and I think green and white cards that you went and got flour, sugar and
milk and sometimes a pair of shoes. If you were lucky. I can recall one
time grandpa somewhere or other was able to get Eddie a pair of shoes
and he took him to the store to get them and he came back and the next
day he didn't have any shoes. And I think it took four months until they
got money for me for shoes, and then Eddie all of a sudden found his
shoes. Said he wouldn't wear them unless I had them. I can remember
that. That kind of scrounging, but also that kind of knit togetherness,
I mean that s really caring. To me it is.
Q: How about the community neighborhood. Did you feel that
people helped each other or.
A: Oh yeah sure. If they hadn't of none of them would have
survived.