Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/70

 54 Fred Lockley them to the mint. That is why they are so scarce now. "My uncle, Truman Bonney, settled at Hubbard. He was what was known in those days as a calomel and quinine doctor, as that is what he prescribed for every- thing that ailed people. "My father died in 1854. Shortly thereafter my mother married Orlando Bidwell. Our claim joined A. R. Dimmick's claim. John Dimmick, father of Grant Dimmick, and I went to school together. The first time I ever saw the inside of a school house was when I was 14 years old. "In those days they used to have big times at the barn raisings. When Dimmick's barn was built it was christened the Queen of the French Prairie because it was the biggest barn on the prairie. Neighbors, with their ox teams, came for twenty miles around to help at the barn raising. One incident of that barn raising I remember very distinctly. There was a man there named Zack Fields who offered to bet a $5 Beaver coin that no one could raise his head from the ground by his ears. It looked as if it would be easy, but when a man put up a frVe-dollar gold piece Zack greased his ears so the man's fingers would slip off, and Zack won the bet. "Father paid §12 each and sent five of us children to school there. The teachers didn't have to know much about books, but had to be able to whip the big boys. I saw a teacher tackle George Dimmick, who was 18 years old. It was a battle royal, for George put up a big scrap. The teacher wore out a six-foot hazel rod on him. "I put in most of my time making cedar shingles. My father's donation land claim on the Pudding river bottom had forty acres of fine timber on it. We split our cedar timbers for both Ford's and Riser's houses. We got $10 per thousand for the cedar shingles. People came from all over Mission Bottom and French Prairie to buy shingles of us. "The first time I was married I was married to Cath-