Theodore M.
The valley of the Crooked River was surrounded by the Ochoco National
Forest, and we surveyed dam sites up on Big Summit Prairie and Little Summit
Prairie, and I was in my element, because here I had my maps to work on and
I was studying and figuring out the way to run the canal lines. We could
actually get out and drive through the sage brush, and sometimes we'd get big
chunks of sage brush caught under the bottom of the Chevrolet cars we were
driving. Somebody finally got the idea of welding a steel plate under those cars
so you could drive through the sage brush without getting caught.
I was up there until about the middle of June, and the weather was really
getting good then, so we finished the field work. Then we had to work in the
office. It was ever thus! You worked out in the field when it was rainy and
cold and miserable and windy, and then when you get all the field work
finished, you have to go in to the office and work up your notes while the
weather is good outside.
Green-Puyallup Project
In June I went back to the office in Pendleton until that office closed in
September. Then I transferred to Salem, Oregon, and was sent to Puyallup,
Washington, which is a little town about 10 miles east of Tacoma, where I was
surveying for the Green-Puyallup project. This was to be an irrigation project
which would use water from the Green River and the Puyallup River to irrigate
some of that fertile valley where they grow good crops but suffer from lack of
rainfall in the summer.
All of this was part of what they called the "Food for Victory" program at the
Bureau. This was how the Bureau justified this work during the early years of
World War II. By this time it was the fall of 1942~and it was thought we were
going to have a long war and that we'd need the extra food production before
it was over.
People now tend to forget the shortages of food during World War II.
Everything was rationed, not just the meat. You had red points for meat and
you had blue points for fruit and you had green points for canned vegetables.
There were shortages of almost everything, and you did not have much choice
in what you bought in the store. There was very little butter. You could buy
margarine, but you couldn't buy yellow margarine. They had that mix so when
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