My duties were those of storekeeper, taking care of stock and supplies, and keeping record of them. I lived, that first summer, in the ranger dormitory (2) and we had our meals at the Mess hall. I lived up there with a bunch of characters, some of them temporary and some of them that worked pretty regularly. They were graded men in the ranger force and they were great for having fun in the parks. It was, all in all, a very interesting summer. I toured the park, took horse rides around the park a time or two. Then came the first winter. I very much liked it. I was on a temporary appointment, you understand, even with the Civil Service, and one thing led to another and Mr. Canfield asked me if I would like to stay in and jumped at the chance. But the only opportunity was that of a cook for the crew that he was putting together for the winter. The idea behind this, which was different than previous (years), was they wouldn’t open the park for passage or for traffic (3). They would keep the roads plowed during the winter so that in the spring there wouldn’t be this tremendous, long drawn-out job beginning in May of opening the many miles of road, to both the entrances and around the rim. The idea was we’d keep the road open to the rim, Annie Spring to the West Entrance, such as we could with one rotary snow plow. That was the variation for the crew that he was holding on. There were six of us all together. Other than the couple at the lodge, Mr. and Mrs. Richardson, there were no other people in the park (4). They [the rest of the park staff] in Medford. I was not exactly a cook, but I went home and took a short course of a month, a leave of absence, vacationed before we settled in, and came down and reported for duty.
(SR) My aunt gave him a course at real baking. I wasn’t a cook either, but I had some recipes and I gave them those recipes. We boned up on a lot of things and tried a lot of things.
(DR) I came on prepared to cook for this bunch of fellows. They weren’t the best meals, and I found out real early that they would eat steak and potatoes three times a day if you gave it to them. And that’s a fact. I was brought up with the idea of a balanced diet and one day I thought I would do something really different. I cooked them salmon soufflés and served it to them. They sat and grumbled and looked at it. One fellow said under his breath, “They’ve got a whole house full of steak and potatoes and you feed us this stuff!” My heart went right to my shoes.
