How did the Park Service get water to fires in the park?
Well, one of the things Bill Godfrey did was to put me on fires control. In those days, you went on a fire and you just got up on the rim and looked around and spotted where it was off in the timber and you took off for it. You could be going to a fire at any time of the day or night. You might spend all night, but you didn’t get any extra pay for it. You just got paid for what you did in the daytime. I’d come back from working on a fire all night and have breakfast and go back to work on building the motorways. You were dedicated to your job. I think it’s far different, the way things are today. I think, at that day and age, government employees, oh, they do now, too, I know, but as far as paying you really every minute of the job, in those days, you had to have integrity that your job was 24 hours a day regardless and you got paid for eight.
Steve had asked about getting water to the fires in the park. The only fire I ever worked on at Crater Lake where water was used was one in my second season of ’31. There was a fire on the trail going up to the summit of Wizard Island. I can still remember that was parked a pumper down the trail. At that time, the trail went down to the lake from in front of the cafeteria. I got to the point I couldn’t handle my end of the pumper anymore. So George Christianson, who was an All-Coast tackle for the University of Oregon and, by the way, the whole football team at the University of Oregon worked in the park in ’30 and ’31. But George took over my job of handling my end of the pumper and thanks goodness because he was big enough and strong enough to accomplish that. We did get the pumper down and we got water on the lower end of that fire, but the rest of it took using shovels.
