The next summer I moved from that house, which was one of the stone houses, into a small house on the bank near Annie Spring and lived there all that winter (8). The next year they decided they wanted me at headquarters again, so they moved me into another one of the stone houses. That made three different houses I lived in during the three years I was there.
When I was single I didn’t live in a house at all. I lived in a bunk over the Mess hall (9). One of the things that the cook was very fond of was lamb stew. He used to use a little more fat then I like in lamb. That got me to the point where I do not like lamb even to this day. [This is due to] all the lamb stew I ate in the Mess hall at Crater Lake.
What was the social life like in the winter?
The social life was playing card games, with the families. As I said, families were real close. I guess you could call them “impromptu parties.” It was pretty common to go to somebody’s house or they would come to ours. We called them parties or informal get together. We played cards a lot. Radio was the main type of communication we had, of course, there being no TV in those days. We had telephones which connected you with the other people at headquarters. Anything outside of that was a long distance call which we didn’t use very much.
The park had an electrician and the power company was responsible for the line to the park boundary only, not inside the park. It was a pretty common event in the winter time or during a big storm for the power to go out. Usually a tree across the line or something, because the right of way that they cleared for the line was minimal. They were thinking more of the scenic values than of getting electricity to headquarters. I’d say two or three times every winter, at least, something would go against the line and we would be without power. The way we usually handled that was the ranger would start patrolling that until they found the problem, then we would go out to the road and get the electrician to go take care of the problem. Handing electrical wire was not in our job description. The line don’t go along side the road but is back probably a quarter mile from the road, so as not to be visible. This is good from the scenic standpoint, but not very handy when you are trying to find a break in the line.
