He seemed too smart for that.
Yeah, I think so. That was certainly my feeling because I lost a couple of positions, all right. But I might have lost a lot more positions if I hadn’t sat up and really talked for them. In some ways, though, as far as Yellowstone was concerned, Horace was living about twenty years behind times. He still thought it was a good idea to have an enclosure for the antelope and this sort of thing out at Antelope Flat which is up above Tower. He thought this was a great idea. Horace never could understand why he couldn’t find a ranger right behind him all the time, too.
I know he is a lawyer by his education. Having not a natural sciences background could have made his administration, as far as the park, a little different.
I’m sure that it did.
Chase kind of seizes on that in this book (29).
I have not taken the time to read the book.
I think we’ll probably steer away from that source!
O.K.!
Let’s see, “My responsibilities as far as Crater Lake was concerned.” I accompanied the regional director on a lot of his trips, too. And I was down here several times when we talked to the concessionary, Ralph Peyton. I believe Ralph’s dead now. I don’t think it was a secret to anyone that Ralph Peyton was an alcoholic. It was well know in the Park Service that if you could talk to Ralph before noon you could get a pretty good conversation. But if you talked to him in the afternoon, you might as well forget the whole thing, because he would forget the whole thing. He would evidently start drinking somewhere around noon that was the end of it. You couldn’t accomplish any business at all. I was told this by several people and I did not initiate conversations with him. But here again, the Concessions Branch was in my bailiwick and region, too. I had one or two concessions people all the time. So, we dealt with that, too.
When you were a ranger here did you help do a lot of those reports that I’ve seen from the late 40s about the condition of the lodge?
Yes.
