The letter of October 19, 1915 was the last missive for that year. I then have three empty envelopes with 2¢ postage. Three are postmarked Eugene, Oregon. Feb 15-16, Feb 29-16 (someone doodled on it), Mar 13-16 (with a side note When Dale was in Grantsburg with Parke & Harry– Except that was during the summer of 1915). The last one is postmarked Vida, Oregon, June 19, 1916. Vida is just west of Eugene. I place the following letter inside this envelope despite the odd date in the upper right corner. I know Dale didn’t write it in 1919 – he didn’t live that long.
Vida, Ore. June 18, ’19
Dear Folks,
I must write this in a hurry and get this away at on o’clock with Brown when he goes to the store.
I saw Grace. She’s changed a lot since I saw her last. Next morning I came out here. Got a ride on the running board of a car as far as the fish-hatchery so I had to walk only about seven miles. I was here in time to eat breakfast about noon.
We have been working hard the past week. It takes about an hour to climb to the slashing and about an hour to come back. We work ten hours slashing between times. The work will be finished about the last of this week.
Dad you know lots about measuring land. How would you measure a slashing that is not in rectangular form? Brown says that we should measure the distance around it in rods, divide that number by 4 times the number of rods in an acre, and square the quotient. I say that we should take the number of rods around it and treat the piece as a circle, find the diameter, and the area in sq. rods. then divide that number by the number of sq. rodds rds. in an acre. We want some scheme so that we can figure 16 acres out of a piece 1100 yds in circumference.
One of Brown’s neighbors wants us to cut seven acres of clover for him. We could get about $1.50 per day and board. We may do it, but it would not be a very long job just to run the scythe over seven acres, would it? How many acres should one man cut in a day?
We went fishing last Sunday afternoon an hour or so and caught a few small ones. There are three men from Portland on the creek to day but they cant catch anything. It is funny to see them try.
I am standing the work fine, better than I expected. The wages are $1.50 per diem but I will not collect over $1.25 if I have anything to say about it.
Did you hear that the cannery at Newberg had been burned and that the company is working on the new building both day and night to get ready for fruit.
We have nothing in sight after the hay job. We may go down to Portland and look around. There is nothing here but section work and the board is high.
I must stop now. Your letter hasn’t been here yet for this week. I will send my grades as soon as I get to Eugene.
Dale
Comments: who wants to take on the math question posed?
Slashing – Clearing up the left over debris after logging (commonly referred to as “slash”)
You may note Dale said they would go “down” to Portland when Portland is clearly to the north of Vida. He is correct: the Willamette River flows north and Portland is downriver from Eugene.
Jaci Dawn 
I’m thinking that it took him two days to write the letter: June 18 and 19? Moving that slash was mostly done by manual labor. Man and mules. Sometimes a steam powered winch would have been placed nearby (aka Steam MULE), but those took days to move from one site to another.
Even the trucks of the time were manual…manual steering, manual transmission, manual brakes, etc!
Those were some tough folks!
(lots of photos on the internet, many on pinterest, but I refuse to log in just to look at photos.)
Reading this comment made me realize I should have done the same research and inserted a hot link so the reader could go look at an article on “slashing”. I think because I have lived around logging for over 35 years now, I don’t actually think about having to explain it to someone outside of my sphere.
And, yes – I *think* he meant June 18 & 19, but since the letter is 99 years old, I figured I’d be safer letting the reader make that conclusion. The envelope is postmarked June 19. 🙂
That should be “Steam Donkey”. 🙂
They both are doing the math the hard way. (maybe first generation common core?)
Well, if the circumference is 1100 yds, that’s a diameter of about 350 yds, so area is about 96214 sq yds. (D=C/Pi and A=Pi x R squared).
At 4840 sq. yds/acre, that converts to just under 20 acres. (19.8).
They want to clear only 16 acres or 77440 sq yds. That’s about 314 yds diameter or 986 yds circumference.
Meaning, they clear a smaller area.
OR figure for their bid of 16 acres and modify it by 1.25 and clear the whole thing.
I was wondering if anyone would get that! Geometry was never my thing, but I was pretty certain they were both coming at the problem from the wrong angle (pun intended). Yeah, probably first generation common core (which is actually how *I* do a lot of math – I’m just surprised that now they’re teaching it that way…)