BOB CHRISMAN
BC: My name is Bob Chrisman. I was born in Enterprise, Oregon in June
of 1938. My father was Cecil Chrisman who was a local attorney. I have
gone through my education, grades 1 through 12, in the Wallowa schools. I
graduated from Whitman College in 1960, and from Walla Walla College
with my Masters Degree in 1968.
GT: So your father, Cecil, can you tell me a little bit about your family-how did they come to be in Wallowa County?
BC: Well, my father followed his brother who came to Wallowa County in
probably about 1932 or 1933, and was the district attorney in Enterprise at
that point. My father graduated from law school at the University of Oregon
and decided that he would come to Wallowa and practice, with his brother
being in Enterprise. His primary reasoning was that he would develop a
bunch of clients here in Wallowa. He had a law school friend, who settled in
La Grande, and he would develop a bunch of clients in La Grande, and then
my father would move to La Grande and they would have a partnership. But
his friend was never able to garner very many clients, so he ended up leaving
and my dad was left here in Wallowa, where he spent his entire lifetime as a
practicing attorney. In fact, he was still practicing when he passed away.
GT: So he was here right about the time the Bowman-Hicks Lumber
Company was going out of business?
BC: Yes.
GT: And was he--were you aware--when he came was he aware of the
African-American population in this area? Do you know?
BC: Well, he was here--Mr. Ashby was the man that basically brought the
black people here as far as cutting trees. I think my dad represented the
Bowman-Hicks Lumber Company and he became very good friends with
Mr. Ashby. Basically, Mr. Ashby kind of involved my father in the moving
of the people from Maxville into Wallowa. That’s how basically our family
relationship was with the black community in Wallowa. Mr. Ashby called
my father and wanted to know if he had any problem with dealing with
black people. Dad said, well, I don’t know any of them, so I don’t know
whether I do or I don’t. But, he said, I certainly have no problems with it.
Well, he said, there is a little piece of ground down there, which is now the
Wallowa park, and he said you go buy it. He said we are going to move
these houses in from Maxville. You will rent to them then. Dad said okay,
and my dad bought this little piece of ground. He said a couple of years
went by and they moved the houses onto the ground, and he never heard
from Mr. Ashby again
Finally, one day he called my dad and said, “Well, they are paid for now.”
Those houses--he had been taking the rent. He had brought those--basically
what they were was old railroad cars--and had put them in there. So then my
dad got in the rental business. He basically owned the little town down
there. But along with the rental business, he became the attorney and
confidant of most of the people who lived down there. Basically, through
the rest of his life he represented them and they called him Lawyer
Christmas. He just really had some very, very good friends.
Ivoney Sassinett (sp) was probably one of his favorites. After Ivoney
reached Social Security age, he didn’t trust anybody, particularly with
money, so he used to drive over from La Grande and bring his Social
Security check into my dad, and my dad would walk down to the bank and
cash it and bring back the cash and give it to him. Then he would go up the
street and buy his groceries at Shell Merc and then he would go back, until
he would be back the next month. He got sick one time and the hospital
called my father and said, you know, you have got to come out here and help
us out. Ivoney has got all his money in his hand and he won’t turn loose of
it unless you are there to get it. I happened to go with my dad that time, and
we went in and there were two people in the room--Ivoney and somebody
else. My dad came in and as soon as Ivoney saw him, he just held his hand
out and handed him this big wad of money. I could see this guy in the other
bed thinking, gosh, what’s this guy doing? Is he robbing this poor old man?
But that was kind of the relationship they had. He just totally didn’t trust
anybody but my dad.
The Marsh family, of course they were my age, so I went to high school with
Amos and Frank. I totally enjoyed it and I think it was a good experience
for me, being from an area that didn’t have non-white kids to go to school
with and learn to know them and like them and hang out with them. I knew
them probably better than if I had gone to a large school where everybody
was kind of anonymous, you know. It was a good experience.
GT: Why do you think that relationship between your father and the black
community was so special?
BC: Well, I think primarily, from what I observed as a young kid growing
up, my dad was a pretty compassionate person and I have no idea of how
much rent they paid, but most of them--the people who were down there-they were working for a salary and they didn’t have a lot. My dad, rather
than take money, he would have them do things for him. He was fair with
them. I think that’s primarily why they thought so much of him and trusted
him.
GT: Do you think his friendships went beyond just the business? He was a
compassionate man in his work, but did you think the relationships were
deeper than that?
BC: Oh, I think very definitely. He considered them his friends. He had no
feelings of, from a segregationist point of view--my grandfather had the
same kind of attitude with the Celilo Indians. His being sheriff and he had
to deal with a lot of them, you know, bad ones and good ones. Chief
Tommy Thompson was my grandfather’s best friend. I think that carried
over to my dad. My dad was just pretty color blind. He just didn’t really--I
never heard him say a negative thing about anybody of color. ))
GT: So, how about your father--did he have any of the blacks over to dinner
at his home?
BC: No. The reason that he didn’t was because Mr. Ashby said that’s not
the way you treat blacks. He said, well, you just don’t have them to dinner.
My mother would always try, and they wouldn’t--when they would come to
our cabin at the lake and fall trees and do that kind of thing. They would
bring their own lunch and they would not come in and eat. They kind of
knew that that’s-- I guess, Mr. Ashby told them, I don’t know. I don’t
remember him. My dad talked about him a lot, but he never called him
Newt. You always called him Mr. Ashby, so he must have been a very stern
man and had--I have no idea what his attitude toward the black community
was, but I have a fair idea because he thought, well, that’s just the way it is.
GT: What other types of southern tradition standards did Mr. Ashby sort of
line out for your Dad?
BC: Well, he said, you know, you don’t want to let them get behind on the
rent, you have got to be stern, and everything. Well, my dad could not-that’s not the way he operated. But, basically, I think mostly it was the
social aspects of it. He said you just don’t want to be socializing with them
and everything. Well, here, it didn’t make a lot of sense. Frank and Amos
were at our house all the time as little kids. The adults, I don’t know if he
told them that or what, I really don’t know why they seemed--they just
wouldn’t come to the door. They would sit out on the porch and have their
lunch and do their thing. So that was kind of the way it was. I think, well,
he was the boss. I am sure that he held a big stick. You had better behave
the way he thinks the way you ought to or else.
GT: I have interviewed a lot of amazing people in this town. I consider the
people I interview and I sit and break bread with--this is really my family
today. They have honored me by really telling the story from their heart-telling it honestly. One of the phrases that comes up a lot is that the southern
people gave them names to refer to them by. So, a lot of the folks I have
interviewed didn’t know the last names of the people. They said, well, there
is Nigger Bob and Nigger whatever. That was how they prefaced the names.
Was that something that you had heard as well?
BC: No, I didn’t. My father called them by their name and I knew their
names. There was one fellow they called Snowball, and I know he was a lot
of trouble and they finally--I think Pa Pat said you don’t need to be here
anymore. They kicked him out of the community down there. But I don’t
know who he was, but I heard people talking about it--I heard my dad, he
referred to him as Snowball. I have no idea what his name was or who he
was. I do know, some of my uncles were from the south and some of them,
you would hear them talking about--I was never really aware of who they
were referring to.
My dad, he was doing--like the Sassinetts, Bobby Sassinett. The Sassinetts
had a--somebody came through here and they had a child. They, I guess,
wanted to get rid of it, and so they left it with, not Ivoney, but Odell and
Ruby. They were gone for a couple of years, and Odell and Ruby just
basically adopted this child. Well, the people came back and wanted their
child back. They had no legal entitlement to the baby, so they came running
to my father, you know, what can we do? My dad said, well, really there is
not much we can do. But he said I will find you a child, so he did. He found
this little boy who is named after me. Bobby Sassinett. I don’t know any of
the--where he found the child or anything about it, but within a couple of
weeks, they had a child. So, he did things like that. I never, ever heard him
refer to those names. I am sure he knew who they were, but no he never did
do that.
GT: Do you recall any names of the African-American folks that had
families, whether just their last name, or their first names--do you have any
families that you know?
BC: Well, of course there were the Pattersons and the Marshes. I have
never been very good with names. And, of course, the Sassinetts. Those
three families that I was well acquainted with and was as adults, because
after my dad passed away I had to handle a lot of the things he had been
handling for people. I know the Sassinett family in particular--they used to
come in about every two weeks to have me get something untangled or
whatever--they wanted to buy a car or do this and that, so I did that kind of
thing for them.
GT: Yeah. So tell me about Pa Pat.
BC: Pa Pat was just about the most wonderful man that I ever met. He was
just had this wonderful sense of humor and he just--he always wore bib
overalls. The front of them was always worn out. So I asked him one time
why. He said, “Well, when you are as fat as I am, I can’t step over a tree, so I
lay my stomach on there and I pivot--so I wear my britches out that way.” I
just thought he was great. I kind of got to re--after I moved back here, I got
to know him again. I had known him as a little kid. He was pretty much the
mayor of the--what he said when this Snowball guy, whatever his name was,
and it might have been Minor, but when they said he couldn’t live there
anymore, it was Pa Pat that said that. He said, you are not behaving right so
you have to go somewhere else. Yeah, he was the minister and the leader
and just a good guy.
GT: Tell me something that was indicative of Pa Pat--if you saw this person
walking down the road, how would you know that was Pa Pat? Besides the
clothing…
BC: Because he would have a smile. I never saw the man mad. I had to
haul him up to the hospital one time. He used, when he would have a
problem, he would call my partner or I and we would take him up to the
doctor. So we got him in there and Harley Scholz was the doctor. He said,
“You know Pa, you have got (I think he had gallstones and they were pretty
painful)--you are just going to have to quit eating all that bad food or it’s
going to kill you.” Pa Pat said, “Let me tell you something, Dr. Scholz. (I
think at that point he was 82 or 83 years old.) “You will never get as old as I
am, so don’t you be telling me how to eat!” And then he just laughed. He
was a great guy. Ma Pat, she passed away soon after I moved back, but I
don’t remember seeing her anywhere but at the house. That’s when Lilly
May Hadnot, you know Macy, when she came, she came to take care of Ma.
She was a niece, I think, of Ma.
GT: After they both passed away, she didn’t leave?
BC: No, she got the house. You know, the community built that house for
them.
GT: Tell me about that.
BC: That happened after I had gone off to college and was teaching, but the
old house burned down. So, whether the insurance was inadequate to fix it
back up-- a bunch of the local guys got together and they donated lumber
and they brought--whether the sawmill--I don’t even know that there was a
sawmill going at that time--but anyway, they built the house that is there
now. It was pretty much built with volunteer labor. Pa was still alive. I
think Ma was still alive at that point, and Macy, she was there. When Pa
passed away, she ended up with the house and she owned it when she passed
away.
GT: That triggered another thought--none of the people really owned their
spaces back then.
BC: No, right.
GT: Was that because of the law or because of other things?
BC: No, I don’t think they could afford--and I don’t know--now, see, the
Marshes did. They owned theirs. But whether they did initially and then my
father sold it to them, I don’t know. But I think the wages being what they
were; they probably just couldn’t afford to buy things. They could afford
the rent. So I think it was more economic than anything else. I think when
they finally got to the place where they could afford it, that’s why they
moved to La Grande. Because there was quite a community there, and I
think most of the people who left here and moved to La Grande, like your
father--I mean he bought a house out there. It probably made it a little easier
for them there than had they stayed here.
GT: I realize that Maxville actually officially closed in 1933, but there were
still people living up there until the mid 40s. What do you know of that?
BC: Yeah. I don’t--the only story that my father (and I don’t know what
year it was) he took the last train out of Maxville. They had a big deal, you
know, that this was it and they were going to tear the tracks up and
whatever. He went out there and did that. His other Maxville story was
when he first came here; he of course was looking for something to do. He
got a letter from Sears & Roebuck. They said they wanted him to collect
some money from this baseball team in Maxville. They had bought these
uniforms and they hadn’t paid for them. So dad gets in his car and drives
out to Maxville. Big Amos was the captain of the baseball team out there.
Dad said he took one look at Big Amos and he decided he didn’t want to
collect that money! He turned around and came right back to town.
GT: So what else have you heard about this baseball team? This is
something I have been trying to research--I finally got a picture of a baseball
field and people playing.
BC: Really? I’ll be damned.
GT: Do you know any stories of the baseball team?
BC: The only thing that I know is, again, definitely second hand from my
father and my uncle Verd Baird that had Baird’s Tavern down here. I guess
nobody could beat them. They had the best baseball team in the whole area.
Big Amos was just an amazing athlete. I guess he was just something else.
I can remember looking at that guy--my gosh, he was just a perfect person
when it came physically, just this big, strong man. I guess he ran fast. My
uncle Verd, he played a lot of baseball. They had the town team baseball
teams and whatever. He said, ah, we quit playing them--they just beat us so
bad. I do know they won about every game they ever played. But that’s all
I really know about that.