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the side-rear of the McNulty Pioneer Home Museum at H and 7th. Our memorable two-hour taped interview followed. That evening Ruth held her ice-cream social to honor some of her elderly Indian friends. That night I slept in her guest bedroom. The next morning she prepared tea, toast, and jam in her tiny kitchen. Then I said goodbye and left for Requa. I would never see this colorful unstoppable old lady again.

In a light-weight sweater, thin cotton slacks and low tennis shoes, Florence was ready when I arrived at her door. She asked me if we could drive out to Larson’s Docks first. She wanted to check on the dynamiting. We climbed into my wagon parked behind the Inn, then dropped down onto the dock road, continued along the estuary shore, and arrived on the outer edge of a large terrace backing against tall cliffs. I parked, we got out. From here, we had an unobstructed view downriver. The air was cold and clear. Larson’s Boat Docks was already battened down for the winter: Rental skiffs were piled in tall stacks nearby. Forty or so rental trailers nestled against the cliffs. A second fenced-in empty space awaited the arrival of next year’s campers and motor homes. Further inland, a row of one-story buildings lifted seven feet off the ground and fronted by wood stairs, walkway and railing, awaited a flooding river. Signs on their doors read Evinrude Motors, Coors and Oly, Mens and Womans, Canning and Smoking, and Restaurant. In the other direction, at the base of a treeless ridge, sat two dump trucks and a tractor. A third of the way up were claw marks and open cuts, the visible reminders of the daily excavating. The place appeared deserted.

But it wasn’t. Someone was there. As I would learn to my discomfiture at Pat Gussin’s Halloween party tonight.

Unsuspecting, Florence and I ambled slowly inland. Immediately she began to reminisce, “Here was Timeri. Here, a fort where two soldiers in the 1880’s kept White squatters off allotted Indian lands.” I thought, here also, before 1933 and the outlawing of commercial fishing and canning, were Kiamath Packing’s five processing buildings, company headquarters, tall docks, and rows and rows of tree-shaded net racks.

At the base of the cliffs Florence picked blue michiemas daisies from among the wet vegetation. We walked back at my car. Again able to see downriver, she noted how this year’s river mouth and high tides had damaged docks, tipped over boats. “The deepest banks used to be on the other side, the fisherman’s net racks were right here.”

Her words recalled the ever constant change in the lower estuary.

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