Home, Home On Fire Road
by Norm Maxwell
Homeward Bound
Quiting time at the salt mines. I secure for the day and walk out to my motorcycle
in the deepening gloom. The old flat twin fires reluctantly and settles into its
ultra reliable putt-putt-putt. I give the Costco shopping frenzy a wary eye as I
ride to Coburg Road and negotiate the lights onto Beltline for the short blast to
I-5 South. The traffic gets worse every year but it thins as you pass Lane Community
College. I open the throttle and the old bike responds. The pathetic cagers peer
from behind windows and turn up their heaters. They know that they are wrong and
that God intended them to ride on two wheels instead of four. By the time I reach
Creswell, it is raining lightly. I idle through town and open it up at the western
city limit sign. It is truly dark now and the temperature hovers at freezing. I try
not to go too fast as deer like to step out in the road at dusk. Camas Swale Road
turns into Hamm Road because a sign says so and I drop a gear and then another to
ride over the curving top of the hill and down the other side. It is trying to snow
at the crest. It turns back into rain as I shed altitude. I grab high gear and the
BMW bellows with delight. Its mufflers don't work as well as they did 20 years ago.
A few miles later and I am at the junction of Ham road and Lorane Highway. No cars
in sight so I make a left and ascend Stony Point in the snow flurries. Down the other
side and open it up for the long straight stretch into the big city of Lorane. I
downshift at the "city" limit sign and the exhaust vollies and thunders.
I reflect that when we get too overrun with Californians we can paint out the excess
letters in LORANE so it reads L A . I stop at the post office and dismount, heaving
the bike up on its stand. The bike is idling flawlessly now that it is at full operating
temperature. I go in and check the mailbox and stuff the handful of Christmas cards
in the side pocket of my cammo pants. The snow is getting serious now and it hisses
when it hits the protruding cylinders of the black bike. My legs are wet from the
knees down but my feet are still dry.
I get on and push the machine forward until the stand springs up. I put it in gear
and get across the oncoming lane of the blind corner quickly and then bear right
onto Siuslaw Access Road. The pavement is now white but there is a set of tracks
in the slush so I center the machine and ride slowly in the dark watching the snowflakes
hurl themselves at me through the beam of the head ligt. After two miles I make a
left onto Fire Road and the snow stops as I ride under a thick canopy of fir boughs.
A couple of bends and I come out into the open and it is snowing again. Down and
up past Ira1s old house. He died recently and I will never see him out on his riding
lawnmower again. His obit said he fought in WW II and was a pilot. I wonder if he
flew during the war. Another little hill and I shut off the gas so the carbs will
be empty when I get home. Past the old green house that was one of the two original
farm houses on Fire Road. I turn right into our gravel drive and roll past the house.
The two porch panthers jump up and commence sharpening their claws on their favorite
railing support under the cover of the tin roof. This is a ritual greeting and must
mean hurry up and let us in. The engine stops as I brake on the concrete pad in front
of the shop. I get off and open the walk through door and push the bike in and park
it next to the BSA and the first year liquid cooled BMW. I could drive a car the
30 miles to the salt mines and back but I usually ride as I get better gas milage
and I have always prefered a motorcyle. My personal best is 19 degrees when the pavement
was dry. I take off my gloves and helmet and cold weather hat and put them on the
bike seat and shut the door. The snow is getting serious now. Let it. I'm Home.
A History of Fire Road
The first white man to legally "own" the end of Fire Road, I'm told, was
an American Civil War vetreran who was given a donation land claim as a reward for
his efforts. I assume he must have fought for the Union as I don1t belive the South
was in a position to hand out DLCs. I don't know what the natives thought about this.
The vet willed it to somebody with the stipulation that he be taken care of on the
place until he died. In 1908 Arthur Kelly bought the place for eight hundred dollars
in gold coin. It was sold to another Kelly and then to the Milnes and eventually
it was bought by a couple who gave it to their daughter. The nearby Siuslaw River
changed its course about then and you can still see its old meander loop that acts
as a slough and refuge for beavers. The Chambers Logging Company built a rail road
line nearby that went past the place to Cottage Grove to deliver big logs to the
mill there. Millions of board feet passed over the line but now the tracks are gone
and Weyerhauser owns the 66 foot wide easemnet. The trestle across the Siuslaw has
fallen down but most of the pilings are still sticking out of the river. The daughter
sold it and another Milnes bought the place and sold it to his girlfriend for 3one
dollar and love and affection.2 Apparently Milnes died and the girlfriend married
a Shurgar (probably German for sugar) who dammed the creek that now bears his name
and built a sawmill. The house burnt down and so they built another one that still
stands. The apple orchard must be close to a hundred years old. Apples were an important
crop in and around Lorane. Now the old apple trees mostly feed the deer and the odd
bear that comes by at night. W. W. Hawley petitioned the Lane County Commissioners
in the teens to build a road along the south bank of the Siuslaw River so he could
move his apples to market easier. It doesn't look like they ever finished it but
apparently they did build it as far as the Shurgar place. Perhaps the low ground
flooded too often and they decided to build on the other side where the Siuslaw Access
Road is today. There are no pilings in the river like at the RR easement crossing.
In the late 30s or so The Forest Service put a fire watch station at the junction
where the roads splits from the modern Siuslaw Road. Somebody started calling W.
W. Hawley Road the Fire Station Road and finally Fire Road. The original building
is still there and has been remodeled so that it looks much newer and serves as a
house.
I don't know much about the house to our east other than it was built in 1912. I
am pretty sure that it was the second farm house to be built in the Fire Road Valley.
It is on 35 acres of Siuslaw flood plain and has the biggest scotch broom I have
ever seen. It is commonly 12 to 15 feet tall and almost six inches at the base on
some stems. It infiltrated from the rock in the old RR easement. The easement bisects
our property and I have planted 2 and a half acres of trees between the abandoned
rail line and the river. The trees struggled for years but are finally getting big
enough where they will stand over the grass next summer. I wrapped tinfoil around
the bases of the trees to keep the voles from gnawing the bark like little beavers.
On this side of the easement, we keep Karen's horses. I don't know why she has horses
with no land but there it is. We shut them on the neighbor's land in the winter so
they don't stomp on our drain field when the ground is soft. Along about June we
let them on our side of the fence and they eat down the tall green grass.
Somebody dumped four roosters at the end of Fire Road in early March. We first saw
them the day after Sharon's surprise birthday party in early March. Dozens of cars
were parked along the road past our place so Sharon wouldn't see them when she and
Bruce drove home that night and everybody jumped out of the woodwork. Somebody probably
seized the opportunity to dump a few roosters. Coons quickly got one of the birds
and then another. The third lasted a couple months and the fourth made it almost
to Thanksgiving. We were sort of getting attached to the old red rooster even though
he did like to crap on the porch. He would come to our back door and crow in the
morning until somebody threw him a handful of birdseed. The horses would try to lick
it up off the ground if you didn't throw it on this side of the electric fence. Nowdays
nobody farms out here other than raising a few cows. There are still reminders of
Fire Road's agricultural past here and there like the half century old implements
sinking into the ground next door. Now everybody drives to town every day to work
a job. I find this depressing. But it's the price you have to pay. It is time to
put the ornaments on the sequoia at the beginning of the driveway. A few years ago
when I first did this, the tree was about 6 feet tall. Now it is fifteen and takes
a ladder to dress it up with the cheap ornaments from Goodwill. I don't know how
much longer we can maintain this tradition. I planted fir trees along our perimeter
almost ten years ago and they are big and green now. I have taken to pruning the
tops out of them to encourage them to hedge. I planted one line on the old fence
line and when I finally had the place surveyed, discovered that the fence and true
line formed a very flat X. So I planted another line of trees on true line. The old
fence was falling down so I built a new one.
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