Page 10 - Forest Grove Years 17 Feb

Not far from the store to the south stood another frame building which I recall being
called a feed shed. In the early 1950s it was converted to a temporary residence for the
Belton family. Stan Belton and his wife looked after their daughter who was suffering
from advanced cancer and three grandchildren, Ronnie, Oleen and Bunty. I think their
last name was Johnson. They were on again, off again playmates of mine for a couple
of years. I have no idea how they managed in that building without plumbing or elec-
tricity. Stan Belton did some horse logging for us, but he had no other employment that
I was aware of.
In recent years I reconnected with Ronnie through the Forest Grove website and as well
with his sister Bunty. She was most upset with me because I had used a photograph of
her on the website without her permission. After some back and forth I took it down. I
gather that she had experienced a problem on the internet with the compromise of
some of her personal information.
There were a number of other buildings on the property some of which were original,
and others constructed after 1945. The original buildings that stand out in my mind in-
cluded a large log barn which was probably one of the earliest structures and built
about 1922. It consisted of three stall areas on the lower floor. The middle stall was
filled mostly with hay and seemed to be occupied only by many barn cats none of which
were approachable. They might best be described as feral cats. There was nothing re-
markable about the other two stalls. Above the main floor was located the hay loft
which had a particular attraction for me in the form of a heavy rope which dropped
from the roof at the rear of the barn. One could swing out on this rope and then drop to
the ground or return to the barn. It was a useful place to take visiting children for half
an hour of distraction. The log barn is now gone and replaced by a more modern struc-
ture.
Behind this barn further up on the hill was another hay barn. It was an open structure
of no particular interest and do not recall that it lasted very long before being torn
down. I vaguely recall an icehouse not far from the log barn and even ice that was cov-
ered by sawdust allowing it to last well into the summer months. I think that the ice
came from Canim Lake. This building must have had value before the acquisition of
proper refrigeration but soon disappeared. On the other side of the log barn was a
chicken house which was, even by my uneducated standards, very poorly maintained as
were the poor chickens which resided there winter and summer.
The one newer building which was constructed during our early years stood not far from
the Lodge kitchen. It consisted of a laundry area, a woodshed in front and a sawdust
loft on the upper floor. Sawdust could be dropped down a shute or passage from the
loft into large and heavy buckets that were then carried into the kitchen where the con-
tents could be added to the hopper attached to the kitchen stove. It was especially im-
portant that the sawdust be dry as wet sawdust burned poorly and produced excessive
smoke.

The only other rooms that I remember were the small space which housed our Lister
diesel light plant and a small upper room separated from the sawdust loft by a parti-
tion. This room contained a fascinating collection of ammunition for Bob Parkin’s many
guns. There was no order to this collection and I once got in big trouble for giving sev-
eral of these bullets to a friend called Peter Barons who lived down on the old Ford
place on Biss Road. He took them home and showed them to his father who then called