Discovery at the Museum

    I visited the Deschutes County Historical Society Museum with my family today for the first time ever.  I learned a lot just minutes after walking through the front door.   My big sister Karen realized that she attended second grade in the museum building that was built as the Reid School.  Five minutes later I learned that the Reid school building and the building next door, the Cascade school building, (which I attended as a child for a short time), was built by the Brosterhouse brothers.  They were well known masonary contracters.  Thirty seconds later I discovered that I was raised for the first 15 years of my life in the Brosterhouse family home.  Henry Brosterhouse's chicken ranch.  We raised horses there but I could see chickens running amuck.  My father bought the modest two story house on five acres in 1963 for around $10,000.00.  The house was small for the 60's but probably when it was constructed, one of the finer homes of it's time.  I need to reserch the year it was built because I haven't learned that yet.  Our property had a unique little stone garage building about 50 yards from the house.  It had thick stone walls.  I remember it was always warm in the winter and super cool in the heat of the summer in that garage.  It was kind of dark and a little scary when I was a child but I have fond memories of family parties with a live band in that garage.  My parents and my cousins had a country and western band.  I also remember home movies of my favorite uncle sporting my dad's "ten gallon hat" (a huge "Hoss" style cowboy hat) and acting very silly at that party.  I do remember alcohol being involved.  Those were some good memories that I revisited due to our trip to the museum today.
    The museum walls were covered with old photographs of the Brook-Scanlon logging trains that carried the logs from the forest of my sacred place (deer camp) into the mills at what we currently know as the Old Mill District.  Old photo's of hunters dressed in vest, jacket and bow tie decorated the walls as did pictures of logging camps that housed hundred's of working families in the forest southwest of Bend.  My dad lived in a logging camp for a time as a child with his family while his dad and other family members worked for the company.  It was so cool seeing photos of the places my family has come from.  It makes me want to dig deeper into local history, my history.  This is who I am and where my family came from.  My roots grow deep.  I'm proud to have been raised here.  Just strolling through the rooms today it's obvious how hunting was such an important part of the local history.  The mule deer herds were abundant so harvesting meat was an easy task as long as you were a decent marksman.  My book "A Sacred Place" is being considered for the book store.  It tells of local history from a personal perscective.  I recommend that you visit your local museum.  It helped me to have a greater appreciation for my community and it's a place of great discovery.

This is a photo of me and my big sister Karen playing at what used to be a Brook-Scanlon Logging camp.  No this picture isn't in the museum.