The 4,500 Square Foot Cabin

Pop designed a log house for our family home. He bought the logs still growing from the Cassano Ranch, felled and peeled the logs in the forest the hauled them out of the gully with a cable attached to a '27 Dodge truck. Three trees at a time, he loaded them on the flatbed of the truck and over a dolly by using block and tackle all by himself. The heavy ends of the logs swiveled on the flatbed as he negotiated the turns.

I helped very little with the actual construction except for hauling lots of rocks to fill in the concrete forms of the foundation and concrete piers. I was busy in school and that was Pop's full time job. When he wasn't working on the house he was scouring the countryside for materials that went into it.

The wood counter tops were clear sugar-pine bar tops from some of the old saloons in North Bloomfield. The tile for the kitchen counter and bathroom was from a man who went broke setting up a saw mill in Garden Valley. Heavy timber came from Pauly's old barn that was next to the new U.S. Forest Service.

After school was out in the afternoon there was a daily visit to the site to see the progress of the day. The framing for the interior walls were up and half of the outside log walls were in place in early 1936. We moved in that winter with black tar paper covering all the interior walls and ceilings. The wood lath was in place in the kitchen and sun porch only. These were heated with wood stoves!