Vardanega

Shortly after arriving in America, Joseph came to Columbia County, Oregon. John recalls that his dad’s first job was digging coyote holes at Tom Watters’ quarry at the north end of St. Helens. So-called coyote holes were holes dug laterally out of a rock cliff with hand tools, and deep enough to accommodate a dynamite charge sufficient to blow down an ample amount of rocks for a crusher machine. Joseph’s next job was at the Pope and Talbot Mill in St. Helens where he had to clean out the sawdust from around huge gang saws. He kept this up until one day he began to spit blood from breathing too much dust. St. Helens physician Dr. Edwin Ross told Joseph he needed to find other employment, and then offered him a job on his farm just up the hill from the quarry, which he took for a while. His next move was to the Boesel farm—then located in Warren on the east side of Columbia River Highway across from Fullerton Road.

One of John’s earliest memories was from 1932 when he helped his dad move cattle across the highway and up Fullerton Road to a 97-acre farm located where Slavens and Hazen Roads intersect, and where John still lives. Neighbors Arnold Tarbell and Joe Cuzzolin helped out with the cattle drive. Paul Adams owned the farm, which the Vardanega family rented for five years before buying it in 1938. The family milked a herd of twelve to twenty dairy cows and put two or three ten-gallon cans of milk out along the road every day for the Darigold Milk truck to pick up and take to Portland. John and his siblings went to Warren School for grades one through eight, and walking a three-mile round trip was their means of transportation.

When high school started, a bus came around and took the students to Scappoose High School—which today serves as the city’s middle school. Electricity did not come to John’s part of Warren until 1940, so milking was done by hand until a few years later—he still has some of the several kerosene lamps that he used to keep supplied in those early years on the farm. He earned pocket money sacking potatoes and helping out on Pete Marracci’s truck farm—a 100-acre piece of land directly across from the Vardanega farm.

John turned eighteen years old in February 1944, and was a high-school senior when Uncle Sam said the United States Army needed him. He wanted to at least graduate first, and was able to receive a deferment—with the caveat that he attend school one half-day and work on a farm the other half. Driving a bus for Scappoose schools was another job that he took that same senior year, and one which particularly stands out in his memory because it provided the setting for the first time he asked his future wife for a date. One day John arranged his bus stops until only one student remained—a high-school girl by the name of Gene Elizabeth Schuring, and who, suffice it to say, accepted his invitation to go out. But World War Two loomed large, and the budding romance was temporarily interrupted when his draft notice came two days after graduation. On 12 June 1944 he was on the way to Fort Lewis for basic training.

John was assigned to the United States Army Corps of Engineers as a heavy-equipment operator, and spent the bulk of his two-year service in England, France, Germany, and Belgium.

Among his assignments was a clean-up operation in the aftermath of allied-bombing raids in Berlin. Buildings barely left standing needed to be knocked down, pill boxes destroyed, and the entire shredded, crumbled, and broken wreckage of war shoved out of the way for the occupation forces. During the summer of 1945 he was in Potsdam, Germany, where he helped clear the ground for the Potsdam Conference. It was there that Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt met for the purpose of deciding how to punish a defeated Germany for instigating the war (Germany surrendered on 8 May 1845).

When John was mustered out in June 1946 he received $250 pay and a bus ticket home from Fort Lewis. He said there were few job opportunities in Columbia County after the War: “My first employment was planting filbert trees for a neighbor.”

In 1947, John and Gene were married. That meant a home was needed, and so in 1948 he and Gene built a house on Hazen Road in Warren, and as the family grew they built another house nearby on the corner of Slavens and Tarbell. Their final move was to a home they built in 1974 on what is part of the original Vardanega homestead. John built all three houses, including two barns and two workshops, with lumber that he logged and milled on the Vardanega property. Naturally gifted with constructing and repairing anything on the farm, he made his own sawmill, and in the absence of electricity to the site he ran the saw blades from a tractor-driven belt.

For steady employment, John went to work for the Parker-Schram Company—the company owned and ran what is now Scappoose Sand and Gravel, and it also contracted to build roads.

He began working in the road-building side of the business, and kept busy at that for several years. After the company dissolved in the early 1950s, he went to work for Roger’s Construction Company and became a project supervisor for construction on U.S. Highway I-84. His job extended from Troutdale, Oregon to Mountain Home, Idaho. Responsible for directing 100 employees, John had to drive the entire distance many times, and some years put nearly 100,000 miles on the company pickup—many nights were spent sleeping in the same vehicles he drove all day. After twelve years of burning the candle at both ends, John quit Roger’s Company and came back to Scappoose. He worked at Scappoose Sand and Gravel running the rock crusher end of the business for several years, and then left in 1979 to work on his farm.

For the most part, Warren has always been a residential/farm area, but one business John remembers well was the Lund Brothers store on Old Portland Road (east side of Highway 30) across from the Warren Country Inn. The Lund store was an ongoing business from 1918 to 1947, and sold just about everything a rural community needed. The Warren Post Office was located inside the store, and there were other businesses in the block, including a liquor store and Thornton’s nursery—the Vardanega farm still has some trees that were bought from Thornton’s. He also remembers the store had a stage and dance area on the second floor where Warren School teachers would sometimes take him and other students to rehearse for school related programs—in those days the school did not have a stage.

Trains ran by the store on the same rail bed they use today, and John said a nearby water tower was used to replenish steam locomotives. Because there was no official stop at the store, the mail was sent in a canvas bag that was attached to a pole by the tracks; when the train came by a metal arm would extend out and catch the mail bag. This was done on the way downriver, and then again on the way back for the upriver mail. The Lund store building was constructed around 1910, and first began operation as Erickson’s store. Unfortunately, the entire structure burned down several years ago, and took a sizeable piece of Warren history with it.

A Strong Family Legacy

Four children have graced the Vardanega household: Barbara Gene, a Portland State University graduate and public-school music teacher for the past thirty years; John Peter, an Oregon State University graduate with a degree in civil engineering who both farms and contracts engineering work for private and government agencies; Lorelie Anne, a University of Oregon and Oregon Health & Science University graduate, who is a physician with Emanual Hospital; and Josie Elizabeth, a graduate of Western Business College, who is a consultant with Hilton Hotels.

Gene, wife and mother, passed away in 2010, having endured the debilitating effects of a stroke twelve years earlier. In addition to domestic responsibilities, she and John worked together on the numerous tasks needed to make the farm a viable enterprise. Along the way, Gene became involved with the PTA, provided leadership for Girl Scout troops, and for more than two decades contributed her skills on the piano and organ for services at the Warren Bethany Church. Outside-the-farm she found employment as a secretary for the Scappoose School District, and as a tax-preparer.

The Vardanega family evokes all of the wholesome attributes that history has assigned to America’s agrarian-pioneer spirit—self reliance and integrity are two of the most conspicuous elements. Barbara, the oldest of the Vardenaga children, includes this snapshot of her father’s past and present:

Dad was always able to invent a solution for what was needed. One of his creations was a combination tractor/lifter/loader that he christened “The Jitney.” Some of it was pirated from defunct vehicles, and part or it was just plain invented and manufactured from scratch in what we recognized as “The Shop.” Dad built one of these workplaces in at least two houses, and spent a great deal of his life in that space. It was filled with amazing pieces and bits, smelling of grease and hot metal and was somehow very mysterious to us kids—a sort of wizard’s lair. We weren’t allowed to be in there by ourselves, there were always projects afoot, and every tool imaginable. Dad could run them all, from drill presses to welding equipment, lathes, pneumatics, and he wielded them all with skill and confidence. He repaired all of our vehicles, farm implements, and anything that needed it from that important space; he still spends several hours most days working there. Other projects included building an enormous hay dryer and a water-wheel power station on a creek that runs through the farm.

In 1982, John and Gene started Cedar Springs Farm, and the name continues to represent quality hay and grain crops. Horse owners, for example, are known to drive hundreds of miles for the farm’s oats, hay, and alfalfa. Although now a business he operates by himself, John continues to grow and harvest crops on more than 100 acres in the Warren area. A few days before his eighty-ninth birthday, I stopped by to ask a few more questions for this history. No one answered the door, but there was noise coming from amidst a cluster of barns and outbuildings. A few minutes search and the source was revealed—a tractor was hoisted aloft, and there was the senior Mr. Vardanega working on the engine.