Don DeFreese was born February 5, 1912, the eldest child of Mark DeFreese and Ethel King DeFreese. He grew up on a farm near North Bend, Oregon. He was to have three siblings, one brother and two sisters, the girls not coming to the family until Don was a teenager. He and his brother, Babe, had chores like every farm boy of their day. They went to a little, one-room school three miles down the road; one teacher, seven students, each in a different grade. The Little One Room School was written about this period of his life.
While growing up, Don had all kinds of pets. It seemed that he grew up loving animals and the animals returned his love. Once he caught a tiny squirrel. After a neighbor had put out poison and killed all the older squirrels, this little fellow had made his way out of the nest and to the upper ground. Don put the little guy in his shirt pocket and took him home where he raised him on cow's milk and Cream O Wheat. When the squirrel was older, he spent the dinner hour on Don's shoulder, eating whatever Don ate; roast beef, bread and butter, cooked carrots or anything else being served. On one Thanksgiving Day, the squirrel ate so much turkey and dressing that he got a bellyache. He stretched out on his back, his belly bulging and bloated, and groaned cried for over an hour. Don used this memory as the idea for his Thanksgiving poem.
Don's horse, Chubb, a high strung gray, was another pet which was raised on cow's milk. He was brought to western Oregon as a colt before being weaned from his mother. When Chubb was nine years old, he could still drink a fourteen quart bucket of skim milk from the separator without coming up for air. Then he would chase Don all over the barnyard wanting more and rubbing his snotty nose all over Don's back.
Once when Don's dad was working on the truck engine with the hood up, Chubb touched his nose to the spark plug. He squealed, turned around and gave the truck a kick, and took off, clearing a five-foot corral fence without touching the top rail.
Chubb followed Don wherever he went; but when he got tired, he would stand still and fall asleep. His head would fall slowly until his nose would touch the ground. There he would balance awhile, weaving back and forth, finally falling down. He would come to, with a most sheepish look on his face, whereupon Don would laugh and Chubb's feelings would be hurt. This prompted The Old War Horse poem.
Big Grown Eggs was written as a result of barnyard pranks. Don and Babe would put duck eggs under a setting hen to watch the fun. A river went by the chicken yard and the baby ducklings would swim out into the water. The poor chicken hen standing on the bank would scream herself crazy thinking the ducklings were going to drown.
A pet hen pigeon lived in the house in her own little nest. She wouldn't go outside if other pigeons were around but would look out the window and create a big fuss. She kept trying to call a male in to live with her but with no success. She would lay an egg, sitting on it faithfully for a week or more. Finally someone would take the egg away and she would be terribly upset. Don put a big brown egg under her and she hatched a baby chicken. She hunted for food but couldn't get the chick to eat it. Also, the chick would get out of the nest and run around on the storeroom floor, driving the mother pigeon crazy. Such was the fun of a farm boy in 1919.
Don's parents had a place in Marshfield, Oregon, so they moved into the city. Don had a job as a paperboy on the Front Street from 1920 through 1925. He sold his newspapers in all the saloons and upstairs rooming houses. Although his mother worried about him, he was friendly and the Madams all liked him, watching after him so that he didn't get hurt by a drunken logger or some other bum. This was how he earned his first bicycle. The Old Blue Door and the referral to Astor Street are harking back to this time in Don's Life.
Don went to high school in North Bend, and some of his fantasy poems come from memories of this period. He had the usual puppy love experiences but there was one girl he really liked. She was a year older and a wonderful dancer. When he became a Senior, she married someone else and nearly broke his heart. When prom time came around, he got all dressed up, went to the pool hall, and shot pool all night!
During high school, Don worked as a bellhop in a local hotel. He became a night clerk but quit after graduation and traveled north where he got work in a hotel kitchen. During this time, he met some great chefs, developing a love for good food. He became an expert cook, a talent he kept all his life. He decided that this wasn't what he wanted to do for a living, so he traveled further north, finding work as a pile driver man on the Columbia River jetties.
He landed in Ilwaco, Washington, where he pursued and finally married a blonde, Finnish girl. Family legend has it that as Helme was walking down the street, flipping a silver dollar in the air, Don snagged the coin and invited her to the movies. She agreed and the rest is history. In 1934, their first daughter, Dona, was born. Sixteen months later, a second daughter, Marie, was born. Meanwhile Don had done some contract logging and later worked for a boom company which had large wooden dams built in the Millacoma River. The River Rats and Poky and the Swede are about this time.
Many times during a big drive, twenty to thirty million feet of lumber went into the mill boom. Sometimes these drives lasted for several days, which meant sleeping on the ground and eating cold cheese sandwiches with black coffee. At the end, all would gather at a tavern and drink up a storm. Don sometimes got home in pretty bad shape, needing a bath and a cure for a hangover.
Exciting was the word as the great logs jammed up into huge piles and the "river rats" had to climb over the piles with peaveys, tearing down the key logs to break up the jam. If the key logs were not removed to release the strain, it made for long, sweaty hours of backbreaking work after the water receded to release the pile. Then they had to wait for the next water release several days away.
During these early years, huge steam donkey engines were used to haul the logs to large piles called cole decks. The sound of the steam whistle sent in by the whistle punk, and the mighty roar of the steam engine gears as lines tightened and logs were torn from their beds in the brush was music to the early loggers' ears. No words can describe the exhilaration of watching these giant machines as they wrestled these old-growth trees as if they were matchsticks. From the cole decks, the logs were loaded onto early logging trucks, a far cry from the monsters seen on the highways today. Don's early years found him a hard-muscled, slim man, who could run up and down hills all day, and on Saturday nights, dance until dawn without any rest, a shot of bourbon and water now and then to keep his energy flowing.
By the time World War II had begun in 1941, Don had quit the woods and was fishing commercially out of Coos Bay, Oregon. (In fact, he was out in the ocean when a Japanese sub and a commercial vessel were a short distance away.) Anther time, a floating mine covered with brass knobs floated by his boat within three to four feet of the hull. Although really frightened, his boat stood by the mine until a Coast Guard cutter came up and sank it with shots from the big gun. It was a lucky day for Don, but really shook the small fishing boat he was on.
Don's ability to operate large road building equipment was in demand, so he spent the war years building streets and roads around army camps and airports. He was sent to Camp Adair near Corvallis, Oregon, where he worked on the Albany airport. During this time, Helme gave birth to their third daughter, Susan. Their family was finally complete.
-Dona & Kathleen Alvick
