The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1910-04-21
the club for the privilege of wrestling

the club for the privilege of wrestling
with nature.
And they are doing it successfully,
too, The call to the soil is not now
as it was once, to ranch big enough
to make county, where the nearest
nelghbor was over beyond the horizon,
but rather to community of ten-acre
farms, with neighbors within stone S
throw of each other.
As you drive down the road with the
man who is entertaining you, you spy
two men on horseback, who realize
your ideal of cowboys or Western
brigands with their high boots, cor
duroy suits, flannel shirt and wide
brimmed soft hat. AS they gallop by
your host halls them and you are intro
duced to men from Yale, Harvard,
Princeton, Cornell or some other of the
great colleges of the country. What
are they doing? Clearing the land and
raising apples, testing the value of
| trained minds applied to the problem
of making the earth yield its best fruit
In this little valley, about twenty
miles long by seven wide, everybody
raises apples on small tracts of land
seldom over ten acre. The most sue
cessful fruit farm is one of only three
and one-half acres. They are all men,
Der of the Fruit Growers Association,
which undertakes to sort and classify
the fruit and of market it. So care
fully is this done the boast of Hood
River is that ''yOu can eat Hood
River apple in the dark in any part of
the world'-and they go everywhere,
to London, Paris, Hamburg, Hong
Kong and Toxic and command the
highest prices. But the interesting
thing of it all is that of the $50 men,
bers of this association, many are col
lege boys, who have become practical
fruit growers. There is a University
Club in Hood River with membership
OF lS5 and more college men are ar
arriving on every train, And they are
in dead earnest, too
Of course, the social side of it gives
one the feeling that it will endure.
There is no isolation as in the ordinary
life on the farm or big Western ranch.
There are men of your own kind all
about you, as one stalwart college
fellow put it, Every month or oftener
formal dance is given at a hall in the
village, and then all the evening
clothes appear, but ordinarily calls
are made in overalls or corduroys or
other "togs" almost as disreputable as
the athletic things in which the under
graduates dazzle the visiting girls dur
ing their schooldays. The boys out
there have learned the secret that
women admire the man who is too busy
to think much of his clothes, if he only
wears them brigandishly and looks
rugged and picturesque. And how
they do need girls in Hood River
Our kind of girls, they would tell
you. Think of 1876 college men, all
busy making homes, with only about
sixteen girls in sight But don't
go unless you are prepared to talk
apples, eat apples, live apples.
A gathering at Hood River delights
stranger for the novelty and serious
ness of the conversation. In place of
bridge, or the latest paly, or choicest
gossip, people are in groups and you
can hear snatches of talk about fertili-
ger, cultivation, pruning, coddling
moth, scale, fungus, air drainage, or
fertilization. And, stranger still, you
find yourself observant Of the tree, the
soil and a scores of thing you never
dreamed Gof, and intensly interested in
magazines on fruit culture and farm
ing with which everyody's table is
laden.
Therein lies the secret of their pre-
sent success and the promise of their
future. These people at Hood River
are studens and are mixing branis with
their fertilizers. They are in where
the old settler leaves off. There is pos
sibly little jealousy on the part of the
old against the new settlers with their
book and scientific methods. At a re-
cent meeting of the University Club a
waggi@h member reported that old set
tiers referred to them as the Rah Rah
Fruit Growers" and asked whether
any action should be taken in the
matter. Whereupon a resolution was
adopted extending to the old settlers
the assurance of their most distin-
guished consideration and concluding
with the declaration that ''the old
settlers could go to HI"
The Rah Rah boys know that it is
not bed of roses and seem to enjoy
the rough work and the rugged life.
They are genuine pioneers with trained
minds, which they are apply into the
problems.
They work by day and study by night.
The reality of their interest saw dem
onstrated.
One evening during an impromptu
musicale, when the young people were
gay with the inspiration of the music
of guitars and mandolins in the hands
of some collegemen, | noticed one of
the listening guests stray over to ta-
BILE and take up book, casualty read
the title and then lose himself in it. If
it had been last will bequeathing him
fortune he would not have been more
utterly absorbed or Indifferent to the
things about him. Not even the songs
Of his own icollege drew his attention.
His friends, even the girls, seemed
to understand the Seizure" and made
no attempt to interrupt him. When it
was all over, he explained: Pardon
my disappearance. You see, I'm telling
some pretty big trees on my place and
selling the logs to a mill man. I've
had to look wise and accept his state
ments of the number Of. feet in a log,
not nownig the rues of the game. But
I've just taken a brief postgraduate
course with that little log book, so that
when my mill man puts up his next
figures I'll be there with my own lead
pencil and a few short rules. I" This
man was Fred Wasson, son of H. P.
Wasson, of Indianapolis,
Some of the young men who have
gone to Hood River have purchased
bearing orchards and are reaping good
profits from their crops, but the major
ity seem to prefer to buy the raw land
covered with the forest. ! spent night
with such settler. He had been,
since his return from Yale, an officer in
a trust company controlled by his ia
ther. He. had married beautiful and
accomplished woman who had spent
some seasons in Europe with her music.
found them in a charming bunga-
low, perched on the side of mountain
overlooking the beautiful valley, with
the matchess snow-capped Mt. Hood in
I hp disanca Rahtar I found hpr and