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62

That was an avid interest in fishing. I once remarked in his presence that he impressed me as one more interested in fishing than anything - Marion, in an instant corrected me on this saying that he had other interests as well. He did enjoy himself as an outdoor sportsman, to get into the forest along side a rippling stream and cast out his line to catch the Trout. He was a very successful fisherman also which may have increased his avid interest - we wondered about this and concluded that he had found some very good fishing spots but had kept these secret so that he could return to them again and again and have good fortune with his catch.

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*     GILBERT LAFAYETTE DAVIS     *
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Gilbert was one also with mechanical inclinations but with a different level of achievement than his older brothers. He became interested in cars in his teen-age years but not race cars but rather work vehicles. He enjoyed taking an old conventional car and removing the back part of the body and then converting the vehicle into a flatbed pickup, so that it could be used for hauling purposes.

Gilbert became a very good truck driver and at one time we worked together hauling sawdust bags that we gathered from mills in the outlying areas from Portland. To reach these remote places, we had to travel plank roads that were ribbons of 2" by 12" lumber and were only a little wider than the truck wheels. These wooden roads generally followed the natural terrain and so they went up and down and all around so that the chauffeur needed to be some sort of an engineer in order to negotiate all of the contortions. I marveled at Gilbert's ability to drive this large truck in and out 0£ places like this.

He enjoyed dealing in a junk business and felt good in this element as he worked with other men engaged in this trade. His engagement in this trade was stimulated by some hopes and a few dreams of becoming rich in the junk business. But the days of the neighborhood junk man passed when commercial developments in the iron and steel business took place and Gilbert found other things to do.

He became interested in sawmill work and applied his abilities in that direction. In the latter years of his life he made his home in Toledo, Oregon where he worked in a large lumber mill.

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*   EDWARD ERWIN DAVIS    *
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As I approach this most difficult task of doing a self portrait, it is with a great reluctance and diffidence that I continue and it is only for the sake of continuity that I move on. In the first place, I am probably ill equipped to do this job - in the second place, I feel like the man who was awarded a medal for being the humblest person in the world and then had it taken away from him because he considered wearing it.

Like many other people, I have been shaped and modified by influence of others around me. In my early life, my parents were very effective in setting the direction for my life. From my mother, I received an almost puritanical discipline that, as a child I hated but, as an adult, I came to respect. From my dad, I got good inspiration for building things. One of the first projects was an airplane built with a stick of stove wood for the fuselage and thin pine peach crate boards for wings and tail sections.

I could hardly wait until I reached the upper grades in school and could take Manual Training. Later during the dismal depression years of the 1930s and just after I finished high school and needed employment, it was good to be

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