Tony Fazio is a long-time farmer on the Columbia Slough and Sauvie Island. His family began farming on the slough shortly after immigrating from Italy in 1921. Mr. Fazio recalls the effect of the 1948 flood on his family’s farm.
Oral History
Narrator: Tony Fazio
Interviewer: Patrick McGinnis
Date: August 17, 2000
Place: the Fazio Farm on Sauvie’s Island, Oregon
Edited by Donna Sinclair
PM: This is an interview with Tony Fazio by Patrick McGinnis of the Center for Columbia River History and Portland State University. The interview took place on August 17, 2000, at the Fazio Farm on Sauvie’s Island, Oregon. Mr. Fazio will be talking about his experiences living and farming on the Columbia Slough.
PM: How long has your family been living and farming on the Columbia Slough?
TF: Since 1921. My dad farmed, when he came from Italy he farmed with other farmers then he went into business with 17 other partners.
PM: How long did you live on the slough before moving your operations over here to Sauvie’s Island?
TF: Well, we still did operations on the slough. My dad bought this island property in 1941 before it was drained. The government was still putting a dike around it.
PM: Where did your family live on the slough, or where do they live, the same place they live today?
TF: They lived on 47th, Northeast 47th, right where the airport’s at now.
PM: How much land did your family own and farm on the slough?
TF: About 400 acres.
PM: And that has been reduced?
TF: Yeah, well Portland Meadows was part of it; Hayden Island was part of it; where Yellow Freight is at is part of it; and Guerthe [?] Road is part of it; and uh 33rd and Marine Drive got a piece there-and had a big piece on 47th. Then he had a big piece about 48th to 49th that was confiscated during the war.
PM: What can you tell me about or what kind of memories or experiences can you remember about living and farming on the slough during the Great Depression and the years leading up to World War II?
TF: Well, I can remember back to about 1933, ’32 or ’33. During that time, there were a lot of veterans out of work and my dad built a place so they could come and live there and he’d get a lot of people come in and work for him for the food just to take home, because everybody was hurtin’. Everybody didn’t have any money and so he kept a bunch of guys fed and their families. . . .
[Questions unrelated to narrator’s experience]PM: Where were you and what were you doing during the flood of 1948?
TF: I was working in a cannery. My dad had a cannery. He had a pickle plant; he had sauerkraut and everything. We were warned a week ahead of time that possibly it was gonna be a flood. So we moved everything out of the warehouses and cleaned up all our canned goods, the sauerkraut, and pickles and we moved them to another warehouse on Columbia Boulevard. It was a lumber company that was closed up . . . and we moved everything in there and we went back to the cannery, and we had to put barrels of water up on the second floors to hold the buildings down. We had wooden barrels. We filled them up full of water to hold the buildings down. And we had bottles, empty bottles that we stacked in the buildings that were upside down in the case so we had to throw all those out the window so they wouldn’t float the building up. The cannery consisted of about fifteen acres, and my dad put a log boom around that fifteen acres so it would contain everything that was in there. We had about uh ten to fifteen thousand barrels of pickles stacked up on each other that was curing and we lost two barrels of pickles-went down to Troutdale. But everything else was inside the log boom and stayed right there. We had sauerkraut tanks full of sauerkraut that just rose up and tipped upside down, just dumped the sauerkraut out. We had a mess to clean up.
PM: What can you tell me about any um other-was your property affected in any other way?
TF: Well, we had crops out there that was all flooded out. We had cabbage and cucumbers planted. It happened in June when everything’s almost done planting and we lost the crops. Luckily, we had crops out here planted too that we did harvest enough to keep it going.
PM: Were you or any other members of your family involved in any of the rescue or clean-up efforts during and after the flood?
TF: We went back in with an Army truck and hauled some more stuff out. We had about fifteen horses that my dad was using for cultivating and working the ground and we had to tie them on the side of the Army truck and get them on higher ground. But most of the people that was in the flood, except for Vanport, I think they lost more people in Vanport than what they said, but around us down there most everybody moved out.
PM: What have been some of the biggest challenges of farming on the Columbia Slough in your experience?
TF: Well, during the war it was getting help. You couldn’t get no help. Right now it’s the same thing, it’s hard to get good help. The government has got their nose in everything, just like minimum wage. For picking cucumbers I used to pay 50 cents to one dollar a bucket to pick cucumbers. Today you can’t do that no more because the guy can go out there and sit on his bucket all day and still have to pay him minimum wage. And if you start firing him, you won’t have nobody ’cause it’s too hard to get people. . . .
[questions about development]PM: In what ways have you or do you organize with other farmers on the slough to promote and defend your interest as farmers?
TF: Well, it’s hard to get farmers to stick together, ’cause you know if one guy has got rutabaga that’s gonna spoil he’s going to sell them cheaper that the other guy, and then the other guy and the other guy’s gonna get mad. It’s just uh supply and demand.
PM: What specific issues have you had to organize with other farmers in order to deal with any of those sorts of issues?
TF: Well, the canneries now are having meetings and they have the farmers at the meetings and they talk about what they’re gonna pay and how they go about to pay that. They get other canneries and uh they see what other canneries pay and they all kind of get together and tell the farmer what they’re gonna give him. Because if they got a lot of stuff left over the freezers and stuff-they’re not gonna pay too much. But if they’re short and stuff than the price goes up. . . .
PM: And, uh what are your thoughts and feelings about the future of farming on the Columbia Slough?
TF: There’s no, there is no future in the Columbia Slough for farming. It’s all industrial and that’s the way it’s gonna be.
PM: What sort of changes would you personally like to see on the slough in terms of development, the environment, etc., if any?
TF: That it’s going in the direction it’s going in now. Nothing’s gonna stop it.
PM: Can you tell me about some of the other, anything that comes to mind, any other changes you’ve experienced while living and working on the Columbia Slough?
TF: Well, the only, the only changes that I can see is some of the streets are gonna have to get bigger, and maybe some more bridges put in because down where I’m at they just built 130 homes, and all that traffic is not used to the small streets we got down there. Viking Freight’s down there and uh and Oak Harbor, and there’s a lot more stuff coming in there and the streets are getting too small.
PM: When did you make your move over to Sauvie’s Island, or you indicated you’ve been here for quite some time?
TF: We’ve been here since ’41.
PM: Has it just been a constant process of more attention over here as the land has been drying up over there or-?
TF: No, the land is getting industrial over there and it’s getting short of farm ground. We still farm a little bit over there but not too much. Over here we farm about 700 acres here and your time has to be where the biggest part’s at.
PM: Who have you sold your property to in the past, other farmers, industrial interests?
TF: Well, we haven’t sold anything. Um, we sold some ground up there to Yellow Freight- a small piece, the rest of it still belongs to us. And we sold some ground to the racetrack when all that development down there was sold to the racetrack and they developed it.
PM: What sort of crops have you grown in the slough?
TF: On the slough?
PM: Yeah.
TF: My dad when he was in the pickle business, most what he grew was cabbage and cucumbers. That’s what he processed. And we continued that, cabbage and cucumbers, we continued it up until about, . . . we still raise cucumbers, but we don’t raise cabbage anymore.
PM: Who do you sell your crops to?
TF: Our cucumbers go to the fresh market and our corn goes to the cannery. Our peas go to the cannery. Zucchini goes to the fresh market, and blueberries go to the fresh market, and the grain goes to the granaries.
PM: When you were younger did your father, did you sell your products down, I understand there was a farmer’s market on Belmont Street that was quite active for a number of years?
TF: Yes, my dad used to go down there and sell his [produce]. Before he went in the pickle business, he raised vegetables. He raised carrots and rutabagas and turnips and cabbage for the market. He raised a lot of vegetables for the market. And in fact one year, 1942 or 43, he raised a whole truckload of vegetables and donated to the Sunshine Division so it was real nice.
PM: In the 1970s in particular, there was a lot of debate over how the slough was going to be developed. There were interests that wanted, wanted it to be navigable and others who wanted to dry it up.
TF: After the flood everybody was thinking about plugging the slough and they could have. They should have done it. They should have plugged it and have a gate where, because the airport drains, it pumps into that slough, probably half of it. If they would have blocked it then we wouldn’t be worried about a flood anymore. But instead of blocking it, they reinforced the dikes. I don’t know why they didn’t want to. People wanted to block it and people didn’t want to block it; then the city said they’re not gonna do it, so-
PM: So from a farming, the standpoint of a farmer it was uh-?
TF: It wouldn’t have made much difference one way or the other.
PM: Is there anything else you can tell me about your family’s experience, any stories you can recollect from your parents or other experiences that come to mind?
TF: This will be a good situation to get into with my cousins. If you got them all together and start talking about the old days there’s a lot of stuff that comes into your mind that you just don’t think of. There’s. . . during the war when my dad was hauling cabbage from here to the plant on 47th he couldn’t even buy any trucks so he fixed up old trailers, made trailers and towed them with tractors and hauled them down there with tractors. And he had old Mac trucks, single-axle trucks. They’d only haul about about five, six tons at a time. He made it work until the war ended, then he could start buying some military equipment. He bought the army trucks and made semis and, and got little bit bigger trucks to transfer his crop to the market.
Going across the ferry, we used to have a ferry here on the island until 1950. They put the bridge in in ’50. And some of the trucks that we had loaded a little bit too heavy had a hard time making it up the ferry ramp. And the people we had working for us were, at that time they were all people from skid row that there were winos. But when they were sober they were great, great, good help.
PM: Were these a lot of the folks that were living in the uh barracks that you had mentioned earlier?
TF: Yeah, in fact a lot of the people lived right here. This building here was all rooms down here. I tore ’em out afterwards ’cause we never used them anymore. The next building over there was a kitchen and we fed them and they slept here. They stayed here.
PM: What can you tell me about your experiences growing up as a child on the Columbia Slough?
TF: Well, I started working in the fields when I was nine years old. I didn’t do manual work. I drove tractors and in fact, I even drove a horse cultivating. When I got a little older my dad put me on a D-4 Cat disking. He didn’t, I rode with him to watch him work it and he told me, he said, “Sit down there.” And so I sat down in the driver’s seat and he showed me how to run the handles and stuff. And he jumped off. I’m going around in a circle and and disking up a cabbage field and some of the stumps were real big, and they’d get plugged up in the disc so I’d have to stop and shift it in reverse and back up a little bit to unplug it. So I stopped and shifted in reverse and started backing up and the Cat twisted a little bit and the disc went one way and the Cat went the other way and I couldn’t stop it, and I backed right over the top of the disc. My dad didn’t get mad. He took the tongue off and got it all straightened out again and then me showed me what I did wrong and kept on going from there.
PM: I understand uh, but I’m not clear on the details, the-your family is hoping to uh turn some of the, your land here on Sauvie’s Island and possibly over on the slough if I’m not mistaken into-for recreational purposes.
TF: My son is thinking about down here, yes. At winter time we have duck hunting clubs, and during the winter time and spring time sometimes we get a lot of bird watchers. They blocked Sauvie’s Island Road sometimes. You gotta stop ’cause they’re all over the road and you’re going down the road 30, 40 miles an hour and they guy might step right out in front of you. So my son is thinking about taking advantage of it and starting a bird tour. Hopefully, maybe this winter or maybe next winter we’ll get it going.
PM: ‘Cause uh, has it just been a matter of working that out with state regulations and-?
TF: There’s some stuff he wants to do on a dike. He bought himself an amphibious piece of equipment where he can go in the water and go out of the water. He needs to be put some approaches and stuff in the dike, so he can run it up the dike to show people on the other side where the big lake is at. There’s a lot of wildlife down there. But he’s having problems with the district a little bit, a lot of problems to work out.
PM: Well, it looks like we’ve come to the end of uh the interview here and it was very interesting . . .
TF: That’s fine.
[Interview Ends]