Scott Swanson
“Rising in a land of snow,
Down my rushing waters go;
Gathering force along my trail,
Brawling streams from hill and vale.
Nothing o’er me can prevail.”
– “Song of the Santiam”
by William Mealey
George Mealey says he always held his grandfather, William Ralph “Bill” Mealey, in high esteem as a youngster growing up in Sweet Home in the mid-1900s.
He remembers trips to Lebanon for ice cream sodas, fishing together, learning about geology and mineralogy – so much so that George decided to pursue a career as a mining engineer. Bill Mealey was, by all accounts, a man of vision and intelligence, who could expound knowledgeably on a broad range of subjects and was just as good with his hands.
“My grandfather was probably the most influential person in giving me direction in life,” Mealey said.
At other times young George would watch Bill, seated in front of an ancient typewriter, slowly punching out poems, verses about life, about his beloved Sweet Home, the Santiam River, love, life, the weather, patriotism and more.
A couple of years ago, George, now in his late 70s and retired from the mining industry, was in Sweet Home visiting his aunt Rachel Vogel, Bill’s youngest daughter.
Vogel, a former librarian and teacher, had collected many of her father’s poems into a scrapbook and was busy typing them into a computer as part of a project she had started with another nephew, Steven Mealey.
“That tweaked my curiosity,” George said. “Of course, as a little boy, I wasn’t that interested in poetry. I have somewhat of an interest now. My main interest was seeing what my grandfather had to say in his poems.”
He borrowed a copy of the collection from Vogel and took it home to California.
“I read through them and I was amazed at the depth and breadth of what he was talking about.”
So George decided to put them together in a real book – 260 pages containing 136 poems – “Songs of the Santiam.”
He had 200 copies printed last year, for family, friends and “maybe some of the museums around – some of the people who have an interest in history. I didn’t think a book of poetry would become a best seller.”
* * *
“Why need we fear this thing called death,
At set of sun?
What should one care for earthly breath
When day is done?
There comes a time for mortal toil to cease,
When wearied limbs may rest at last in peace,
And free from all pain and sorrow, be released
When evening comes.”
– An Ode to Death
Vogel describes her father, who died in 1948, as an “unusual man” – an entrepreneur, a visionary, an outdoors enthusiast, a photographer and a promoter of the local community. He was one of the main forces behind the creation of the Linn County Fire Protection District.
“He was very interested in Sweet Home and in people around him,” she said. “I hardly ever thought of him as a poet. Nobody would. This was kind of a hidden thing. He was a remarkable person, really.”
Bill and his brother ran a logging operation and a mill in what is now Foster Lake. It burned down in 1927, but the Mealey brothers went on to acquire substantial timberland – some 3,700 acres.
“He died before the timber acreage paid off, but his heirs did well with it,” Vogel said. “He was very progressive, foresighted. We had running water in our house when other people had pumps on their back porches. We didn’t have electricity, but he put in gas lights.”
Bill was born in 1870 in Albany, to a family descended from Irish nobility. His father had traveled to Oregon from West Virginia by ox team, married, and in 1874 moved his family to Moss Butte, where they ranched and ran a roadhouse on the Santiam Wagon Trail. This was where Bill, the youngest, grew up and where, as then-editor of The New Era John T. Russell put it years ago, he “saw plenty of life in the rough, and got his first inspiration to write verse.”
* * *
“Loud roars the frigid, northern blast,
Down Copper River’s dreary waste,
As some mad giant, rushing past,
He thunders by with furious haste.”
– Night on the Copper River (Alaska)
Bill and his brother Judd spent a hair-raising year and a half in Alaska, where they pulled sleds bearing their gear for more than 1,000 miles and only slept in a house for three nights during the entire stretch. Both nearly died of illness and they came home empty-handed.
They returned to Oregon in 1899, and operated Mealey’s Sawmill together for 17 years before it burned.
* * *
“Blaze a good trail that others may follow,
Make the way plain without stay or stop;
Onward through forest, o’er hill and through hollow,
With the eye of your soul on the high mountain top.”
– Building the Trail
Vogel, who will turn 97 in a few weeks, still lives in the house her father built in 1907 on the shore of the Middle Santiam River and, when Foster Dam was built, was moved up north of Northside Road. The fine two-story house had three bedrooms upstairs, and two on the bottom floor, with living areas around a stone fireplace.
Vogel said the structure reflects Mealey’s approach to everything he did.
“He built this house when everybody else was throwing up pioneer buildings,” she said. “He had this vision to do the best he could in everything he did.”
He thought big and was capable at promoting his ideas, she said.
“Anything that was progressive, he was right behind it. I think all of us have been influenced by him. All of the Mealeys have gotten into logging or forestry, though there were some that stayed a year or two and then decided this wasn’t for them.”
Bill especially loved his community, she said.
“Dad thought Sweet Home was a wonderful place and that it was going to be a metropolis some day. It was the Gateway to the Cascades. He was a very strong proponent of the highway going over the mountains.”
* * *
“Whenever I look into the glass
That mirrored her wonderful face,
I seem to see her watching me
With all her beauty and grace;
Eyes of tender, lavender hue,
Large and eloquent, loving and true.
– Out of the Glass
Bill Mealey married Fanny Rachel Hamilton, a local beauty who lived in Holley, in 1901; they had six children: David, George, Mary, Marguerite, Robert and Rachel.
Vogel said her mother’s death, five weeks after her birth, left her father “stricken.”
“He idolized his wife,” she said. “They were Christian people, but he couldn’t figure out what had happened.”
Still, she said, although his faith wavered for a portion of his life after Fanny’s death, “you can tell from his poems his belief.”
He frequently wrote poems for The New Era. Local history columnist Mona Waibel said 187 of Mealey’s poems were published in the newspaper over the years.
Vogel recalls how, in the 1940s, engineers proposed constructing a dam where the Pleasant Valley Bridge is located now.
“Everyone was upset and the editor of The New Era asked Dad if he could write something about it. Dad wrote a poem on what would happen if Sweet Home were flooded.” It begins:
“Aye, tear our Sweet Home city down.
Drown out her public schools!
Those people who resent the act
Are mossbacks and old fools!
They do not know what’s good for them,
Nor for the public weal.
They do not countenance such frauds
Nor such a public steal.”
– Aye! Drown the City (With apologies to Oliver Wendell Holmes)
As his poetic reputation spread, Mealey became known as the Poet of the Santiam.
Her father, Vogel said, was largely self-educated. He had finished third grade when his family moved to Sweet Home. His mother was an educator, with a degree in botany, and “she raised her kids to learn,” Vogel said. “I’ve seen the books he studied on science and mathematics, and he read all the classics.”
But it was talent that produced the poems.
“He has some beautiful phrases in there,” she said, quoting one of her favorites:
“My tide is red with the blood of the hills,
For at times, when the winds are warm,
My life tides rise, my passion thrills,
For I am a child of the storm.”
– The River
* * *
Though many of the poems contain deep thoughts and soaring phrases, one section of the book contains 26 poems written in a more vernacular style, under the title “Alexander McQuirk, on subjects ranging from farming to fishing, many of them humorous, folksy observations on life in the soil.
“Terbaccer don’t taste good no more.
Guess I’m feelin’ mighty blue.
All my bones air mighty sore,
Muscles air all akin’ too.
Got a feelin’ in my head.
Kaint sleep when I go ter bed.”
– Gettin’ Old
* * *
George Mealey said working on the book was an eye-opener.
“I got to know my grandfather in a way I couldn’t have as a boy,” he said. “Here I was, 50 years later. I became quite enamored, interested in them. It was quite a fun project. I had to read them very closely. I got a lot out of it.”
He said in preparing the book, he found one poem that referred to robins eating cherries.
“I said, ‘Robins don’t eat cherries. What’s he talking about? Then I Googled it and found hundreds of photos of robins eating berries.”
“Robin! It is my belief,
You are just an errant thief;
I have watched you all day long,
And you never sang a song
In the way of paying toll
For the many things you stole;
But you always are so merry
When you come and take a cherry.”
– Apostrophizing a Robin
* * *
Ultimately, Vogel said, her father loved to write about Sweet Home.
“Sweet Home, the name that imparts
A throb to the wanderer’s breast.
A feeling of love to their hearts,
A longing for home and for rest.
A longing that cannot be stilled,
That only, by home, can be filled.”
– Sweet Home (Respectfully dedicated to the pioneer
founders of this community)
“He thought it was the most beautiful place on earth,” she said.
* * *
George Mealey said he plans to reprint the book, which has nearly sold out of its first edition.
For information on how to get a copy, contact The New Era at (541) 367-2135 or by e-mail at [email protected].