Jeff Hutchins
For The New Era
It’s been a sad week for me, and especially for my dad.
One of his best friends passed away on Tuesday, Dec. 9: Patrick Clinton McCollum.
I’ve known “Pat” since I was 10 or 11 years old and he was quite a character. Tom Gosser, my dad’s best friend since grade school, worked for Pat for something like 30 or 40 years so I’ve heard “Pat stories” just about my whole life.
He was a hunting and shooting fool. I worked at my dad’s and uncle’s machine shop since I was 10 and Pat would have to come in frequently to get some kind of logging equipment fixed so I’d always try to get him talking about guns or hunting. The more time I got to spend yakkin’ at him, the less time I had to spend sweeping the floor.
After all, it would be rude for Dad to tell me to get back to work when I was talking to such a valuable customer. Plus, I genuinely liked talking to him.
When I was 14 I bought a brand new Ruger 77R in .300 Winchester Magnum at Bi-Mart – the most accurate rifle I’ve ever owned.
Pat came up to me at work and said, “You bought your Idaho hunting license and tags, didn’t you?”
“Huh?” was the only response I could think of.
His explanation was classic Pat: “Well, you’re going to be hunting in eastern Oregon and that dang .300 shoots so far, you might kill one in Idaho!”
When I started my gun shop he would stop in now and then and try to get me to sell him something for about half price (well, that’s how I remember it). I can’t remember what we were haggling on one day but it was a fairly expensive firearm of some sort and he didn’t have the cash to pay for the whole thing right then, even after he knocked me down to my lowest price on it (that’s how I remember that too).
I told him to go ahead and take it with him and pay me later. If you knew Pat, that was money in the bank. There was no way were you not going to get paid.
Of course he had to say, “Well shoot, I just got me a pretty cheap gun ‘cuz I ain’t never gonna pay up!”
I told him that was OK, I would just send “Knuckles” after him for collection. He asked who “Knuckles” was and I replied, “It’s a 12-year-old girl I hired to knock him around; that’s all it would take.”
He must have thought that was funny because I met his long-suffering wife Ivel at our deer camp later and she asked me about “Knuckles.”
Speaking of that deer camp, he came roaring into our camp and told us to follow him; his grandson had just shot his first buck!
We jumped on four-wheelers and headed after him. A couple of miles from camp he stopped, puffed up his chest. (Well, Pat had a barrel chest, so he always looked like that – but this time it was pumped up a little more than usual.) He led us off through the trees to the dead deer.
There was one proud papa, Pat’s son Clint, with two boys and a dead buck there. That’s a good memory, I never tire of seeing parents and grandparents justifiably proud of their offspring.
My dad can fix or build about anything – whether it’s made out of wood, metal or plastic – so he has helped Pat out a lot. That’s what friends are for. To show his appreciation Pat came down to my dad’s shop one day and said, “Hey, we’re going mule deer hunting in Wyoming.”
My dad, always the realist, replied, “That’d be great but I’m building a house right now and I don’t think I can swing it.”
“You don’t get it,” Pat replied. “Pack your gun and gear; we’re going mule deer hunting!”
He paid for the whole thing and they had a blast. Of course dad repaid him somewhat with the gift of one his own rifles, a Weatherby Mark V in .270 Weatherby magnum that Pat was particularly fond of.
Fittingly, Pat took that rifle on the hunt and Dad took his Weatherby in the same caliber that replaced it.
The only two hobbies I have are trucks and guns and I had a lot of fun with Pat on the former. He was a die-hard Ford man. I’m into trucks for the fun of it but I think for Pat they were more of a tool than anything else.
I own at least one of every American-made brand but do consider myself a “Dodge Man.”
Being someone who would wade through a herd of porcupines to get into a good-natured argument, Pat would over-act his fondness for Fords just because I prefer Dodges. He came into my dad’s shop with one of his work trucks one time, a Ford diesel, and it was smoking white like cozy out of the exhaust and had almost no power.
I told him I didn’t see how he could tell the difference, since it never had any power anyway. He laughed and said, “Well, the smoke gave it away.”
Dad got up on the front bumper and pulled the intake hose away from the air box and about a 20 pounds of dog food came pouring out. That pack rat could not have possibly stuck another chunk of dry dog food into that thing.
I heard this next story second-hand, so the fine details might not be exactly right but the gist is correct: I told Dad that the next time Pat came in with one of his Fords to work on, have David (my cousin who worked there at the time) jump behind the wheel, start it up, then pull the oil fill cap off of Pat’s truck. Then have David back it out, drive your Dodge in, swap the oil fill cap out, slam the hood and say, “There you go, Pat. I’ll send you the bill.” Well, that’s what they did. Pat said, “Yeah, that would probably do it. Now bring that Ford back in here and get it running right.”
One year my brother came down from Portland for Christmas with his new wife and his father-in-law’s brand new Ford F-250. My mom gotten my dad a new garden tractor trailer for Christmas.
I got the idea to hook the puny little trailer to the Ford and take a photo. I then got my Dad to print out a nice-sized picture and I put a caption under it that read “2000 Ford F-250 Super Duty w/ Powerstroke Diesel, Maximum Towing Capacity” and framed it.
I hung one up at my shop and Dad had one in his. After Pat saw it it didn’t take him long to retaliate.
He put some kind of huge logging equipment (a D9, loader or yarder, I can’t remember) on a low-boy and then backed one of his Super Duty trucks under it. It looks for all of the world like it’s actually towing it out of the woods.
That photo is captioned: “Never underestimate a Powerstroke!” That picture is hanging at my Dad’s shop right next to the one we made up. All I could say was, “Touché, my good man.”
The only one of Pat’s children I know is Clint, if he’s any indication of the rest, Pat and Ivel either got things right raising them or just got real lucky, I’m guessing the former.
I know Clint’s sons, Jacob and Kyle, and I think they turned out even better and Clint’s about as good as they get, so that’s saying something. I wish I had room to tell all of the stories I have about Pat but I’m not sure the statute of limitations is up on some of them either.
I just remembered he gave me a tailgate off of one of his Fords that was lying around my dad’s shop and told me we’d “work something out.” We never got a chance to work anything out so I’m just hoping he doesn’t have his own “Knuckles” that’s coming after me. He’d probably say it’s an 11-year-old girl just to one-up me.
I didn’t see Pat that often the last few years, but every time I did we had a good laugh about something, I personally don’t have a bad thing to say about him. It’s going to be hard, maybe impossible, to get through his funeral without shedding a tear. I’m truly going to miss him.
Pat, if you’re reading this right now, DODGES RULE!
By Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
“Grampa” Tom Hufford, longtime local restaurant owner and log truck driver who died Dec. 8, was about to be recognized for his longtime membership and involvement in the American Legion.
Hufford was an enterprising businessman who, with his family, founded the Cedar Shack drive-in restaurant in 1965 and kept it going for nearly 40 years, until it was burned down by arsonists – and then rebuilt several years ago.
“I’d drive truck, then work at the Cedar Shack at night,” Hufford said. “I’d jump in bed and roll out the other side and go to work in the woods.”
He founded a car show that continued for two decades, partly because he loved old Studebakers. He drove a log truck until he was 87.
Hufford served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1945 aboard the USS Dewey. The Farragut-class destroyer had been in Pearl Harbor at the time of the Japanese attack there and was believed to have shot down two Japanese planes during the battle.
The Dewey was primarily responsible for guarding the rest of the ships in the Third Fleet, which cruised from Australia to Alaska for a nine-month stay in 1943 to help drive the Japanese out of the Aleutians.
Hufford was aboard the Dewey for 13 battles, some as gun captain on a 5-inch gun. He entered the Navy as an apprentice seaman and was a gunner’s mate first class when he finished his duty. He was involved in the Mariana Turkey Shoot in 1944 during which the combined fleet shot down more than 350 Japanese planes.
He was aboard the Dewey during what was believed to be the worst storm to hit the Philippines in 500 years in December 1944. The ship rolled 82 degrees, a Navy record, during the storm. Two ships went down, and 790 people were lost.
Hufford returned to Sweet Home and the logging business and started driving trucks after the war. He married Mardy on April 6, 1946; and in 1964, they opened the Cedar Shack, which also became the site of the annual Grampa Tom’s Get Together car show.
“I enjoy working,” he told a reporter in an interview 10 years ago.
Dale Jenkins, commander of Sweet Home’s American Legion Timber City Post 133, planned to present Hufford with a certificate for 70 years of membership on Dec. 4. He was unable to make the presentation when Hufford went to the hospital.
Jenkins hopes to present the award to Mardy Hufford, and he said he’s warned the auxiliary president she’d best be prepared to present a 70-year certificate to Hufford next year when she reaches 70 years of membership.
Tom Hufford would have been only the second to receive the recognition, Jenkins said.
“I found out there was one other person presented with a 70-year certificate.”
Jenkins plans to work with others to restore the annual Grampa Tom’s Get Together, held in mid-June, in Hufford’s memory.
The show was canceled this year in the wake of Hufford’s son-in-law Marvin Wilson’s death on April 17. (Wilson was the American Legion commander, and Jenkins inherited the role from him.) He said he plans to consult with Mardy Hufford about how it can be re-established as a memorial for Grampa Tom.