Washington County Oral Histories

Walter Tews oral history recording Part 1

Part one of an audio recording of an oral history of Walter Tews and his life in Hillsboro, Oregon, and the many different positions that he held. Born just a few miles north of Hillsboro in Centerville in 1891, Tews moved into town in 1905. He describes the layout of the town including where buildings like the school are located, even giving exact street names. Wanting to be his own boss, Tews quit school and started working for the mill loading and unloading the train cars that brought in logs. He describes himself as doing the job “better than three men.” When the mill changed ownership, he also started working elsewhere. For four years, Tews worked in a grocery store, managing the storage room in the back, the refrigeration of items, and delivering grocery orders to people in town. During this time, he was also a volunteer firefighter at the local fire department. Everybody in the department was a volunteer and he remembers when they finally got a horse to pull the hoses to fires, instead of carrying the hoses themselves. Tews tells the story of a few fires that he fought. After that, he worked as a sewer inspector, a road builder, and a building inspector. Eventually, he even served as police chief for a while. Tews remembers the sewer system and paved streets adding to the growth of the city, the paved streets especially since they allowed automobiles to drive in the city for the first time. Anytime the city of Hillsboro needed an inspector or chief, they went to him because they “could depend on” him and he “always did a good job wherever” he went. It is hard to understand many of the individual words that Tews says throughout the interview. There is some background noises of cars’ engines roaring by and the clocks chiming, but the interview is still clearly audible. There is an attached page of typed introduction and an index along with the recording.

Tews, Walter

Washington County (Or.) -- History

Tews, Walter

Washington County (Or.)

Hillsboro (Or.)

1 sound cassette (1 hr., 2 min.)

English

WCM_OH_291a

In Copyright

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Five Oaks Museum

Audiocassettes

Sound