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Even
though he "haint" around anymore, Arthur Haine tells it like it is.
The
big, well-groomed Belgium immigrant left one succinct message for anybody
pondering his whereabouts: Haine Haint.
Well,
he hisn't.
Those
two words, the only two on his grave marker at the Old City Cemetery,
were just one of his many last wishes.
"My funeral
is to be the cheapest of kind, and I don't want my body to be transported
but buried near the place where I may die. As I have lived an infidel,
I want to be buried as such without any monkey business," he wrote in
his will.
When
Haine wanted something done, it was.
"I wish
to be hauled to my grave by a team of matched white horses. I wish them
to be directed at a smart pace. I wish to have a band follow, running
if they must, and playing lively tunes."
The
Vancouver mortician who handled the burial said he followed those instructions
to a T, and the community was so outraged that he subsequently went out
of business.
A wealthy,
highly-educated atheist, Haine first arrived in New York and fell in love
with a glamorous movie star of the time, who agreed to marry him.
She
later broke off the engagement abruptly, and Haine vowed that day to never
marry. "All (women) are treacherous and deceitful," he once uttered.
Even
though his family was so wealthy he "could live in a palace with servants
at his command," Haine wanted his own success.
His
job as a government clerk required him to travel west, and upon arrival
in this area, he saw golden, or at least wooden, opportunity.
In 1883,
Haine started the Vancouver Hoop Factory, where the Camas paper mill now
resides. The company specialized in wooden hoops that hold barrels together.
Working
for Haine wasn't easy. He had a "hot temper, bitterly protesting any sloppiness
in dress, even on the part of farmers coming in to have work done. Use
of slang was also resented," Richard Schane, an employee of Haine's recalled.
His
tactics worked, though. He was respected and successful.
When
the bushy-haired man with a drooping, handle-bar mustache wasn't making
hoops, he was often bird hunting, except for the first day of the season.
On that
day, he would dress carefully in his coordinated hunting outfit, grab
his dogs and head to the nearest tavern.
He would
take a table with his purebred hounds, Pat and Mike, waiting patiently
by his side, and drink until closing time, when he and the dogs would
return home.
After
leaving Vancouver for several of his later years, he returned for one
last hurrah.
"I knew
he was back before I saw him," W.P. Davis, a resident of the time, said.
"I was in the livery stable when a man came in and told of seeing a stranger
in town, tall, well-dressed with a couple of dogs."
"That
man looks like he could fight the devil," the man commented. "I knew it
was Arthur Haine," Davis said.
Bad
case of the flue
Wendel
G. Fettig, 17, had broken curfew and was locked out. Waking someone meant
trouble. So he decided to crawl down his chimney to get in.
That
plan may have worked, if it had been the right chimney.
About
3 a.m., Harriet Warnock awoke from a sound sleep to hear a man yelling
and moaning. She roused her hard-of-hearing husband, Frank. He too heard
the racket and called the police.
Officer
Mike Kandoll described the scene in his report filed in April 1982.
"As I
got out of my car, I could hear someone saying in a loud but muffled voice,
Get me out of here. I'm in the fireplace.' "
After
the Warnocks let Officer Kandoll in, he approached the fireplace and asked
why the young man was in there.
"I came
down the chimney because the doors and windows were locked, and I didn't
want to wake anyone," the voice answered. "I live here, who are you?"
More
conversation revealed that Fettig thought he was in the chimney next door,
where he was living temporarily. He was in big trouble if he was late,
he said.
"I was
locked out, see," Fettig said. "Then I thought, hmmm, I wonder if I can
just crawl down the chimney."
He climbed
to the roof and put his feet in the flue. He hesitated, then thought,
"Oh well, it can't hurt nothin" and lowered himself in.
Vancouver
firefighter Gary Lowry said Fettig had taken off most of his clothes everything
but his shoes and shorts and left them on the roof. He was probably afraid
of getting them dirty, Lowry said.
Fettig
said he had been yelling for two hours before the Warnocks heard him.
The firefighters pulled him out with a rope. Fettig said the process scraped
him from head to toe.
"It
was pain."
Half-baked
tribute
A couple
of blocks from Officers Row, in a forgotten park on the triangular corner
of Davis, Fifth and R streets, a stone monument to Gen. Ulysses Simpson
Grant stands as a reminder of his service to country and county.
Crushed
beer cans, broken glass and general debris surround the point that memorializes
Grant's biggest accomplishment in this area: his potato patch.
As a
young officer stationed at the Columbia Barracks, he planted potatoes
to "reduce the expense of his officers' mess," the monument, erected in
1927, reads.
It marks
a point one mile west of where the patch was located.
Grant
went on to have some other important, non-horticulture related, achievements,
such as becoming commander in chief of the Union army during the Civil
War, the first U.S. citizen after George Washington to be ranked a full
general and being elected the 18th president of the United States.
Follicle
offense
 Vancouver
Judge C. Dean LaRowe ordered a young man "who obviously hadn't been near
a barber for months" to have his shoulder-length tresses trimmed after
he pleaded guilty to hitchhiking and vagrancy in LaRowe's court in October
1967.
Allen
D. Floyd, 23, his long, stringy hair flowing onto his jail coveralls,
"appeared as if he had spent some time in hippie land," The Columbian
reported.
Besides
the buzz, he also received a day in jail.
Great
balls o'fire
On a
warm, muggy day in the late 1880s, the Gibbons family of Washougal had
just finished their midday meal.
The
women were busy with their after-meal chores, and the men folk were resting
on the front porch when the firebox door on the big kitchen range opened
with a crash.
A yellow
ball of lightning rolled across the floor, through the door, past the
porch, up the clothesline post and across the clothesline straight into
the outhouse which exploded.
It was
unoccupied at the time.
During
reconstruction, the Gibbons made sure that the new facilities were not
connected to the clothesline.
Now
that's a mighty rough draft
Earl
Rogers opened the letter in December of 1979 and started to read the state's
decision on his child-support hearing.
"Merry
Xmas and Happy New Year to the Jerk," was the first line in the correspondence
headed, "State of Washington, Department of Social and Health Services."
That
hurt Rogers' feelings.
"I might
not be the greatest person in the world, but a person in that capacity
doesn't have the right to tell me that," he said.
Jean
Patten, the hearing officer responsible for the letter, said, "It was
a rough draft. It wasn't intended for his eyes at all. It was just me
blowing off steam."
Oops.
No disciplinary
action was taken.
Whoa
as me
CAMAS
-- Around the turn of the century, before the paper mill's yard was filled
in and level, a tramway trestle lead from the old dock and sawmill to
the paper mill yard and proper.
Along
the way, there were several spots that were high off the ground, but a
deck was built to insure solid footing for the horses that pulled loaded
tram cars from the dock to the mill and back.
One day
a rather melancholy-looking old horse was stopped near the sulfite plant
while wood it was pulling was being unloaded.
It's
conceivable that he was fed up with the world or that he realized there
was nothing more for him in life than a bag of feed and some comfy hay
to sleep on. Maybe he was curious about the afterlife, or maybe pressure
from work or home was too much to bear.
Whatever
it was, the nag broke through the collar of his harness, headed straight
for the steepest cliff and plunged more than 20 feet to his death.
Just
pulling your leg
 CAMAS
-- Paper mill pranksters don't like people sleeping on the job.
In the
early 1900s, employees started work at 6 p.m. and didn't finish until
morning 7 a.m. or later. Everyone was exhausted. That was no excuse for
slacking.
If some
poor soul happened to get tired of this routine and take a short nap,
his leg was tied to an old, creaky elevator and the shuttle was sent to
the bottom floor.
When
the dozer felt his leg being pulled, he had "to get his knife out in a
hurry and sever the rope or else find himself sprawled out on the basement
floor about 10-feet below," George Williams, a former mill worker, recalled.
Despite
its crudeness, it cured every worker in the old beater room of going to
sleep anywhere near that old, jerky elevator, Williams said.
But
did he peel out?
 "Well,
officer, there was this monkey driving a station wagon, and ..."
"There
was a what?," officer John Lund responded.
"A monkey,"
Lee Drake, 17 at the time, repeated. "He was driving a station wagon,
a late model station Datsun."
"Go
on," Lund said, turning his pencil around as he noticed he was taking
notes with the eraser.
Drake
said it was about 10:30 a.m. on a Wednesday in November of 1974 when the
monkey drove past him on 39th and Washington streets. The monkey was seated
alone in the front seat, but a male and female passenger, most likely
human, were seated in the back seat.
As the
vehicle passed, the boy said the monkey smiled at him, distracting him
to the extent that he walked into a telephone pole.
Drake
said the monkey was wearing nothing but fur, and he estimated it to be
4 feet tall and weighing 80 or 90 pounds.
After
the vehicle passed, Drake went to a nearby store and promptly called the
police.
Police
officials say it is against the law to drive without a driver's license.
Unwarranted
behavior
Around
4 p.m. on a Tuesday, a Vancouver police officer was sent to check out
a "person acting strangely" in a 1984 Chrysler parked behind the Bowery
Tavern, 4712 E. Fourth Plain Blvd.
When
officer Michael G. Smith arrived, he reported a nearly naked woman and
a half-naked man were in the car, "oblivious to my presence."
A records
check showed that Paul Pappan II, 34, had outstanding warrants. Smith
also cited him for lewd conduct.
While
being booked, Pappan told Officer Smith that he had "been having sex with
(the woman) for about an hour and a half so I did not really interrupt
him."
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