RICHARD DYER: Joe, when I first came aboard, they told me that there was something about plank holders.  What is a plank holder anyway?

JOE BARBER: Well, there’s a lot of skepticism among certain people here that I know folks around.  But apparently what is meant by the term that there are certain teachers—back in Eagle Cottage days- were the, soft of, fist people here.  And I think the idea is that they have some kind of status or something as being the first people along.  As far as I know I’m not all that familiar with the term, but there were, well I suppose there is interest in the future and people who have always been with Columbia ever since it first began. 

DYER: And this would include then the people who started with the extension courses, I suppose, and at Eagle Cottage at 1968?

BARBER: Well I suppose stating with Eagle Cottage, because there that many people here before we were down at Eagle Cottage.  In some ways, as I understand it, I wasn’t the first person involved with Columbia Junior College by any means.  If I remember right, John Hankstrom, and Bill Haskens (the old being of instruction), and Dusty Rhodes and Pat Rhodes were working all hours—early in the morning before school in Modesto Junior College and after school in the evening—setting the school up.  They were the one that were the first people involved, although as far as I know, I was the first teacher to move to this area for the purpose for becoming an instructor at Columbia Junior College.  At that time—see I think that was in the fall of 1967.

DYER: Now you were teaching extension courses.

BARBER: I was teaching extension courses that were called Columbia Junior College courses, but they were extension courses from Modesto Junior College.  They were on a semester basis, and I taught them at the high school mostly.

DYER: At Sonora High School?

BARBER: At Sonora High School.

DYER: Did you teach at Modesto Junior College as well as a…

BARBER: No, I…well what I did is, I got my masters degree at the University of Oregon in 1966 and my first teaching job was replacing Ray Bates at Modesto Junior College—the art history teacher who was on a sabbatical leave. I had the…well, I operated under the assumption that this was a one year sabbatical replacement and there was no tenure or anything of this sort involved.  And then afterwards I was intending to go back to school at get my PhD. But I changed my mind, seeing that the Junior College, perhaps, was a better place for me anyway, than a State college or University system.  And I, well I had applied for some other positions, but then I liked being from Oregon and loving the mountain terrain and the great outdoors, and so forth.  I felt that with Columbia being up in the mountains, that I might be happy with a position here.  Well, because to me, the geographical location is very important to me.  I do not like cities.  I don’t even like towns. 

DYER: (Laughs) well, now as a new teacher, as well as a new instructor, did you fell a little uncomfortable about establishing the art program?

BARBER: Well, yes, because I really had no position.  The first year that I was teaching extension course at Modesto, I was learning in Sonora; I was supporting myself as much by substituting in the grammar school and high school as I was by teaching night classes at Columbia, or for “Columbia College” at that time—really Modesto extension classes.  So, I think I had four classes, if I remember correctly.  There was no guarantee of any kind.  For all I knew, I was just teaching these classes, and then I might get dumped the next year.  So, I really didn’t know exactly what to expect, except that I was committed to the job by then.  I wanted the job.

DYER: Well did you actually initiate the art courses that are now offered at Columbia Junior College?

BARBER: Yes. Bill Haskens, the dean of instruction told me that I was the art of thirty and to set up a program.  And I did.  So what actually, even now, I probably have had a major hand in almost every course outline, with the course offering, and what not.  Even though now Dale Bunzy, part time instructor—he has influence; but actually that I still pretty much have set up everything.  Maybe the evening classes and some of the craft classes I don’t have any contact with. 

DYER: Many of the instructors have talked about innovative courses.  Would you categorize yours as innovative courses? Or do you feel the need for more traditional…

BARBER: Well, art is a very creative field, and so in itself it’s innovative and I would not consider my art courses innovative.  That, in fact, things which, I think there’s been Dusty Rhodes was very interested in the school being innovative, and he would sometimes call things innovative, that really weren’t.  There were things that I’ve seen around for years and, yet, because it’s here, it becomes an innovative procedure.  To me, the art courses were foundation courses.  That, is some ways, I made some errors in setting up these courses, since I only had one year of experience in the Junior College, at the Junior College level.  I felt that the school was going to be more of a two-year feeder into the State College system, and it’s turned out.  I set the program up as a foundation to your foundation course for art majors.  And I feel now that was a mistake. 

DYER: So it was more university-oriented.

BARBER: Yes, (speaking simultaneously), and art school.

DYER: Could you give us just sort of a quick run-down on some of the courses that were offered in the fall of 1968 at Eagle Cottage?

BARBER: Well, at eagle Cottage I had a, I think it was sixty percent contract, and I offered a sequence of basic drawing and figure drawing—what I would call a drawing sequence.  And I offered an art appreciation class and an art history class. Then in the evening I offered, I believe, if I remember, I had an oil painting class. 

DYER: Did you get a good turn-out from the cross-section of the community? Younger? Older?

BARBER: More of a cross-section, I think, than we get now. There are more older people in my classes (percentage wise).  My classes were smaller.  Most of them were limited to ten to twenty people.

DYER: what kind of studio arrangement did you have in Eagle Cottage? I don’t recall…

BARBER: I didn’t.  There was a room in the back—I think it was a preparation room that was use as a classroom.  I t had tables and chairs, and I required my student to bring their things.—similar to a night class.  The setup was very similar to an off-campus evening class.  And I had a little nook in the corner, one of the bedrooms that was my office.   I think I shared it with Walk Leineke and Bob Hamilton, if I remember right.  And, it was very homey, but it was fun because it was new and everyone was optimistic.  I suspect that it would be terrible now.  But it was a good year.  I also… I was very bust because I had a one-third contract down at Stanislaus State—at the same time I was teaching classes down there to fill in.

DYER: So you were commuting then.  You lived in Sonora, you taught in Columbia, and you also taught in Turlock. 

BARBER: Right…and then I had evening courses here. So I was pretty busy.

DYER: Did you have an opportunity to peruse your own interests—to do any paintings yourself?

BARBER: Well, I was more busy on sort of another abortive project which I have to finish up.  I’ve been writing a book and I was working harder on that than on the painting, but I did have the opportunity—especially being single, that any time I wasn’t preparing for my classes or in class, was my own time.  So that in some ways I had a little more free time than the average person. 

DYER: Now, the painting that we have in the rotunda in the library of Eagle Cottage is one from your collection, though. 

BARBER: Well, what happened is that a student said that the Eagle Cottage wanted to leave a graduating present for the school.  And I suggested that works of art make an ideal gift to leave behind because you can spend five dollars, you can spend five thousand dollars on a work of art; and it’s something that the school can always use. And they asked me if I would paint a picture of the Eagle Cottage on a very last-minute-rush basis.  So I was out in front of the Eagle Cottage the day before graduation painting the picture. So, some of the people in the picture are student from the school.  And the fellow coming out the door in a rather disheveled situation is Bob Davidson.  Actually, the people painted in the picture were actually there.  As I would see someone go by, I would just pain them in. 

DYER: I think that’s beautiful. It makes it much more personal and more interesting.  Are there specific student that you remember or happenings that occurred that bring back foreign memories?

BARBER: Well, I remember the—I can’t remember the names particularly—but I do remember that the relationship between the teacher and the student were much closer than now.  I think that there has been a general depersonalization taking place and I found that as an instructor at that time I have a lot more freedom to carry out things my own way, now that you have to operate on a more administrative level than you did then.  It’s a little tricky to get to the curriculum committee now, or registration is a lot more regimented than it used to be.  And then you just sort of had people that you knew who were in your class, and you could pretty much set things up the way you wanted them within reason.  And now I found that things are much more paper oriented than they were then.

DYER: Would you think it was a worthwhile experience for a college to be born under such humble circumstances?

BARBER: I think so.  I think it established a spit for the school.  But I know most school start out this way; Stanislaus State, which I mentioned before, was this way.  They were out of the fair grounds, which is where they got the name Turkey Tech, because they were right next to the turkey display area, and so the name Turkey Tech stuck.  But, us…so a lot of schools start out this way, but I think it is.  I think it gives sort of a spit to it and I suppose where this business about the “plankers” gets in—that here you have certain teachers who have been here ever since the inception of the school.

DYER: Do you have you little gold pin?

BARBER: Because there is a certain degree of hostility toward the gold pin I deliberately lost mine. 

DYER: So, that’s a very small pin that…

BARBER: Yeah, I do.  Virginia Balckburn passed those around, and she bought them in Columbia.  I suppose if you first looked around, you could probably find them. They said they in Columbia, because she just went down to one of the stores and bought them and passed them out. 

DYER: Well, Joe, I appreciate the opportunity to reminisce with you.  We thank you very much, and we will save this for friends of the college to come back and listen to at their convenience in the future.

END OF INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW #2

Interviewer:  Richard L. Dyer

Interviewee: Ross Carkeet (Science and Natural Recourses)

DYER: Ross, why don’t you tell us what you were doing before you joined the “plank holders” during the Eagle Cottage days. 

CARKEET: I came as a grad student fresh out of Humboldt State College.  And before accepting this job, I was a seasonal naturalist up at Humboldt Redwood State Park, just south of Eureka.  And here I am. 

DYER: And since you were involved in natural resource program at Columbia Junior College were you the one responsible foe the courses?

CARKEET: Yes, through the coordination of Dick dodge, who was dean of science and natural resources back in the beginning, we communicated through the main, and designed the courses as we perceived they should be taught.  Setting them up in field of forestry and conservation a natural resources—those three main areas to begin with.

DYER: Now, as I understand it, you were the only local boy teaching at Columbia Junior College.

CARKEET: Yes, the only loco local who came back.

DYER: (Laughing) did that have any effect then, since you were a Tuolumne County product, did that have nay affect on the way you set up courses?

CARKEET: It had a lot of affects in term of people helping me set up courses, because they knew me.  Which may have been good or bad, but for the most part it was a very helpful thing because they were interested in what they were trying to do, and because they knew me, they seemed to become more interested.  People like Vince Dona—you know that local game warden, you know, he knew from when I was a little kid—wanted top help us set up a good program.  I’d worked seasonally in this community fighting fire and I’d worked for Pete Green as a part-time forester and most of these recourse people were here when I came back to teach and were very willing to cooperate. 

DYER: When they saw you as an instructor at the college, did they think of you as a teacher or did they really think of you as the little boy around town that they used to remember?

CARKEET: Mostly the latter, to start with. 

DYER: That’s a realistic attitude.

CARKEET: yeah, yeah.  They were going to help me, you know, and…which was fine.  It didn’t bother me. 

DYER: Well, as a younger instructor, did you find that this gave you an advantage in working with the students in Eagle Cottage?

CARKEET: Definitely.  I felt that IU could identify with the student better than some of the older colleagues, simply because I had just gotten out of school, I knew how students felt because I had just been there, and I felt that it was a real advantage.  And I still feel that way today, being one of the younger faculty members. 

DYER: Ross, what were some of the courses that you taught in Eagle Cottage?

CARKEET: I started with my first class being and introductory conservation class and an introductory forestry class.  And those were followed in the weather by surveying--forrest surveying—and a (____) science course.  And then in the spring a forestry course on dendrology—the study of trees and local shrubs with some field trips to see these things—and part-time I helped develop the initial biology program at Eagle Cottage.  I was one-third time instructor in principles of biology and botany, so I really started in biology and forestry.

DYER: So you were rally spread really thin then.

CARKEET: Right.  Some quarters I was teaching as many as four or five classes—on a part-time basis anyway.  Yeah, we were all over the place that first year. 

DYER: The field trips?

CARKEET: The field trips, labs to the campus over here before anything had happened to it, labs outdoors, setting up audio tutorials inside…all kinds of things.

DYER: Did you establish the conservation trail here on campus at that time?

CARKEET: Yeah, that came the second year, as far as working on it.  No, let me take that back. The first year we had one work party out here on a Saturday with about thirty of us and we put the first stairs down into the arboretum where the rail heard starts.  And I remember that in particular now, because there was a large weenie roast in the afternoon to celebrate our vast productivity.  It was a lot of fun.  We were on the lake and having a weenie roast and at this point the buildings were just being started and it was a very young time. 

DYER: Now, did you personally get involved in the cleaning up of the lake when it was drained and prepared for the fish life that went in later?

CARKEET: When the lake was drained and burned, as far as the plants and so forth after they had been accumulated, they were burned up and carted away.  I was still up at Humboldt.  When I came back the lake was just starting to fill and we had a very sterile environment—no fish life, no plant life.  And it was my charge, then, to put some life back into the lake.  So at this point we started getting fish of different types and these were provided through student projects—going out and collecting small mosquito fish to start out with and then bluegill and then eventually black bass and these were weekend and also school town projects sometimes associated with the biology program.

DYER: So where did you go on some of your other fieldtrips?

CARKEET: On the first year you mean?

DYER: Eagle Cottage days.

CARKEET: Yeah, Eagle Cottage days.  I started field trips that I’m still conducting. We went to the White Mountains in Eastern California to look at the bristlecone pine on a weekend trip.  These are the oldest trees in the world.  And we had such success with that the first year tht I continued it every year and every year it gets better. 

DYER: do you ever get snowed in?

CARKEET: We got snowed in two years ago.  We drove up there in a blizzard.  It was a late day in May and the air temperature was twenty-five and the wind was about forty-five mile an hour and I remember (a name I couldn’t make out) hung his canvass water-bag on a pinion pine right in the camp sight and in ten minutes it was a swinging block of ice in the wind. (Laughs) It was a miserable night.  In the morning we didn’t even get up to the grove.  We just hopped in the busses and came back home. 

END OF TAPE

General Information:

Interviewer: Dyer, Richard L.

Interviewee of interview #1: Barber, Joe (Art department)

Interviewee of interview #2: Carkeet, Ross (Science and Natural Recourses)

Name of Tape: Continuation of the History of Columbia Junior College: Interviews by original faculty of Columbia Junior College (CC_hist_7_1)

When: Winter of 1973

Transcriber: Ariella (September 2008)

Transcriber’s Note: This interview does not continue onto tape CC_hist_8_0