Bucking Bales in 1957 - Bob Ackerman

Working on the Gonyea farm in 1957. (MP3, 1:13 min, 1.4 MB.)

Site of Lane campus in 1965. Looking northeast
from the present athletic fields toward Bloomberg
Road, the Russell Creek basin and Springfield hills.

It was probably the summer of 1957.  I had to go to summer school. I missed a term. I was in a very severe automobile accident and had to lay out a term. So I had to make that up in summer school and so I stayed here. A friend of mine and I got a job with the Gonyea family which owned all the property that the college is on right now.  In fact the Gonyea house is still on this property, or on their property.  And the job was what we call bucking bales.  It was going through the fields.  The bales of hay were already in the field and it was our job to buck them, basically put them onto the back of a pickup truck and to take them and stack them in the barn.  So we did that part of the summer.  That was my first communication with LCC even though it was many years before the district was formed.  I never envisioned I'd be back out here in the capacity of a Board member or that there'd be a community college here in 1957. [Bob Ackerman served on the Lane Board of Education, 1965-1973, 1999-2003.]

Site of Lane campus in 1965. Looking west
from the present athletic fields toward Eugene.

[This land was] rolling hills with grass growing on them.  It was not forested.  It's much like, if you look to the south a little bit where the Gonyea house is, up on that little knoll.  It was rolling hills like it comes down from there.  There were no trees that I recall, no trees at all until you get way in the back.  It was all open fields.

Aerial view of future site of Lane campus in 1965.  
Looking west towards Eugene. 
Interstate 5 is in the foreground.
30th Street is on the right.