History of the Bremner Family

A lot of what follows is pictures which come to mind of things I have seen and experienced during the past seventy years, and more. Some of it may seem a little dull and some might say somewhat self-centered, but at least it is factual first hand information.

My earliest clear recollections are of living in what we called the “little house” at the back end of a lot on Franklin Street in Bellingham. There was a larger house at the front end of the lot which was one of the three houses owned and rented out by my father who by this time was bookkeeper for Mogul Logging Co., owned and operated by the brothers George and Charley Nolte. About the time I started to school we moved to a large two story house at the northeast corner of Lake and Ellis streets in Bellingham. We lived there until I finished the eighth grade at Franklin School which I did in seven years. This was a pleasant period during which my brother, our friend, and I played shinney, nobbles, duck-on-a-rock, scrub or work-up baseball, marbles, crack-the-whip, and other games which have now been displaced by T.V. watching, little league and other things. We also did a great deal of exploring in the woods which extended from the edge of town where we lived to an almost unlimited distance to the southeast. We picked wild black caps, red huckleberries, and native wild trailing blackberries. My mother canned 50 or 60 quarts of the latter each summer. These delicious blackberries, now rare, ,are not to be confused with the Himalaya blackberries introduced to this country many years later that are now becoming a nuisance. W also rambled through the forest all over Sehome Hill and, my father being a sensitive man and lover of nature, I learned from him most of the species of tress and flowers and learned to love and respect wild animals and birds.

My family were strong supporters and members of Garden Street Methodist Church. My father was treasurer of the church during the construction of the present fine brick building completed in 1912 at a cost of $40,000, which required tremendous effort. His name is now among those on the cornerstone of the church.

During these years I also acquired a great interest in public affairs, international relations and politics which I still have. One big issue was prohibition of production and sale of alcoholic drinks. The battle between “Wets” and “Drys” was, bitter and we were “Drys.” At this early age I developed a loathing for alcohol and the tragedies resulting from its use which had completely immunized me from every wanting to taste the stuff. The same can be said for “coffin nails” and other forms of tobacco. In 1912 Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive, or “Bull Moose” Party was the cause for which we fought. My father was candidate for County Treasurer on that ticket and I was busy distributing handbills around the city. Roosevelt decisively won over Taft, but Wilson won the presidency for the Democrats who later adopted many of the positions taken by the Progressives and have been the majority most of the time since then. The local Progressive, including my father, lost to the incumbent “Stand Pat” Republicans.

We spent seven happy years in the large two story house which still sites on the lot described, but it has been turned halfway around and moved to the back of the lot to make room for a commercial building. We had four large fruit trees in a row back of the house, a yellow transparent apple, a royal anne cherry, a king apple, and a bosc pear. A combination woodshed and chickenhouse sat next to the alley. There was also a vegetable garden, loganberries, currants and six varieties of large sweet gooseberries which my father had imported from England. To keep us busy, we had a large vegetable garden on a vacant lot next to the home of my mother's parents, about four or five blocks from our house. My brother Raymond and I sold surplus vegetables to neighbors and were allowed to add the money to our savings.

A great adventure, when I was about ten years old, was going, alone, by train to Everson, then by wagon along the Nooksack River to the farm of my Uncle Willis Liston where I spent several days driving a team of mules on the hay fork to put hay in the barn. While waiting for the next load of hay I stuffed myself with the delicious black cherries of which there were several trees. I was extremely proud of the dollar or two that I made there, and have always had a special regard for my Uncle Willis.

My closest friends at Franklin School included Clifford Gunderson and Richard Atwood, who recently died in Chicago, George McCush, an attorney in Bellingham, and Harold Kendall, of whom I knew nothing for 67 years until I recently noticed his name in the phone directory. I phoned him and found that he had just been wondering the other day what had happened to me, and also found that he was one of the group that roasted potatoes in a fire in an old stump across the alley from our house when he was nine and I was eleven years old. We visited him ,where he lives near Blaine and learned that he had lived in various places and spent 27 years in Seattle.

In 1914, when I was twelve and my brother was nine years old, our family began a much harder and more precarious life. My father developed a blood clot in the vein in his leg and spent some time lying down most of the time with his leg elevated. The doctor advised him to find work where he would be physically active. It happened that my Uncle Willis Liston knew of land being leased for farming on the Lummi Indian Reservation, and my father joined in a partnership to lease, for five years, about 360 acres of mostly wild swamp land. Only about 20 acres was cultivated, the rest having to be fenced, diked, ditched, and brought under cultivation. They also agreed to build two small houses and a barn and to pay a token cash rent. The land was mostly salt marsh, the delta of the Nooksack River, with scattered brush and small trees, driftwood and a heavy growth of tall reeds called tules. The next five years was work, struggle and financial loss. A great flood of the river in 1917 washed out the dike, allowing salt water in and drowning quite a number of yearling heifers. We had a dairy herd and raised oats for grain, but often the tules grew better than other things. In Bellingham we had modern plumbing, gas lights and a warm house. Now we had outside toilet, kerosene lamp, carried water from a spring about 200 feet away, and lived in just a shell of a house. Raymond attended school in Marietta, about two miles away, walking and being taken across the river in a rowboat by the one-legged ferryman. I went to Whatcom High School in Bellingham, going in by stage on Monday morning to stay with my grandmother and Aunt Olive Wilson until Friday afternoon when I returned home to work during the weekend.

Our spring, just across the road east of our house, was in a forest of virgin Sitka spruce, western red cedar, and western hemlock. My brother Raymond, cousin Paul Liston, a couple of years
younger, and I traveled through the forest on the ancient Indian trails and located the best salmonberry patches. My father located a bee tree near our spring, a big cedar about six ft. in diameter. When it was cut down we had tubs and washboilers of honey to last many months. He also split shakes with a “Nigger maul” and froe for the barn roof from the big cedars. Mosquitoes were far worse there than in Alaska or any other place I have been. A black horse would appear to be gray. Sometimes they sucked blood until they broke open and continued to enlarge the blob of blood beside them. It was necessary to wear a veil when working in the field.

Our land was rented from old Jacob, Old Albert Discanum, and August Martin, son-in-law of the Chief, Henry Kwina. Old Henry Kwina had a large family but most of them died of' “consumption”, or tuberculosis of the lungs, which, along with alcohol, was the plague of the Indians. August Martin worked for us and I spent a lot of time working with him clearing the land, etc. He was a good worker who did not drink and later became Chief of the Lummi Tribe. When he became old, however, he took up drinking and became an alcoholic.

What was probably my closest escape from death happened early one morning when I rode our fractious pony down toward the river nearly a mile from our house to get the cows. A fence had been opened by loosening the barbed wire and laying them on the ground. Of course, the horse afraid to cross the wire and I dismounted and led him across, then tried to get back in the saddle. He was excited by this time and my foot slipped through loop of leather strap which served as a stirrup, he whirled around and broke the bridle so I had no control. He took off it a wild gallop dragging me. There was noone within sight or sound. Luckily, after bouncing along at top speed for several hundred feet, I struck a bump which knocked the wind out of me but also broke the strap. While on the subject of horses I should say that we had a team of two big, beautifully matched Clydesdales for which we paid $500 and a big black Percheron of the same size. These furnished the power to do the farm work for the first several years, until a man showed up in the area with a Fordson tractor to do some plowing for hire. When breaking the tule marsh with the plow it was necessary to put “tule shoes” on the horses so they would not mire down. These were slabs of wooden board slightly larger than the horses’ hooves which were fastened on with clamps somewhat on the order of snowshoes.

Late in 1918 my father bought a 120 acre farm on the Willey’s Lake Road about five miles southwest of Lynden. The south boundary of the farm was the Nooksack River from which I dipped salmon in the fall, many of which I smoked. The farm was subject to severe floods which left large stumps and logs, took out fences, filled ditches, deposited sand and eroded banks. On part of the farm, the layer of rich sediment left by the water produced tremendous hay crops.

At this time the social life of the young people consisted of parties at the homes where games such as farmer-in-the-dell were played, square dances and a dramatic club which produced simple plays in which we took part. The Epworth League of the Methodist Church was also popular. Thirty years later the Epworth League of the Methodist Church was put on the “subversive list” by the U.S. Attorney General, during the disgraceful period of anti-Communist hysteria led by Senator Joe McCarthy.

I graduated from Whatcom High School in l919 in the fall two other students and I rented a small house in which to “batch” while attending Bellingham Normal School. We each prepared our own meals, such as they were, and piled the dirty dished in the sink. When the dishes in the sink became intolerable we played horseshoes and the loser washed the dishes. I took only courses in physics and chemistry preparatory to transferring to the University of Washington. The post-war slump struck farm prices in 1921 so milk, eggs and other products that we produced were only half the price that they had been. The payments on our loan from the Federal Land Bank and our taxes remained the same, so as financial conditions worsened, I spent the next two years at home to keep the farm going. I worked long hours on the farm and did custom work with our Fordson tractor. I also hauled gravel to put on the roads at five dollars per day for me and a team and wagon, as well as cutting alder poles with a buzz saw for firewood, which I hauled with the team to buyers. Money was so hard to come by that I went back to Normal School in the fall of 1922 for one year in order to qualify to teach school. Beginning in September of 1923 I taught for one year at the Woodland School near the intersection of the Lynden-Birch Bay and Woodland Roads. I was principal and taught the upper four grades at a salary of $100 per month for nine months. I lived at home, of course, and spent my spare time working on the farm. A couple of years ago we had the first reunion of the Woodland teachers and students, after fifty years. It was a strange sensation to meet several of them whom I had not seen during all this time and are now old retired people.

In 1924, I took the examination for post office clerk at Lynden. I went to work in the Lynden post office on July 1, 1924, at 60 cents per hour for a 35 hour work week as substitute clerk. During my first day on the job a young woman came to work, whom I had noticed at the examination, but had no idea who she was. She turned out to be the daughter of the postmaster, Curtis B. Bay. I did not imagine that I would marry her the next year and still be living with her 57 years later. We were married June 14, 1925, and about that time my parents rented the farm and moved to Lynden. The newlyweds bought a small four room house located where Rainier Bank now stands. We paid $2800 for it and sold it during the Great Depression for $1800.

The next ten years I worked as a post office clerk, having been appointed to a full time job to replace Marian who was deemed ineligible because her father was postmaster. She taught school in Seattle for one year prior to our marriage. Our daughter Margaret was born in 1927, followed by twins Don and Doris in 1929. The twin buggy we bought for them was so wide that a notch had to be cut in the front door to get it into the house. We had outgrown the small house, so we arranged to live on the 20 acre farm belonging to Marian’s parents while they lived in our House. We kept three or four cows, had a big garden and fruit trees, but the house was very old and the water pipes froze in the kitchen and bathroom during cold weather. We enjoyed the farm life and it was a good place for our four children who now included Jim, born in 1932. The east half of the 20 acres was stumps and a fair stand of young cedar trees eight to twelve feet high. It was part of the Robert O’Neil homestead and the old log cabin served as our woodshed.

My work as P.O. Clerk was interesting and covered the whole range of postal duties, distributing incoming and outgoing mail, selling stamps, money orders, postal savings, etc., keeping accounts and records, making reports and waiting on general delivery. The latter was a nuisance because, with no city carrier and money to pay lock box rent being scarce, most people chose to call at the window for mail. As a result there was too much mail to handle there and, to make matters worse, mama, papa, and all the kids would pop in individually during the day to ask for mail.

Home on Benson Road in Lynden WA where George and Marian Bremner lived out their married lives

In 1934 we moved to a four acre farm, which we rented, at 8427 Benson Road. The house had never been completely finished inside and it was, we thought, only a temporary arrangement, but we were offered such a good deal that we bought it within a year. Later we bought two more acres on the north from Dick Vander Stoep who was president of the First National Bank. He retained about half an acre where he and his wife lived in the fine log house which had been the home of the pioneer Harvey Slade family. Several years later this log house was bulldozed and burned. Dick, who is now 88 years old, told me he would have liked to live in the log house the rest of his life, but his wife thought a banker deserved better. We milked several cows, had a large garden and fruit trees, which, combined with my post office job, kept me very busy.

In 1935 I asked for, and received, a transfer to the position of rural carrier on Route 1, Lynden. This was still the time of the Great Depression and there were many, including prominent businessmen, applying for the job which was considered to be light work, sure pay, and retirement pension in the amount of a very adequate $100 per month at age 65 after at least 30 years of service. For the first few years I found the work pleasant and not too heavy except for periods during the winter when snow, ice and mud were a problem. Nearly all of the roads were gravel, some of which became mudholes when the frost went out. Many times fences were taken down and detours made through the fields to get around snowdrifts or mudholes. The excessive stop and go and idling was hard on the car engine, consequently I bought a new car every year or two. By taking delivery at the factory in Michigan a customer was given a rebate of $200 to $300 on a car priced at $2000 to $3000. This was enough to pay the bus or train fare for two people to Detroit and gasoline to drive home. By staying with relatives and sometimes camping out along the way we were able to make several enjoyable trips across the country.

By 1944 mail volume had doubled as prosperity returned, everybody received more publications and letters and more people moved onto the route. Pay was by the mile and the future looked like more and more work for the same pay. My father-in-law was postmaster from 1923 to 1935. Wm. A. Bauman was appointed in 1935 and resigned in 1944. I asked to be transferred to the position of postmaster which had been placed under the Civil Service by the Democrats. However, the Republicans vowed they would return to the spoils system upon returning to power. I delayed accepting the appointment while I spent the summer as a logger. All men were urged to accept work necessary for the war effort, so I turned the mail route over to our oldest daughter, Margaret, and went to work for Puget Sound Pulp and Timber Co. (now Georgia Pacific). We logged near the top, at 2500 to 3500 ft., on Wickersham Hill, just out of Wickersham. I was chokerman for a few days and it was rugged work diving into ten foot deep tangles of big limbs and logs to set the heavy two inch chokers. Speed was the watchword and we had to scramble and jump to get out of the way before the lines tightened and the logs took off ripping through the debris and whipping down trees 50 to 100 ft. high. I became a whistle punk next. I was stationed in the area from which logs were being yarded, with a wire connected to the whistle on the steam donkey engine at the landing several hundred feet away. The rigging slinger, who was boss of the chokermen, would yell the signals to me and I would jerk the wire blowing the whistle on the donkey engine, the number of toots indicating whether to go ahead, stop, back up, etc. This was toward the end of the “high ball” logging period when the number of logs gotten out was much more important than the number of men injured or killed. Of the professional loggers on our crew there was hardly one who had not been injured or had a member of his family badly injured or killed. There was also an odd assortment of queers and criminals, some of whom I suspected might have been turned loose to work in the woods. Many of the crew spent their spare time reciting the glorious time they had enjoyed over the weekend during which they got roaring drunk, tore out telephones, smashed furniture, etc. Each day the crew was taken in a bus or van from the bunkhouse up the hill several miles to where we worked. The brakes were so bad the bus would hardly stop on the level, and one day in late summer the transmission slipped out of gear and we took off down the steep grade like a shot. The rigging slinger said we should jump, which we all did except the driver and the engineer, Jack Baird, who was about 60 and considered an old man. The first I knew was when I came out of a daze walking down the road with blood all over my face and a sprained shoulder which required several weeks of diathermy treatments before I could use it to reach out of the car window to put mail in the boxes. I had asked to be promoted to postmaster and my appointment was confirmed by the Senate and took effect May 1, 1945, but I did not officially accept the job until the fall because of the uncertainty of its permanence. However, later, when the Republicans came to power under Eisenhower they kept the postmasters under civil service. Bruce Lytton, a hard-bitten friend who lived at Booth's Corners, had good advice when I told him of my doubts about becoming postmaster. He said, “It would be damned nice to be able to tell other people what the hell to do.” I thought that over awhile and decided to take the job, and never regretted it.

[George A. Bremner II’s son James later told of how his father had perseverated over whether or not to take the job as postmaster. He kept asking his wife whether he should take the job so often that she finally got tired of him and put him on a bus to go stay with his brother Raymond in Fresno, Cal., for a while. He got off of the bus in Portland and got onto a return bus home. When he came walking in the door he was still talking about whether he should take the postmaster job, as if he never missed a beat. He delayed so long that they finally decided to give it to someone else, and he had to take advantage of his personal relationship with Henry (“Skip”) Jackson, the powerful Senator from Washington State, to get the position. Being postmaster in a town like Lynden was a pleasant job. The important thing is to choose good employees, which I was lucky enough to do. Of course, the inspectors have no mercy and you can be immediately bounced out of your job if you borrow a little from Uncle, as a nearby postmaster did. Inspectors walk in entirely unexpectedly and this postmaster was caught trying to bring money from the bank to replace some that he had borrowed. You can also create hell if you carry on a feud with a long time employee like another postmaster did. The position carried some prestige and authority, being in charge of 17 employees and responsible for the postal service in the area.

I had gone to work for the postal service in 1924 in rented quarters in the Dyk Building, where McLain's Drug Store now is. The floor was made up of rough and cracked cement on which I spread wet sawdust to keep the dust down when I swept. Heat was from a big wood-burning furnace in the basement which required frequent stoking. String used to tie bundles of letters had to be saved and reused. Marian and I spent some pleasant intervals tying the pieces together and winding it into balls. In 1940 we moved into the present fine new government-owned building. Some of the local businessmen were very critical of the wasteful, spendthrift New Deal Democrats who built this oversized monstrosity which would never be fully utilized. Of course, it is crammed with equipment and barely large enough at present.

When mail volume dwindled during the Depression the three rural routes were reduced to two, but soon after I became postmaster three routes were reestablished. The next improvement was providing for city delivery service to take the mail to the homes and businesses. Some businessmen were opposed, fearing that people would buy less if they didn't have to walk by their stores on the way to the post office to get their mail.

Our first four children were all born within about a five year period: Margaret (1927), the twins Donald and Doris (1929), and James (1932). My income as clerk and rural carrier was barely enough to support us and make payments on our home. Four small children so nearly the same age, along with the post office job and the small farm kept us on the jump, but, on the whole, we were very fortunate. In 1943 William was born and the whole family concentrated on caring for, and enjoying, the new baby. It is a wonder that he was not spoiled rotten, but he took it upon himself to equal, if not exceed, the accomplishments of his brothers and sisters.

By this time Marian had become a partner in the Central Tax Service with Rella Stallard and Dena Zweegman and I had a better income as postmaster. The four older children were doing well and, although we all had to work hard and long, the wolf had been driven from the door, so to speak.

Family of George A Bremner II: seated L to R: James, William, George I, Doris, Marian with Kathy Erickson, “Dad” Bay, Wm Erickson; Back row: Olive Wilson, Margaret, Eugene, Donald, Delores, Ruth Rockey Brown

In 1926, Marian and I spent two weeks (my annual vacation) south of Forks where my father was in charge of finishing a section of the Olympic Highway 101 just south of the Bogachiel River bridge. K. Saucett, the contractor, had gone broke and my father's friend Victor Roader, a Bellingham banker, being the bondsman, had to finish the job, which was assigned to my father. I took a few days off from working with the crew while Marian and I went with the mail carrier named Fletcher on a 17 mile trip to Spruce, which consisted of two or three families on the Hoh River. Fletcher made this trip once a week, through the pristine wilderness of the rain forest, fording rivers and finding a way through the giant trees which often fell across the trail. Not long before our trip there had been a tremendous windstorm which blew down a great many trees. The hemlock suffered the most being tall and slender, but the big old spruce trees, many ten or twelve feet in diameter, mostly withstood the storm. The Huelsdonk family had lived on the Hoh River for 40 years and their children had grown up there without ever having seen a car or other modern things. Marian and I took turns riding a horse named “Business.'' It was one day in and one day out including an overnight with the Fletchers at Spruce. Their walls were covered with animal skins, mostly cougars which were very fond of livestock.

Marian and I often went on overnight camping trips with the children. We cooked on campfires and slept in the open. I always loved the forest and mountains and when the children were older I went on more extended hikes with them. When I was a small boy I read a little book about a fir tree which grew from a tiny seed, was threatened by forest fires and other dangers, but grew into a magnificent tree. This, together with my father's love of nature, led me to enjoy the forest so much that whenever I could borrow a few dollars on my life insurance I would buy another small piece of land with young trees on it, then I would pay off the loan.

In June, 1927, my father was still on the job on Highway 101 just south of the Bogachiel River bridge. He and my mother lived in a cabin on the river bank. My father phoned that my mother had been badly burned when her clothes had caught fire from the wood-burning stove. The next morning I got word that she had died. Shortly afterward I received a letter in her handwriting. For an instant it was as if she had returned from the dead. I still have the letter. It was especially sad to have her go because my parents were enjoying each other and a more relaxed life.
After ten years as post office clerk, ten years as rural carrier, and 21 years as postmaster, I retired at the end of 1965, about a month before the age of 64. It was a shock to suddenly realize that I had no job to keep me on-the jump. [George Bremner I suffered from a clinical depression after retiring, and was to have several more relapses before his death at the age of 96]. Within a few months we decided to buy a trailer and take off to see the world. We bought a 1967 Ford Sedan and a 22-foot Airstream trailer and traveled throughout the U. S. and Mexico. Being able to carry on a very simple dialogue with the people in Mexico was a big help in making friends and being able to understand their manner of living and looking at life. We also traveled to Hong Kong, to visit our son Don, Russia, Alaska, Europe and Canada. In Yakutat we visited our second cousins John Bremner and family and his sister Mrs. Williams. John Bremner and his sister are grandchildren of John Bremner II, Alaskan explorer and brother of my grandfather, James Bremner. They are all part Tlingit Indian. We spent two days with them seeing the beautiful area, eating salmon, being entertained by the old bear and two cubs who came to visit, and catching sockeye salmon in the beautiful little Situk River. In 1972 we traveled to the Persian Gulf, Borneo, Jakarta, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, where our son Bill was due to arrive to do research, and New Zealand.

George A. Bremner II

Even after all this time, it is difficult to view my younger years objectively, as it is for everyone. I have often wondered whether
is was heredity or environment that most influenced my behavior. I can’t remember being physically chastised or punished by either of my parents. I dimly remember, when I was four or five years old, my mother had a switch which she threatened to use on us if we did not behave, but I am sure that she never used it. I think the most powerful influences were love, very close and supportive family ties, and a distinctly positive self image. It is absolutely essential, I believe, that a child be impressed with the fact that he or she is a good person. I still wonder why it was that many boys of my age did so many cruel and destructive things which I had no desire to do. Religion also had much to do with shaping my thinking. We attended Sunday School and church services every Sunday while we lived in Bellingham, less frequently when we lived on the Reservation, and again, regularly when we bought the farm in Lynden. My religion is not a simplistic belief in the supernatural, but a philosophy and a way of life. The Bible has affected me more than any other book; I do not worship it as infallible, but use it as a guide to my thinking and a help to a better life.

My ethical values have always been quite solid and have changed very little. The greatest conflict between my own values and those of society have been over the conduct of our nation in international affairs. The Vietnam War was the ultimate result of a sickness which seems to afflict the nation chronically, and gain control periodically. Liberal, or even socialist or Marxist thought has always had an attraction for me, perhaps through my father's influence, who had some socialist ideas but became quite strongly anti-communist in later years. I am always instinctively pulling for the underdog. The Christian principles, as presented to me, also lead in this direction. I am convinced that a large infusion of socialist activity is essential in order to alleviate the fatal evils of laissezfaire capitalism.

There have been many great and good men and women who have influenced me, but they are all human and can make mistakes. For this reason it is dangerous to give unlimited or fanatical support to any person. There are always at least two sides to every issue and moderation should be practiced.

My philosophy of life is, first, to maintain physical and emotional health by regular habits, abstention from harmful substances, and living close to nature. I put a great emphasis on close and harmonious relations in family life, including children, grandchildren great-grandchildren, cousins, and so on. I believe in taking an interest and becoming involved in public affairs, politics, and the general well-being, not just for my own selfish interests. Without this, democracy will be a tragic failure. Finally, religion of the loving and unselfish kind is a great help in teaching and promoting the above objectives.

Over the past 60 years I have written letters in the hundreds to members of congress, the president, and editors of newspapers and magazines, in which I have argued and pushed for the ideas I have expressed. I have worked for many organizations against war, militarism, greed, exploitation, nuclear weapons, and in favor of sensible solutions and reasonable behavior. During the Vietnam War I took part in a protest in Bellingham in which several hundred of us marched down the main street and stood all afternoon in front of the Federal Building. We had eggs thrown at us and other indignities, but we did not think that it was too bad when compared to what was happening to our men in Vietnam and to the people of that country. For the past 59 years we have lived on a farm with cattle, cats, dogs, sometimes chickens or pigs, a large garden, and fruit and nut trees. Deeper reasons than financial success led to my interest in farming-- enjoyment of growing things, love of animals and the outdoors. Farming became my avocation while the Post Office became a means of livelihood.
I have climbed Mt. Shuksan and Mt. Baker in the 1920's, and have done a great deal of hiking in the mountains. By borrowing on my life insurance, I was able to buy a few pieces of land with beautiful stands of young trees which have now become medium-sized. I enjoy walking through the woods so much that they are safe from the chain saw as long as I live.

If I had any advice for future generations, it would be this: Be Wise.

This story covers the first 80 years of my life, which happens to almost coincide with the first 80 years of the 20th century. Marvelous, and almost unbelievable things have happened in my lifetime. In trying to peer into the future I have found that the thing which happens is nearly always something that was completely unforeseen, and not even imagined by anyone. I feel extremely lucky to have lived such a happy and satisfactory life, up to now, and I intend to do all that I can to pass on to posterity a livable and happy world.

GEORGE A. BREMNER, Jr.
Lynden, Washington

Footnote inserted in 2004 George Bremner wrote me a note in 1998 saying 'If you want to see me again, now is the time to come. We used the $1000 he gave to all his grandchildren at that time to fly out there based on his note.
We had a good visit, searched for the plaque on the 40 acres, and made the mandatory tour of the barn and the cats. He commented that my son Dylan did not like television so much and approved of that. He was hard of hearing and had trouble
communicating with the little kids. Otherwise things were fairly uneventful. Two weeks after we left, he died. Apparently he had an abdominal aneurysm which had been present for a month or more. He apparently was aware that he had a lethal condition, at
least on some level. I'm just glad we got to see him one more time.

George A Bremner II with Viola Vaccarino and Dylan and Sabina Bremner in front of the old barn at the family farm on Benson Road Lynden WA, ~1998, 2 weeks before his death

At the time of the revision of the “History” George A. Bremner II had recently passed away at the age of 96. His passing away was a cause of great grief to his family. His funeral was attended by the entire expansive Bremner clan of 5 children with their wives and husbands, 20 surviving grandchildren, and many of the 17 great-grandchildren. With his passing we lost more than just a person. My cousins and I have many happy memories of taking trips to Lynden to stay on the farm at 3427 Benson Road. Grandma always had fresh baked cookies in plastic tupperware containers on the kitchen table, bowls of blackberries and raspberries, and real milk (not like the watery stuff you buy in the store nowadays) transported directly from the cow to the table. Having temporarily satisfied our appetites, the kids headed out to the barn while the adults retired to the living room to discuss family events, farm news, or politics (in probably the last picture taken of him, two weeks before his death, he is shown taking the tour of the barn in Lynden with my wife and two of his great-grandchildren, Dylan and Sabina Bremner, a ritual repeated many times over the years with other grandchildren and great-grandchildren). Somewhere along the way there was always a tour of the apple, pear and cherry trees, the large vegetable garden, and a chance to meet the newest addition to the cat family. Five O’clock and the kids filed out to watch the dairy cows obediently file into the barn for their evening milking. Grandpa always wore overalls (“Osh Kosh B’Gosh” till they went out of business), except for on Sunday when he wore his black suit. When he went out for the milking he put on his cap with woolen ears and tall black rubber boots. With 21 cousins there were always a taggle of little kids to accompany and “help” him with his chores. Sometime during a visit to Lynden there was usually a trip to visit the “40 acres” that he owned of the original homestead, or to speed along country roads to see the farm scenery and take in “Grandpa’s favorite smell.”

He always took the time with even the littlest grandchild to show you something and to listen to the tiny voices of his grandchildren so he could learn from them in turn. He liked to tell his grandchildren about how our ancestors floated down the Nooksack River in an Indian canoe when they came to settle on their homestead in Whatcom County, or how his grandmother Abigail sailed around the world with her Cape Cod sea captain brother, or how he ate smoked salmon as a child with Indian Jim and his squaw Sallie on the Lummi reservation. He was never in too much of a hurry to stop the car by the side of the road and get out so that you could get a mouthful of salmon berries, and so that he could teach you the names of the plants in the forest. All in all, I see now in retrospect that he was very conscious of the moral and intellectual patrimony that he was actively installing in his extended brood.

George A. Bremner II’s favorite story as a child was of how a small seed one day grew into large Douglas Fir tree. His life was like that, driven by the belief that small beginnings can have great outcomes. He always believed in the common man, and had almost a mystical belief (which I think can be traced back to William Jennings Bryant, and before him perhaps to Jefferson) that the small farmer was the economic and spiritual source of this country’s strength, and that modern superstructures of finance and marketing were parasites on the small farmers. His logic was that all we really need is to grow food, and everyone else is merely making a profit at the expense of the farmer for their own benefit. A telling incident that provides insight into his frame of mind is when he returned from a trip to Europe shortly after he retired, and made the comment that the cities of Europe were not worth seeing, since cities are the same the world over, in the countryside is where you could really learn about a country. True to this spirit he spent many months travelling in Mexico, where he learned the language and spent a lot of time interacting with the people. I think in Mexico he found his ideal of the “pure common man.”

He had firm ideas about everything, including politics. Trying to change his opinion was like trying to run a train off its tracks, although he was not necessarily argumentative. He was a committed democrat whose views diverged to the left to the extent that he believed Communism was the best political system. He had such an interest in and sympathy for Stalin and the Soviets that he subscribed to “Soviet Life” and made a trip to visit that country before the breakup of communism. His belief in the communist way made him overlook the many negative aspects of Stalinist Russia. I believe this political outlook had its roots in the socialist orientation of many of the workers movements at the turn of the century, such as the Workers of the World (“Wobblies”) who organized the workers in the timber industry (of which he was at times a part), many of whom died in Everett and Chehalis during crackdowns by the “Pinkerton Men.” George’s political convictions led him to be outspoken in opposition to the Vietnam War from the beginning of our country’s involvement in that conflict. He spoke out against the war, including writing letters to the editor, even when noone else (especially in Lynden) agreed with him. I remember him saying the Ho Chi Minh was a patriot of his country who had won fair elections, and that our country had no business being there.

This socialistic approach to politics also manifested itself in a fundamental aversion to industrialism, materialism, and “progress” and the acquisition of material goods at the expense of everything else. One of my favorite quotes was during the gas embargo of the 70s when there were long lines at the gas station, and he said “I’ve seen the beginning of the automobile age and I’ll live to see the end of it.”When he was 75 he started a one man campaign to have the town of Lynden reintroduce salmon into the Fishtrap Creek (as it had had when he was a boy). As a college student listening to the cynical discussions about politics in the late 70s, in the midst of our nation’s coming to grips with the disillusionment with government generated by the Nixon scandals, I was impressed by the courage and integrity of his approach. He never tired of writing letters to his congressman to express his opinion. He felt that if the individual abdicated responsibility for their role in a democracy, then a democracy could not survive (and he was right). His political views seamlessly overlapped with his religious beliefs, based in the Methodist church, which basically entailed thinking of others more than one’s self, commitment to one’s values, doing what is right, and working from a frame of reference of the “bigger picture.”

With my own generations the cousins (myself included) were dispersed throughout the continent away from the “homeland” of Lynden and Washington State. Another one of his favorite sayings was that “The Bremners spent the past six generations moving West, and now everyone is going back East.” I thing that all of our cousins, no matter where they may roam, always had a spiritual source in the Lynden farm. This was a place to go back to when damaged or wounded by the onslaught of life, either for a summer time visit, or even just in the mind. The challenge now is to transform this legacy into something that we can pass on to others, even if the visible portion of the legacy, the barn, the “40 acres”, does not persist.