From the Art Brown interview
February 22, 2002
Oral History MS Vol. I, p. 40

Art: It's on the post card that dad—we blew up the pictures. I didn't have any idea what that was—and we took it to a friend in Mosca. He's my age, give or take a few months. And his oldest sister was there, and she was—see three, six, nine—nine years older. And as soon as we laid that picture down, she said, "That's the old Mosca Pass toll house." Said, "I remember that real well." Well I didn't—it was gone. A lot of those old mountain buildings disappeared in the thirties for firewood. You know, they were abandoned, they weren't used. It was an easy—real easy, quick load of wood. And. . . The house my granddad, or my dad was born in over here—the people that built these buildings—they didn't built 'em, they just put 'em together—lived over here on the corner, and he was a blacksmith, the old guy. And my dad was born a little over a mile east of there—a mile and a an eighth, maybe. I can remember going down that road one time, and another fella, a little younger than my dad, we met him and a team and wagon. And he happened to have a load of two-by-fours. And dad asked him, says, "What are you hauling?" The friend says, "I got me a load of wood." He said, "I went in that old house and pulled out two two-by-fours, and leave one, and pull out two, and leave one." He said, "That way the house don't fall down till later, and I got me a good load of firewood." You know what—you know but I can remember my dad—my dad was perturbed about that, but I didn't know why. I found out later that's where he was born. That's the house he grew up in—and then the one we grew up in.

 
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