October 18, 2011: Charlie Barkhuff's Passing

The pictures on this section are of Will's brother Charlie who passed on October 18th, 2011. Charlie joined us in Australia a few years ago. He was quite a character with an amazing life. He left 5 living adult children and many wild stories. He was a Chef, a wood carver, a carpenter, an artist, a sailor and a lumber jack! Will can tell you more...Charlie died young..(71) due to his life-long habits of alcohol and cigarettes. His ashes will be scattered along the Oregon Coast in the Spring. He spent his life along the Pacific Coast and in Oregon. He was Will's only
sibling and they loved each other deeply and completely. His favorite motto was "No one gets out of here alive!" But what a life he had...he was the master of his fate and lived life on his own terms.

Well, even though my brother was in a care facility for his last years and his health and quality of life had declined very rapidly, I was not prepared for his passing. It is still hard to believe that he is gone. I obviously knew him my entire life, and I probably knew him better than anyone else did. We had a lot of great times together growing up. He was only 2-1/2 years older than me so we did a lot of things together. I knew all his friends and he knew mine. When we were young we fought like crazy until I was able to inflict enough pain on him or whip him that we finally quit. Charlie always loved the outdoors, nature and animals. When we were in Grammar School in Eagle Rock we both had paper routes and we delivered the papers before school, very early in the morning. In Eagle Rock the hills between there and La Canada were pretty wild. Charlies route was up along the base of the hills. The streets that ended up in the numerous canyons were all on his route. Mine was close by. We would meet and set trap lines up those canyons. Actual old spring traps like small bear traps with a chain to secure the trap. They had numbers that indicated their size from the smallest, #0 which had a single spring on one side only and could hold small animals like a skunk or maybe a possum. #1 and 1-1/2 also had a single spring but could hold bigger animals like a coon or maybe a fox. The biggest traps we had were #2 and they had a spring on each side and could hold a coyote or maybe a bobcat. We baited the traps covered them with leaves and maybe a light layer of fine soil and then drove a stake or chained it to a log or something solid. We would check the traps each morning, reset or move them and take any animals we caught. You might wonder, what the hell did we do with the animals? This is where one of Charlies amazing accomplishments comes in. He had taken a mail order class on taxidermy from some outfit in Omaha, Nebraska. Charlie would mount the animals and we would sell them to various places, mostly to the Feed and Fuel store in Eagle Rock. I was in the 6th grade and Charlie was in the 8th grade when we moved from Eagle Rock to Alhambra.

In Alhambra there were no real hills for setting traps although the house we moved into was on a fairly big grassy hill with not too many houses at that time. One night shortly after we moved in we were coming home from the movies with our folks and a family of striped skunks ran across in front of us just as we were coming up to our house. They ran up into a vacant lot next to the house across the street from us. This house was very large/pricey and belonged to a Mr. and Mrs. Cosby. They raised orchids commercially and had several big glass hot houses in their back yard. Charlie and I decided to try and catch one of the skunks. We set a trap at the base of the large hedge between the Cosby house and the vacant lot. The Cosby gardener, a nice Japanese man was trimming the hedge the next day. As he was picking up the trimmings, WHAM, our trap latched onto his thumb. Well, he immediately screamed and leaped back only to come to an immediate painful stop as he reached the end of the chain which was staked firmly in the ground. Mr. and Mrs. Cosby never cared much for me and Charlie after that.

Another amazing thing Charlie did at a very early age was take a Paleontology class at the LA County Museum in Exposition Park. He took the bus down there and I went with him sometimes. This was all about fossils and dinosaurs and such. He went on field trips with the class and gathered lots of fossils. This started us on a long term fossil collection. Charlie knew all the Latin/scientific names. We got little glass bottles and all sorts of other containers that he labeled & placed in special partitioned wooden display cases that he made. This collection eventually brought out our interest and beginning of a rock collection. Also, a little known fact is that owls generally swallow their food whole. Then after digestion they hock up and spit out a large hairball including the skeleton of the critter. These hairballs are called "castings". We would search for castings and Charlie would carefully take them apart and reassemble the skeletons of mice, gophers, rats, moles and the other small creatures the owl consumed. He would glue them together like assembling a model airplane. There was probably only a very small percentage of kids in LA that were doing his type of thing.

Charlie loved animals and birds. We were constantly trying to catch things and raise them. We raised a screech owl up to the age of release, had numerous snakes, birds, turtles, salamanders, lizards, horny toads and you name it. He was in the Boy Scouts and really loved it. He got to go on camping trips in the mountains and desert around LA and back packing trips for weeks at a time in the Sierras. I could not wait to join the scouts after listening to Charlie talk about all the great wilderness and wild life he would see. Charlie did very well in the scouts and became an Eagle Scout which was the highest rank achievable and definitely not an easy task. He had gobs of Merit Badges for all types of accomplishments.

I have innumerable memories of us exploring the natural world. We had field guides for birds, reptiles and amphibians, fish, mammals, rocks/minerals and books on dinosaurs and fossils, bugs and trees. It was a constant quest to see and identify creatures. We could name every bird, animal, reptile or other critter in the southwest. On trips we took during summer vacation our folks always camped and made an effort to go to National Parks or other areas of interest that were in the vicinity of our journey. For example, on one trip to Nebraska to visit the relatives that lived there, we would go to the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert, The Petrified Forest, the Meteor Crater and several lesser attractions on the way and then do a loop coming home and go to the Black Hills , Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, Jackson Hole and Las Vegas. These trips were some of the greatest adventures that Charlie and I had in our lives.I have barely scratched the surface on all the memories I have of my brother and his influence on me growing up.

In high school Charlie got a job at a restaurant in Alhambra called Barbeque Heaven. He started out as a bus boy and the owner, Al, liked him and taught him how to cook. After high school he became an accomplished chef and worked at several very fancy restaurants in the LA area. Eventually he had his own restaurant and catering business in San Gabriel. He was married and had three kids at the time. His marriage failed after 10 years and he left LA driving an old International Travel All and headed to Alaska. He cooked for a crew of 80 on an off shore oil rig in Cook Inlet which was totally frozen over. He migrated back south to Oregon after less than a year and bought a piece of land on top a mountain. He cut down trees and built a one room, dirt floor log cabin. He got married again and had three more kids. He was cooking at a big hotel in Portland and dabbling in wood carving. Eventually he quit cooking and carved various things and sold them at craft shows and swap meets. Eventually he hit on carving fireplace bellows. These sold well and he specialized in them for several years. He had an annual booth at Silver Dollar City near Branson Missouri and he went to several other large craft shows across the country. He was pretty handy with wood. He carved all sorts of really nice things including several totem poles and a great chess set with pieces all from the various totem pole creatures of the north west native people.

He eventually got a little saw mill that ran off a Volkswagen engine. He cut down trees and milled the lumber and built a pretty nice looking two story pole house on his land. He had problems with his marriage again and soon moved down into the valley on another small piece of land he bought. He lived in a funky little trailer that he had covered with shake shingles. He had a workshop at least twenty times bigger than his living quarters. He built a Viking boat from museum specs. It was 35-40 feet long, lapstrake construction. He made a steaming box to bend the boards. It used an old tea kettle for the steam supply. When the wood was pliable he bent each piece into the proper shape by using pegs in a jig table that he made. The bottom of the boat was covered with copper sheet to a bit above the water line. Copper nails were used throughout. The bowsprit was an elaborate carved Dragon head that he made. The mast step which is in the very bottom of the bilge and holds the mast in place was a very large carved whale. This boat was a work of art. All rigging was authentic gear that he made. It had a square sail and used the old hemp type rope. No modern stuff. He kept it for years on the river west of Portland. I sailed it with him and a couple friends of ours for two days up the Columbia River to the town of Hood River. It was another unique and great adventure with Charlie. Eventually he acquired a 42 foot Chinese Junk that was built in Asia and sailed across the Pacific. It was solid teak. He moved onto it in a little marina west of Portland and lived on it for years with the Viking boat tied up along side. He did handyman work in the Marina for his living expenses which were quite low.

Eventually Charlie began a journey he had dreamed about for years.He donated his Viking boat to a museum. He wanted to sail his Chinese Junk down the coast and into Mexican waters and live there anchored up for free in various coves and harbors for the rest of his days or until he wanted to do something else. He gradually worked his way down the Oregon coast stopping in several harbors along the way and doing handyman work. He sailed down the California coast and was anchored up at Capitola, near Santa Cruz for several weeks. One night while he was asleep his anchor rope parted and his boat drifted in to the beach. When he finally woke up the surf was pushing his boat in and it was hitting bottom. It was eventually a total loss and a sad day indeed for Charlie. He was fortunate to be rescued in total darkness and to be able to save his Parrot, Moe. Before too long he was able to buy another sailboat. It was a fairly old boat, about 26 feet long and a traditional type fiberglass sloop. He continued his journey and eventually made it to San Diego Bay. While there he had a change of heart and decided to get rid of his boat and go live with our Mom in Nebraska. I think he finally got tired of the work and the loneliness and after several close calls during the journey he realized what a powerful and dangerous foe the ocean is. He traded his boat for an old pickup truck and probably a bit of cash. He lived with Mom for several years until she passed.

After Mom died he went back to Oregon and lived in a "floating home" in a funky little marina west of Portland. After a few years he moved into a little apartment in Dundee, a small town south of Portland. His health was fading and he started falling down frequently. This was what finally got him into the Chehalem Health and Rehab Center in Newberg, Oregon where he lived until the end.

Charlie loved to grow vegetables in the garden. Even when he lived on his boats and when he lived with Mom, he always had a garden. When he lived on the floating home he sent away for a kit that was a really nice redwood and glass hot house. He rigged up an irrigation system with mist and drips and grew beautiful vegetables for the table.
He also was quite a fine painter for a number of years. His main medium and style was acrylic paint applied with a palette knife. He did some very colorful and beautiful ones up to about 3x5 feet. For many years Charlie rode bicycles up to about 25-50 miles a day. He competed in numerous 100 mile races including an exciting one we attended at Laguna Seca Raceway near Monterey, California.

Charlie had a lot of interests in life, a lot of talent and a big clumsy heart. He made friends easily everywhere he went and had many lifelong friends.
This is brief sketch of Charlie and his unconventional life style. He was definitely a colorful character and the only brother I had. I still find it hard to believe that he is gone. I miss him already.