Alfred Jackson Tucker, 95

Alfred Jackson Tucker, 95, died Wednesday, May 12, 2004, at Sandpoint.

Graveside funeral services will be conducted at 4 p.m. Friday, May 21, 2004, in Pinecrest Memorial Park.

Memorial funeral services will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday, May 22, 2004, in the Sandpoint Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Alfred was born March 14, 1909, at Blanchard, Mich., to Valis and Cora (Miller) Tucker. In 1910, the family moved to southwestern Idaho near Homedale where Valis worked on desert reclamation (irrigation) projects. The young superintendent, Harry Morrison, boarded with the Tuckers and slept in a tent in their yard. H. Morrison and M. Knudsen formed the Morrison-Knudsen Co., which became one of the largest engineering-construction companies in the world.

The Tucker homestead on the east side of the Snake River was preempted by another claimant so they took up a homestead on the west side. However, the irrigation canal didn't reach the elevation of their land so they couldn't farm. After proving up on the homestead in 1918, they moved to Colburn in North Idaho, traveling three weeks by team and wagon.

Alfred remembered that when they reached the logged, burned-over land they had bought from Humbird Lumber Co., his mother sat down on a blackened stump and cried. They lived in a tent while they cleared space for a house, barn and garden.

They built a log house before winter but they didn't have a floor, door or chinking between the logs. They used a quilt for a door, crate board for a floor under the cookstove and the snow had to be swept off the boys' bed upstairs and scooped into a tub so it wouldn't melt into the bedding when the fire was built.

The boys were glad to go to school because it was so much warmer there. That was the winter of the great influenza epidemic but they didn't even get the sniffles.

Alfred and his older brother, Clifford, and younger brothers, Ernest, Kenneth, Clarence and Othel and sister, Ruthie, attended Center Valley School. In his seventh and eighth grade, Alfred was the school janitor. He made the fires and swept the floors. The school had no well so he carried a bucket of water from home each morning to fill the crockery water cooler. That was the day's drinking water for the school, but if more was needed, he walked home three-fourths of a mile at noon and brought another pailful. Most of his $15 per month earnings went to his parents but he saved enough to order a $60 Ranger Bike from the Mead Cycle Co.

After his formal education ended with graduation from the eighth grade in 1924, his first job was greasing the log chute for a lumber mill. He walked back and forth on his 1/4-mile beat, slapping his sock mop from his grease bucket to lubricate the chute so the logs would slide. His work experience was varied. he pulled lumber out of the icy water of a lumber flue. he and an older man hand-seeded several hundred acres on Henry Samuels' place. As a carpenter's helper, he helped remodel the Thomason Hardware Store at Second and Cedar into a bank (now Vanderford's Office Supplies). He helped his father build houses and barns. He double-jack drilled in a clay pit. While still in his teens, he was parts man for the Chevrolet garage in Sandpoint.

Al and Clifford got Chevrolet trucks and hauled lumber and poles. Al hauled crusher balls from the Spokane foundry to Compton White's White Delf mine at Clark Fork. Compton White was elected U.S. representative and wanted Al to go with him to Washington, D.C., as his chauffeur.

In 1929, Al and Cliff started falling timber with a crosscut saw for the new McFarland -Brown mill in the mountains west of Naples.

The spring of 1932, Al met Ruth Kincaid, who was helping her aunt and uncle in the mill cookhouse. They were married on Dec. 27, 1932, and that winter lived in a tenthouse near Elmira while he drayed out piling for the new (second) Long Bridge.

After four years of cutting timber, Al took over the mill's truck shop and maintained the trucks for 10 years. Besides maintaining the fleet of five trucks, Al hauled hundreds of tons of hay from Copeland for the mill's horses, hauled loads of lath down to Naples and barrels of gasoline back up. He built logging trailers, improved a "jammer" and built another one. he was always busy fabricating or improving equipment.

When he began operating the shop, Al and Ruth paid $29.80 to buy a little house on company land.

Al and Ruth bought his parents' place near Colburn and built a new house, where they raised their family. After World War II, they moved to Roseburg, Ore., and Al headed up a truck shop for a logging company; then he was a heavy-equipment mechanic for Caterpillar co.

Returning to North Idaho, he farmed, did custom land clearing with his Cletrac, logged and operated a small sawmill with his sons. He ran the county snowplow and grader and for 10 years, maintained forest roads for the Pack River Lumber Co.

During the 1967 Sundance and Plume Creek fires, he laid out fire access roads for the Forest Service.

Al and Ruth moved into their new home on Selkirk Road in 1971. Friends and family enjoyed visiting their home with its beautiful landscaping, timbered land and fields along Pack River and Grouse Creek and views of the Cabinet Mountains.

In retirement, Al and Ruth enjoyed winters in Wickenburg, Ariz., where he developed his talent for oil painting and wrote his fascinating autobiography. They moved into Sandpoint in 1999.

Alfred is survived by Ruth, his wife of 71 years; sons Richard (and Ruthie) and Wendell (and Sue) of the Sandpoint area; daughters Marjorie (and Wilton) Dillon of Denver, Colo., and Lauretta Sheffield of Logan, Utah; 12 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren, and six great-great-grandchildren, "honorary" children and grandchildren; and many friends.

He was preceded in death by his parents; his brothers, Clifford, Ernest and Clarence; and one grandchild.

Funeral arrangements are under the care of Coffelt Funeral Service of Sandpoint.