The Stone Boat - Transcription from Tapes by Theodore Jensen

(In Summer 1994 I went to Whatcom County and residents at the house now on the foundation allowed me to take a snapshot of the stone foundation made by my grandfather Jonas Jensen and his brother Hans.)
           The Stone Boat     “That's What They Said, That He Learned How To Do That”

1994 - Foundation
made by Hans and Jonas Jensen

Railroad Transom, Lake Whatcom

..





.underneath the house was a full basement, we called it a cellar in those days.  And there was a door in front at the ground level, and the foundation was built out of big blocks of stone.  They had gone up in the creek with what they called a stone boat.  It was a flat thing with small runners on it that they could put a big heavy rock on it without having to lift it up very high.  And they had a steer – this was before I remember anything about it – and that steer would haul that sled with some rocks on it down to where they were going to build the house.  And my uncle Hans apparantly, had learned something about how to do that, how to break up rocks and make stone foundations, over in the old country, because he might have been apprenticed as a stone mason, I don't know that – that's what they said – that he learned how to do that.  And the foundation that was the house, had been there as far as I can remember.  I was back up there visiting about five or ten years ago.  And the house was still standing, and those stones were still there.