My wife and I just observed our 71st wedding anniversary, and in our nearly 91 years of living in Southwest Washington and Portland, we’ve witnessed, been part of and otherwise been amazed by the ordinary and extraordinary.
I was born in Portland in 1928 and spent my early childhood on Terwilliger Boulevard. I recall walking on the deck of the USS Constitution when it was anchored at the approach to Swan Island. In those days, Swan Island was home to Portland’s airport.
On one occasion my folks took us for a drive into the mountains, where my brother and I hiked until we broke through the rain and clouds to come upon a huge pile of logs and boulders and an excavation site. It turns out we had stumbled onto what was the start of construction of Timberline Lodge.
President Franklin Roosevelt came to Portland to dedicate Timberline Lodge, and my father took us to the west end of the Ross Island Bridge in Portland where we anxiously awaited the President’s arrival. He passed by us in his car, waving and smiling, dressed in a white suit and Panama hat and puffing on a cigarette that extended from a cigarette holder. Television hadn’t come along yet, so seeing a U.S. president was a thrilling event for a young lad.
In 1937 my father took my brother and me to Pearson Air Field to see the three Russians and the plane they flew over the North Pole. It made news worldwide and became one of the most famous flights in aviation history.
We used to go out to the Sylvan Hills to cut our family Christmas tree. Few people lived out there at that time. The land had been logged, but there were volunteer trees everywhere.
My father worked as a mechanic for a Ford dealership out on 82nd and Foster in Portland. In those days, mechanics often worked on cars with the engines running in an enclosed garage. In the evenings, at a Ford plant in the eastside industrial area, my dad and his co-worker would assemble two Model Ts each night, for $15 each.
My dad eventually developed health issues and sought out a healthier way of living. One day we all loaded into Dad’s Model A and traveled north on 10th Avenue, what was then the highway (way before Interstate 5 existed). He’d seen a couple of farms advertised for sale, and settled on an 80-acre farm in Ridgefield (where my wife and I still live). He made a living selling milk and raising potatoes. A common sight in Clark County in those days was potato fields and prune orchards.
My wife was born on what was then Rooney Road in Ridgefield — now 194th Street. In those days, the roads were named after the settlers, and they were built by the residents themselves at a time when the county only had the resources to supply dynamite to residents to blow up the stumps to clear the land. Landowners used their own mules, horses, and slip scrapers to carve out what would eventually become county roads.
My wife attended Baker Grade School, as did her father, who was on the school board. One of the school board’s projects was to organize the food growing and canning projects that supplied daily lunches for the Baker students. Our children also attended this two-room schoolhouse.
These are just a few memories of life in this community, which has been filled with endless stories of people with a pioneering spirit.
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