Circle game
It was 29 years ago today that I arrived in Portland in my yellow VW bug, with all my earthly belongings stuffed into it somehow. I had set foot in this town only once before, for a couple of days. It was all new.
It was to be a one-year stint, and then off to Los Angeles I would go. But I found some things here that I wanted to hold onto. And here I still am.
My first Portland abode was house-sitting a new-ish ranch house along the Rock Creek Country Club out near 185th and West Union Road. In those days, if you walked out from the golf course to West Union, there was nothing but agricultural land to the north of you and the west of you. Just wide-open Oregon, all the way to the sunset coast.
The people who owned the house were holding it until it became worth more than $100,000, at which point they were going to sell it. It did, and they did, the following spring.
Many memories were made that year. It snowed just before Thanksgiving; later that winter, we skated through a patented Portland "silver thaw." There were fistfights two nights a week at the Rock Creek Tavern; I saw most of them, stayed out of all of them. I played jazz records on KBOO in the middle of the night. Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, and Ron Carter performed together one night at Portland State. I interviewed Monte Ballou, who used to live just off Belmont, for a KBOO special.
Every day a guy named Ron Roman stood on the corner where Pioneer Courthouse Square is today, preaching away; back then it was a Meier & Frank parking garage. Where Pioneer Place is now, there was an ancient building with a Fred Meyer store, Dave's Deli, and the Harvester Bar, where mushrooms grew in the carpet. There was a daily farmer's market of sorts where Saks is now. The Greek Cusina guys had their first hole in the wall, on Yamhill just east of Fourth. The place to go at night downtown was the Last Hurrah, a nightclub in the basement of a building on Alder; or maybe Sachs Front Avenue, down at Yamhill and what is now Naito. A band called Slowtrain was among the top dogs. Native son Jim Pepper would come through once in a while. One time he played at Artquake, the arts festival that used to take over downtown streets on Labor Day weekend; I remember him playing "Polar Bear" on a riser right there in the intersection of Alder and Broadway.
I heard "The Oogum Boogum Song" for the first time. I celebrated passing the California Bar. There was a total solar eclipse one morning. I blew the engine on the Volks and it took me a couple of months to come up with the dough to have Kurt at Esquire Motors rebuild it. The Oregon State men's basketball team was a national force. The Blazers, just recently world champs, were suddenly over the hill. Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve beer was on something like bottling no. 5. I learned how to cross-country ski and backpack.
There was way more ahead of me than there was behind me. Here in Portland, the whole world seemed to be opening up in a way that it never had before.
| Posted at 2:35 PM | Permalink |
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Comments (20)
GEICO commercial?
Posted by Tom | August 15, 2007 3:42 PM
Huh?
Posted by Jack Bog | August 15, 2007 3:46 PM
I think he's referring to the fact that you sorta resembled a caveman back in '78. You know..."it's so easy a caveman can figure it out." I was kinda thinking mountain man myself. It's all good...I enjoyed the post.
Posted by UsualKevin | August 15, 2007 4:15 PM
Oh, that! Absolutely. It was 1978. The whole Bill Walton thing was still going for some of us. We were trying to counteract disco.
Posted by Jack Bog | August 15, 2007 4:19 PM
wow. blast from the past. I remember each and everything you mentioned. That was awesome.
So glad you stayed.
~K!
Posted by Kismet | August 15, 2007 4:21 PM
Me, too. One of the smartest things I ever did.
Posted by Jack Bog | August 15, 2007 4:23 PM
Share more with us !
I grew up in Seattle and only came to Oregon in '85...
Posted by Gerry Van Zandt | August 15, 2007 5:05 PM
One of these days we'll move on to '79-'80. Now that was a year.
Posted by Jack Bog | August 15, 2007 5:17 PM
One of these days we'll move on to '79-'80. Now that was a year.
Actually that was two years
- but I concede it seemed like one extra-long year.
As far as I can remember.
Posted by rr_townie | August 15, 2007 5:42 PM
The part that transported me, overshot in reverie -- "In those days, if you walked out from the golf course to West Union, there was nothing but agricultural land to the north of you and the west of you. Just wide-open Oregon, all the way to the sunset coast." -- back twenty-odd years before you, when the Way-Back Machine landed in a 195x Oregon childhood, there were trees. Nothing but forests. It wasn't called 'old growth,' it was call Heritage. Immoral greed grabbed it.
The whole g--d--'ed hoax claiming 'environmental spiteful owl-wise ones stumped the lumber industry off' is a bunch of hateful self-guilt horsesh!t! The TRUTH is they cut ALL the trees, cleared out EVERYthing in sight, and there was nothing left to cut.
The bracing mountain air was healthy, the skies were vivid blue, the waters were crystal clean, and the land was treasure dirt.
Then came tele-vision -- what an oxymoron!, and its blight of indoors-blind ambition.
Posted by Tenskwatawa | August 15, 2007 6:09 PM
they cut ALL the trees, cleared out EVERYthing in sight, and there was nothing left to cut.
OK. But, apparently, YOU'RE still here...
...until the mountainskwat beetles get you.
Best Wishes for a speedy recovery,
-rickyragg
Posted by rr | August 15, 2007 6:17 PM
Actually that was two years
No, I mean 8/15/79 to 8/14/80.
Posted by Jack Bog | August 15, 2007 6:27 PM
Wow, what a flashback. We arrived only two years earlier and lived on the corner of NW 23rd and Hoyt. None of the crap there now was there then. Across the street was a store called the Beef and Bible. My old apartment building has had a Starbucks shoved up its . . . well, you know. Great town to be young in back then. Thanks for the trip back.
Posted by Oscar | August 15, 2007 8:21 PM
Great Post!
As an OR native, who moved on to So Cal for a while, and then went to Europe and traveled around in '77-78 in a Westfalia campervan... all that stuff you mentioned is familar.
Nice memories of my somewhat misspent youth.
I am now watching an amazing orange sky with a new moon setting up in the Gulf Islands of Canada.
New memories
Posted by Anne K | August 15, 2007 9:01 PM
No, I mean 8/15/79 to 8/14/80.
Me too!
Posted by rr | August 15, 2007 9:56 PM
That 12 particular months was more than two years of life experience -- more like five.
Posted by Jack Bog | August 15, 2007 10:20 PM
Oh, and while I was back home in New Jersey for Christmas that first year, I opened up the paper to see that I had narrowly missed this slice of Portland history.
Posted by Jack Bog | August 15, 2007 10:29 PM
You know, your story isn't too different from those of the young people showing up here now, it's just gotten more expensive.
Posted by puddlejumper | August 16, 2007 3:18 AM
Thanks Jack. That was great.
Posted by Luke | August 16, 2007 4:44 AM
isn't too different from those of the young people showing up here now, it's just gotten more expensive.
It's not just the cheap housing that's gone. It's excellent public schools, easy commutes, great views from every street corner, the edge of town being 12 minutes from downtown, empty wilderness areas...
Of course, many things have improved. The beer and wine, the transit system, the arts facilities, the farmers markets, the coffee, the restaurants...
Posted by Jack Bog | August 16, 2007 12:44 PM