Columbia City

My poor child. 25 years from now he's going to be explaining to a therapist somewhere that he spent a good chunk of his first years strapped into his car seat while I sang Tapes 'N Tapes songs on the way to go see the Mayor of a random small town in Oregon. He has a ridiculous amount of patience for my shenanigans so far, though.
We met Columbia City Mayor Cheryl Young at the Senior Center in St. Helens, which is apparently her day job. Most Mayoral positions in Oregon are actually pro bono, or strictly volunteer. Mayor Young has been serving Columbia City for over 27 years--23 of those as Mayor. Henry and I got there a little early so we had to entertain ourselves in the lobby for a while by switching lenses in the pile of eyeglasses we found behind the front desk. Henry was quite methodical about the whole thing: He would line up each pair of glasses in a tidy row, pop out the left lens of each pair into a small pile, and then I would help him replace each lens into a different pair of glasses. We made a game out of the whole process. I then judiciously explained to him that eyeglasses don't necessarily work in the way they were designed when there is a different prescription of lens on either side, and he thought that was delightful. I am not the kind of person that takes away delight from a 23-month-old baby, so I agreed whole-heartedly.
Mayor Young was exceedingly gracious (she even offered Henry a cookie) in autographing our map of Oregon, and Henry was again patient while her friend Jim held him, although he had a pained look on his face the entire time as if to say, "Really, Dad? You know you're paying for my therapy, right?"
After leaving the Mayor, we headed north from St. Helens to Mayor Young's city of Columbia City. It's a tiny hamlet overlooking a wide section of the Columbia River with million dollar homes mixed in with double-wide trailers--a really strange combination but one that seems to work out pretty well for them. The Caples House Museum looked really interesting, although this being February it was closed. The downtown area consisted of the City Hall, the Community Center, Pixie Park (looks like a really fun place for a picnic, and I'll definitely be returning there once the sun comes out), and the most amazing library/pizza restaurant in the history of the earth. I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture, but although the pizza restaurant section of library is closed for the winter, the library section of the pizza restaurant is open for business. I think that's probably the best news I've heard all week. Seriously.
20 down, 222 to go.