Gresham

It has been such a long, cold, snowy winter.  For the first time ever in my life as an Oregonian, I can honestly say that I'm sick of the cold and unending darkness.  I've been spending my free time huddled in a fleece trying to find kid-friendly bargain places to stay in rural corners of Oregon like Ontario and Brookings and Keno for whenever the sun finally comes back up without its weird caveats of hailstones and icy wind.  Luckily for me and the sake of this blog I live in Portland and it seems that a third of my Mayors live within a 45 minute drive.

My father and his nine (Catholic, obviously) brothers and sisters were all born just down the street from my house and a good chunk of them haven't fallen too far the house they were born in on Columbia Blvd. that has long since been demolished and given way to the main sales lot of the Caterpillar Construction and Mining Equipment Corporation.  

As a child my parents would take us kids up to Gresham to visit our cousins who lived around 243rd street.  After more than a few rounds of "are we there yet" my parents came up with a tidy solution that not only quieted us down a few decibels but also taught us fundamental mathematical skills at the same time.  Our task was to look at the numbered street signs as we made our way east on Powell and subtract whatever number we were currently on from the above-mentioned 243.  "Are we there yet" quickly turned into "108 blocks to go."  When my parents were tired of that, they made us convert the remaining blocks into miles, so our screaming "74 blocks to go" eventually turned into "3.7 miles to go!"  That novelty would last a few months, and then we had to convert the miles into kilometers.  Later we had to calculate the ratio of fir trees to alders per block.  Every month there was a new computation to make, and every month required more extra-curricular study during the 29 days we weren't driving to Gresham.  Cosines and tangents and cross-ratios filled our heads like sugarplums as we plotted and graphed our way over the landscape of east Multnomah County between Interstate 205 and 243rd street once a month.  For Christmas one year my sister got a graphing calculator just for the insane amount of math that was involved just to visit our cousins.  

And then, one day, they moved away.  So my sister and I started reading books instead.

Mayor Shane Bemis took time out of his schedule to autograph our map, and I'm sure that if you ever meet him he'll tell you that there's more to his fine city than counting street signs.  One of my favorite ways to get to Gresham these days is via bicycle on the Springwater Trail.  And the city center--although somewhat hampered by the wide busy streets--seems to be seeing a revival of some sorts lately.  Also, it's the 4th largest city in Oregon, so that's a little milestone for me.  I'm looking at you, Salem.  One can't even talk about Gresham without mentioning the jazz festival, of course.  Myself, I've never been a big fan of the jazz.  Can't really plot that sort of thing down in a pie chart.

19 down, 223 to go.