Umatilla

It's pretty much exactly like my wife told me before I left the house this morning: "You can pretend it's 2001 and just drive aimlessly around Eastern Oregon." She's pretty much right. It's been a great day driving back and forth over the high plateau stopping at random bars and truck stops and cafes and the like just talking to random people and talking about the town they live in. My only complaint is the no-smoking law. Out here in Eastern Oregon the only thing it seems the law's done is move people out into the wind.
Umatilla is somewhat of a border town. I say that only because there are at least three adult-themed businesses in the downtown section. I could totally see people coming down from Washington to see strippers. Truckers and college students from up in Walla Walla mostly. And admittedly I probably would have stopped in if this were the summer of 2001 but I'm in Umatilla for something a little more respectable today: To get Mayor David Trott to autograph our map of Oregon.
The current Umatilla City Hall building is unassumingly nestled on Oregon Highway 730, but a shiny new one is being built a couple blocks away. Mayor Trott invited me into City Hall even though it's closed for the weekend and we talk about Oregon for a while--my favorite topic of conversation. He showed me around the council chambers when I noticed that on the wall were portraits of all the former Mayors of Umatilla. One portrait in particular caught my attention, a Mrs. Laura Stockton Starcher, the first female Mayor in the United States. She apparently ran against her husband in 1916 and won--perhaps because there were so many more women in town than men (not to mention Oregon was only one of 11 states to allow women to vote). She and the four newly-elected female council members brought about a number of socially progressive changes to the town including the founding of a library and a sanitation department. I highly recommend you buy me the historical novel Operation Clean Sweep so that I can read it to little Henry some time.
Umatilla is also starting to become known its art community. The welcome sign near I-82 is a pretty good example of the metallic arty thingies that are popping up. Hopefully Umatilla will become known for this in the way that Joseph is known for its bronze sculptures. There are even a couple of pieces for sale inside City Hall. I almost bought a big metal salmon but I'm not sure if Mayor Trott takes American Express--probably not his job.
33 down, 209 to go

Hermiston

Hermiston has at least two Starbucks. That blows my mind. I could see them having just the one pseudo-Starbucks in the Safeway, that would be okay. But no, they have a freestanding building on Hwy 395 (their main street) that is a dedicated Starbucks. I know that seems like a banal thing to talk about, but it's really upsetting to me. I guess I want Hermiston to forever be Conway Twitty instead of Billy Ray Cyrus, or whatever the country kids are listening to these days. Seeing a gigantic Chevy pickup pulling into the drive-thru of a Starbucks in Hermiston is--to me, anyway--like seeing Santa Claus in a porn movie. Granted, it's a soft-core porn movie like you'd see on Pay-Per-View at the Astoria Red Lion, but it's still porn. And Santa's in it.
I guess that's me being a typical Portlander, though. I want Eastern Oregon to remain this idyllic haven of rural bliss and the mere mention of development or progress makes me not only cringe but feel somehow offended as well. I guess that if I REALLY didn't want Hermiston to get a Home Depot then maybe I could stop shopping at the ones in Portland in protest. But a Wal-Mart distribution center? That's just too much.
After meeting with the mayor of Boardman I called Mayor Bob Severson and he agreed to meet me at the MacDonalds there in Hermiston. It's about a 35 minute drive no matter which route you take, so I decided to take the least scenic route via the Umatilla Chemical Depot, where they're burning up all that nerve gas from the cold war. I promised myself I wouldn't curse on this blog, but that place figuratively scares the shit out of me. Five years ago I wouldn't have thought twice about it, but now that I'm old and have a kid, I can't even feel good about eating the eggs from my own chickens without getting a lead test on the soil on which the coop is built over. I'm getting so paranoid these days that I'm thinking about making my own underarm deoderant because of the weird aluminum additives found in my Speed Stick.

So it's pretty dumbfounding how quickly all my fears melted away once I drove past the depot and into Hermiston proper. It's a real town: A real, working, honest town complete with a ridiculously authentic downtown drugstore and everything. Granted, the only thing that was open downtown tonight was the Cozy Tavern (chicken gizzards w/ fries: $7), but I imagine that the Kickin' Cowgirls Western Store does a fair share of business during normal weekdays. Twently bucks says that the drugstore has a soda fountain.
Mayor Severson gave me a Hermiston pin. I don't know if every town has these pins (Hermiston is only the third pin I've been given), but if they do then I'm doing this 242-city trip again next year. I'm not sure if I can describe to the five readers of this blog how much it means to me to receive a city pin, but if you know me then it would be on par with being asked to play the glockenspiel during halftime at the Oregon-Oregon State Civil War game. I don't know how to play the glockenspiel, and I don't even know which team to cheer for. I guess what I'm saying is that if you're going to pull out the city pin, don't be surprised if I get flustered and therefore overly chatty and nervous. To put it into terms that I can understand, a Mayor giving me a city pin is like someone saying "Run home, Charlie! And don't stop until you get there!" Except instead of the promise of touring a chocolate factory I have a pin that says "Yes, you've been there, the pin proves it, and the Mayor says you're pretty okay." So to all the Mayors I meet in the future: My apologies. I'm not trying to be rude and I'm not crazy. It's just that I'm more of a Veruca Salt than a Charlie. Hermiston is a river of chocolate and I can't help but jump into it, even if everything downtown except the Cozy Tavern is closed on Sundays.
Also there's a big watermelon painted on the water tower.
32 down, 210 to go.

Boardman

It's been a pretty amazing day. Amazing, that is, if you're a big Oregon nerd like I am. I spent the last couple of days trying to get a good Interstate 84 mix going on my iPod full of good predictable travel songs from the likes of Booker T and the MGs, Jackson Browne, Old 97s, Magnetic Fields, and all the other usual suspects. Laurie and Henry stayed home to mind the new chicks so I got to roll down the windows and blast some vintage Talking Heads through downtown Arlington. The thing I love most about I-84 is that there is such a defined line between the wet side of the state and the dry side (It's about 2 miles west of Mosier). And the thing I love most about the dry side of the state is that it makes me feel like I'm really traveling. Clatskanie and Creswell are all fine and good, but they do kinda have the same general terrain and flora of home, so it's incredibly liberating to see twisted junipers and abandoned lines of barbed wire decorated with years of tumbleweeds like a Christmas tree that you never take down.
I pulled into Boardman and checked into the Rodeway Inn, which is within potato-throwing distance of the freeway. Again, the family stayed home this time or I would have definitely checked out the River Lodge and Grill. Although I've been through Boardman at least a hundred times, this is honestly only the third time I've stopped here--and the first two times were because this happens to be where whatever jalopy I was driving decided to break down. So it was nice to finally purposely visit. I called Mayor Chet Phillips, and he drove right over to autograph our map.
I want to tell the story of meeting Mayor Phillips kind of backwards because I think it will be more interesting that way. The last thing he said before he left was, "You're a pretty tactful democrat for coming to Boardman to talk politics." I figured he was half-right. But it's not so much that I'm tactful, it's just that I can understand the frustrations of the eastern 2/3 of our state when laws get passed by the majority of Oregon's population that just don't make sense in rural towns in the middle of the desert. And I'd love to give an example, but I'm getting to this weird level of casualness in conversation with these Mayors that I'm beginning to think that what we talk about is sorta off-the-record. But I will say this: When it comes to cougars and coal plants, I think it would do a lot of us wet-siders (people from "the state of 503" as Mayor Phillips would say) good if we walked a mile in their boots. Or maybe drove a mile in their gigantic Ford F-350 King Cabs. Because it's true that everyone out here drives those things. I drive an '07 Nissan Versa and the maid at the hotel looked at it like it was a spaceship.
"On the river and on the way" is the official motto of Boardman, which is pretty genius since both sentiments are completely correct. The entire city of Boardman was relocated in the late 60s after the John Day Dam was being built. Hence the lack of any sort of cohesive downtown core. I find it absolutely amazing that we were displacing entire towns for hydroelectric power just 40 years ago. That whole concept seems so WPA or Chinese. Founded by Sam Boardman (whom I believe invented the concept of the rest area?) in 1903, the Columbia River inundated the original townsite just as the freeway was being built and PGE started erecting those modern power lines we're used to seeing. So there are actually three distinct sections of Boardman that are divided by I-84 and the 600-foot PGE easement. The oldest building in town must be the Longbranch Saloon (grilled cheese and tomato soup: $4), but I'm basing that solely on the width of the timbers supporting the roof.
If you come to Boardman (and you should), check out Boardman Marina Park. It was 57 degrees and partly sunny here today and I had the entire park to myself. I had a couple of leftover Session Lagers left in the back of the car and it was such a nice evening that I built a little fire underneathe a willow tree and enjoyed the sunset over the Columbia--just 40 or 50 feet above Original Boardman. I call it O.B., and it's the way you should be. They should totally change their motto. Yes, I'm ending this post with a mid-eighties tampon commercial reference.
31 down, 211 to go.

La Grande, Island City, Joseph

When I was at the OMA thing in Salem, Mayor Colleen Johnson of La Grande, Mayor Dale Delong of Island City, and Mayor Dennis Sands of Joseph all autographed our map of Oregon.  Honestly, I haven't been to that corner of the state since the summer of 2001.  I've been meaning to take Laurie out there since we met because that's probably my favorite section of Oregon.  It's hard to explain, but it's basically a mixture of all the best parts of the wet third of the state and the dry two-thirds of the state:  You have all the perpetual green of the wet side, but then you have the remote expanses of the dry side.  Give me 20 acres outside of Minam and I'm happy.

Maybe I'm being stupid or myopic here, but I honestly don't understand why any right-minded Oregonian would ever want to leave the state when we have all the little towns around the Blue Mountains to explore.  Did you know that there's a restaurant out there that's only accessible by plane or horseback?  I hear they have little goat cheese appetizers even.  There are three stages of food, in my mind:  Regular food that you eat every day, food that you eat when you are camping that tastes incredibly yummy because you're sleeping outside, and--finally, the perfect stage of food--a meal that had to be packed in via horseback.  C'mon.  How could a 3-day, 4-night trip to Cozumel compare to horsed-in goat cheese appetizers?  It just can't.

Like I said, I've been trying to get Laurie out to northeastern Oregon since before we got married, and it looks like this is the year.  We have ten days booked here.  With a little luck, we'll explore a little more of La Grande, Island City, and Joseph.  And hopefully get the autographs of Mayors from Enterprise (looking forward to that one), Halfway, Union, and all the other little towns from my favorite corner of the state.  And then Laurie will want to move there so screw Portland.  Come try our artisan goat cheese; We're farmers now.

30 down, 212 to go

Estacada

The summer of '93 was arguably the best summer of my life.  I lived on 5 acres of mixed growth forest in a pole barn just outside the city limits of Estacada with a couple of other recent high-school graduates.  The one bathroom in the house didn't have walls, but it was conveniently located just below the stairs so you could rest your forehead against the stairwell as you leaned over the toilet while you threw up that bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill fortified wine.  The rent was only $50 per month, which was great since my two sources of income at that point was selling portraits at the Hollywood Fred Meyer and pawning used stereo equipment.  We lived on discounted white bread and expired lunch meat and 24-packs of Hamm's Ice.  Our idea of fun was to coast down Wildcat Mountain Road (saves gas that way) to pick up girls at the Taco Time and then turn in beer cans to get $1.20 in gas so we could crank my 1970 VW Bug back up the hill and blast the Pixies in the forest loud enough to wake up the random cougar that would occasionally saunter by the pole barn.  Also, for some reason, my friend Ben would usually show up around 3am with more Hamm's Ice and random girls from the Woodburn Dairy Queen.  It was a wonderful summer and it sounds absolutely horrible to 33-year-old me.

Estacada these days is still awesome even though I don't live there anymore.  One of my favorite things about visiting Estacada is the incongruousness of seeing Tri-Met bus #31 rolling through town along with all the jacked-up 4x4s.  When I was getting gas there yesterday I even saw the world's largest confederate flag attached to the bed of a Subaru Brat.  It drove down Broadway and even peeled out at the stop sign in front of the Safari Club.  Priceless.  Mayor Becky Arnold met me to autograph our map next door to Fearless Brewing where she was helping her Dad out with his business.  Fearless had a handwritten sign in the window that I wish I had taken a picture of that read:  "Against the beer tax?  We have a thing for you to sign."  I almost went in to add my signature but I knew I'd be cajoled into having just enough beer to not be able to drive home and end up staying in Estacada forever.  Really wish they'd bring back their sausage fondue though.  

Also, if you ever get lost in the woods around Ripplebrook and can't find your car so you end up spending the night under a bunch of cedar branches and almost losing both your pinky toes to frostbite, Estacada is the first town you see the next morning when you finally get unlost so bring cash.    

27 down, 215 to go.

Independence

I don't remember a lot of non-beer-related stuff from college, but two things I recollect vividly are this (NSFW?) and the fact that anyone with a chisel and the slightest interest in amateur paleontology can go to Independence and dig for fossils from the Cretaceous period.  There's a railroad cut in a hillside just east of downtown Independence that yields all sorts of weird 53 million year old mollusks, and it makes a great third date.  Bring a picnic.  

My friend Michael and I went on a little kayaking trip last summer and our goal was to make it from Eugene to Independence in 4 days.  A killer sunburn and a freak spate of heavy rain cut our trip short so we settled on Albany after 3 days, but we had it all planned out perfectly.  Months before the trip, I scoped out the general downtown Independence area and found everything we needed:  A compact and vibrant downtown area, a serene and expansive waterfront park (with boat dock), and a bar within walking distance of the river.  Independence was supposed to be our stopping point, and our final night of river camping.  Therefore, we needed a place to celebrate that wasn't too far out of stumbling distance from our kayaks.  Stupid weird August weather prevented me from realizing my dream of drunk-kayaking so instead we rented a U-Haul out of Albany and went home to Portland.  

Downtown Independence is pretty much the perfect place, though.  Before I5 and US99 there was the Willamette River Highway.  And by that I mean that the Willamette River was the highway.  And by that I mean boats.  

I wish I could go back in time to 1890s Independence:  Walking the dirt streets of downtown awaiting the next steamship arrival with it's delivery of cotton and lumber, chatting with the local smithy about President Cleveland's tariff reform, complaining to the kids that music was SO much better in the 1880s--it would've been great.  

Mayor John McArdle autographed our map at the OMA, lucky for me.  I won't be in Independence until early August and this time I'm not getting in that kayak without sunscreen.

26 down, 216 to go.

Milwaukie

Before I begin, I'd just like to complain that spell-check hates Milwaukie.  Spell-check has no sense of history apparently.  

Baby Henry LOVES Milwaukie because that's where the gang from Apples to Oregon end up at the end of the book.  If you don't have a kid, then don't bother clicking on the link.  If you do have a kid, then definitely buy that book.  As a parent, I wish there were more Oregon-related childrens' books out there.  I started to write one myself called "The Christmas Bats," but I can't find an illustrator.  Also, it's probably not a good idea to glorify cigarette smoking in a book aimed at kids under 5.  Who knew?

Interim Mayor Jeremy Ferguson autographed our map of Oregon, but I have no idea why the "Interim" is in there.  Perhaps it's a a great story, but more likely it's a sad story so I'm not touching it.  Maybe the "Interim" has gone away since he signed it.  I have such a high esteem for the term "Mayor" that I don't know how to feel about putting an "Interim" in front of it.  It's kind of like "Diet."  Introducing Interim Pepsi.  

I wish I had met Mayor Ferguson at city hall instead of at the OMA because I am totally unclear on Milwaukie's boundaries.  I believe the north of town is basically lined by Johnson Creek; the west, of course, by the Willamette River.  I'm not sure where Milwaukie's eastern and southern borders are, and for some reason that sort of detail is really important to me.  Is Bob's Red Mill in Portland or Milwaukie?  Did I get pulled over in Milwaukie or Gladstone that weird night in '91 on the way home after the Rocky Horror Picture Show?  Maybe it's not that big of thing to some people, but I like to know exactly where one thing ends and another thing starts.  I get an overwhelming sense of ambiguous discomfort when I'm in, say, the Ardenwald neighborhood and I can't even tell which county I'm in much less which city.  I'm not sure why that means so much to me.  I'm getting old and boring and predictable.  That might have something to do with it.  

25 down, 217 to go.

Hubbard

Oh, Hubbard.  This is one of the seven towns in Oregon that would show up on my credit report should someone decide to run one.  I spent six weeks in a one-bedroom apartment on G Street in an attempt to distance myself from my home town of Woodburn, a mere two miles down the highway.  It didn't work out so well, as I still managed to hang out in the exact same 24-hour coffee shop every night--drinking coffee, chain-smoking cigarettes, and eating rice pilaf with bacon and maple syrup.  1996 was a weird year for me.  One night, soberly driving my way south down 99E in the January fog between Hubbard and my coffee shop in Woodburn, a naked guy jumped in front of my car, bounced off my hood and bumper, then ran off into the barren winter hop fields.  After finally bringing my Subaru Justy to a complete stop, I scanned the surrounding fields to make sure that I hadn't just hallucinated a tall hairy naked man.  After that, the damage to my Justy confirmed that I wasn't crazy.  Having never hit a naked guy with my car before, I decided to continue on to my coffee shop knowing that various police officers from Marion County were sure to be at the same coffee shop.  I hurried inside and sure enough, two Woodburn cops and a Marion County Sheriff's deputy were sharing some marion berry pie.

"Hey," I said to them, "There's a naked guy running around 99E by the old produce market."

"Yeah, we heard about that," replied the deputy.  "He'll either find his way home or fall asleep."

At first I was pretty amazed that they didn't care that a naked guy was jumping in front of cars on a major highway, but after a few cups of late-night bad coffee and about a third a pack of cigarettes I came to agree with the deputy that these things have a way of working themselves out.

Hubbard Mayor Jim Yonally actually invited me and the wife and the baby into his home so he could autograph our big map of Oregon, which is another first.  Baby Henry even got a little stuffed bear out of the deal which he thoroughly enjoyed all the way from the Mayor's house to the feed store down in Woodburn.  He actually met us on a Sunday, too, and I had to tear him away from working on a car.  In our brief email exchange before we met personally, I observed that he wasn't the first Mayor I had met that liked working on cars and asked him why that might be so.  He replied, via email, "If you want something done right and economically efficient, do it yourself."  If that doesn't sum up what it means to be Mayor, then I don't know what does.  Just as that Nissan Altima's transmission isn't going to rebuild itself, neither is the redrawing of the coming expansion of the urban growth boundary there in Hubbard.  

That sheriff's deputy from 13 years ago was totally wrong.  Things don't just work themselves out.  I realize that midnight naked dudes and zoning ordinances aren't EXACTLY the same thing, but they both need someone to look out for them.  And it takes Oregon Mayors like Jim Yonally to keep our towns from becoming an even sprawlier version of Clark County, Washington where hairy naked guys roam the streets after dark--a nightmare I'm sure I share with many.

There is also a hop festival in Hubbard.

24 down, 218  to go.

Wheeler

I say this about every city over there, but I think Wheeler's my favorite town on the Oregon Coast. It's just that Wheeler is consistently a laid-back, uncrowded place to enjoy the coast even if it's a Saturday in July. I try to go kayaking at least two or three every summer in the bay, and I also try to go visit for a weekend once every winter just because it's so ridiculously affordable. If you don't have a baby you can stay at the Old Wheeler Hotel, and if you do then you can stay at the Wheeler on the Bay. Both places are equally great no matter the weather.
Mayor Walter Trandum took time to autograph our big map of Oregon at the OMA in Salem. He governs a great town that one could probably throw a potato over if they had a few tries and the right spot from which to throw it. You can rent a kayak from several places there on the bay and row up to the city of Nehalem or down to Nehalem Bay State Park if you want to hang out on the beach. The secret is to check the tide tables and try to reach your destination within an hour of when the tide crests so you can go with the tide both ways. And no trip to Wheeler is complete without a meal of fresh fish from the Sea Shack followed by a quick stop at the apothecary/liquor store for lavender oil and vodka. Every liquor store in Oregon should also be an apothecary. It just makes sense.
23 down, 219 to go.

Dundee

Dundee Mayor Don Sundeen autographed our map recently at the OMA. Dundee may or may not be seeing some major changes in the next couple of years as the option to build a bypass around the city is debated. A lot of Portlanders might view Dundee as a 35 minute delay between them and the Oregon Coast, and I'm sure a lot of Dundee folks view Portland as the cause of a big headache. I'm sure it's not as simple as that, but personally I'm against any bypass. Where would they put it?
I used to just drive through Dundee as quickly as humanly possible, but about ten years ago I made a point to stop in just about every town I go through. It makes driving to Lincoln City take four hours, but it's been pretty worth it. How else would baby Henry ever get to taste coq au vin at the Dundee Bistro? Or get scared by the unfortunately placed shooting range next to Crabtree Park? Or contemplate what happened to between Knudsen and Erath? That's what babies think about, right?
22 down, 220 to go.

Newberg

If you believe the stories--and I do--then my Mother was born in a shopping cart in a supermarket in Newberg at what is now a Wilco farm store next to the Walgreens. The reason I believe that story is because I can totally see my frugal farm-smart grandparents saving the money that would normally go to a doctor for some cattle feed or perhaps a new grain elevator. In my head, my grandmother goes into labor while shopping for groceries, she makes herself comfortable in the nearest shopping cart, and my grandfather delivers the baby just two shop rags, a bucket of water, and a pocketknife. Later that evening, my grandmother would perhaps cook a pork roast or a goose.
Growing up in Woodburn I always had the idea that we were somehow in competition with Newberg, and I would pay close attention to east city's population signs to figure out who was winning. I think that nowadays the title goes to Newberg due to its proximity to the edge of Portland's urban growth boundary. I stopped paying attention when a spate of McMansions finally took over a section of Parret Mountain that I used to always call "Strawberry Hill," after the cheap Boone's Farm wine flavor that seemed to be so popular with us in our late teens.
Mayor Bob Andrews was nice enough to autograph our map at the Oregon Mayors Association in Salem recently, and if I had had more time I would have asked him why the Chinese Food place in town is named "Shaw's." Not a bad place, that.
Newberg is also home to George Fox University, which was attended by our second worst president, Herbert Hoover. It's kind of the gateway to Oregon wine country, but best of all it's right next to Champoeg State Park, which is kind of the birth place of Oregon--just two miles from the Newberg Wilco.
21 down, 221 to go.