Oregon On My Mind (Part 2)

Not too long I paid a visit to my hometown, Oregon City, and naturally I took a stroll along the Promenade that overlooks downtown, the Willamette River, Conde McCullough’s first beautiful bridge and the old paper mill.

To the north, traffic crawled across the second ugliest bridge in Oregon, the Abernathy I-205 monstrosity. The ugliest is the Glenn Jackson-205 span across the Columbia River. I’m glad Conde wasn’t alive to see them built.

I truly love this place and once visited it with one of the great loves of my life. She’s gone and I blew it.

I still can’t believe none of my teachers from my old high school up the hill from the Promenade ever walked their social studies or creative writing classes to this magisterial spot. We could easily made it down here in back in one period.

Pure 3-D Oregon history exists here, the grandest outdoor historical theater in the state if not the region. Conde’s bridge, salmon, the CCC boys, sturgeon, the OC Elevator, log booms (back then)Willamette Falls, Native Americans, dams, mills, pioneers, etc.

But no, I was back in class with American history textbooks and videos of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

One day I want to stroll the Promenade and see and hear the Willamette Falls drop freely. I want all the concrete poured around it removed. It might happen in my lifetime. Plans by the Grande Ronde Tribe, who own the old Oregon City mill site are slowly dismantling it, but it doesn’t feel fast enough.

I also hope to see Celilo Falls uncovered, resurrected. That’s even a longer shot, but it will happen one day and then a grotesque act of cultural genocide that occurred in 1957 with the completion of the Dalles Dam will somewhat be rectified.

Someone needs to immortalize Oregon City in modern Oregon literature. It’s not going to be me. I’m not capable of it.

There is one thing definitely wrong with the north end of the Promenade. One of Oregon’s congressional representatives, from the 5^th District which encompasses my hometown, recently elected Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a Trumpian Republican, has an office on this sacred public place. A Trumpian who’s dumber than a clearcut stump! This cannot stand! Whoever she runs against in 2024 in the general election, I will work full time for free.

I took a peek inside the Elevator but didn’t ride it. The Elevator was the name of my high school newspaper I wrote for with extraordinary zeal. That paper is long gone.

Speaking of writing, the office of my orthodontist was on the Promenade in the 70s and 80s. There was a dental hygienist who worked there back in the day who looked almost exactly like Farrah Fawcett in her Charlie’s Angels heyday. I had a spectacular crush on her as a junior high kid. I later wrote about this crush (in the third person!) and it was published in my high school literary review. It was was my first piece of creative writing ever published.