There was Conde McCullough, Oregon’s master bridge builder’s first elegant arch bridge, an Art Deco masterpiece, completed in 1922, spanning the Willamette River, connecting Oregon City to our despised nemesis West Linn. Before the new Oregon City High School campus opened in 2003, this bridge conveyed the players and coaches to the oldest continuous high school football rivalry west of the Mississippi River. Oregon City and West Linn are right across the Willamette River from each other. For a century or so, because of where the schools were located, perched on high ground, students, if they had binoculars, could actually see each other from a secret spot on each others’ campuses. We had binoculars and we knew the secret spot and we spied on the Lions, or rather, lionesses, whenever we had nothing to do at school on a clear day, which was pretty much all the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The schools were so close to each\nother, a stunning and probably unprecedented intimacy between rival\ncities and schools, that whenever the annual Friday Big Game under\nthe lights occurred, the away team’s marching band, accompanied by\ncheerleaders and other students on foot or following in muscle cars,\nwould march in what was essentially a patchwork parade, to the\nrival’s stadium. Usually in the rain! And to get there, they had to\nmarch across Conde’s bridge, a bridge that probably facilitated more\nacts of drunkenness, violence, vandalism, lust, gridiron lore, and\ndaredevilry related to a high school football rivalry than any other\nbridge in American history. That bridge, with its seductive concrete\narch pitched at such a low angle, tempted you to walk right up and\nover it. Many men and some women did exactly that in those anonymous\ndaredevil days. I heard someone even rode a motorcycle over the arch\nand lived to seed a legend. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think it was my freshmen year when\nthe night before the big game, a bunch of Oregon City varsity\nfootball players raided the West Linn campus at midnight and painted\nred and white the testicles of the golden lion statue that graced\ntheir main entrance. West Linn played at Oregon City that year and\nbeat us 50-0. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And my favorite rivalry story comes\nfrom 1974. Some Oregon City football players procured hydrochloric\nacid and used it to dislodge the lion statue from its pedestal. They\nsomehow (drunkenly) hauled the lion to the bridge, tied a noose\naround its neck, secured the other end of the rope around a girder,\nand threw it over the side. A hanging. They left it there and fled. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(Note to reader:\nIt is my wish that the reader will support the idea that Pioneer\nPride<\/em> is a \u201cbook.\u201d It is also my wish that the reader\nconsider \u201cbuying\u201d the book as it rolls out in installments. A\npurchase supports an author and future literary endeavors by Nestucca\nSpit Press. To purchase, look to the right on the blog to use Paypal\nor contact me to make other arrangements.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was Conde McCullough, Oregon’s master bridge builder’s first elegant arch bridge, an Art Deco masterpiece, completed in 1922, spanning the Willamette River, connecting Oregon City to our despised nemesis West Linn. Before the new Oregon City High School campus opened in 2003, this bridge conveyed the players and coaches to the oldest continuous high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,942],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-city","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5931,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5929\/revisions\/5931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}