Yesterday Auntie Bridgett and I went for a long walk. We enjoyed the dogs and trees at Laurelhurst Park, and the pretty houses of the Laurelhurst neighborhood. We wandered for quite a ways before we decided to turn back towards home.
When we did, I realized that we were very close to The Lone Fir Cemetery and that it had been a long time since we visited the folks there. So we went in.
As you already know, I love the peace and perspective of this old cemetery. We saw familiar headstones; heroic pioneers and shady ladies, revered doctors and just plain folks. And, as so often happens, something new caught our eye. Mr. Frank Dekum.
Auntie Bridgett with Mr. Dekum
We know the name, because a big stone and brick building built by and named for him is on the corner of 3rd and Washington and we pass it every time we go downtown. Mr. Dekum came to Portland in 1853 with his family and started a very successful fruit business. He was also a candy maker, so obviously, a lover of good things.
His tallest namesake
When he had made his fortune in fruit and candy, he started investing in real estate development. He was involved in every building that went up on Washington Street between First and Third. He was on the Boards of banks and water companies, helping bring railroads and fresh drinking water to the city.
When the city was hit by a financial panic in 1893, property investments crashed and Mr. Dekum was badly impacted. He died the next year with only a fraction of his fortune intact. He is buried in our dear Lone Fir along with his eight children, so I can visit the whole family whenever I want.
Hollyhocks and day lilies, living together, mass hysteria!
Now that is is officially summer, our evening walks have moved from six o’clock to more like 7:30. It stays light until nine and it feels silly to waste all that lovely sunlight!
Yesterday evening Auntie Bridgett and I walked around the neighborhood and noticed that the flowers are really exploding. Sweet peas, roses, day lilies and hollyhocks are shooting up out of the ground like the police are after them.
Sweet peas!
Even the sunflowers are getting tall and majestic. The bees all seem to be prosperous and busy.
Bee on a leaf
We met a new cat, a very friendly young lady with beautiful markings and a tag that declares her to be “The Princess.” She not just allowed, but demanded, that we pet her, squeaking in a very royal voice.
The Princess in all her glory
On the way home we passed The Belmont Inn, and stopped in for a few games of Monster Bash, our favorite pinball game. We played together for a few, then went head-to-head. My score of six million made me very proud until Auntie Bridgett whupped me with forty-four million!!! Holy smokes, I need more practice!
Monday was my day to fly back to Salinas for the last two months of the school year, and of my 30 year teaching career. We slept in because Mouse the cat let us, then had breakfast, packed my suitcase, and went for a walk in Laurelhurst Park. We took Auntie Bridgett’s last gnome that was still at the old house.
We had already hidden a different one in the yard of our local plastic flamingo flock, in amongst the rhododendron bushes. It was well hidden, but someone must have seen it, because there were Easter eggs hidden nearby. We wanted to put the last gnome somewhere it would be seen, but only if you really looked. We found the perfect place and tucked the gnome away. I hope he makes people smile.
We stopped at Oblique coffee to get fortified what would be a long day of packing for my two wonderful people, and then Grandpa Nelson and Auntie Bridgett helped me load my stuff into the car and drove me to the airport. We all held hands all the way, because we are going to miss each other so much.
At PDX, I had a Yumm! Bowl for lunch and found a cute bear wearing a Portland hoodie as a gift for Cousin Liza.
The flight was quick and pleasant, because I listened to Hamilton the whole way. The flight is shorter than the show, and I remembered the stage play as I listened to the music. Uncle David picked me up and we caught up with news as he drove back to Salinas. We stopped at BJ’s burgers and had a very delicious pizza before heading home to rest until Auntie Olga and Liza got home.
Later in the evening, Dinner was done and it was still light! Yay Spring! Uncle David got out Liza’s bike and helmet and they practiced in the back yard for a while. When they were tired of pushing and pedaling, Liza and I played with bubbles for a while, using our jackets and the porch lights after the sun went down. Then it was bedtime for Liza and me.
Yesterday, December 30, 2017, was the warmest day we have had in a month. The blue sky was decorated with puffy clouds, and the temperature got up to 50 degrees! Auntie Bridgett and I went for a walk. We noticed some premature gladiolus flowers shooting up through the mud. The warm weather has them fooled, perhaps.
Wells Fargo from east side
Our first stop was Triumph Coffee at SE 12th and Ash. A busy, friendly place, with comfortably mismatched furniture. it is what Linus Van Pelt would call sincere. Neighborhood folks were enjoying coffee and having conversations. I didn’t see a single laptop open. Bridgett testifies that the coffee is excellent, and I stand by their carrot zucchini muffins. We got our goodies to go, and continued on our way.
Big Pink from east side
We walked on Ash until it ran into Sandy Boulevard, a major street that runs diagonally through east Portland. It makes some connections easier, of course, but also creates really interesting angled corners. Portland has a lot of these odd corners, like on the west side where Burnside hits every street at an odd angle, and in Ladd’s Addition, with its “x marks the spot” plotting.
From the obtuse corner of 10th and Ash, we could look west and see the two tallest buildings in Portland, “Big Pink” and the Wells Fargo Building. It is nice to be able to find landmarks and get a better picture of where you are in relation to other things.
We turned left and followed Sandy southwest until it became 7th Avenue, and followed that to Morrison. In that neighborhood are many old industrial buildings that have been re-purposed. The Troy Laundry, a brick building from 1913, is currently for sale. I am sure it has an interesting future.
1913 Troy Laundry Building
Heading back towards home on Morrison, we found Auntie Bridgett’s new favorite place: The Grand Central Restaurant and Bowling Lounge at 808 SE Morrison. This two-story playground for grown-ups (and kids) is in the old Grand Central Public Market building, which was built in 1929. It has bowling, a restaurant, two bars, pinball, Pac-man, air hockey, shuffleboard, skee-ball, driving games, pool tables, and giant televisions. It looks like a great place to spend a long wintry afternoon, and is not far from our house! Hooray for accidental discoveries!
Bowling on Morrison!!!
We left the bowling alley, smiling, knowing we would be back soon, and continued east on Morrison. We went through the Lone Fir Cemetery to say hello to the dead people, and got to chat with some squirrels and tourists, as well.
Yes, a disco ball in a bowling alley…..
We said a special hello to little Genevieve Gray, who died in 1912 when she was only 3 months old and is buried under the tiniest headstone I have ever seen. It is about 7 inches by 10, and is tucked under huge trees at the far northeast corner of the cemetery. I know visiting the cemetery might seem morbid, but it gives me perspective. I always leave with a sense of hope and purpose.
Little Genevieve Gray
Back home, we headed off for shopping and reading. See you soon, sweetie.
It gets dark really early here now, as we approach the longest night of the year, December 21st. By 4:30 I need my lit-up coat to walk out safely. One lovely thing about the early darkness is that you have more time to go see everyone’s Christmas lights!
History Lesson
Last night we walked east past Laurelhurst Park and Cesar Chavez Boulevard to a street called Peacock Lane. It used to be called Southeast 40th, but in 1929 the neighbors decided to give their street a special name and then live up to it.
Peacock Lane runs 2 blocks, from SE Stark to SE Alder, and every house is lit up like crazy. There are Santas, elves, Muppets, bears, deer, and even Star Wars characters, lit up and amazingly presented. It was like being at a parade, except the floats stayed still and the people did the moving.
And boy, the people!
Hannukah Bear
The street was still open to traffic, so hundreds of folks had to fit on the sidewalk, and we all walked along slowly, taking pictures and enjoying the pretty lights. It was fun to watch kids’ faces light up as they recognized SpongeBob or C3PO.
My Favorite!
There was a small booth where neighborhood kids sold hot chocolate, and they were doing a great business. That was the only commerce on the Lane, and the neighbors are determined to keep it that way. This is a neighborhood of folks who work together and want to keep their street special.
R2D2 with antlers??
There was so much car traffic that we were once again grateful that we could just walk over. When our eyes were full we walked home, enjoying other house lights, then through the misty forest of Laurelhurst Park. A mist was rising off the lake and the street lights along the path were mysterious and wonderful.
Yesterday I got out for two walks, one in the morning with Grandpa Nelson, and one in the afternoon with Auntie Bridgett. It was cold and wet but not raining, and both walks went through our favorite, Laurelhurst Park.
Grandpa Nelson’s walk was quick. He was still “at work”, at his office downstairs, but he needed to stretch his legs and clear his head. We covered ground, enjoyed the thousands of leaves floating on the lake, and saw dogs running full speed just for the joy of doing it.
My walk with Auntie Bridgett was less hurried. We saw some fine mushrooms.
Happy mushrooms!
We talked about how different kinds of trees are changing at different rates. Most of the maples are pretty bare, but other types of trees still have quite a few green leaves.
Looking up, she said, “For example, this one.” We stopped beside a tree we hadn’t really noticed before. It was some sort of conifer (there were small green cones under it) but had clearly changed color and was getting ready to lose its leaves. “This tree isn’t well,” was my assumption. When an evergreen goes yellow, it’s near the end.
Mystery Tree
We took pictures of the tree and leaves, tucked the location into our memory banks, and continued our walk.
On the other side of the park is a ‘tree map’, showing what sorts of trees are growing where in the park. Once we got oriented, we saw that our mystery tree was listed as a Metasequoia glyptostroboides, also known as a Dawn Redwood. Dawn Redwoods are deciduous conifers, meaning they have cones like evergreens, but lose their leaves every fall. A rare thing, indeed.
Close up of Dawn Redwood
Dawn Redwoods are really special trees for other reasons, too. They were alive 60 million years ago, when dinosaurs were around. Scientists have found their fossils in North America, China and Japan. A Japanese paleobotanist (person who studies extinct plants) named Shegeru Miki found fossils in Japan and called it “Metasequoia”, meaning it was sort of a grandmother to all other redwoods. He assumed the tree was extinct.
At about the same time in China, a forester named T. Kan found a living grove of the same kind of trees. Because this all happened in the middle of World War II, it took years before they learned about each other’s finds.
Needles of Dawn Redwood
When the seeds and other parts of the plants were sent to botanists at Harvard University, the tree was called a “fossil tree” and a seed gathering expedition went to China. Thousands of seeds were sent to different places around the world, including the Hoyt Arboretum and Laurelhurst Park here in Portland. The next year, the tree in the Arboretum bore cones, the first tree of its kind to bear cones in North America in 60 million years, or so they all thought.
It turns out there were, and still are, Dawn Redwoods growing wild here, in forests, the Gorge, as well as parks. They weren’t extinct, we just hadn’t found any as of 1941. Now we have. It seems there are always new things to discover!
I love what this story tells me about curiosity, problem solving, and serendipity. The same kind of trees grew in China, Japan, and North America, for millions of years. How did the seeds travel so far? Were the continents closer then? What if that scientist hadn’t send those particular seeds to that particular guy?
The weather here keeps surprising me! Yesterday Auntie Bridgett and I walked down to feed Auntie Katie’s cats, Pixel, Pietro and Wanda. Grandpa Nelson warned us that there was weather on the way, but we headed out anyway.
There were looming clouds but also bright sunshine. We fed the kitties, then walked back, taking pictures of leaves, roses, and rainbows and chatting with a lady jump roping on the sidewalk. We had stopped in Lone Fir Cemetery to collect some more chestnuts when the looming clouds moved right over us.
The sky shook and rumbled, and the rain started, hard, heavy raindrops racing each other to the ground. We realized that ‘under a tree’ was not a good place in case of lightning so we opened the umbrella and headed up the path. By the time we reached the gate, the rain had turned to hail about the size of bb shot. The sky was throwing pebbles at us!
Lone Fir Cemetery in the hailstorm Photo Credit: Bridgett Spicer
We stopped by the gate, amazed at the storm happening around us. A poor jogger came by, shook like a dog, caught his breath and headed off, and several other folks found trees to shelter under. When we started walking again, the sidewalk was covered in tiny balls of ice, making it both crunchy and slippery. It sounded like Cheerios but felt like ice!
Hail collecting all over the placeTiny hailstones
By the time we got home there were piles of tiny hailstones everywhere. We shed our wet things and had some warm apple cider, glad to be home and safe and dry.
This storm, like the beauty and people of this new place, reminded me how big and interesting the world is, and how much I have yet to experience.
Friday was a day where nothing much was planned, but things just kept happening. In the morning, Auntie Bridgett and I took the giant pile of books we had borrowed and walked them back to the library. My research into Portland history has me visiting the library a lot. So we packed up my eight books and Auntie Bridgett’s three, and walked to the Belmont Library on Cesar Chavez and Taylor.
Cesar Chavez is a main north/south road, and very noisy, so we walked through the neighborhood. It was a good day for cats, bright new paint jobs on houses, and seed pods. A very satisfactory stroll.
Auntie Bridgett and a Bowl
Library books returned, we headed south to the UPS Store and bank on Hawthorne. We were hungry, and headed further east on Hawthorne to The Whole Bowl. This little restaurant started as a food cart and made enough money to get a real building. They only serve one thing, in two sizes: a big bowl, and a bambino bowl. The bowl has two kinds of beans, cheese, sour cream, cilantro, avocado, and a garlicky lemony sauce . It is so wonderfully good you just keep eating! We shared a big bowl and a bottle of kombucha, a fermented tea drink, and we were ready to continue our walk.
St. Patrick’s Church
As we walked back toward the library, we found St. Patrick’s Church, a big Catholic Church we hadn’t seen before. It was beautiful and bright on the outside, but seemed dark inside, either because the windows were too small, or our eyes were used to the bright. We didn’t stay, but we will remember where it is so we can tell Bridgett’s mom when she visits.
Back at the Belmont Library, I hunted for some books on World War I, because my story will have some things that happen in 1918. The story doesn’t happen IN the war, but DURING the war. So I need to know…what were kids doing to help? What foods were rationed? What did people use instead? I need details! So, I read. I checked out three new books and we headed home.
After Auntie Bridgett and I got home (after walking over 4 miles!), she went down to draw in The Art Bunker, as she calls our basement, and I read…and napped. I read some more, and then it was dinner time. We read some more until the NEXT thing.
Moon and Sixpence Pub coaster
We had tickets for the Northwest Animation Festival at the Hollywood Theater up on Sandy. We stopped at the Moon and Sixpence Pub for a beer and cider before the show. There were people playing darts, but no noisy football games on TV, so we were happy.
The Hollywood Theater is a classic old movie theater from the 1940’s and is very elegant. It was really crowded, though, so I didn’t take pictures inside.
The Hollywood Theater
The Animation film festival really happened in May, when a lot more films were shown. The ones we saw were voted the BEST. The films were short, from 2 to 16 minutes long, but were really interesting. Some, like “Life Inside ‘Islamic State'” were very sad. Others, like “Birdlime” and “Spring Jam”, were happy and sweet, about birds and the sounds they make. Others, like “Resistance”, which had giant bugs drinking champagne, were really creepy. The variety of styles of animation and countries they came from (The United States, Canada, England, Israel, Poland, France, New Zealand, and Germany) was delightful.
We got home really late (almost midnight!) and pretty much collapsed into bed, with our heads full of weird images from the festival.
The other night we took a long walk after dinner. Auntie Bridgett had read about a restaurant called The Rimsky-Korsakoffee House that is about a mile from our house, at 12th Avenue and Alder. It was quirky, she said, and possibly haunted, and we should go there.
So we did. We walked due west, right into the setting sun, and by the time we got to the restaurant, we were sun-blind and exhausted. From where we stood on the sidewalk, there was no sign that the building was a restaurant, or even occupied. The faded rose Victorian exterior looked like one of the hundreds of great houses in Portland that have gotten tired over the years. The lawn was weedy and the willow tree a bit overgrown. At 6:57, it was as if no one had been up the stairs in years. At 7:00, a small “Open” sign came on and people began walking up the street towards it.
We entered the cluttered, underlit foyer, our eyes and glasses still adjusting from the bright afternoon outside. “Take a menu” a sign said, so we did, and wandered into the living room. Small tables and chairs filled the space, where a piano sat in the corner and all sorts of knick-knacks perched on shelves.
The number 36 dangled from the ceiling and was spelled out in roman numerals made from yard sticks. Auntie Bridgett remembered that the restaurant had been started in 1980, so was 36 last year. It is as old as your daddy. The whole place was lit with fairy lights.
Auntie Bridgett and “36”
We sat and listened to the Romantic piano music of Rimsky-Korsakoff lilting through the small rooms, reading the hand-written signs. “Warning to customers: This is the OUT door” said a sign on the door to the kitchen. “This table for 2 people only” was the sign on our table. We were three, but no one seemed to mind. Quirky, indeed.
Our waitress took our order and we shared the most delicious ginger cake I have ever had. The cinnamon coffee was rich and sweet, and Grandpa Nelson’s ice cream sundae was wonderfully cold and fluffy. Having enjoyed our dessert and coffee and recovered completely from our walk, we paid our bill and got up to leave.
We saw what we hadn’t before, the stairs up to the restroom, over which hung a swing of sorts. On the bottom (the side towards us) was another hand written sign: “Everyone Enjoy Engaging in Eating, Entertainment, Escape, Enlightenment, Euphony, Elsewise, Exit!” We had seen no signs of haunting, but it was early yet. Maybe the spirits wake up later.
Orders from above
We had a conversation with the baker before we left, complimenting him on his ginger cake and getting the recipe, which he rattled off from memory. “But don’t quote me,” he said. “I make a lot of cakes.” I don’t remember it, but I will have fun trying to duplicate it, once the weather cools off enough to bake.
Yesterday our dear friends George and Mimi Niesen were in town delivering one of her paintings and they stopped by for brunch! We decided to walk, since there are so many wonderful places close by.
Their first choice, called Fried Egg I’m in Love, on Hawthorne at 34th, turned out to be a food truck. I’m sure their food was good, but their eating area right by the busy street was too noisy for conversation. We walked a few blocks east to Bread and Ink, a restaurant that has been here for 32 years!
Bread and Ink
We had a very tasty brunch of waffles and berries, black bean cakes with mango chutney, potatoes and sausage, and eggs Benedict. Good coffee, good service, and interesting art on the walls made for a very pleasant morning.
We walked back through the neighborhood more slowly, stuffed with breakfast. We walked along Hawthorne seeing all the fun shops and met Ray, the man who owns Classic Collection, where we found Grandpa Nelson’s new summer hat the other day. Ray has a bigger store downtown, but he calls this one “my baby”.
We saw the Tov Bus, a coffee place made in a re-purposed double-decker London Bus. Turning into the quiet neighborhood, there was a sign in a garden explaining that there were important pollinators called mining bees living in their yard, so it didn’t get gardened much.
Bee Protection Sign
We passed the ‘cow house’, which has, well, a large plastic cow on the roof. It just sort of sits there, being a cow. Very entertaining!
You know, it’s a cow…on a house
We imagine it saying things…”Yeah, I’m a cow, what’s it to you?”….”Who took that ladder?”
After George and Mimi went on their way and we worked and had dinner, Auntie Bridgett, Grandpa Nelson and I went for a long walk up to the Grant Park neighborhood. This is where the author of the Ramona books, Beverly Cleary, grew up.
In Grant Park (named for President Grant, who was president from 1868-1877) there are three statues in a fun, splashy fountain. The statues are of Ramona Quimy, Henry Huggins, and Henry’s dog Ribsy. Ramona and Ribsy are actually part of the fountain because their statues help spray the water. Henry is watching from the side. The sculptor, Lee Hunt, captured the fun of playing in the water perfectly.
Auntie Bridgett and Henry HugginsRamona Fountain at Grant Park
We walked a long way through the Grant Park neighborhood, seeing the big high school and Beverly Cleary Elementary School, lots of nice houses for sale, and friendly cats.
Ribsy helps out!
We were getting tired and thirsty, so we stopped at the Migration Brewery for cider, beer, and pretzels, then finished our walk and collapsed happily at home.
Auntie Bridgett’s mileage meter on her watch said she and I walked six and a half miles in all. No wonder our feet were tired! Another lovely, interesting, exhausting day.
Dear Liza 