On to Portland…

Dan and I spent the next couple days in Walla Walla visiting with our retired sister and the still working BIL. He works up at the old military base & Walla Walla Regional Airport as an all around maintenance guy. The airport has all these old WWII buildings so they’re cheap to rent for new businesses. I worked out there years ago at an electronics firm that designed and built frozen food weighing machines. While there at that company, they had a policy of teaching employees to fly, free, if they wanted. So I got flight training on their dime using that historic runway. Long before that, I’d gone out there once a week for over a year for USNR (US Naval Reserve) training as that’s where our meeting hall was. Might still be there. After each training session we’d all rush home, often we’d drag race through downtown Walla Walla. Lucky I never crashed, got a ticket, or blew up Dad’s engine. Almost always won those short races because my timing was good, Dad always had big engines, and those other drivers sucked.

In Walla Walla during those years, 1961-1964, there was no radio station in town that played Rock & Roll. It was all crap all the time, really snooze fest music. And a couple religious and Country/Western stations thrown in. We were too far for the average radio to pick up any Pasco station (50 miles away), which did play R&R. Though sometimes if the atmosphere was just right people could pick it up and the latest songs would be sung by the gurls to the rest of us the next day at HS. There was even a phone network for passing around the latest songs.

But we had at HS a kid (one year younger then me so…to me he was a kid) with a natural radio announcers voice, which all his friends and acquaintances, including me, were lobbying with him to use as a DJ at any local radio station. We didn’t care which one, just as long as he was the host. Finally he warmed up to the idea, after a couple years of his peers telling him he had a perfect radio voice, and went all in. Most of the student body was electrified when it got passed around school that he was going to become a radio announcer. Then our lobbying switched to the radio stations in town with a vengeance & it took a concerted grassroots effort on our part with teams of teenagers calling the stations asking why no R&R was played, while others visited the stations manager whenever they could and lobbied for our guy. And it was a struggle. The stations initially refused. “There will never be Rock & Roll in Walla Walla!” as one on air personality screamed after fielding 10’s of calls from our campaign group requesting popular songs during his call in request show. His stupid comments made the papers, outraging most parents with teenagers. Except for the religious freaks, as always, trying to block it, R&R was already widely accepted throughout most of the nation…but the radio stations in our town still objected and REFUSED to play it. Remember this was almost the MID SIXTIES. It’s not like R&R had just been invented. Occasionally you might hear a Elvis, or Ray Charles song on air but that was pretty much the extent of R&R on the radio in Walla Walla for those years.

Finally, one station, grudgingly, allowed our hero, Burl Barer (he even had a cool radio name – pronounced Burl BEAR), to host a one hour show featuring R&R from an approved play list. Damn it was good to finally have some of our own music. And Burl’s voice is so deep and rich we knew we’d launched a new city wide, state wide, maybe country wide, radio star. And that link above from Wikipedia about him proves we did! But just ONE FUK’IN HOUR PER WEEK?? Jeese. Anyway, teams of teenagers swamped the station with phone requests whenever Burl’s show ended. None of their other listeners were doing that. So they went to 2 hours per week. Then a couple hours a couple days per week. 8 pm to 10 pm. ‘Cus you kids should not have fun. It’s amazing how much the stations pushed back against it, or dragged their feet. Burl, his parents, and the station’s managers were concerned about him working at his age, what with school work and such, but he got air time, by popular demand. Other local radio station managers finally saw what was going on with this whole thing and Burl soon had two shows at different stations, eventually a weekend show. And on the other stations (except the religious or C&W) there would be the occasional R&R song played, sometimes a block of several, usually with a snotty introduction by an arrogant DJ apologizing and pandering to those opposed to ‘that music’.

Before R&R radio play time had become the norm, the whole town exploded in controversy about whether R&R was evil or not. Radio surveys, church’s used the pulpit to tell anyone who would listen R&R is bad, newspaper articles, hundreds of letters to the editor, radio station owners using their Bully Pulpit to lobby the city’s mayor to outlaw R&R!! Can you believe that? We even had teenage misguided Jeebus freaks at school telling the rest of us how evil that kind of music was. Gah! That did NOT go over well. It is JUST MUSIC. Which caused us to redouble our efforts. Eventually, and it took months, no, it took years, Walla Walla emerged from the dark ages and we got nearly full time R&R from a local station grudgingly changing their format. During the change over the station manager pissed and moaned about having to do it and repeatedly apologized profusely to the old timers and religious freaks. It started out playing R&R in the early morning hours only. Then eventually, after hundreds of complaints from teenagers, they played R&R from 8 to 10 pm, and several nights per week. Finally, we were making some headway. Also, the stations noticed their advertising revenue was trending up with more listeners. This was during the time when I’d occasionally turn on the car radio, hear only ‘How much is that doggie in the window’ type crappy ass’ed music, and switch it back off. Leaving it off for days at a time. There’s only so much Frank Sinatra I can stand, even to this day.

It was during the period when ‘our music’ was still only played an hour per week I was driving home from a Reserve training meeting (one night per week, on a Wednesday) that I’d occasionally stop at a pizza place on 4th street. And that’s the first time & place I heard the Beatles fully. Damn they were good. That pizza joint got a newer jukebox with 45 RPM records and since we had R&R on the radio an hour per week now, the owner took a chance and put R&R on his jukebox. He had to buy the box and sign up for the record service in Pasco though, because the business in town wouldn’t handle R&R. Holy crap, that place exploded with business from teenagers, but mostly gurls too young & immature for someone all grown up and in uniform like me. We’d call them bubblegummers (yes, I had a crew). I’ve often thought that those were probably the gurls that went on to be hippy gurls a few years later because they were so wild and reckless there in the pizza place. Oh, and the pizza was great too, and I mean great. But the music! Wow. I went from a casual listener to a fanatic overnight. The Beatles had like 3 songs on the box, the British invasion was already in full swing so there were several other British groups that most of us knew nothing about on there too, and a year later the owner told me he’d had to replace several of the records repeatedly because they got wore out being played so much. But he wasn’t complaining.

It was strange when I got out in the ‘real’ world to find out how far behind music trends those of us that grew up in Walla Walla were. We had no, or little, idea how great the music elsewhere had become. Sure there were some kids at WiHi who traveled and knew about it but they were the minority and could only share with a few as all our recording equipment back then was rather bulky, or not exactly mobile. Our record stores had not caught up for the most part either. And those with records brought in from outside were not about to share them as they would quickly ‘disappear’ or get scratched up if loaned out. This same kind of suppression of popular music also occurred with movies and dancing. Movies shown in Pasco would be advertised in the Walla Walla paper so we would know about them, but they would never come to our theater. It was an adventure getting people together to travel clear over to Pasco just to catch a movie they wouldn’t show in Walla Walla. Only ‘approved’ movies were shown there. Dancing at proms and the like was also strictly controlled. So when I saw the 1984 movie Foot Loose, (I’ve only watched it once, it’s too stupid to watch more than that), I recognized that same backwardness in my home town. Can you believe we had ignorant jackasses writing letters to the local paper editor, going to city council meetings screaming about how ‘that music’ was going to ruin out ‘Merican way of life and that it should be outlawed? And always on religious grounds. Wow. Such. Intense. Stupid. Probably the same people were still against Elvis and his style of music.

But I digress…Dan and I left Walla Walla heading for Portland and 30 minutes west of town there’s a turn off to the Tri-Cities (Pasco, Kennewick, Richland) where we spent most of our childhood. And some of our adulthood. It’s a longer route, but we took that route for memories. Here’s a picture of the New new Bridge off in the distance connecting Pasco (where we’re at at the moment), and Kennewick over on the south side of the Columbia. A couple miles further west is another bridge that when I went to college here in Pasco, we called the New bridge. We’re heading nearly due west in this picture. This is our old stomping grounds. In fact, when we were toddlers, we moved into a little cinder block house on this street a couple miles west of here.
This is all build up and modernized now. Use to be a dump around here.

And then we turn south to cross the Columbia. The river is a mile wide here. Nice bridge. But we’re soon in Kennewick, where we took a back road, 10th Ave. It passes by the first grade school (GS) we both went to. I have fond memories because when I was 4 and in kindergarten, that’s where I met Trudy. A beautiful, brown eyed girl with brown hair and a pagegirl hair cut. Use to chase her all over the school grounds during recess. Even snuck aboard her bus home with her once so that I could figure out how to walk her home and then make it back to my own house without getting lost. Quite the adventure. And it took some doing, but I did talk her into letting me walk her home a few days later. It wasn’t far from the GS. Got myself and her into trouble, her for walking home and not taking the bus, me for being missing. Our house was just down the street from GS and I was just suppose to walk home after. I was devastated when we moved away. Years later, I was now a 12 yo and taking tap dance classes, and at a recital, she was in the back dressing room getting ready to do her ballet set. She was a member of a different dance studio. Recognized her right away. Only problem was I was only 4′ 7″ and she was now 5′ 7″ or so. I didn’t re-introduce myself.

And soon after passing the GS we’ve turned onto US-395. That highway runs into I-82 running north/south. Off we head towards the Columbia River. On the Oregon side, you can get on I-84 freeway a bit south of Umatilla. The river flows east between Pasco and Kennewick then turns west at Umatilla. And yes, this was where Kennewick Man was found. A 9,000 year old skeleton.

On the way south we decide to take the highway on the Washington side. It’s only 2 lane, not the fancy 4 lane freeway like on the Oregon side, but we’re both retired so…Above picture is the slack water just below McNary dam. This is how much of the countryside looks on this side of the Columbia.  It’s not very crowded though because of the better freeway on the Oregon side. The road is much improved from when Dan use to drive it. I haven’t been on it in 10 years myself. We passed a bunch of wild flowers on the side of the road and eventually found a place to stop and take pictures. Oh, yeah, I should mention the ancient volcanic formations all throughout the gorge. Starting to see some evergreens off in the distance as the desert east gives way to the wooded and wet west.

I grew up in this area of the country so naturally it’s my favorite. With good reason. Later in the day we arrive at the RV park at Janzen Beach. Do not stay there if you want WiFi. Theirs is throttled by that evil company Tengo Internet. Tengo will tell you the RV park is just not paying enough, and it is better when a park pays more, it’s just still not very good. Too slow. You can’t video stream like you can in 70% of US RV parks these days. Anyway, we get there, I decide on and pay for 3 nights, than drive out to my spot and set up. Happy that I got there early because when I found the WiFi was no better then an old time modem, I call the office and they gave me a refund of two nights.

Next morning, I drive Dan to the airport. I thought for a while he was having a stroke or something because it was 9 AM and here he’s staggering, slurring his words, blurting out nonsense, fumbling around with his luggage. Worried me, so when we got there and he was sort of falling out of the door, I ran out to help, grabbed him and tried to get a handle on what the problem was…still thinking it was a stroke. He tells me, no, he’s drunk. Ahh, that explains it. OK, help him get the rest of his luggage out of the RV, give him a big hug goodbye, say, “Bye, have a great flight”, and off he goes to find his flight’s check in counter. He planned on taking a nap once he got past security. He was two hours early so I suspected he’d make it (which he did). Jeese. Found a half empty 1 & 3/4 liter bottle of gin later that had been nearly full the night before. WTF. Well, he’d bought it and it’s mine now. Don’t drink much gin, maybe I’ll save it for friends.

After dropping off Dan, I have to figure out where to find a suitable RV park in or around Portland. I’m in town because I have to have my 5 year colonoscopy, I have friends here I’d like to visit, and the weather in the area is fairly nice. Generally much cooler then the desert SW. Plus I lived here for 35 odd years, it’s my adopted home town.

I drove around east Portland randomly for 3-4 hours stopping & shopping here and there but generally heading further east while trying to kill time. Even though I’d called a couple days before and they had no open spaces, I tried stopping in at Rolling Hills RV Park in Fairview and find they’ve changed over to a permanent occupant park. No more transient RV spaces. Damn. It’s right next to the Stagecoach Saloon too. They tell me they won’t have a space for months as everyone is a permanent resident now. So I drive a bit east to the Portland Fairview park and they rent me a space by the week. Telling me they have no monthly spaces. It’s $330 per week. Yikes. Anyway, I wander around the park several times and there’s probably a hundred empty spaces.

Here’s my space. They also have Tengo internet here but at least it’s faster than at Janzen beach. Not so painfully slow, but still glitchy.

It’s a very well maintained park. I like it here. Flowers everywhere.Nice huh? The next lower level. 

There’s 5 levels/sections. The transient section is highest and closest to the highway of course, but the lowest section is right next to a very busy railroad track. As I’ve said in the past, I love trains, so them passing all day and half the night doesn’t bother me.

During my 2nd week there, I’m in the office again asking about a month to month space find out they’re $500 + electric, and amazing, one opens up? I have to fill out an application and they know what it is, but can’t accept my EIN # in place of the SSN they asked for on the form. So I get all their corporate info so I can sue them if my SSN gets compromised.

I had to move, and my new spot doesn’t have the shade I want, but it’s better then a Walmart parking lot any day. And I have my own rhodie.

As you can see though, no shade.My new neighborhood.

And a couple days before my first month at my new spot was up, my bike was stolen. Here’s how it looked when I took it in for service last year. I’d had it for 4 years. See the coiled cable lock? The thief carried a tool to cut that cleanly. Thing was, there were probably 50 bikes in the RV park, many of which where not locked up at all or had the same wire lock I did. Most of which were either better condition, or nicer than mine. But the thief took mine. Great.

I had just received two brand new RV tires at $200 each and I’d U bolted them, along with the heavy duty wire cable that it came with, to the picnic table. While doing that, I was trying to figure out how to also lock my bike up using the heavy U bolt lock. It didn’t fit. Two nights later, they stole my bike. Left my tires alone though. So, yea!

I call the cops, print up a couple fliers, and pay my rent. Which is now $100 per month more because the park has been sold to Encore…the thieves that own Thousand Trails. One of the most deceptive sales RV companies out there. Some older folks forked out $30,000 plus a yearly amount of $12,000 to stay in a few ordinary RV parks in ‘zones’ around the US, and even more if they wanted to drive from zone to zone. I understand that their new management isn’t as hostile to consumers, they’ve turned over a new leaf so to speak, but I remember them and don’t have a good opinion. Not much I can do about it, and no where to go that’s this convenient either. So for the time being, I’m kind of stuck here.

Next time, I finally get around to buying a car. Stay tuned! And thanks for reading…