As I should have expected, our jam-free traffic last week in Portland did not come without a price. Almost as soon as we were out of the driveway this week it became apparent that we would be paying for our good fortune last week by having double the impediments this week. Every driving-challenged boob in the valley, driving at the pace of a herd of ailing slugs, had decided to take to the road at the same time, each doing their best to keep us from ever reaching our destin

I’m not sure what was going on this Friday, or maybe what was not going on, but we practically flew up the I-205 freeway. All of the places where the traffic usually comes to a crawl for absolutely no reason were clear, as always, but for some reason nobody was slowing down for those imaginary obstacles and we were able to drive the speed limit until our exit onto Washington Street, from where we headed east into the vast ungentrified suburbia that is east Portland. The Mil

We decided to undertake a significantly shorter expedition this week and drove through the unseasonably wet countryside to the city of Eugene. In 1950 the city had two high schools and a population of 35,000. Over the next 15 years that population almost doubled and North Eugene and Sheldon high schools had opened their doors. That still wasn’t enough to accommodate all of the students, so in 1966 Winston Churchill High School opened in the southwest corner of town, named

Vale High School has had a really good football team for a long time. The Vikings took to the gridiron for the first time in 1928. It took them a few decades to find their groove, but they’ve gone on to win 12 state championships, with another 5 runner-up awards, including one in 2024. One of the secrets to their success is that they schedule a home preseason game each year against a good team from the western part of the state as a tune-up for their regular season. They h

It may still be August, but it’s football season, so it was time for a road trip. And what better road to take a trip on than the longest road in the country? Highway 20 is 3265 miles long. 506 of those miles are in the state of Oregon, and our destination was only slightly less far away than that. If you take that highway to within a mile of the Snake River before heading south for another fifteen miles or so, you will come to the town of Adrian. The site of present-da

The early evening was dark and damp as we made our way through Yamhill County wine country on the first Friday after falling back the previous Sunday. It wasn’t raining, but looked like it could if it chose to. We came into Sherwood through the back door, so to speak, on the section of Highway 99 just south of Sherwood known inauspiciously as the Herbert Hoover Highway. After a short tour of the heights south of downtown that offer panoramic views of the surrounding countr

It was the final Friday of the regular season. Rivalry night. And how better to spend it than watching one of the biggest rivalries in the state: Dayton vs. Amity. Both of these teams have impressive football histories by any standard, even if I have reason to think they’re not quite as impressive as they’d like everyone to believe. The Pirates from Dayton have been playing football since 1928 and won a state B Division title in 1948. In 1965 Dewey Sullivan took over as

We did a little more driving this Friday night than we had originally planned on, but in the end everything turned out well for everyone except the South Umpqua Lancers. We had made plans to attend a game in Glide, but after arriving there only to find out their game had been rescheduled, we put Plan B into action and drove on south through the rain showers and gusting wind to Winston. We didn’t have time to do much exploring before the game, but when we turned west off of

When I heard that the students in Jewell were going to have their own football team this year, I knew I had to get to a game there while I had the chance. The Blue Jays have been playing football since 1981, and as recently as 2016 they played 11-man ball. But they didn’t have a team in 2015 or 2017, and even after dropping down to 6-man football in 2018 they had to team up with Vernonia in 2023 for their players to have a chance to play. They’re back with a team of their

Sometimes attending a football game takes a lot more courage than people think. It had crossed our minds to change our schedule and head south this week, or maybe take in a game on the coast, but in the end we decided to stick with our original plan of going back to the Portland metro area, specifically to the city of Milwaukie. With battles raging all over the war-ravaged city, with fires everywhere and bombs going off and armed mobs running wild, I didn’t want to be too c

We do things differently in the Ednold family, and things don’t always make sense at first glance. Let me give you just one example: Ma Ednold passed from this earthly world a few years back. I know lots of people say that they have, or had, the best mom in the world, but I really did, and nobody who ever knew her would argue that point with me. There has never been a more kind and loving soul, so for some reason the family has chosen to commemorate her birthday each year

We drove east on Highway 126 through Springfield and followed the McKenzie River up into the mountains. The river is named for Donald McKenzie, who explored the area for the Pacific Fur Company in the early 1800’s, and it’s where all of Eugene and Springfield’s tap water comes from, and we were looking forward to a beautiful drive all the way up the valley. On our way, we had to make one short stop in Leaburg to pay our respects to a guy in the Greenwood Cemetery there. I

On the last Friday evening of the summer I decided it would be fun to spend an hour or so checking out the freeways in and around Portland. I don’t know if Mrs. Ednold would agree that it was fun, but I slowed The Bucket to a crawl so that we could inspect every inch of that road along the way, and lots of times I even came to a complete stop, taking a minute or two to assess the infrastructure that allowed thousands of people to make their way around the city each day. Act

The road north out of Pendleton across the rolling hills of northeast Oregon is pretty monotonous this time of year, and I can’t imagine it’s much different the rest of the year. It’s all hay fields and corn, and more corn and hay fields. Most of the hay was newly cut, but most of the corn was still standing, which was a little surprising for so late in the summer. There were lots of onion trucks taking their full loads to wherever they take them, but I’m not sure what a f

When I look at the football schedules to look for likely places to watch a game, I may not know where all of them are, but I've at least heard of them. I've been around for a while, so how could there be a town in Oregon big enough to have a high school that I've never heard of? That's what led to The Bucket's appearance in the little town of Echo on a Friday afternoon. I didn't know why the place was being kept such a big secret, but we were going to get to the bottom of

As we approached Eugene, the smoke and haze off in the distance was making me a little nervous. I had checked the forest fire maps and the air quality readings for Oakridge and everything looked fine, but the sky was telling a different story. We'd made an unsuccessful trip to Oakridge last season, and I was really hoping we wouldn't be making the trip for nothing again. So, for week 1 of the season (last week was week 0. Don't ask me, I don't know why) we were back on th

I can’t remember what I was doing last December that took up all of my time. I don’t remember it taking me all month to put up the Christmas lights, but maybe it did. All I know now is that for the first time I didn’t write a wrap-up story for last season. Anyway, I can’t start a new season without a short recap of the last one, so here is your nutshell wrap-up for 2024. In the 6-man championship, Powers overpowered Harper Charter for their 4th state championship. Then it

I’ve been updating my list of things I’m going to address when I become King of the World, and at the top of my list is fixing the whole daylight situation. Some genius, at some point, decided that when days start getting short we should all change our clocks to make them even shorter. I’ve never understood how that plan got approved, and when the time comes, that whole stupid thing will come to an end. It’s going to be “fall forward” when I’m in charge, but until then we’

It was the last week of the regular season, but it also happened to be the first week of basketball season and I’m still perfecting my ability to be in two places at once, so we had to make a choice. Fortunately, there aren’t enough referees in Douglas County for them to play all of their games on Friday nights, and the Riddle Irish had to play their game on Saturday night. Perfect. Riddle is a small town in southern Douglas County near Cow Creek where William Riddle settle

It was overcast for our last game of October. It wasn’t the all-encompassing grey that it will be in a month or two after the sun has gone into hibernation for real, but the clouds reminded us that we were on the back nine of this season and it would be a long time before we had another day like we saw last week at North Lake. So, you’d think fate would have been kind to us as we tried to adjust to the new climate, but she had other plans. Highway 99 north was clogged with