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

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

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

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 attended a conference recently where I sat at a table with five other people, and the young lady leading this particular session had given us all an assignment to complete. It was an exercise in communication, where we would be pairing up and taking turns speaking and listening with our partners based on the instructions provided by the facilitator via little slips of paper she passed around. My partner spoke first, with directions to explain, in detail, what her favorite

Here I was once again. The Saturday after Thanksgiving. The last Saturday in November. After three months, Championship Saturday had arrived and it was my job to keep track of all the action. Okay, I admit it: I hadn’t watched or listened to the 5A or 6A games that took place Friday evening at Hillsboro Stadium. In the 5A game, the Wilsonville team we’d seen win their quarterfinal game so impressively beat Mountain View of Bend. Mountain View led for most of the game and

Though the Willamette River generally flows south to north, it takes a sharp right at Newberg, and from there to Canby runs perpendicular to all the traffic going to and from the Portland metro area. There had to be a river crossing somewhere along that stretch, and this is the place Mr. Boone chose to put his ferry. At the site where natives had crossed the river for centuries, Daniel Boone’s grandson, Alphonso, established a ferry in 1847, and Alphonso’s son Jesse built B

You may remember a few years ago when we attempted to attend a football game at Perrydale. For reasons that you can find in the archives (Central, March 2021), that didn't work out as we had planned, and reading that story again made me feel I may have been a little hard on the Pirates. The curse I put on the team caused them to go 1-4 during that Covid season, and the next season they went just 4-5. After I lifted the curse last season, they were able to record a 7-3 reco

The time has come for closing books, and long last looks must end. I never envisioned using any of Lulu’s lyrics in this blog, but that line is kind of fitting. This season is in the books and we’ll be taking one long last look at this long last weekend. If “To Sir, With Love” is stuck in your head now, then you owe me. That girl could sing. Probably still can. As usual, this championship Saturday was filled with more than just high school football games, and I had that

Here’s a little something to think about before we get started: If you were hiring a musical act and could only judge the applicants based on their resumes, what’s the single most impressive thing you could find on one of those resumes? What’s the one thing that, if you read it, would immediately make you say “OK. You win. The job’s yours”? What if they said they had won a Grammy? Big deal. Lots of people have one of those. Gold records? Platinum records? That’s nic

As seems to be the case each Championship Saturday, this Saturday was packed full of more sporting events than anyone could possibly keep track of. But the Arsenal game started at 4:00am, so Gabriel Martinelli scored to secure that win, and assure my fantasy team’s loss, long before the football started. Which gave me time to prepare my breakfast of champions - Grits “All The Way” - and otherwise prepare myself for an afternoon in my chair juggling the onslaught of soccer,

Another week, another progressive president. This time I was headed to Kennedy High School in Mt. Angel to watch the Trojans host the Nestucca Bobcats in the first round of the 2A playoffs. Once again, Mrs. Ednold had been detained at work, so I stopped along the way and picked up little bro to occupy the shotgun seat in The Bucket. Mt. Angel is a town of 3,500 about 20 miles northeast of Salem, and it's one of those places that isn't easily accessible from any main highwa

I can’t say I ever really knew Gus, but I met him a few times when he must have been 8 or 9 years old. Even at that age he was already a bit of a local celebrity, having set several national age-group records. But it was another six or seven years before the whole rest of the world got to see him. After winning three events at the state high school track and field championships in that spring of 1984, he went down to Los Angeles to run in the Olympics as a 16-year-old who

Football is over, at least for another 5 months or so. But I was tired of being cooped up in this house, so we packed our bags and hit the road one recent morning. We were on our way to Seneca. Seneca is a town of a couple hundred people located up in the Blue Mountains of southern Grant County between John Day and Burns. Back in the late 1800’s postmistress Minnie Southworth named the town for her brother-in-law, Seneca Smith, who was a judge in Portland. Am I the only

I guess I sound like a broken record by now, but let me start by repeating the fact that everything is connected somehow, at least inside my head. When Captain Tom died this month it got me thinking about him and his hit rendition of The Song That Must Not Be Named, and his record of being the oldest person to ever have a #1 hit song. Which, in turn, got me thinking about the oldest female to ever have been part of a #1 song. We have to go quite a ways back for this one.

As I mentioned in my last story, there are links to things in this world that are sometimes unexpected. Sometimes it’s just plain strange the way people and events are connected to each other. I wasn’t planning on ever mentioning the song “You’ll Never Walk Alone” again in my entire life. But here I am bringing it up yet again and drawing more attention to it than it ever deserved. If you hate that damn song as much as I do, I apologize. If I could write this without men

It’s strange sometimes the way things work out; how things fit together in a way that makes you realize just how small the world is. There are things that, at first glance, have nothing in common, but you start digging a little bit and there are ties that you never suspected. Some people refer to degrees of separation, some call it interconnection, to some it's spiderweb logic. Whatever you call it, this is one of those things. Not long ago I posted a story about the Liver

If you get up at 4:00 or 5:00am every weekend morning and watch the games, which I’m sure you all do, you already know that Liverpool fans sing the old song “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, or YNWA as it is known, before and after each home game. It’s a tradition. A stupid tradition, but a tradition nonetheless. Why, you may wonder, do thousands of people in Liverpool sing an old tune from an American musical that premiered in 1945? Why would ultra-macho soccer fans, people fam

The year 1986 saw the release of the movie Hoosiers, about the smalltown Hickory Huskers high school basketball team that won the Indiana state championship in 1954. The movie, starring Gene Hackman as the coach who needs to redeem himself, Barbara Hershey as his antagonist/romantic interest/teacher friend, and Dennis Hopper as the dipsomaniac assistant coach, is exciting and fun to watch. I like it. Some people say it’s based on a true story, but it’s more accurate to say

We were somewhere around Bridal Veil on the west end of the gorge when a vague awareness of the whole situation began to take hold. I remember thinking “I should never have even answered that stupid phone.” My friend Allison is smart and she’s full of good advice, but she’s also a little on the crazy side. As far as I know she’s still wanted by Interpol for an international incident on the frontier of a small Mediterranean country back in 1998. She still claims she wasn’t