St. Paul 9/18/26
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 destination. I have to admit it tested my skill, perseverance and patience, but in the end they were no match for the Ednolds, as we pulled into St. Paul only a few minutes behind schedule.
St. Paul (pop. 434) is a small town in northwestern Marion County, and it has been for almost 200 years. Early white settlers built a log church there in 1836, and the St. Paul Catholic Church, built ten years later, is the oldest brick building in the Pacific Northwest. By 1874 there was a post office, though the town wasn’t incorporated until 1901.
I would guess St. Paul stays small because of its geography. It’s just a few miles east of the Willamette River, but there aren’t any bridges across the Willamette between Salem and Newberg, so there aren’t any main roads leading there. It’s only about 5 miles from Dayton and another few to McMinnville as the crow flies, but if you aren’t a crow you’re just out of luck. It’s less than ten miles from Woodburn, but those miles are slow going through several right-angle turns between farmland and pastures. If you don’t live there or aren’t trying to get to Newberg, there’s really no reason to ever go to St. Paul, which is a bit of a shame.
The town of St. Paul got its name from the Saint Paul Mission, which was started by a Canadian, Francois Blanchet, one of the first Catholic missionaries in the Oregon country in the 1830s. In 1846 Pope Pius IX made Blanchet a bishop, but he had to go back to Montreal to be consecrated. This involved a boat ride to Honolulu, another trip by sea around Cape Horn to Dover, England, followed by a train ride to Liverpool, from where he sailed for Boston before taking another train to Montreal. It seems like there might have been a more convenient way to get there than traveling 22,000 miles, but he made it and returned as an official bishop. By 1850 he was Archbishop of Oregon City and held that position for another 30 years. He died in 1883 and is buried in St. Paul.
Another guy buried in St. Paul is William Cannon, who is the only Revolutionary War veteran buried in Oregon. Cannon served in the 4th Pennsylvania Artillery before being recruited for John Astor’s expedition to set up an outpost near the mouth of the Columbia River. He ended up working for the Hudson’s Bay Company and in 1843, at which time he was in his 80s, he was at Champoeg to vote in favor of setting up a territorial government.
Herman “Old Folks” Pillette didn’t die in St. Paul, but he was born there. He dropped out of school at a young age so he didn’t attend St. Paul High School, but he did pitch one inning of baseball for the Cincinnati Reds in 1917, after which he was sent back to the minor leagues, and by 1920 he was playing for the Portland Beavers. Despite losing 30 – yes, 30 – games for the Beavers that year, by 1922 he was back in the big leagues pitching for the Detroit Tigers. That rookie season he won 19 games, but the following year he lost 19 games, and played his final big league game in 1924.
“Old Folks” must have loved playing baseball, though, because he came back and played 21 more years for six different clubs in the Pacific Coast League, earning his nickname in the last years of a career that saw him pitch his final game just a few months before he turned 50. All told, Pillette pitched in 789 games, compiling a 298–296 record, and he was an inaugural selection to the PCL Hall of Fame.
It was 70° and the sky was cloudless as we crossed Mission Creek and drove up the slope of Church Ave. into St. Paul, and a few seconds later with the church visible at the end of the street, we could see how the street got its name. To look at from the outside, the church isn’t anything special, but it’s been there for 180 years, which is pretty impressive. The most conspicuous spot in town on a pleasant Friday night, however, is the Harvester Taproom on the corner of Church Ave. and River Rd. The place was hopping. Enough so that we made a note to look elsewhere for our aperitif. We drove a few blocks north on River Rd. and found the school, and across the street the old pioneer cemetery, which is the oddest cemetery I’ve ever seen. It’s probably an acre in size, but contains precisely one headstone, that of William Cannon, the Revolutionary War vet. The other wood and stone markers deteriorated and have been removed, although the graves are still there, unmarked except for the well-maintained field of grass above them. On the plus side, for anyone searching for William Cannon’s grave, it literally could not be easier, and I appreciated that.
We needn’t have worried that the Taproom was so busy, because half a block to the south we found the Rodeo Inn, which met our needs entirely. I knew that St. Paul hosts a rodeo every July 4th, but I wasn’t really aware of how much the town is defined by that event. The school mascot is the Buckaroo, and the Rodeo Inn is just one example of the way the whole town embraces that identity. The old cowboy boots and spurs, the chaps, and the old longhorn skull all hanging on the walls inside brought back fond memories of round-ups and cattle drives and my own days as a cowboy prodigy. The rodeo has been going for over 90 years and is one of the 20 largest rodeos in the whole country, so I guess it is a bigger deal than I ever realized, and with a stadium that can hold over 10,000 people they attract over 75,000 people each year for their five-day event. In a town of less than 500 people, that’s pretty amazing.
The Buckaroos, or the Bucks, as us die-hards call them, started playing football in 1938 and 46 years later won a state championship. They’ve won six more since then, all of them at the B or 1A level playing 8-man football except for their last one in 2024, when they won in their first season after moving up to play 2A-9-man ball. They’ve also lost 10 other championship games since that first win in 1984, tying them with Vale for the most championship game appearances ever, at 17. There have been few seasons in the past 40 years that they haven’t been serious contenders, including last year when they were semi-finalists.
The team that beat them by 40 points in that semi-final game, Heppner, just beat them again two weeks ago by 54 points. Then last week the Buckaroos beat Lost River 37-0, and Lost River were the team that beat Heppner for the state championship last year, so things could get wild when the 2A playoffs start. St. Paul’s opponents for this game, Regis of Stayton, have a pretty strong football history themselves, having won eight titles to the Buckaroo’s seven. The Rams have lost to #1 Lowell and are 1-1, while the Buckaroo’s come into this game at 2-1. This will be a league game between two teams from 2A Special District 2, and it should be a great one.
That older-looking school on the northwest side of town is nice, but that’s not where the Buckaroos play their home football games. Since there just happens to be a 10,000 seat stadium a few minutes away on the south end of town, they make use of it and turn it into a football stadium during the season. It took us a minute to find the correct route, but we eventually made our way down Malo Ave., where other cars were already parked for entry to the game. We paid our $6 each and entered under the giant wooden grandstands that make up the south side of the rodeo arena. As soon as the rodeo has finished in July a group of volunteers lay the infield with sod, and I have to say you’d never know the grass hasn’t been there forever. We plopped ourselves into the middle of the Buckaroo rooting section and made ourselves at home near what we later found out was the Dominic Elias fan club. Dominic is either a very popular player or has an exceptionally large family, or both, and they were very vocal in their support.
Both the home and visiting crowds are seated in the southside bleachers, and there were a lot of us. In the giant stadium it didn’t feel crowded, but there must have been over 500 of us in attendance, with most of the fans self-segregating with us Bucks fans on the right and the Rams on the left. For unknown reasons the hometown team has chosen to have their bench on the far side of the field with the visitors right in front of the spectators, so we had the Regis cheerleaders on our side of the field with none of our own to counter them.
From the outset it was clear that the Rams were going to have a tough time trying to stop the Buckaroo’s offense, as St. Paul cruised to a 24-0 midway through the second quarter. They’re a running team, for the most part, but they do throw just enough to keep the defense honest. Their song is a variation on the U of O fight song though, so I found it a little difficult to fully engage in the celebrations after each score. Regis was able to reach the end zone once before the half, and the two teams went to halftime with St. Paul up 24-6.
The Buckaroos don’t have a pep band or cheerleaders, or a dance team, so the halftime entertainment consisted of watching the visiting teams’ ballboys tossing the ball around on the playing field, so I took the opportunity to do a little exploring. I found the empty livestock stalls and chutes under the bleachers and marveled that the almost entirely wooden structure has managed to avoid going up in flames over the 70 or 80 years it’s been standing. Looking across the field I could see the newer aluminum stands on the north side, which aren’t much of a fire risk but also lack the inviting esthetic of the old wooden stands. I hope there aren’t plans to aluminumize the whole place.
As I was returning from my halftime ramble I turned to go up a flight of stairs only to be met by a pair of healthy-looking rats making their way down. I expected them to be as startled as I was and choose a different path, but they apparently had the same expectation of me, and they were correct. I walked on to the next set of stairs where I was able to ascend without having to share the steps with any wildlife and, wanting Mrs. Ednold to stay for the second half, I didn’t share this little episode with her until long after the game was over.
I also had time for a trip to the snack bar located right underneath where we were sitting and, though the menu is limited the price was right and I had no complaints about either my cold popcorn or hot coffee. Since Regis was the visiting team, I didn’t take much notice of their cheerleaders, but during my absence Mrs. Ednold had made one important observation. She was appalled at the poor herkie technique on display: “I guess people don’t learn to do proper herkies anymore”. Of course, I readily acknowledged that herkies were, indeed, becoming a lost art, then surreptitiously googled “herky” so I would know what the heck she was on about. She was right, though ; those herkies were substandard by any measure.
Regis seemed to have made some critical adjustments during halftime and promptly came out and scored, though they still couldn't convert the extra point, and for much of the rest of the game it looked like they just might be able to claw their way back into contention. But whenever they needed a crucial defensive stop or offensive first down they could never quite make it happen. As it was, the score was 40-24 after three quarters and that 24-point outburst from the Buckaroos at the outset proved too much to overcome. The final 56-31 score was a good reflection of the play on the field, and I can’t say I was too upset to see the Rams take a bit of a beating, but they both looked like playoff teams to me, so this may not be the last time these two meet each other this season.
We got back on the road optimistic that the trip home would be smoother than the one earlier in the day, but someone had other plans. Just outside of town the line of cars came to a complete stop, and we witnessed a sight that my mom would have been envious of. Young mom had occasionally picked hops, and not because she just loved picking hops. But now we were stopped in our tracks by a huge hop picking machine that was cutting down the strands and depositing them in the bed of a massive truck, at 9:30 at night for some reason. Watching that thing do the work of several people in a fraction of the time it must have taken a whole crew to do it back in the day was something to see, and I’m sure mom would have been relieved to know that nobody has to pick them by hand anymore.
After that, though, the traffic gods decided to smile on us and we made the trip home at a reasonable pace, and I hope they’re scheming to delay the future trips of all the slowpokes who were in on the conspiracy to make us late earlier. I’m counting on you, karma!
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