Skip to main content

A Bit of an Update

--This just in -- It looks like July 10th is a big day for me. --This just in -- It looks like July 10th is a big day for me. I will be giving a talk at Powell's in the evening, and that morning I will be on live television interviewed on KATU AM Northwest.


 I am now breaking an unintended period of silence brought on by crashing my new electric bicycle on the first day out. The damage was enough to require open surgery on my shoulder, but that is all I care to say on this quite boring subject.

There are a couple of dates ahead I want to mention.  Thursday, July 10th I will be speaking and signing books at Powell’s City of Books (1005 W. Burnside St., Portland) The event will begin at 7:30pm. I sincerely hope that there is a good turn-out of my friends, old and new—and the ones I have yet to meet.

August 1st  and 2nd I will be at the author’s booth at the Clatsop County Fair. This will be in Astoria, Oregon, one of my favorite places on the planet. This last year, I am happy to say, I have made the acquaintance of Peter Grant, the great grandson of the infamous Astoria Sailor’s Boarding Master, Peter Grant. Peter with his mother, Bridget were prominent members of the exclusive society of  shanghaiers who worked the waterfronts of Astoria and Portland. In my Oregon Shanghaiers book I include a photo of young Peter sitting on the lap of his great grandfather.  Peter is in the process of returning to set up residence in his ancestral home. He is a living link to the city’s fascinating past.

In researching my books I have spent many months digging up skeletons in the backyard of some of Oregon’s most notorious shanghaiiers, led on by a morbid fascination that slowly turned into affection. I now know some of these families better than my own, and I can tell you alnost as many good things about these scoundrels as I can enumerate their shortcomings.  By immersion in old periodicals I feel as if I have lived in 19th century Oregon. In my meanderings through these heaps of (mostly) digital newsprint I have encountered enough great material to keep me busy for decades (unfortunate that I am over-the-hill).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Last Word on Shanghai Tunnels - Including 14 reasons why the stories are bogus

I have never been on a tour of Portland's so-called "shanghai tunnels," so I am unable to comment on this attraction, except that I have heard that the tour is quite entertaining. Neither have I been to the Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland,  the Magic Carpets of Aladdin, or the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, for that matter. The closest I have come to this sort of tourist entertainment was while visiting the ancient city of York I took my family on the "York Ghost Walk." This tour is a bit of innocent fun with some old ghost stories mixed in with distorted history—just for the tourists.  It may be true that I have no experience with the tourist tours of these basements in the northwest regions of downtown, but I do know a bit about them. There is a great deal of documentation in the newspapers, and in old court records. They were built by Chinese back in the days when Chinatown was the center of gang activity related to the different tongs
16 comments
Read more

The Chinese Ghost in the Grain Elevator

A photo I took of T5 from a water taxi while doing stowage area exams on ships anchored in the Columbia In my book, "Portland's Lost Waterfront," I have a section devoted to the O. R. & N., Pacific Coast Grain Elevator System, often called the "great grain pipe." This was a system of grain elevators following the rail lines up the Columbia River basin, with tendrils reaching out as far as Idaho . Today this system is duplicated in many ways by the Japanese owned, Columbia Grain International, a company with elevators reaching as far as North Dakota . Since the 1970s this company has operated the gargantuan Terminal 5 grain elevator near the mouth of the Willamette. This one grain elevator is responsible for a large percentage of Oregon's total exports, and a surprisingly large percentage of the entire nation's wheat exports.   This industrial giant pulls grain from hundreds of railcars each day—up its whirring and rattling &qu
Post a Comment
Read more

Asthmatic Weakling Writes Book on Prizefighting in Portland

It is true, an asthmatic weakling, who used to regularly give up his lunch money as tribute to bullies, has written a book on prizefighting. Not only this, History Press has just published it! Oregon Prizefighters: Forgotten Bare-knuckles Champions of Portland and Astoria , will hit the shelves on Monday. What was it that made someone like me, born without the “sports gene,” to become interested in the bare-knuckles prizefighting of yesteryear? It was the people: brash, naïve youths, wracked by passions, ruined by limelight. Then there is the model Portlander, Dave Campbell, for many years “Our Dave,” beloved chief of the Portland fire department. He was self-educated, intelligent, measured, and fearless, and gave up a sure championship career as a boxer to fight Portland’s fires. Add to the mix the original all-time champion, Jack “Nonpareil” Dempsey (died 1895), and “Mysterious” Billy Smith—both legends in the world of boxing history—and you soon begin to wonder why these fellow
4 comments
Read more