O, to be by thy waters once again, sweet river

This was what I saw when I stepped outside

Some days I find myself almost falling into the illusion of "retirement remorse." I miss being right next to the river, even though it would take me only 5 minutes to get there from my house. Most of all I miss my fellow workers. If I were more social, instead of being a agoraphobic recluse, I would go seek them out: except that most of the time they are working weekends and nights, and have no time to socialize. I put up the www.portlandwaterfront.org website during a long period of 12 hour shifts. Some of my fellow workers, like Stu here in the picture, did other things with their time.

Stu finally retired for real last month

I looked over the old website the other day and did a lot of cringing. I need to get rid of a few things that turned out to be not as true as I once was led to believe. (Oy!) I am ¾ finished with a new, HTML5, with lots more, and much larger images version. I will also include a more comprehensive list of Portland history websites.

The video below may help to explain why I might have a pang of nostalgia from time to time.

Comments

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...

The Steel Bridge and the Railroad

I don’t know if anyone has noticed this, but the Steel Bridge on old postcards is often designated as being owned by any one of three different companies. Most often you will see the words “O.W.R. & N. Co. Bridge across the Willamette,” or something to that effect. Other times the card might read, “O. R. R. & N. Co. bridge, Portland, Oregon.” Then, on occasion, a card might say, “Union Pacific bridge, Portland, Oregon.” This was confusing to me at one time, until I read a little something on the history of the Union Pacific lines in the west, then I became even more confused. The lines were in and out of receivership, leased, sold, given different, but very similar names, and called different names by different levels of railroad hierarchy. When the first Steel Bridge was built in 1888 the company behind the construction was the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company (O. R. & N. Co.), an old and powerful entity that had evolved from the Oregon Steam Navigation Company...

Good old O Dock

O Dock, foot of North Holladay When I started working on the waterfront the first place I was assigned was to a place that was indicated on the dispatch roster as "LDC". This stood for Louis Dreyfus Corporation, but few people called it that. It was known to the longshoremen and most everyone else as "Globe". The dock has gone through a number of names over the years and is now wearing the name O Dock. I am of the opinion that this is an older name than Globe, harking back to the Portland practice of naming docks after the streets of which they were the "foot". "O" referring to Oregon Street. At one time Victoria Street ran all the way down to the river having its foot in this same area. In those days there was a Victoria Dock. It was burned to the ground in 1902 by an arsonist who had spouted threats while spending a bit of time in the Oregon State Penitentiary that he was going to "burn Portland to the ground." He got as far as l...

Portland's Lost Waterfront

Search This Blog