A Little Off The Top

                             

CLARK’S BARBERSHOP (503) 358-7722 Ann Clark, Owner-Operator. 102 N. Maine St.Gresham

Once a month, Lou, Joy, and Bill travel to Gresham, Oregon, where each of them, one by one, is administered to by the Tonsorial Queen of downtown Gresham, Oregon, Ann Clark. Joy has been associated with clippings by Ann’s magic scissors for the past 20 years and only in the past six months has he shared the secret of Ann’s expertise with his fellow inmates from the Russellville Gulag.  She is a really good hair cutter.  You end up looking splendid and for $18 plus a fiver tip, you can’t beat it.  Plus you get the brows and the ears as part of the deal.

Ann’s one-chair shop used to face a regular street but some years ago her landlord needed her space for a neighboring business’s expansion, so Ann agreed to move to a small space with the only access to her shop being down a long alley where a small red, white, and blue turning barber pole is mounted on the alley wall next to the door to her shop. Kind of like Hernando’s Hideaway.  Ann’s clientele is all regular customers, so she does not need the walk-in trade from a busy sidewalk.

If you’re in a hurry, find a different cutter.  Ann likes to talk but she does not talk and cut at the same time.   Don’t complain because her talk is a big reason you go there.  It works fine for the Three Amigos because among them they don’t have enough hair to outfit a dying rat.  

Life in Russellville Park is not a continuing circus filled with hours of excitement, so the monthly trip to Gresham is always a pleasant exercise, even without a lollipop treat for not wiggling in the chair.          

HOO HOO HOO

 Hoo Hoo Hoo

Oregon’s economic base in the early 1950s was lumber.  Between college terms I worked in the logging woods as a choker-setter,  the person who wraps a wire cable (choker) around the log so it can be dragged to the truck landing.  The job pays well because it is dangerous and requires nimble, almost athletic, physical action.  The chokers that grip the logs are connected to a heavy cable  that pulls the timbers to the truck landing.  The person controlling the movement of that main line receives his calls for forward or backwards or stop, and go from a man close to the choker-setters who sends his directions through a telegraph-like device that is connected to the line operator.  One click for stop or go.   Two clicks for forward and three for backwards. Likewise, the telegrapher gets directions from the choker-setters, who yell, HOO for stop or go, HOO HOO for forward, and HOO HOO HOO for back. (Wives of loggers belonged to an organization named the HOO-HOOETTES.)

I still regret not having my picture taken from those logging days.  You had to “stag” (cut off) the hems of your jeans  leaving ragged edges that would not snag on a limb causing an accident.  Also, no belts (they could snag), only suspenders.  Add the tin hat and you’ve got the heroic image of an authenict Oregon logger (never “lumberjack”).

One summer outside Eugene, Oregon, I was working on a high-lead show where the trees had been knocked down during the winter.  The heavy logs sunk into the wet ground making it impossible to rig the choker.  The creative solution was to have the choker-setters, in the morning, load their shirt pockets with dynamite caps and carry loggers #2 dynamite sticks in a pouch.  Dig a hole under the log , attach a cap to the dynamite and jam the stick into the hole.  Stand on top of the log and touch the two wires from the cap to a battery and BOOOOM !!!  If an OSHA agent ever saw that, he would go nuts.  Trip and fall on a log with those caps in you shirt pocket and your chest would be found somewhere high over Sacramento.

In the summer, because of fire danger when humidity would hit a certain low mark, the crew had to leave the forest.  Everybody would pile into the crummy (the worker’s transport vehicle) and head down the mountain so the men could  go home and use the free time to work in their yards or respond to their wives’ honey-do lists.  Yeah, right!  The crummy would stop at the first tavern.  Make your choice: sit in that crummy or join the boys for a cool one.  Or six.

Hey … anybody got a camera?

Wonder Woman, MJW

  Imagine my amazement to find that one of my comic book legends from 1941 now lives on the second floor of Russellville Park's East building.  She no longer wears those over-the-top skin tight spandex outfits but rather chooses to wear a less flamboyant attire befitting an 83-year-old Grandmother.  She goes by the name MJ Wallace now.

Mary Jean Wallace lost Pat, her husband of 65 years, in 2020 and after selling their home in S. E. Portland, she elected to start her new life in the Russellville Park retirement community.  Let me tell you a few things about her old life that validates the moniker of "Wonder Woman".

MJ is a native Oregonian who has lived in the Portland area all her life. She attended Grant High School where she didn't achieve celebrity for her ability to run faster than other girls because schools in those years had almost no programs for girl athletes. 

She and Pat designed a family of three boys and two girls and when you ask her what you do to keep that boatload afloat she will tell you, "Just about everything." That's what MJ and Pat Wallace did: just about everything.  The 18th century economist Adam Smith who is credited with drafting the theory of capitalism would have loved MJ and Pat. They were entrepreneurs whose clock had no hands and their determination to achieve economic stability was relentless.

The two of them operated a small motel on Barbur Blvd.  That's a twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week adventure of cleaning rooms, doing laundry, maintaining the physical plant and greeting the public.

They ran a first call funeral service (Pick up the newly deceased and deliver to the designated funeral parlor).  One client had a relative who showed no consideration for their client by dying in San Francisco instead of Portland.  The client had a fear of flying so chose MJ and Pat's service to transport the body back to Portland. Another time they wanted to upgrade their hearse and found one they liked in L.A. whose owner agreed to a swap for theirs.  They drove it to L.A. but seeing it would be late night by the time they arrived, elected to park in a rest stop until morning.  They crawled in the back and slept.  The sun woke them up in the morning and they rose to finish the trip but heard terrified screaming from outside where people had been looking in the back window.  How to finish a journey, laughing all the way.  Once they got a call to pick up a body in San Francisco that had to be back in Portland for the funeral service just days away.  Middle of the night in the Wallace home: Pat calls out to all five kids, "O.K., everybody up and in the car, we're heading for San Francisco."

They ran a sporting goods store (Gateway Pro-Am Sports) for 35 years.  They won contracts for high school athletic uniforms by delivering for the late ordering coaches in a matter of days instead of the big companies' promised deliveries weeks later.  This was accomplished by MJ running her sewing machine putting on the special patches and emblems until 2:30 am, night after night.

All this while keeping a family of seven fed and parented (is that a word?). Here is a direct quote from MJ Wallace:" I HATE COOKING !"

When she was in her late 70s and Pat in his early 80s they got jobs as bag checkers for events where  hordes of people entered through gates.

That's not enough?  On her 40th birthday MJ joined a party that scaled Mt. St. Helens and camped on the spot where the Old Girl blew her top. Some time later.

On her 70th birthday she dived out of an airplane (joined by a guide) to see what that felt like.

On MJ's 80th birthday she went zip-lining with family.

Her 90th birthday is just around the corner so MJ is narrowing the options for her "event."  Hint: " Hey, Elon Musk, hold a spot for Wonder Woman on one of your coming shots into outer space.  Round trip please."

Over the years MJ ran 13 marathons.  When Father Time whispered in her ear that her running days were over, she defiantly walked 11 more.

MJ participates in exercise classes five days a week and she doesn't use a walker.  She's a delight to chat with about any subject you might choose because she's probably been there or knows somebody who has.

Perilous Roads

 As the Biblical Apostle Paul learned while traveling on the road to Damascus,  there are sometimes pot holes and perils along the way.  He was beaten with rods and stabbed by Gentiles so you just couldn't call it a fun outing for him. I felt Paul's pain on a recent journey of my own from my apartment in Russellville to the Gateway Shopping Center.  It is just short of a mile and I try to walk there every day even though I usually don't buy anything.  It's all about exercise in my attempt to maintain my Adonis-like body. 

While on that walk I had a frightening encounter with a deranged woman who, I believe, mistook me for one of her ex-husbands.  The poor dear had been down some hard hiways and taken serious hits leaving her with a dental inventory of three.  And there was a definite limp in her mobility.  She came rushing toward me, screaming obscenities while recalling various unforgivable transgressions in our previous relationship.  Both claw-like hands were wind-milling toward my face and I managed to stop them by shoving the shopping bag I was carrying into her face. That held her off momentarily.

The last thing I wanted to do was get into physical combat with Crazy Cathy, so I made a tactical retreat into the speeding traffic on 102nd Avenue, waving my arms in a "PLEASE STOP" signal.  It worked,  Both north bound and south bound lanes slowed to a stop as I sprinted to the other side of the street.  She didn't follow.  I'm pretty sure she wasn't an ex-wife.

You can appreciate my choice to be run over by an eighteen-wheeler rather than mixing it up with Crazy Cathy.  I'm certain the Apostle Paul never had to contend with anything like that on his way to Damascus.  At least if he did,  it didn't make it to the King James Version of the Bible.

Friends

A friend told me this is national Friend's Day. I thanked her because she is a "Say-Hi" friend where we know each other's names but I wouldn't drive her to the airport nor would she drive me. But her casual mention of Friend's Day started me thinking about friends.

In almost ten decades I have acquired a lot of friends (and lost a few). A major engine of friend acquisition is shared circumstance: school, church, jobs, armed forces,  But next to family, your reservoir of friendships is what flavors the quality of your life.  It's a complex interaction of ever changing temperatures that adds the spice to social intercourse. 

 Words matter; spoken and unspoken. They are the binding mortar of friendship that can cut as well as mend.  My oldest friend is Darryl Pollock. He can run faster than me but I'm better looking. Who is smarter has yet to be resolved.  We met in high school and agreed on things that made us laugh as well as the importance of playing football.  We've outlived most of our classmates but it draws us closer to the other survivors.

Darryl lives in a nice neighborhood in Bend, Oregon and a daily ritual is to sit in his garage with the door up and give a wave to anybody who happens to be walking or driving pass his home.  He thinks of them as drive-by friends and Darryl has lots of them.

Friends deserve more than one day a year.  Like Mother's Day and Father's Day it should be every day.  So, on this Friend's Day,  choose some words carefully, and send them to a friend.

This Old Man

 Roger Angell died last May 20th at one hundred and one years of age.    He was possibly the best writer ever published by the New Yorker magazine where he worked as an editor for a good share of that publication's long history.  Almost as a sideline, his love of baseball led him to become the greatest writer ever of that classic American sport.  He actually knew Babe Ruth as well as the hottest stars in today's pennant races.  Roger is in the Coopertown Baseball Hall of Fame.

I have admired Angell's writing for years and my friend Josie Larson, knowing of my high regard for Roger Angell, sent me copies of a piece he had written for the New Yorker in 2014 entitled:  This Old Man. It is now included in a book published by Doubleday ($26.95): This Old Man, All in Pieces.

Here is some of the best advice you will ever get:  Buy the book!  If you are still seventeen,  never mind.  But everyone else will pass up one of life's true treasures if they don't let Roger into their mind.  Particularly if they are with me in God's waiting room, nervously anticipating the call, "Next."  It is Roger Angell at his lifetime best: insightful, funny, profound, touching.  Roger hits all the bases as he knocks a slider out of the park.

Trust me.

Meet Gene McKinney

Gene and Mary Ellen McKinney have been residents of the West building at Russellville Park for about a year.  Gene appears much younger than his 84 biological years and his life in the last half of the 20th Century is a personification of America’s in that same time period.

When Gene was born in 1937 it was only 34 years earlier that the world was stunned to learn that a couple of brothers at  Kitty Hawk, North Carolina had made a powered air flight for the first time ever.   And today, if Gene possessed a million or two dollars of disposal income, he might be able to book passage on a 15- minute rocket ride to outer space.  Gene’s working life was in the telecommunication business and his first job as an adult was installing rotary dial telephones for American Telephone & Telegraph (AT & T) that put Tilly the telephone operator and her massive board of tangled cables out the back door.  Replacing old technology with new technology was what kept Gene involved in America’s quest to lead the world in communication technology.

You’ve never heard of some of the installations Gene’s teams made because you don’t know what a “hot box” is.  Ask the engineer of that 100-car freight train streaking through the Columbia River gorge and he will tell you it has to do with the wheels on all those box cars and flat-bed container haulers,  The load weight rests on an axle attached to the wheel and the axle turns in a box filled by fibers soaked in an oil based solution that controls the heat generated by the turning axle.  If the oil fails the heat creates a “hot box” that can make the wheel lock-up and possibly derail the train.  So Gene’s team wired in sensors along the track to detect any hot boxes that needed attention.

The yearly advances in technology had sent thousands of workers to join Tilly on the sidelines and in 1989 At&T offered thousands of their employees a plan to leave the company.  At age 52 Gene elected to take a lump sum buyout that included lifetime health care and drug coverage.  As years passed and health care cost went crazy, Mary Ellen and Gene knew they had made a good decision.

The two met in 1956 and married a year later.  They raised a family of three boys and a daughter.  Their oldest son, Mike, grew to be a 6’3”, 237 lb. football tight end who played at the University of Oregon for coach Rich Brooks.

Gene’s working life gave him an up close and personal view of the disappearance of Tilly’s massive obsolete equipment to his daughter’s  3” x 5” cell phone that could do everything but fry an egg.  From 1937 to 1989 it was a trip of wonders for both Gene McKinney and his home, America.