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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1997)
PAGE 13 CHARLOTTE BRUHN "Everybody goes everywhere nowadays," Katie said "Not just the rich. It's so much cheaper and faster to travel than in the old days. People fly all over the world now in jet airplanes instead of crossing the ocean in ships or across the country in trains or covered wagons." Was that what he had seen racing through the sky — a big airship filled wth people? And "automobiles". She had to describe to him that they were steel-bodied machines self- propelled by internal combustion engines fueled by gasoline pumped regularly into tanks they carried like horses did nose bags of oats before he consented to ride with her from the jail. (She also told him the metal grasshopper he had seen was a "helicopter" that flew as a result of revolving wings that spun like propellers.) Ufda! Eino shook his head, thinking this crazy world he had awakened to (or was crazily dreaming about) was crazier than he could ever dream. His future (or fantasy) granddaughter seemed intent on explaining what she knew of her world to him but the more he learned the less he wanted to know. He was disturbed not only by what seemed to be happening all around him but Katie's revelations of what they meant confused and frightened him more. Every new blow to his sensibility was dramatically unlike his familiar world, which was itself quite strange (certainly to someone from an earlier century, he acknowledged, and perhaps also to the people he now found himself among) but at least familiar to him in form and scale despite its quickening pace. America astounded him. its vast ness, its 19th century modemess unlike anywhere else in the world; the immense factories churning out vast products in infinite variety and number; the massively populated cities with their sky scraping buildings; the intricate local and transconti nental webs of railroads that spanned spectacular prairies, deserts and mountains — and Astoria at the far and final edge with its raw and lawless boomtown atmosphere and get rich quick attitudes, its constant influx of people and merchandise, was as much a sinister alien menace and threat to his life and family as it was the new home he labored to make safe and prosperous. Katie told him of the drug problems and increased crime in Astoria, and of a cultural invasion of Spanish speaking people from the south which created anxieties and conflict. 'The people who have lived here are prejudiced against them because they're afraid everything wll change," she said. "So they blame problems on them that were here all along — like there weren't any drugs or crime in Astoria until it started wearing a brown face," she said sarcastically. Eino said he never went anywhere in Astoria (or even on the river in his boat) without packing a pistol because of crimp gangs looking for men to attack and shanghai off to China, and he seldom left home at night alone He said there were saloons and brothels all over the wld and wicked city that were crowded night and day wth rough men from ships and forests and the crooked saloonkeepers, loose women and sinister gamblers and crimps who preyed on them like parasites; vice, crime, violence and murder were rampant and usually unpunished; alcohol and drugs were openly tolerated and wdely used, vtfiich caused too much trouble — brawls, killings and rapes of women and girls. A hard place to raise a family, he said. "Drugs are blamed on the Latinos," she said "On the Chinese," he said, and spoke of the local tongs and their wars for control of the drug trade "But your Astoria is what brings the tourists," Katie said "It's been cleaned up for merchandising ’Gay 90s' stuff. .." He looked perplexed as she giggled 'You left the Gay '90s' and reappear in the gay 90s," she said, "but the word's different now. She tried to explain the double-entendre but since his era was not so named until it was long over he had no idea what she was saying except her reference to homosexuals, which he did understand though not her sanguine attitude toward it He shivered. "I don't think I could ever accept it," he said 'You don't have to, because it's none of your business," she said gently. "Besides, all of the world's problems are made worse by overpopulation Maybe homosexuality is nature's way of cutting the birthrate." She smiled at his shocked expression, which she was getting used to. 'You don’t know how crowded the world's getting," she said. "I wouldn't be surprised if Astoria becomes as big a city as Portland or Seattle in my lifetime." Not just babies, she said. Even now people are moving into town or nearby. "Astoria's a city of immigrants, past and present Everybody who lives here came from someplace else originally I've lived here all my life, but you started my family after you got here from Finland.” "Everybody but the Indians," Eino said. "But I've never seen any." Katie laughed. 'There's a large chainsaw carving (a power saw fueled like a car, she said) on the west side of Astoria that's supposed to represent the Clatsop Indians — most of us call it 'Chief Peckerhead'." she said, blushing again, which was lost on Eino whose knowledge of American slang was as limited as it was dated She said the city's mayor at the time the totem was carved (Katie admitted it was "hideous") wanted it removed from public property because it didn't represent Astoria's Scandi navian heritage and had to be reminded that Indians were here long before her ancestors moved them out — not Eino personal ly, of course, she quickly added 'They were gone before I got here," Eino said. "Most of them died from smallpox a long time ago ." "But you know what I mean," she said. "I think that's the attitude about the new people coming here — that they don't belong here. That they take jobs away and increase crime." "People feel that way about the Chinese here," he said "Nobody likes immigrants these days," she said "When you came here immigrants were needed but not anymore Of course you were from Europe Now immigrants are from Mexico and South America, and from Asia, and new laws are going to deport millions of them Did you like the Chinese?" He shrugged. 'They're all right. They're like me.They left their homes and came here to America Same as the Greeks and Italians," he said, thinking of fishermen upriver. He laughed suddenly for the first time "I don't like the Swedes or Russians," Finland's traditional enemies ROGER McKAY THE OREGON TRAIL AT THE NATEL GRANGE APRIL 4-6,11-13 & 18-20 8 P.M. A benefit for the Natel Grange Restoration Project and for the Astor St. Opry Company, which is producing the show. 325-6104 "Astoria's been mostly Scandinavian for a century but it's changing," Katie said "Last summer I knew it was changing when two little Latino boys watched us rehearse Shanghaied one night They stared at us like we were from another world. And I stared back at them realizing we were." She hugged her shoulders and laughed. "I mean, those boys gave me a hard look at the future and I knew for sure my comfortable little world was soon going to be very different." She shrugged. Most of her friends weren't going to stay here anyway, she said. They planned to move away as soon as they were out of high school, to the big cities like Seattle or Port land, or south to California — some to college (a very few), most to look for work. There weren't any good jobs left in Astoria any more. she said. The boys were no longer able to go into the woods as loggers or climb aboard boats and go fishing like their fathers and grandfathers, and the girts weren't content any more to stay home as housewves or mothers or work as waitresses or bartenders. He was shocked. Women didn't want to be mothers? And if there were no fish, what happened to them? (Though he suspected the answer.) She answered that women had many more options than a century ago (on the other hand more were single mothers whose only options in Astoria seemed to be low-wage dead-end jobs, such as motel maids and waitressing) And the great salmon runs were wiped out when the river was dammed to produce cheap electricity, plus overfishing (which Eino had suspected), clearcutting the forests, industrial and biological sewage, radiation from upriver nuclear power plants and des truction of salmon habitat in the river and streams by irrigation and incessant development of human habitat. Astoria thrived for a long time by carelessly exploiting its once abundant natural resources, she said, but their despoliation eroded the city's prosperity and more than half the population left town. "I'm probably exaggerating, but the port only got through this century because of two world wars," she said The only business now was sending raw logs to Asia, and that was about to end. The ships he had seen anchored in the river used Astoria as a parking lot while waiting for open berths in upriver ports Tourism is a poor substitute, she said Only a few people make money — the owners of restaurants and motels ("motor hotels" for people with automobiles, she said; large hotels like the J. J. Astor were dinosaurs). The majority were paid next to nothing as waitresses, motel maids, bartenders, cooks, janitors or dishdogs Yesterday, when Eino took his afternoon nap a century ago, the city's wharves were crowded with the masts of ships and the stacks of riverboats, and three dozen canneries sent Columbia River salmon all over the world The fishing fleet was immense and Astoria's lifeblood But one thing hadn't changed: the dispanty of incomes between those who do a job and those who profit from it: fishbuyers were always cheating the fisher men and underpaying cannery workers That was the reason fishermen and cannery workers started their owo cannery, which he was very proud of and bitterly disappointed when she told him it had been tom down a few years ago and its records hauled away as trash "I don't know the whole story, only part of it," Katie said half apologetically. "I guess it's the same wth fishing like it was logging Nobody cared too much about putting anything back, which was really stupid because when there were hardly any fish or trees left people couldn’t make livings any more. They blame environmentalists who wanted to save something before it was all gone but it was their owo fault for being so greedy and not thinking ahead, just going for the big buck today and to hell with tomorrow Now it's tomorrow and the day after tomorrow," she said caustically. Eino nodded He had seen the wyaste Heaps of dead fish scattered on the riverbanks and under the wharves Trees cut dowo left to rot because they were in the way of falling big ger more profitable trees Nobody seemed to care or worry about the waste Everybody acted like the abundance and 1
