THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2016
COMMUNITY
1B
OLD TJIKKO
ASTORIA’S STAR
T
DO YOU KNOW THE MALONES?
M
onday, Feb. 1, would have been actor William Clark “Billy”
Gable’s (pictured) 115th birthday? In case you haven’t seen
the plaque on the corner of Exchange and 12th streets, the famous
thespian actually spent some time in Astoria, at that particular spot,
the former location of the Astoria Theater before it burnt down in the
December, 1922 ¿re.
The plaque proclaims that Gable “began his acting career in the
summer of 1922” there, which isn’t exactly accurate, according to
SouthernOregonPastAndPresent.com (http:tinyurl.combillygab1),
among others:
“As a teenager, he decided to become an actor after seeing the
play ‘The Bird of Paradise.’ Leaving his Ohio home, Gable eventu-
ally joined a traveling theater company, which disbanded in Montana.
He rode the rails on a freight train to Bend, Oregon, in 1922 ... The
21-year-old Gable next moved to Portland where he sold neckties for
the Meier and Frank department store, and in the classi¿ed advertising
department for The Oregonian.
“While there, he joined a Portland-based company, the Astoria Players
Stock Company; this troupe traveled the lower Columbia River aboard a
paddle steamer and stopped to play in towns such as Astoria and Ilwaco.
It also ran into financial problems and disbanded, the players needing to
perform their way back to Portland, as they were broke. Gable studied
under Josephine Dillon at the Little Theater in Portland from 1923-1924,
and when she moved to Hollywood, he followed soon thereafter.”
The Ear couldn’t ¿nd any record of his ever returning to Astoria.
‘LUMBERJACK STAR’
‘I
am seeking information on my family, the Malones, who
lived in and around Astoria around 1870-1950,” Bridgette
Malone wrote. “I believe Malone Creek (in Rosburg, Wash-
ington) was named after them, and they had a logging operation
— I believe it was called McGregor and Malone.”
Edward Malone (1844—1916), married Mary Ann
Tierney (1855—1921), and the couple had several children:
Patrick Lawrence, John William, Peter Francis, Edward A. ,
Joseph, James M., Nora, and possibly Hannah, William and
Rose. Pictured, Nora Malone and Leonard Chetwood, taken
on their wedding day.
Bridgette knows that several family members were “in the
Astoria, Mist and Birkenfeld areas for some time before they
moved to the Wahkiakum or Grays Harbor, Washington, area.
Or, that may be backwards because a good lot of them were
buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Astoria.”
Do you have any information about the Malone family?
If so, please contact Bridgett at 541-430-1624 or bridgetter-
malone@yahoo.com. “Any photos, newspaper articles, birth,
marriage, death certi¿cates or literally any other information
that can be dug up on these people,” she added, “would be very
much cherished and appreciated.”
SAVING THE SALMON
D
id you know that Clark Gable, pictured, was known in Holly-
wood as the “Lumberjack Star” in addition to being the “King
of Hollywood”? It’s true, even though he only spent a couple of
months a lumber camp in Bend, according to a story in the Oct. 17,
1932 issue of The Milwaukee Journal (http:tinyurl.combillygab2).
Gable and his pal, Fritz DoerÀer, were hired by an out¿t that was
surveying timber tracts. “My experiences with my father stood me in
good stead” for the job, the actor is quoted as saying, referring to the
grueling labor involved when working with his father in Oklahoma
oil ¿elds.
“For nine weeks I tramped through the Oregon woods. It rained
every day. My part of the work wasn’t the easy half. A bunch of
fellows from an eastern university did the actual surveying. I carried
the chain most of the time. This meant going on ahead and cutting a
way through a jungle of thickets and brambles.
“They’ve got a vine up there called ‘devil’s walking cane.’ Its little
thorns dig into your hands and stay there. Once they had to send for a
doctor to take care of me and I spent the whole nine weeks with my
hands bandaged. It was all pretty tough but it meant three squares and
a bed, such as it was, at night.”
WHAT IS IT?
A
storian Bob Bohnke found the strange-looking 6-foot by 6-foot
P\VWHU\ ÀRWVDP, pictured, on the beach Friday, Jan. 29. It’s
made of concrete, and has large PVC pipes sticking out of it. A very
worn-out rope is attached.
“I discovered this strange object while walking with my dog on the
Columbia River near the bar,” Bob told the Ear. It was not there two
days earlier. “Does anyone out there have any idea what it is?”
If you want to hazard a guess, please call the Ear at 503-325-3211,
ext. 257, or email ewilson@dailyastorian.com
“Hope this gets solved,” Bob said.
here’s not much doubt that
Scandinavians are hardy folks,
but apparently that characteristic
goes all the way down to the botan-
ical level: Did you know the oldest
tree in the world is Sweden’s Old
Tjikko? The 9,500-year-old tree is
a Norwegian spruce growing at an
altitude of 2,985 feet on Fulufjället
Mountain in the Dalarna province,
and is shown in a photo by Rachel
Sussman.
According to an article on Digi-
talJournal.com, the ancient tree,
which was discovered by geologist
Leif Kullman in 2004 and named after his dead dog, is only 16 feet
high (http:tinyurl.comtjikko9500). Kullman says that Tjikko took
root and sprouted at the end of the last Ice Age, when an ice bridge still
connected England and Europe.
Actually, the part of the tree that is above ground is only a few
hundred years old — it’s the root system that makes Old Tjikko the
“oldest known individual vegetatively cloned tree,” which has been
veri¿ed by carbon dating.
“What is amazing is that the trunk of the tree may die and regrow
many times,” the article says, “but the root system remains alive and
intact, sprouting a new tree when the old one dies. Another really neat
survival tactic occurs in the winter when heavy snows push the tree’s
lower branches to the ground where they take root, helping them to
survive to live again the following year.” Old Tjikko would make
Darwin proud.
CALL OF THE WILD
T
om Grimm received a casting notice from Nora Jobling, which
might be of interest to North Coast survivalist types: “Think your
family has what it takes to survive in the most remote places on earth?
Ready to heroically battle the elements as you ¿nd water, forage for
food, and build shelter? From the creators of the Emmy nominated
Discovery (channel) series ‘Naked and Afraid’ comes a brand new
survival show for families.
“Families can be compact and nuclear, blended and extended, and
may include grandparents, parents, children, partners, aunts, uncles,
cousins, nephews, nieces and friends.”
Don’t worry, everyone is clothed for this one. Participants must be 18
or older, and the adventure takes place at an “international destination.”
Ms. Jobling is especially interested in alumni of Boy Scouts and
Eagle Scouts, but it appears to be an open call. To apply, email nora@
metalÀowersmedia.com with “DISCOVER< FAMIL< SURVIVAL
SHOW” in the subject line. Include the names and ages of your family
members, phone number, city and state, why you are nominating your
family for this opportunity, and how you heard about the show. Be sure
to attach a few family photos.
SPEAKDOLPHIN
F
irst ran Sept. 28, 2012: Herb Goblirsch of Otter Rock,
a sport ¿shermen and retired tuna and salmon troller,
called the Ear about the gillnet ban issue, and pointed out that,
“nobody really knows the story of why there are still salmon in
the Columbia River for everybody to ¿ght over.”
Back in 1933, he said, the Bonneville Dam was originally
proposed without a ¿VKODGGHU by the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, “who ¿gured the salmon could go up through the
ship locks with an elevator hoist – which never would have
worked,” according to the Columbia River Gillnetter. The
“head of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, when asked about ¿sh
ladders, said ‘I haven’t time to play nurse maid to a bunch of
¿sh.’” (http:tinyurl.comcharlesknapp).
“If you want to see what would have happened to the ¿sh
runs without the ¿sh ladder, just look at Grand Coulee,” Herb
asserted, and he’s backed up by a Gillnetter editorial, which
claimed that the lack of ¿sh ladders “wiped out 40 percent of the
entire Columbia River ¿sh spawning grounds. In that massacre,
we forever lost the big June ‘Hogs’ (50 -pound salmon) and
sockeye runs.”
But Kiwanian and gillnetter Charles Knapp, head of the
Columbia River Fishermans Protective Union, rescued the
salmon that were otherwise doomed to die with the construc-
tion of the Bonneville Dam. He, along with some fellow
commercial ¿shermen, petitioned the Corps of Engineers to
knock out an end of the dam to make temporary adjustments
for the expected August salmon run. Even so, many ¿sh didn’t
make it upriver.
However, the need for permanent ¿sh ladders was estab-
lished, thanks to Charles Knapp’s efforts, and the Bonneville
Dam has them because of him.
“The sports guys forget about that.” Herb observed. He
wants everyone to remember this: “Gillnetters are the salmons’
best protectors.”
S
peakDolphin (www.speakdolphin.com) caused quite a stir in the
marine biology universe recently when its researchers sent out
a press release proclaiming that “for the ¿rst time in the history of
dolphin and animal communication, scientists have imaged what a
dolphin saw when echolocating on a human.” The image in question
of a diver, and some dolphins, are shown, courtesy of SpeakDolphin.
“When a dolphin scans an object with its high frequency sound
beam, each short click captures a still image, similar to a camera taking
photographs. Each dolphin click is a pulse of pure sound that becomes
modulated by the shape of the object,” John Stuart Reid said. He’s the
inventor of the CymaScope, who used the echolocation recordings to
create identi¿able 2D images, including a Àowerpot, a cube, a plastic
plus symbol and the diver.
“We’ve been working on dolphin communication for more than a
decade,” Jack Kassewitz, research team leader and founder of Speak-
Dolphin.com, said. The next step is to see if and how dolphins might be
sharing these echolocation images with each other. The ultimate goal,
of course, is to “create a language interface” between humans and ceta-
ceans. Maybe we’ll be talking to dolphins sooner than we thought.