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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
HOT RODS ROAR
By NATALIE ST. JOHN
EO Media Group
L
ONG BEACH, Wash.
— The noise rattled
windows and terrified
dogs, as participants in the tra-
ditional Saturday night cruise
roared through downtown on
Sept. 10.
The event resulted in one
police chase and one roll-
over wreck, and some police
officers said the atmosphere
seemed a bit rowdier this year.
But aside from those inci-
dents, the Rod Run was safe
and successful, authorities
said.
More than 800 vehicles
registered at the official Beach
Barons’ Wilson Field east of
Ocean Park, a club member
said. Rain on Saturday after-
noon somewhat dampened
the celebratory atmosphere,
but on Saturday morning the
field looked as full and lively
as it ever has.
Robert Hilson
Natalie St. John/EO Media Group
This ’56 T-bird brought back memories for Donata
Kalisch of Nehalem. Her father borrowed this exact same
car to take her family on a trip to Montana more than 40
years ago.
For some, the cruise is a family event, and a chance to
bond with other car enthusiasts. The cars ranged from
prize-winners that have been featured in magazines to
works-in-progress like this one.
Younger, wilder
People who pour their life
savings into vintage cars are
pretty sensible drivers — they
don’t want to destroy an irre-
placeable part or a perfect
paint job. But the long line
of raised jeeps and old Toy-
ota pickups from an off-road-
ing club had no such con-
cerns. As they pulled through
the intersection of Pacific and
Bolstad at sunset, one Jeep
driver peeled out and jerked
backwards, slamming on his
brakes just as he was about to
hit his buddy’s Jeep. On each
pass through downtown, they
revved their engines, surging
forward and screeching to a
stop again and again. Some
observers cheered, others
looked seriously annoyed.
Officially, the Beach Bar-
ons’ Rod Run to the End of
the World is a celebration of
lovingly-restored “hot rods”
and classics. The 34th annual
Ocean Park car show was
open to cars made no later
than 1987. But this year, the
informal cruise seemed to
draw a lot of cars — and peo-
ple — who were made well
after 1987.
As always, there were
pristine Mustangs, Bel Airs
and Barracudas whose own-
ers hovered over them with
chamois cloths in hand. There
were custom-paint jobs worth
more than the actual cars,
mirror-like chrome bumpers
and hand-upholstered leather
interiors too beautiful to sit
on.
This year, there were also
End-of-summer
car party mostly
safe, successful
accelerating to the point where
he lost control of the vehicle.”
Near Bolstad Avenue, the man
crashed into a white SUV and
jumped the curb, nearly hitting
a woman in a wheelchair.
Officers from several agen-
cies arrested him at gunpoint.
Tests later revealed he had a
blood-alcohol level of 0.26,
well over the legal limit of
0.08, Moon said.
Though a bouncer metic-
ulously checked IDs at one
popular watering hole, a lot
of drinkers didn’t bother
with bars. Many of the peo-
ple who lined the route of the
cruise surreptitiously pulled
out flasks, or sipped from red
plastic cups filled with mystery
punch. When a spectator threw
something into the bed of a
passing truck, a hidden cache
of empty cans clattered loudly.
There’s always a certain
amount of partying associated
with Rod Run weekend, Moon
said. But crime dropped sig-
nificantly after local author-
ities moved it to after Labor
Day and beefed up the down-
town police presence several
years ago.
Fifteen years ago, Moon
said, State Patrol would send
as many as 40 troopers to help
out, and they’d arrest 40 to
60 drunks over the weekend.
For the last few years, they’ve
arrested four to six drunk driv-
ers each year.
This year, there were three
DUIs, Moon said.
Rod wrecks
Natalie St. John/EO Media Group
A spectator leaped into the street to cheer for a muscle car during the annual Saturday night cruise in Long Beach.
Natalie St. John/EO Media Group
Robert Hilson
‘Rat rods’ and other eccentric vehicles — and people — are
an increasingly common feature of the Saturday night cruise.
Roni Zonnefeld, 27, of Kirkland, worked hard rebuilding
this 1963 Ford F-100 truck with her dad.
more souped-up model Ts,
ancient Chevy pickups and
other jalopies that wore their
flat paint, rusty bumpers and
dents like badges of honor.
These were the “rat rods,” the
redheaded stepchildren of the
hot rod world.
Mixed in with the vin-
tage cars were dune buggies,
homemade mopeds, coupes
with giant spoilers and neon
lights, and giant muddy
trucks.
Drinking
on the downlow
Early in the evening, a vis-
iting officer from Castle Rock
noticed a man in a black truck
talking on his cellphone as
he drove through downtown.
When he signaled the man to
pull over, “The guy dropped
the cellphone, turned and took
off. He went to Ocean Beach
Boulevard,” Washington State
Patrol Sgt. Brad Moon said.
“The driver was headed north,
There was one fend-
er-bender involving a 1948
car that lost steering and
crashed into a bush near Chi-
nook, Moon said. The only
other Rod-Run-related wreck
occurred on State Route 103,
near the Dunes Bible Camp in
Ocean Park.
Two men in an open-top
Jeep were headed south on 103
on Saturday night, when the
driver missed his turn.
“We suspect he was going
too fast for the conditions,”
Moon said. “He did a U-turn.
It rolled over.”
Both passenger and driver
were ejected from the vehi-
cle. At first, the passenger,
who was “highly intoxicated,”
appeared to be unresponsive,
but he woke up. The driver
was not drunk. Both men were
up and walking around by the
time responders arrived. They
refused aid. The vehicle had to
be towed.
“That ended up being a
minor injury collision,” Moon
said.
Program: Participating businesses Grades: Roughly 60 percent of
must pay at least minimum wage
students fell short in mathematics
Continued from Page 1A
County leaders learned
about McMinnville Works, a
similar internship program in
Yamhill County, and applied
to be part of one of their four
statewide workshops funded
by a grant from the Oregon Tal-
ent Council. The initial work-
shops were all taken, but the
leaders banded together to pay
$125 per business for up to
20 to attend a fifth workshop
Sept. 27 at Clatsop Community
College.
Kevin Leahy, executive
director of Clatsop Economic
Development Resources and
a coordinator with the intern-
ship program, said he has been
reaching out to a number of
major businesses in the county,
from hospitals and mills to the
hospitality industry.
The intern program will
be open to students at all five
county school districts, along
with the college. Originally,
the program was meant to
be for students 18 and older,
Leahy said, but some busi-
nesses, such as hotels, want
to start training employees as
young as 16.
“The beauty of this is that
it’s employer-driven,” Leahy
said. “It’s almost turnkey, the
way that I see this. The busi-
ness can dictate what the
internship is about.”
Participating businesses
must be able to host interns for
up to six weeks, pay at least
minimum wage and provide
Kevin
Leahy
‘The beauty
of this is that
it’s employer-
driven.’
Kevin Leahy
executive director of Clatsop
Economic Development Re-
sources and a coordinator with
the internship program
them an employee mentor and
management.
Leading the workshop will
be Jody Christensen, the exec-
utive director for the McMin-
nville Economic Develop-
ment Partnership. Christensen
has overseen the McMinnville
Works internship program for
the past five years.
“When I was going out
and meeting with companies,
I kept hearing over and over
again about the critical issues
in finding and keeping talent,”
she said. “Positions were being
kept open months on end, they
weren’t filling jobs.”
The city reached out to Cli-
max Portable Machine Tools,
a Newberg company with an
internal internship program,
and secured seed funding from
the Yamhill County Board of
Commissioners for a summer
pilot at four local companies.
The program took off, she
said, and now includes 15 to
20 businesses a year hosting
a similar number of students.
The businesses focus on proj-
ect-based work that can be
completed during a nine-week
summer internship. Partici-
pants also go through weekly
workshops to learn skills
like teamwork and managing
finances.
“What we’re trying to do is
round out some of the things
they might not be learning in
school about what it means to
be employed,” she said.
Most of the students in
McMinnville’s program are
juniors and seniors in college
from throughout the Pacific
Northwest, Christensen said,
but each community designs a
program fit to local needs.
“We’re not going to get
every detail worked out in six
hours,” she said. “There will
be areas up in the air, but we’ll
create the basic framework.”
Continued from Page 1A
are more demanding than the
previous generation of year-
end exams. That was a tad
more than ducked testing in
2016.
The new tests, titled
Smarter Balanced, were
developed by a consortium of
13 states to measure reading,
writing, listening, math and
reasoning skills that panels of
teachers, professors, employ-
ers and other experts agreed
were needed at each grade
level.
Overall, in the three years
the exams have been given,
students in Oregon and most
other states have struggled to
reach the standards they set.
This year, roughly 60 per-
cent of Oregon public school
students fell short in math-
ematics as did 45 percent in
reading and writing. It was the
worst showing yet by Oregon
schools, particularly in lan-
guage arts.
Statewide, all four major
race and ethnic groups —
whites, Latinos, Asians and
blacks — registered lower
proficiency rates than in 2016.
Scores for Asian-American
students, already the top-per-
forming group, dipped least;
scores among white students
fell the most.
How well students per-
formed on the Smarter Bal-
anced tests this year will be
the primary factor driving the
school performance ratings
that the Oregon Department
of Education plans to issue in
October.
But those ratings will
require a more sophisticated
determination than whether a
school posted low, average or
high scores. Instead, the rat-
ings will be based primarily on
how much the school helped
individual students prog-
ress in English and in math
from where that particular
student scored a year or two
before. Performance ratings
also give extra weight to how
well schools succeed with stu-
dents who historically have
struggled in Oregon schools:
minorities, low-income stu-
dents, those with disabili-
ties and students still learning
English as a second language.
Very few Oregon students
still learning to master English
do well on the exams, which
require reading complex pas-
sages and following multi-
step math instructions. But
a higher share of them reg-
istered as proficient on both
English and math exams this
year, making them the only
demographic group to show
strong gains.
Smarter Balanced tests
are designed to measure how
well students have been taught
to master the Common Core
State Standards, a set of rig-
orous expectations for read-
ing, writing, math and reason-
ing skills adopted by nearly all
U.S. states.
Still, the tests have
remained controversial. At
some Oregon schools, par-
ents or students decide that it’s
best for the student to sit them
out. That’s particularly true at
some schools where students
generally do well on standard-
ized tests.
This year, only 16 percent
of juniors at Portland’s Cleve-
land High, known for its aca-
demically rigorous Interna-
tional Baccalaureate program,
took the math portion of
the test. More than half the
juniors at Lake Oswego High
and Portland’s Wilson High
skipped one or both exams,
and nearly half skipped both
subjects at Portland’s Grant
High.
Students at Lake Oswego
and some other schools orga-
nized to urge fellow students
to boycott the tests. They say
they do a poor job of mea-
suring readiness for college.
They also complain they place
an undue burden on juniors,
given that many take the ACT,
the SAT, Advanced Placement
exams and other standardized
tests that year.
Test-taking rates among
elementary pupils were gen-
erally very high. But doz-
ens of Portland-area elemen-
tary schools — mostly ones
in comfortably middle-class
Portland neighborhoods —
fell short of testing 95 percent
of students.
Edward Stratton of The
Daily Astorian contributed to
this story.