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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 16, 2020)
B1 THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, JANuARy 16, 2020 CONTACT US ewilson@dailyastorian.com (971) 704-1718 COMMUNITY FOLLOW US facebook.com/ DailyAstorian IN ONE EAR • ELLEDA WILSON PLAYING ‘DOMINOES’ s a local witch casts her spells on a small, Oregon port town, some unsuspecting locals meet their fate in the vast coastline,” a story on AmericanSongwriter. com began. “It’s a darkly brewed scene set to The Hack- les’ video for ‘Dominoes,’ the latest single off the duo’s second album ‘A Dobritch Did As A Dobritch Should’ (Jealous Butcher Records).” The port town is Astoria, and The Hackles are Asto- ria couple Kati Claborn and Luke Ydstie, who are also members of Blind Pilot, along with frontman Israel Nebeker, who grew up in Gearhart, Ryan Dobrowski, Ian Krist and Dave Jorgensen. You can read the story and see the four-minute “Dom- inoes” video — which was filmed in Astoria, and features some familiar faces and a local crew — at bit.ly/hackles- vid. The couple are pictured in a photo from their website, thehackles.bandcamp.com In case you’re wondering what the Dobritch connec- tion is, the album title refers to Bulgarian-born Alexander Alexandroff “Al” Dobritch’s hard luck story. He came from a family of circus performers and became “an influ- ential circus agent, impresario and producer,” according to Circopedia.com. A story on LVStripHistory.com reports his sad down- fall in Las Vegas. His life fell apart after being arrested for assault with intent to kill, and then for extortion, and con- sequently being fired … then he jumped (or was pushed) and fell 15 stories to his death. “Dominoes was inspired by the licentious history of the small port town in Oregon, situated where the Colum- bia River meets the Pacific Ocean, that we call home,” Claborn told American Songwriter. “The song is a work- er’s lament, a rumination on life as a participant in a rigged game, and the tale of a witch who turns her victims into sturgeon, doomed to a long life haunting the bottom depths of a grey coastline.” “(The video) dives into the details of the song’s nar- rative,” Claborn added, “with decades-spanning Pacific Northwest voodoo, chance encounters with dire conse- quences, and the water, eternally waiting.” DOUBLE DISASTER ‘A TUNA AN INTERESTING TIME n Astoria/Iran tidbit from long ago: Longtime Astoria resident Daymon Edwards (pictured), who now lives in Korea, owned the Waldorf/Merwyn Hotel from 1979 to 1980. “Just after I bought the hotel,” he wrote, “the Irani- ans took the Embassy hostage (on Nov. 4, 1979). I have always had a large collection of flags and a flag pole, so I put out my American flags from the windows and vowed to keep them there until they returned.” The Daily Astorian took notice, and on July 4, 1980, the Waldorf was on the front page. (You can read the story at bit.ly/wixwall.) His photo of the flag-flying hotel is also shown. “Many people wrote to the editor about the flags fac- ing the wrong way,” Daymon noted, “and then about being tattered, missing the whole point.” People even criticized him because they thought the flags were being used for “stuffing window cracks.” “(But) I refused to budge,” he noted. The flags stayed. “My experiences when I owned the hotel,” he added “… I can tell you, it was truly an interesting time. We had more going on in that hotel than Tales of The City!” (Many thanks to Jimmy Pearson (Astoria Library), and Liisa Penner (Clatsop County Historical Society) for their help finding Daymon’s July 4, 1980 story.) A anuary 1853 was a disastrous month for ships enter- ing the Graveyard of the Pacific when two vessels met their fate on the Columbia River Bar, both on the 12th. The bark Mindora, with Capt. George Staples at the helm, waited off the bar for 28 days to enter the river. At last she was able to sail in … but only reached Sand Island before the wind died. They set anchor to wait again, but a strong current dragged the vessel, and she got mired in the middle sands. Heavy seas developed, relentlessly pounding the Mindora, forc- ing the captain and crew to abandon ship and head for safety in Astoria. A pilot boat went out the next morning, but the Min- dora had vanished. Eventually she turned up again, north of Shoalwater Bay. Capt. Samuel Kissam, sailing the bark I. Mer- rithew, arrived off the bar on Dec. 30, but heavy weather prevented him from entering the river until Jan. 12. When no bar pilot appeared to escort him, Capt. Kissam decided to forge on ahead. He soon found himself having the same experience as the Mindora’s captain: the wind died, they dropped anchor, and the currents dragged his ship onto the mid- dle sands. A gale blew in, and even with her masts cut down, the ship took a terrible beating. After a harrowing night, the pilot boat was able to rescue everyone aboard the next morning, but there was no hope for the I. Merrithew. She drifted out towards the ocean, but got caught in a cross-cur- rent and finally came in on the rocks north of Cape Disappointment. Jan. 12 may have been a bad day for these two ships, but it was a good one for their crews — no lives were lost. (bit.ly/LewDry, bit.ly/cimbarks) J A LONG AND WINDING ROAD n interesting local history tidbit was found perusing the Cannon Beach History Center and Museum Facebook page, and the accompanying photo (shown) had this caption: “Undated photo of travelers on the old Ecola road enduring one of the 111 infamous hairpin turns.” Dramamine, anyone? The road was also known as the toll road, or the Elk Creek road, and wound its way from Seaside down the coast to Cannon Beach. In fact, at the time, it was the only way to get there. “The ‘new highway,’ completed in 1950,” the post says, “finally eliminated all of those curves that had plagued anyone traveling to and from Cannon Beach. “The new road had several interesting effects. For one thing, up until the 1950s retirees had tended to shun Can- non Beach because it had lacked medical facilities. Now, with travel time to Seaside and Astoria much reduced, that was less the case.” A VANDALIA IS LOST he South China Morning Post ran a whopper of an eye-catching headline: “Sushi king pays US $1.8 mil- lion for bluefin tuna that weighs as much as a Japanese vending machine” (bit.ly/whoppertuna). Kiyoshi Kimura, who owns a chain of sushi restau- rants, Sushizanmai, always attends the first auction of the year at Tokyo’s main fish market, and isn’t afraid to let his wallet bleed. Up for bid this year was a 608-pound bluefin tuna, caught off the North Coast of Japan. Kimura happily coughed up the $1.8 million, which is child’s play com- pared to what he paid at last year’s auction, a record $3.1 million for a 613-pound tuna. He is pictured with his cur- rent prize, courtesy of Kyodo via the Associated Press. “Yes, this is expensive, isn’t it?” Kimura noted, with a flair for understatement. “I want our customers to eat very tasty ones this year, too.” T GUILT-FREE WATER storia has become a hot spot stop for cruise ships (pos- sibly 35 this year), with their thousands of passengers. But one can’t help but wonder: What on earth do they do with all that garbage? Well, in a big step in the right direction to reduce plas- tic waste, Norwegian Cruise Lines has eliminated sin- gle-use plastic bottles across its 17-ship fleet (single-use straws are already gone), MaritimeExecutive.com reports (bit.ly/nomoplastic). The Norwegian Encore is pictured, courtesy of ncl.com The cruise line has partnered with JUST Goods Inc. (justwater.com), which makes paper carton-packed water (pictured). The carton is made of 82 percent renewable materials and is refillable and recyclable. Also this year — continuing to set a good example — Norwegian plans to get rid of single-use plastic shampoo and conditioner bottles. Godt jobbet! A NEWS NOTES ne of the most baffling and haunting wrecks that occurred in 1853 was that of the barkentine Van- dalia, which was heading in from San Francisco with Capt. E. N. Beard as master. Jan. 9 was the last time she was seen by a passing ship, the Grecian, which reported that Vandalia was waiting to enter the Columbia River Bar; struggling a bit, but holding her own, and not in any obvious distress. A week later, Vandalia was found hull up on Ben- son Beach. All hands were lost, but four bodies washed ashore; among them were Capt. Beard and a 14-year- old boy. Capt. Beard’s remains were found on the beach at a small cove north of the North Head Lighthouse that was thereafter named for him, Beard’s Hollow. Other crew members from the Vandalia washed up on the beach in Dead Man’s Cove (or Hollow), which is below and just north of the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse. Over the years, several unfortunate souls who were lost at sea have turned up there, hence the name. An interesting historical tidbit about this particular wreck is that a small Ilwaco, Washington, neighborhood — lying at the east end of town, and somewhat discon- nected from it, at 1.6 miles from downtown and the clos- est park — is named Vandalia, after the lost ship. “Exact particulars of the accident will never be known, as there were no survivors,” Lewis & Dryden’s Marine History of the Pacific Northwest reports of the Vandalia’s demise. “It is supposed that the bark missed stays while beating in and drifted into the breakers, where she sprang a leak and afterward foundered.” (bit. ly/LewDry, bit.ly/vandwreck1, bit.ly/vandwreck2, bit. ly/vandwreck3) O ems from the Sunday, Jan. 16, 1881 edition of The Daily Astorian: • A newspaper is a window through which men look out upon the world. Without a newspaper, a man is shut up in a small room, and knows little or nothing of what is happening outside of himself. In our day, the newspaper will keep a sensible man in sympathy with the world’s current history. It is an unfold- ing encyclopedia and handbook, forever issuing and never finished. • Half of the books used in the public schools of the land are worse than useless, and it would be cause for general rejoicing if whole editions were burned by the hangman. That school book makers and school book publishers are a greater incubus on education than railroad extor- tion is on commerce and production, does not admit of a question. • Adler is selling school books very low. G
