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THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, JANuARy 16, 2020
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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