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THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, JuNE 9, 2022
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IN ONE EAR • ELLEDA WILSON
ROCKING RETIREMENT
ohn Stuper, former Major League Baseball pitcher
and World Series champion, and coach for the Yale
baseball team for the last 30 years, retired on May 14
after coaching a doubleheader against longtime nemesis
Harvard (Yale won both games).
Astorian Dan Supple was first contacted in 2020,
when the coach originally planned to retire. Some
friends wanted to give the coach one of Dan’s special
Supple Rockers, works of art made from baseball bats,
as a retirement gift. Although Stuper’s retirement was
delayed by COVID interrupting the baseball seasons of
2020 and 2021, the desire to give the coach one of those
chairs never waned.
On retirement day, there was a huge turnout of friends
and his former players at George H. W. Bush Field in
New Haven, Connecticut, to watch the games and wish
coach Stuper well. “It’s overwhelming, you’re going to
make me cry,” Stuper told NBCConnecticut.com, refer-
ring to the crowd. He looked pretty tearful when he saw
that Supple Rocker, too.
“The rockers can jerk some tears out of the toughest
coaches,” Dan noted.
“What makes it so exciting is the smiles we put on the
faces of the people at the stadium that day,” he added.
“My wife, Kim, and I, we are having so much fun with
these rocking chairs.”
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SAVED BY STYROFOAM
PRICELESS
ancy Murray of Naselle, Washington, won free
tickets to the “Antiques Roadshow” tour in their
yearly sweepstakes. Each ticket holder can bring
along two items for appraisal, so off she went to Boise,
Idaho, for the May 31 event.
“Item No. 1: A set of antique prostheses, a hand
and a hook, and the accompanying harness,” she
explained. “I got them last year at a thrift shop and
paid $35 for the set. I felt lucky to get James Supp
for this appraisal, not only because he wears a han-
dlebar mustache, has piercing blue eyes and a das-
tardly sense of humor, but because he knew so much
about the prostheses! His area of expertise is antique
tools.
“… He took one look, and his eyes lit up. He
grabbed the hand and asked, ‘Can I borrow this for
a minute?’ I said yes, and he trotted down behind the
other tables with it and snuck up behind one of the
other appraisers, and tapped her on the shoulder with
it. It was funny. We all got a chuckle. He returned and
said, ‘Sorry, it’s been a long day!’
“He said the set was probably made around 1920
to 1925. It’s made of wood, brass, nickel, leather
and repurposed Army surplus straps and buckles. He
demonstrated how the harness was worn, and how
the hand and hook could be opened and closed by a
cord that ran up the arm to another section of the har-
ness worn around the bicep, and also the lever on the
hand.
“He recommended they be restored and conserved.
He valued them at $100 to $400 each. He seemed gen-
uinely intrigued, and spent a decent amount of time
talking about them and goofing around a bit, and let-
ting us take pictures with him.
“Item No. 2: A small, original, pen and ink abstract
expressionist drawing that I got at Goodwill for
$2.99. The artist is unknown, because we can’t make
out the signature, and neither could the appraiser, but
the date is 1955. The appraiser … said it was worth
maybe $100 to $150 at auction.”
“The whole experience,” she added, “was a blast,
and priceless.”
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OLDER THAN METHUSELAH
o doubt the North Coast has some old trees; some
have even been around a century or two. But the lat-
est candidate for Oldest Tree in the World is a Patago-
nian cypress named Alerce Milenario, or Gran Abuelo,
the “great-grandfather,” at Alerce Costero National
Park in Chile, SmithsonianMag.com reports.
That’s the belief of Jonathan Barichivich, a Chilean
environmental scientist, anyway, who estimates the tree
is 5,484 years old, which makes it more ancient than the
current contender, Methuselah, a 4,853-year-old bristle-
cone pine in California.
He couldn’t figure out the age the normal way, since a
regular core sampler can’t penetrate to the center of the
13-foot wide tree. So instead, he used a partial core sam-
ple of 2,400 growth rings, and calculated the age and
growth from there using statistics.
With this new age estimation, he hopes the tree will
now get federal protection, which would stop people
from trampling on and damaging its roots. “To me, this
tree is like a family member,” Barichivich said.
By the way, he has one other estimate: Only 28% of
the tree is still alive. (Photo: El Mercurio (archivo))
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REMEDIES
idbits from The Daily Morning Astorian, June 9,
1888:
• Astoria No. 1‘s fire engine was engaged in religious
duty yesterday in a holy attempt to flush the filthy Main
Street sewer. Cleanliness is not only next to, but is part
and parcel of godliness, and it is godly work to keep the
streets from smelling so loud that people cry out for car-
bolic acid and the coroner as they pass quickly by.
• Paine’s Celery Compound: Cures nervous pros-
tration, nervous headache, neuralgia, nervous weakness,
stomach and liver diseases, rheumatism dyspepsia and
all affections of the kidneys. $1 ($30 now).
Note: People probably just forgot what was wrong
with them after taking this; while some of its contents
are a bit of celery and coriander seed and hydrochloric
acid, the main ingredient was alcohol.
• Look out for the man who is advertising an infalli-
ble cure for a corn, price $1, and money refunded if the
corn does not disappear. If you send him a dollar, you
will receive by return mail the following recipe: “Cut
off your toe.”
T
he rescue of some creative crew members has been
in the news recently. Here’s what happened:
According to Maritime-Executive.com, the Zidane
Express was sailing tandem with another ship on May
26 on an overnight trip when the other ship lost sight of
the Zidane. That’s because heavy seas had caused water
to get into the Zidane’s engine room, and the ship lost
both power and radio contact.
The four crew members aboard knew the ship was
probably done for, so they quickly found several sty-
rofoam coolers, and some rope, and strung the coolers
together to create a raft. When they abandoned ship, they
also took along lots of bottled water and dried food — a
smart move, since the ship sank.
When their companion ship reached port, and the
Zidane hadn’t shown up by the following morning, they
reported the Zidane as missing. Search and rescue crews
went out to cover a 345 square mile area in the Bali Sea,
also asking for help from other vessels in the area.
A fishing boat found the lost crew, four days into
their ordeal, styrofoam raft intact, around 60 miles from
shore. All of the men were, amazingly, in good shape,
and returned to shore. (Photo: SAR Banyuwangi)
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DRIFTING TO SEA
ne shouldn’t forget how dangerous the Colum-
bia River can be, and how many sailors have been
pulled out to sea by an outgoing tide to an almost cer-
tain death.
One such tale appeared in the June 9, 1887, edition of
The Daily Morning Astorian:
“Nils Hansen, of the West Coast Packing Co.,
drifted out through the south channel last Tuesday morn-
ing, about 3 o’clock, and into the breakers, where the
boat upset and the net went adrift.
“He clambered onto the capsized boat, drifting to sea,
and at 3 o’clock that afternoon was picked up 20 miles
out to sea, by the government steamer McArthur, and
carried to Shoalwater Bay, from whence he arrived in
safety yesterday afternoon. He bewails the loss of his
boat and net, but is thankful that he escaped with his life.
“It is no unusual experience for Columbia River fish-
ermen to thus drift out on the trackless ocean, out of
sight of land or seeming hope of rescue, and it is only by
the fortunate passing of a vessel that the rescue is made.”
O
LAST STOP, NAHCOTTA
little railroad history from The
Daily Morning Astorian, June
9, 1888:
• Joseph Kamm bought a new
locomotive at Pocatello, Idaho, for
the Ilwaco, Washington Territory,
railroad. L.A. Loomis goes to San
Francisco tomorrow to buy cars and
other necessary accouterments for the
railroad.
Note: That was the first of six loco-
motives they bought for the Ilwaco
Railroad Navigation Co. (aka the
Clamshell Railroad), for $2,500
(about $76,000 today). Construction
on the railroad had begun in Ilwaco
that same year, with tracks being laid
that were extended to, and finally
ended at, Nahcotta (pictured), in 1889.
Tourists from across the Colum-
bia River would arrive in Ilwaco to
explore the burgeoning recreation
possibilities on the peninsula, only
to be at the whim of the tides, as the
steamers could only dock at high tide.
The stops were Holman Sta-
tion, Seaview, Long Beach, Tioga
(also Long Beach), Breakers Sta-
tion, Pacific Park, Cranberry Station,
Oceanside, Loomis, Ocean Park and
Nahcotta. Oysterville couldn’t raise
enough money to have an extension
run there.
In 1900, Loomis sold his stock to
the Oregon Railway and Navigation
Co., and in 1908, a terminal was added
at Megler, the town that used to be at
the other end of the Astoria Bridge.
Eventually, the use of the cars and
trucks and ferries cut into the rail-
road’s business to such an extent it
was no longer worth running. The rail
line was officially abandoned in 1930.
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A TASTE OF SECURITY
he Associated Press reports that a Finnish brewery,
Olaf Brewing, in celebration of Finland and Swe-
den asking to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion, has produced a new lager.
“Otan olutta,” ”I’ll have a beer” in Finnish, is also
a play on words; the French abbreviation for NATO
is “OTAN,” French being one of NATO’s official
languages.
The blue-labeled can features a smiling, beer-drink-
ing cartoon knight whose armor bears the NATO sym-
bol, a compass. The beer also honors the town of Savon-
linna, where the brewery is located, near the Russian
border.
Brewery CEO Petteri Vanttinen noted that the beer
has “a taste of security, with a hint of freedom.” (Photo:
Soila Puurtinen/Lehtikuva via AP)
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