4A • November 27, 2015 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com SignalViewpoints Life’s a buggy ride for Gearhart’s oldest resident S EEN FROM S EASIDE O f all the things we can think about to be thank- ful for at this Thanksgiv- ing, it is the people in our lives who gives us love, support and friendship, especially new friends young and old. Probably the oldest new friend we met may be the oldest resident in Gearhart. Most people think so. Bob Mc- Ewan celebrated his 93rd birthday this month, making him a living witness to the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War and everything in between. He is a lifelong Oregonian and has lived in Gearhart for more than half a century. His bug- gy ride, drawn by trusty donkey IULHQG 3DQFKR GRZQ 3DFL¿F:D\ on Sundays and holidays, is fa- mous up and down the North Coast. We have the privilege of knowing Bob and Pancho, a de- lightful friendship if there ever was one. Pancho is a Bethlehem donkey — not your common burro, that’s for sure. Pancho is blessed with the mark of his breed, a cross along his back. He is enormously social, intelligent and he makes you want to own a donkey of your own. Bob, accompanied by his black Labrador retriever Pearl, is a mas- ter of the rare art of carriage-driv- ing. He came with his mother and grandmother from Portland to Seaside, where she managed the Necanicum Inn, “an old, old hos- telry in Seaside,” McEwan said on the occasion of his 93rd birth- day. His grandmother dabbled in real estate a little bit, he said, and she bought the Gearhart home he now lives in sight unseen. The home, built in 1908, was located on “just a cowpath in the trees,” he said. “Up here, between Cottage and Marion up to the main street, there was nothing there,” McE- wan remembered. “It was just that rolling sand dunes and grass. Where the golf course is now but from there to what they call Pa- FL¿F :D\ ² LW XVHG WR EH 6L[WK Street — it was horse pasture. There were cranberry bogs in Del Mar.” Gearhart School was located where the Trail’s End gallery on Avenue A is now. As a teenager he got a job working at the Gearhart Hotel, B Y R.J. MARX Today, McEwan still wakes up and goes to work every morning at Laurelwood Farm. He harnesses Pancho to the cart and drives him around Gearhart every Sunday, his dog Pearl riding shotgun. when it was owned by Portland department store magnate Myron Frank. The hotel, now gone and replaced by condominiums, held conventions for 300, 400 people at a time, McEwan said. “I was the kind of mess boy in the help’s dining room, they had a help’s dining room that seated about 50 people,” he said. “I set it up every day and cleaned off the tables and stuff. It was a big deal then.” A prankster, teenage Bob would ride the dumbwaiter — an elevator with a crank with a rope ² IURP WKH WKLUG ÀRRU GRZQ WR the basement. “It was against the rules to get into that thing, but I al- ways got in and rode myself down IURP RQH ÀRRU WR WKH QH[W7KH\ carted all the whiskey bottles and glassware and took it where it was supposed to go.” +LV QH[W MRE ZDV ZRUNLQJ for the Gearhart Fuel Company. “They sold wood, ice and coal on Gin Ridge and everywhere,” he said. “I drove one of their wood trucks around when I was about 12. There were no streets square like there are now, just tracks. You could drive around — no WUDI¿FQRSROLFHQRQRWKLQJ7KH big houses on what we call Gin Ridge, they’re just like they used to be, but there’s a lot more added in between.” McEwan drove milk trucks from the dairy in Seaside, deliv- ering to Cannon Beach and Gear- hart. The shelling of Fort Stevens took place in April 1942, but McEwan missed it. “My grandmother and I were here that night when that hap- pened,” he said. “In the morning she said, did you hear those aw- IXOH[SORVLRQVODVWQLJKW" “I said, ‘No, I slept right through it.’ “She said it sounded like somebody was blasting. It was that loud, I guess.” When he woke up in the ear- ly morning to make his deliver- LHV WKHUH ZHUH DOUHDG\ ³H[WUD´ editions of newspapers on the stand, telling the Oregon coast had been shelled by a Japanese submarine. That afternoon, he was up to see the shells, mostly at DeLaura Beach. “They didn’t come very close,” he said. “They were on the wrong side of the the road.” 7KHIRUWGLGQ¶WUHWXUQWKH¿UH because they were afraid they would give away their position, 0F(ZDQH[SODLQHG³7KH\SURE ably couldn’t reach it anyway because the range wasn’t as good as the submarine’s was,” he said. Soon after, he joined the Merchant Marine, and traveled around the world delivering needed supplies until the war ended in 1945. “I was most of WKH WLPH LQ WKH :HVWHUQ 3DFL¿F DQG WKH 6RXWK 3DFL¿F´ KH VDLG “I was in the Persian Gulf and around the world. The Merchant Marine was a big operation, and they covered a lot of ground,” he said. “Everything that was hauled overseas, the Merchant Marines took it, so we went ev- erywhere.” McEwan returned home to Gearhart in 1945. :HUH\RXJODGWRFRPHEDFN" “Oh, yeah! I was all over the world, and I decided this was the best place anywhere,” he said. After the war, McEwan went to work with the county road department as an engineer for the bridge crew. Those were the days of timber-trestle bridges, before the advent of the concrete bridges built today. Part of his work was installing and replac- ing culverts. The county pur- FKDVHG D EDFNKRH ² ³WKH ¿UVW one I’d ever seen or anyone had ever seen around here.” In the course of his work, he was made bridge foreman. The backhoe became his stock in trade “I took over that thing and R.J. MARX PHOTO/SEASIDE SIGNAL Bob McEwan travels in style with Pearl on the seat and Pancho at the lead. R.J. MARX PHOTO/SEASIDE SIGNAL Bob McEwan celebrates his 93rd birthday in Gearhart. XVHG LW IRU WKH FXOYHUWV DQG ¿ nally a friend of mine convinced me to buy my own and I quit the county and bought one. I started in 1956. It’s the oldest company in the county still going. My son runs it.” Today, McEwan still wakes up and goes to work every morning at Laurelwood Farm. He harness- es Pancho to the cart and drives R.J. MARX PHOTO/SEASIDE SIGNAL Pancho poses for his close-up. him around Gearhart every Sun- day, his dog Pearl riding shotgun. As Bob McEwan blows out the candles on “93” (“39,” if you look at in reverse), a hint of a tear forms at his eye. It’s a chocolate cake, his favorite — although his doctor tells him he can “only eat so much.” Between the Covers  ESTHER MOBERG Thankful this holiday for a community of readers Here in Seaside, we have a lot to be thankful for. I say this looking out a win- dow where the rain hasn’t stopped for three days straight, but it’s a gentle rain even as it makes a lake out back behind the Seaside Public Library. But I am thankful for Seaside. Where else can you live a mile from the ocean and walk on the EHDFK IRU IUHH HYHU\ GD\" Where else do you have beautiful mountains, rivers, and great air to breathe in without hours of commuting to a job in a cubicle without DQ\ZLQGRZV",VD\DOOWKLV because I’ve done the cubi- cle job. I’ve driven in snow and ice to work. I can say I appreciate Seaside even more because of it! But most of all, I am thankful for our community of readers. Every day I see parents bring their 2- and 3-year-olds into the library to get another stack of pic- ture books that they will read to them. I also see kids come to the library and hop on the computers and join in a Lego building program be- cause they know the library is a safe and fun place to be. I am thankful that at a Sea- side Chamber Of Commerce meeting, I can discuss Ore- gon authors who are obsessed with Moby Dick, or go to a chamber banquet that has a “Library Olympics” cham- pioned by the former library director who gives her gift card prize back to the library to buy more kids books. ESTHER MOBERG So, yes, in this month when most people think about being thankful for family and friends and good food to eat around Thanks- giving, I am thankful for books and reading. By books, I also mean books you can listen to in the car, and books you can read on your tablet. I would challenge you to think about all the forms of read- ing and try each one in the QH[W GD\V WR VHH ZKLFK one you are the most thank- ful for. Have you ever tried D SOD\DZD\" 'R \RX HYHQ NQRZ ZKDW D SOD\DZD\ LV" You can check one out at the Seaside Public Library. +RZ DERXW D .LQGOH"