10 years ago this week — 2011
Who says you can’t teach old dogs — or their owners — new tricks?
That certainly wasn’t the case at the Classy Canines 4-H dog club annual event on Saturday at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds.
The public was invited to bring dogs and join the 4-H kids and their canines for dog rally, agility and nosework events. Experienced dog handlers gave classes to novices before each competition. Several dozen people and dogs participated in the competition and workshops.
Stay safe and batten down the hatches.
That was the message from North Coast emergency preparedness officials and state agencies today.
The storm that walloped the North Coast and Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula overnight on Monday is likely to continue through 7 a.m. Wednesday.
The National Weather Service predicted the storm could be the worst since the Great Coastal Gale of 2007.
The U.S. Coast Guard closed the Columbia River Bar entrance because of hazardous conditions at 9 p.m. on Monday. The closure applies to all vessels, and any request to cross the bar prior to reopening must be approved by Capt. Bruce Jones of Coast Guard Sector Columbia River.
Happy and healthy are the two things that serve as the goal for the room in which Astoria Mayor Willis Van Dusen was standing Tuesday morning.
Both were true when the room once held first and second graders.
Both remain true as new paint, hardwood floors and athletic equipment grace the room now.
The former St. Mary, Star of the Sea School now serves as the Astoria Recreation Center for youngsters, teens and adult fitness classes, as well as child care for parents using the facility and a program for children when school is not in session.
“We’re absolutely delighted with this facility,” City Councilor Arline LaMear, who is also a member of the Astoria Parks Board, said at the Tuesday opening. “I just couldn’t believe all of the things that were going on in Gray School, and now, things have just tripled by the opening of this.
“We are so grateful to Father Ken (Sampson) and to everyone in the city that has worked so hard to make this come to fruition. This is just a very exciting day for the city and a very exciting day for all of us.”
50 years ago — 1971
The Astoria Plywood Corp. will discontinue use of its wigwam burner at the end of this year, manager Cleve Ramsey said Friday. The closure is in response to directives from the state Department of Environmental Quality.
A spokesman for DEQ said last week Astoria Plywood was to have stopped using the big, metal burner earlier, but was given an extension because of delays in construction at the plywood plant. Waste material from the mill is burned in the wigwam shaped burner.
Ramsey said after Jan. 1 waste material will be run either through the plant’s new chipper or through a device that breaks down the material for use in the plant’s boiler. He said the burner had been “a real convenience, but there’s not much you can do because they (the DEQ) have a big club.”
Astoria Plywood started operating around 1950.
How do you get people to turn out for a community talk session?
That question occupied members of the Clatsop County Youth Council and District 1 council of the governor’s Commission on Youth at a meeting on Monday in Astoria. The District 1 council is sponsoring a series of three “rap sessions” among students, parents, teachers and school board members at Astoria High School.
A few of the students and adults who attended last week’s rap session tried Monday to explain why only 25 to 30 people attended last Thursday night.
One student and a member of the District 1 council said a problem at one of the rap sessions was that participants seemed more interested in talking and getting over their views than in listening to others and having an exchange of views.
Another council member speculated that the light turnout last week owed in part to a lack of community togetherness in Astoria.
LONG BEACH, Wash. — The main street storefronts of this peninsula town will soon resemble a seacoast town of 1900, or maybe a movie set.
Residents and visitors alike will be able to imagine themselves in a bygone era as the town’s stores and buildings change their exteriors. It’s all directed by the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce.
In recent months, many ideas have been debated on how to upgrade the town. At a recent meeting it was decided to give the town a theme, much like Leavenworth, which has a Bavarian motif. Leavenworth since 1965 has turned itself into a tourist mecca with a great increase in business.
Downtown merchants have agreed to change their building fronts as they can. If the weather permits, the first changes will begin this weekend when Marsh’s Free Museum starts by putting up a canopy.
75 years ago — 1946
Downward slipping of land in various parts of the city, which comes almost every winter with heavy rains, has resumed at two points on Irving Avenue.
One is the approach at the west end of the Irving Avenue bridge, which slid more than a foot downhill in recent days. When the bridge was rebuilt last summer, the city began construction of a system of drains to carry water away from the bridge foundations.
Capt. John Lampi, of Ilwaco, Washington, master of the 72-foot dragger John T, is a first rate seagoing mechanic, the U.S. Coast Guard reported today.
Lt. Robert Bracken, skipper of the cutter Nemah, which offered assistance to the John T southwest of the lightship Tuesday, said that the Ilwaco deepsea fisherman had made remarkable emergency repairs of the rudder.
A heavy sea had wrecked the rudder assembly, carrying out the gear box. Despite the heavy sea, Lampi made repairs, which held out in the choppy run over the bar.
Prowlers were on the loose again early this morning in the east end of Astoria, attempting to enter the Desdemona Club and actually forcing an entrance to the beer parlor next door, where the cash register was rifled of $24.90.
A gusty southeast gale attained a 60-mile-an-hour maximum velocity during the night and whipped up power and telephone line damage as well as one traffic accident here.
The wind reached its maximum force between midnight and 1 a.m., the North Head weather bureau reported, and had moderated greatly by this morning, although a southeast storm warning was still flying.
Local aviation interests are putting up a strong but apparently losing fight to retain radio-range facilities for the Astoria airport in the face of the Civil Aeronautics Board’s desire to pull out the facilities.
The radio range is considered vital to the West Coast Airlines service, which otherwise will be limited by bad weather conditions.
Col. Theron D. Weaver, of the Pacific division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has recommended the deepening of the west channel in Baker Bay to the depth of 10 feet at low tide and also the dredging of a mooring basin for small craft in Ilwaco, Washington.
Snapping her mooring lines in a storm in Crescent City, California, the local drag boat Thelma II, owned by George Amato, is on the beach, endangered by a high tide and a heavy surf.
The heaviest sea ever to smack the pilot schooner Columbia crashed her pull boats and swept over the vessel near buoy No. 6 early in the series of storms that have hit the coast recently.
Outbound with a pilot aboard, the schooner continued on her course and led the incoming freighter into the river where the pilot was transferred.
Forty percent of the cars chugging down the nation’s highways are nothing but “junk on wheels,” Lou Delson said today.
Delson, as executive secretary of the National Auto Wreckers Association, knows a jalopy when he sees one. And these days, he said, he sees too many of them on the highways.
