HILLSDALE

1964 WILSON GRADUATE REMEMBERS HILLSDALE
by Mike Maurice, Wilson Class of 64'
Tigard, Oregon 97224
http://www.yachtsdelivered.com

I remember,

1949 - Grandma and Grandpa Lynch taking the cash and popping it in the register; each time the bell would ring in the round vegetable stand that they ran a couple of hundred feet west of what became the modern Lynch's Market. Jimmy and his wife gradually were taking over the work load, until one day Grandpa was gone; I didn't understand.

1949 - The Mexican restaurant across the street was a feed store at that time; with a high loading dock where a truck or pickup could back up and load straight across into the truck bed. There were endless sacks of feed grains, each with it's own particular aroma.

1949 - The city limits ended at SW 22nd, and beyond that lay one dairy farm after another; they were all gone shortly after the modern version of Hillsdale was built.

1950 - Louie Kyllo built a number of the homes on Sunset Drive. In 1960, he moved his family to Kelso/Longview, bought the Broadway Hotel and remodeled it from top to bottom.

1950 - Mike Narver kept his collection of owls, hawks and eagles in a small building at the corner of Sunset Drive and Sunset Boulevard; and he hasn't changed one bit.

1952 - There was an old man, who lived in the hollow and raised pumpkins in his garden patch, just south of the Raz bus barn. Just before Halloween everybody in the area would swarm to his place and carry off the pumpkins. I suspect he smiled long after we were gone. I think his name was Jack. I imagined that he grew bean stocks, but that was just a fantasy. After 30 years or so, he moved to Hawaii, I heard. I bet he grew those bean stocks over there...

1955 - Tony's Shoe Repair shop was in the next building east of the feed store. It was a fascinating place of leather smells, rosin and polish. What Tony did with all those neat machines was beyond the imagination of a child.

1955 - Vandenburg's Shoes was another of those mysterious places where the smell of leather mixed with show polish and cardboard. Somehow the right size would appear out of nowhere and make a perfect fit. So... maybe it took a multitude of tries!

1955 - Donuts were 5 cents and that was REAL money. But, the name of the bakery has now escaped the shadow of my mind. Maybe the shadow is getting shorter! Five times five was not near enough to buy all the aroma at the bakery.

1960 - Mr. Junkie (I don't think that is the right spelling) ran the only soda fountain, in his pharmacy, until it too became old fashioned and was removed. I recall that he regretted doing that, to his dying day.

Glen Woodyard and Scotty Semler both died in accidents before my 13th birthday. Johnny Mannan died in another one the year we got out of high school.

They are all gone now, only the memory remains and the list is growing. I had an old friend who once told me that if you lived long enough, everyone you ever knew would be gone. He was in his late 80's and would have known. I asked what the fix was, and he said you had to keep making friends.

The trouble with life is that the people you care about, you can't keep alive, and the ones you don't, you can't hardly get rid of. If all that seems to add up to an odd number, it's about as far as I can enumerate with only ten fingers and a short shadow.

Gary Bisacio's mother is still baking the same cookies, in the same house. You would think 60 years would be enough, the bakery still hasn't put her out of business.