DIFFERENT TIME, DIFFERENT PLACE

The past is a different place, different yet familiar.

Maybe too familiar?

Familiar like you remember it now differently than you used to remember?

Here’s how I remember it:

I was a lot like the city I moved to in the early 1980’s, still finding my footing and growing.

At the same time I carried with me parts of the city I’d just moved from, Brooklyn, New York.

Portland was easy compared to Brooklyn, smaller in most ways and working hard to get away from being a stepping stone for people on the move.

For me it was not a stepping stone.

Switch my departure and arrival on the bus around and it would have been a stepping stone.

Leaving Portland for Brooklyn made more sense to the up and coming people.

One is big city, bright lights, the other is a bend in the river with a smaller city and dimmer lights.

Since growing up on the northern bend of Coos Bay I’ve always lived near some kind of bend.

I should have expected it with a Mom who graduated a Bend, Oregon Lava Bear?

 

Just getting to Northwest Portland was a long and winding road with plenty of twists, turns, and bends.

I said goodby to a Jersey girl, a Delaware dream, and an Oklahoma scientist working in a federal food testing lab. (Hey Susan)

I said goodby to a Portland treasure looking for her prince, a welcoming home, and a little dog.

The neighbors I met in the Burgess were a guy rebounding from divorce, career women on the way up, and an old lady on her last stop before assisted living.

It was a mixed crowd in a changing part of town where I was starting out, or starting over.

 

The Younger BoomerPdx In A Different Time 

If this alley was in any other city I’d never go down it.

But since NW Portland was my neighborhood and I had goals of becoming an eccentric local as I grew older, I went in to discover a garage with a basketball hoop.

Call it a perfect city court, a hidden gem. I’d round up the local hoopers and shoot around.

The sign for bicycles on the left is for the store my ‘real’ future began in.

 

Mom: You ride a bicycle and don’t have a car. What kid of woman do you think you’ll attract on a bike.

Me: A biker chick, Ma.

Mom: I’m sure you will.

Me: That’s the one for me.

 

After I started dating a woman who worked in the neighborhood I told her that story. We laughed.

Then she bought a new bike from that store and things changed.

Since she doesn’t like her picture taken, that’s her forehead in the top picture thirty years later.

It’s from a visit we took with our adult kids to review the journey we’ve been on.

 

Me: That’s the apartment building where we met. We shot baskets back there. 

Kids: We know.

 

Since it’s been a while I can see another tour this summer.

 

Me: That’s the apartment building where we met. We shot baskets back there. 

Kids: We know.

 

It makes for an exciting day for all of us. Mostly me.

 

Me: That used to be a grocery store called Payolas before it became a Starbucks. The laundromat and a bar called Val’s is where those apartments are. The apartments next to the Burgess used to be a parking lot.

 

The Mean Streets Of Portland 

When it’s the right city you can step out the front door and take a walk around the block, maybe two blocks, and not look out of place, weird, like ‘why are they walking?’

Walkable flat sidewalks, slow traffic, what’s not to like?

You can actually get lost in thought because you’re not worried about getting run down every second.

One block leads to another and before you know you’re having a better time than expected which leads to:

Summer training goals.

This coming summer I plan on taking my hearty companions to Lower Macleay Park for a walk up Wildwood Trail, all the way up to Pittock Mansion and down to NW 23rd for a bar hop back to the cars under the Thurman Street Bridge.

It’s a good walk up Balch Creek that climbs to switchbacks, crosses Cornell and keeps going higher until you walk out of the woods at the top of the Pittock parking lot.

After that it’s coasting down to a few cold ones between NW Couch and NW Upshur.

Maybe add a stop on Lovejoy for a refresher.

 

Me: That’s the apartment building where we met. We shot baskets back there. That used to be a grocery store called Payolas before it became a Starbucks. The laundromat and a bar called Val’s is where those apartments are. The apartments next to the Burgess used to be a parking lot.

 

That’ll be a different time.

Sound fun so far?

Life award worthy?