OREGON COVER-UP REVEALED IN GEORGE ROGERS PARK

The Oregon cover-up starts with scale for the new folks in town looking to show how backward we are, and how desperately we need help.

Leader: We have our marching orders and we are assembled here to learn more about the problems these people get wrong. It would behoove you to pay attention.

The lesson of the day was ‘What Happened To The Pittsburgh Of The West?

Leader: As you see, the founders of early Oregon steel made the mistake of building their ore melting furnace too small. In fact it’s no bigger than a picnic table. I have it on scientific authority that people were smaller back then, but not that small.

By the time they realized their mistake it was too late. but they still built a larger model.

 

 

This chimney is bigger than a picnic table.

How much bigger?

I stand 6’3″ in shoes, which is about three stone blocks high including the sliver of stone at the base.

 

The Big Furnace

Twenty-two stones high, give or take, makes this forty-four feet tall based on each stone being two feet tall with me at six feet.

For a closer look:

 

 

It’s harder to understand history if you can’t read, or won’t read; if you can’t get out, or won’t.

You might be surprised, you might be disappointed.

Or both.

 

 

There’s a window?

 

 

Let’s go inside.

 

 

There’s the window on the left side.

 

 

For the new people: This is not an enemy within strong hold.

You don’t need to protect it.

 

 

The only insurgent I saw was running sweaty, breathless, laps on the track.

 

 

If you do get a moment’s break from the Portland war, take a little R & R by following Macadam Ave south.

Be careful on the Sellwood Bridge ramp because it’s ass-backward.

Past that, stay on Hwy43 until it turns into State St., then take a left on Ladd.

If you miss Ladd St. you’ll be going over a bridge and up the road a ways before you can turn around safely.

 

Area History Part Two

This is a narrow section of the mighty Willamette, not as mighty as the Mighty Columbia, but still mighty.

Shown here are waterfront homes, not drug cartel lairs with cocaine chutes running down to fast boats asking to be bombed on the open water based on a hunch.

You safely relax, so go ahead and lay your burden down and dip your toe in the water.

Prior warning, your feet will get wet. This water is wetter than most water because it rains here so much.

And speaking of rain, the locals are preparing their bunkers by clearing gutters, blowing debris off their streets, and getting ready for the wet season.

Like the river, the rain here is wet.

A lot of people say it’s wetter rain than anywhere, wetter than any rain in the history of precipitation.

 

 

So plan your side trip and run, don’t walk, to the Pittsburgh Of The West.

That it didn’t turn into Pittsburgh won’t matter.

Oregon didn’t become the Detroit Of The West either, or Paris.

Not that we have an identity problem, but . . .

This is also not Little Beirut, not the Saigon U.S. Embassy in ’75, or Kabul at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in 2021.

Most people couldn’t point to Oregon if they had a map tattooed on the back of their hand, and we like it like that.

For a dolled up elected official who gets briefed by their make-up artists to declare emergencies here, there, and everywhere seems forced.

Leader: You can see by the destruction and disarray left behind by what amounts to be illegal pirates that some law has been broken. You are here to fix broken laws showing no remorse to those in the way of you doing your duty until we learn which laws have been broken.

 

PS: The great Oregon cover-up has been centuries in the making. Portland could have been Pittsburgh or Detroit, someplace more interesting, but it has to settle for being Portland, a specific target for invisible decadence and lawlessness.

 

PSS: Other Oregon cities had dreams. Coos Bay could have been San Francisco. Astoria could have been Seattle. We all have regrets. Army National Guard could have opted for Regular Army status instead of weekend warriors trying to prove they’re equal to or better than their Regular Army counterparts.

 

“Watch me run over the old guy with walker this time.”