10 years ago this week — 2013

Recipe for a delicious weekend: equal parts wine, seafood, art, crafts, music and friendship. Add a dash of curiosity and a pinch of adventure. Mix together with plenty of sunshine and serve.

The 2013 Crab, Seafood & Wine Festival, held at the Clatsop County Fair & Expo Center, was one of the busiest ever, but no one seemed to mind. The 200 vendors were too busy giving joy and making money, while the nearly 20,000 guests were too busy tasting, sipping, sampling and generally giving their five senses a workout.

When 72-year-old Katuo Saito of Rikuzentakata, in the Japanese prefecture of Iwate, moored his boat on land in March 2011, he could have never guessed that he would be inadvertently donating it to the Columbia River Maritime Museum two years later and more than 4,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean.

Nonetheless, the museum is preparing a Japanese tsunami exhibit around Saito’s 20-foot blue and white fishing boat, named Sai-sho-maru. After being ripped away by the Japanese tsunami of 2011, the boat floated upright from the island on Honshu to the Long Beach Peninsula.

Walmart is not coming to Warrenton.

At least not anytime soon, after the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals sided with Clatsop Residents Against Walmart at the appeal against the store’s 17-acre construction on U.S. Highway 101 near Costco.

The Warrenton Planning Commission approved the applications for site design, property line adjustments and variances back in November. The application included intent to build on a wetland and the variance dealt with fewer bicycle racks than required by city code.

But the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals has remanded those applications, issuing the final opinion last week, which sends Walmart and its developers back to the Planning Commission.

WARRENTON — Along Kalmia Avenue, on the western edge of Warrenton in the Juniper Ridge development, several houses pop up out of the sandy soil in various stages of bloom.

In the last three weeks, several have started. Some have foundations, others have floors to stand on, some have frames standing and others are receiving the finishing touches inside.

“We’re building homes for Clatsop County’s working families,” said Cary Johnson, owner of C.T. Johnson and one of about five general contractors working in Juniper Ridge.

50 years ago — 1973

KNAPPA — Restaurant survival, old-time films, homemade musical instruments and campfire breakfasts aren’t courses in the normal high school curriculum.

But they are among the many mini-course subjects being taught at Knappa High School this week.

This is the second year Knappa High School students and teachers have set aside a time in the spring for mini-courses to introduce students to different subject areas than their regular classes.

In Leon Vasey’s homemade musical instruments class, students created original musical instruments from bits and pieces of metals, plastics and paper. Vasey also taught practical photography.

Meanwhile, students were taking other bits and pieces and welding them into artwork in Dennis Burley’s sculpture welding class. Completed works include a spark plug man, metal lobsters, bugs and a swag candle lamp.

Some of the boys and girls attending guest teacher and beautician Donna Kelly’s personal grooming class were given haircuts, as well as learned grooming tips.

Students learned to cook pancakes on an open fire in Dean Kelly’s campfire breakfast class held on the bonfire field.

Boys attended J. Piro’s home economics class, and girls learned automotive mechanics from Archie George.

Social studies teacher Carl Erickson conducted classes on “Our Historic Past” featuring slides of Clatskanie in the 1890s. Speakers included Mrs. Vlastelicia, on “Old Knappa”; Mr. and Mrs. Joel Sarke, on “Memories of Old Brownsmead;” and Walter Stacey, on “Pioneer Old Svensen.”

Other courses included fencing, trampoline, old films, philately, the study of old stamps and various crafts including batik, the art form of making a picture on cloth with wax and dye.

ILWACO, Wash. — A telephoned bomb scare Tuesday afternoon prompted officials to evacuate Ilwaco High School. However, a search failed to uncover any bomb.

Police Chief Norman Williams speculated that the call came in from a pay phone.

CANNON BEACH — The controversial Breakers Point condominium project will be back in Clatsop County Circuit Court soon with another set of antagonists.

Thomas T. Georges, a Breakers Point property owner, is asking the court to stop the city of Cannon Beach from issuing a building permit for the proposed project.

Georges alleges in his suit City Council actions in 1971 were illegal that granted a conditional use and vacating portions of two streets at the request of the developers.

The product of an 18-year-old diligent hobby was shown off this week when retired Seattle banking executive John Henry presented his collection of pictorial art of the Pacific Northwest Maritime Explorers from 1774 to 1794.

Henry’s presentation approached the history of the two decades of intense discovery in Northwest waters through contemporary art of the time.

75 years ago — 1948

Fishermen found salmon in the upper drifts of the Columbia Friday on the opening day of the 1948 season on the river.

In Astoria, the average delivery was less than 200 pounds. One cannery reported 450 pounds as the “high boat” delivery at its cannery and 350 pounds the high delivery at an Uppertown station.

CANNON BEACH — Four storm-tossed sports fishermen who abandoned their 22-foot dory and isolated themselves on the craggy side of Haystack Rock off the beach here were rescued during a howling sou’wester Sunday night by Coast Guardsmen aboard a 36-foot lifeboat.

Government fish experts think it would be quite possible someday for even amateur fishermen to catch Pacific salmon in the Atlantic.

About all it would take to create such a situation, they say, is at least 3 million Pacific salmon eggs and three years.

The trick is to transplant enough Pacific salmon eggs in New England hatcheries, and, when the little salmon are born, set them free in Maine rivers.

But it would take a lot of eggs to get a good salmon run started because at least 95% of the young fish die or get lost before they are old enough to start a new generation.

WARRENTON — A Japanese mine, hidden in a netload of fish, crashed down with a loud thud onto the deck of the drag boat Panda at sea Friday and was unloaded — along with 10,000 pounds of bottom fish — onto the San Juan cannery dock here Saturday.

“Yes, we were scared,” said George Otradovic, the Panda’s skipper. “But we weren’t going to disturb the mine further by trying to dump it overboard.”

The mine is believed to be one sunk by gunfire from the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Balsam about a month ago. The mine’s casing was perforated as if by rifle bullets.

Coast Guardsmen from the Point Adams station inspected the mine and found that its safety mechanism had slipped on. It may have been the jar of hitting the Panda’s deck that rendered the mine safe, they said, although the same jar could have exploded the mine.

Agreements raising the basic wage scale of cannery workers from $1.10 to $1.18 an hour and establishing a year-round, 44-hour work week were reached as negotiations ended between cannery workers and packers, Henry Niemela, secretary of the Columbia River Fishermen’s Protective Union, announced Monday.

An unseasonal May wind storm with gusts up to 55 miles per hour struck the lower Columbia region Sunday night and Monday morning, but so far as could be learned Monday it caused no damage, except for two drag boats torn from their moorings at Warrenton.

No shipping crossed the Columbia River Bar Sunday night or Monday morning.

April’s official weather records here prove that those Astorians who think we have been having a cold, wet spring are correct.

Temperatures were well under April average and rainfall was above average.