10 years ago this week — 2013

If there isn’t rain, blustering wind and the Columbia River is calm, It’s hard to get a sense of what it was like for the band of explorers camping at Dismal Nitch more than 200 years ago.

Luckily, as the first words of Capt. William Clark’s journal entry on Nov. 10, 1805, were read Friday, some rain began to fall as a handful of annual revelers were there to make the historically important anniversary.

The location was not an ideal place to be for Capt. Meriwether Lewis, Clark and the more than 30 other members of their expedition. The rain wouldn’t let up and the river was too rough for them to find a better campsite or allow them to complete their journey to the Pacific Ocean.

The skies were gray and the drizzling rain was chilling, but the smile on Suenn Ho’s face was enough to warm all of Astoria.

The designer of the Garden of Surging Waves was happy to show off her project Friday afternoon. Visiting architectural students from China appeared delighted with both the design and the fact that Astoria was commemorating its Chinese ancestors.

“It is very impressive,” said Yang Kai, of Shanghai, China, one of the students, who visited Astoria on a break from an exchange program with the University of Oregon.

CANNON BEACH — Two men found themselves stranded on an outcropping just north of Hug Point on Sunday.

When Cannon Beach Fire and Rescue arrived on the scene, they knew immediately that they would need to call in the U.S. Coast Guard, according to Fire and Rescue Lt. Matt Gardner.

“They said they were fishing, they waited to too long, the tide came in and trapped them out where they were,” he said. “We determined they were in quite a bit of trouble because of the weather, the conditions and their location on the cliffs.”

Over a two-hour period, the Coast Guard performed an airlift rescue. Both men were deposited safely onto the shore.

Team Depot, an employee volunteer group from Home Depot, came to Astoria High School Thursday to renovate its greenhouse. As a collaborative project, named Fresh Starts, between Astoria High School, Home Depot and the Clatsop County Master Gardener Association, each group contributed a portion of the expense for materials.

The greenhouse’s plywood shelves and tables had become a hazard for students working in the area and would not hold the many plants that needed to be in store.

Team Depot, led by Capt. Lee Dohaniuk, added wall-to-wall shelving with three to four shelves on each unit. They built a large workstation table for students to have space when learning gardening techniques.

50 years ago — 1973

Some of the Astor Elementary School kids must have looked a bit odd as they got on the bus to go to school Tuesday.

There were Pilgrims with potatoes and Puritans toting turnips. A few of the kiddies carried onions. And then there were some even younger students, also decked out for Thanksgiving, who held apples.

The kids with the vegetables were third graders, bringing the ingredients for a savory stew. The little ones with apples were first graders, set to whip up a big pot of Thanksgiving applesauce.

Other third graders stirred whipping cream until it turned to butter, while the remainder made cornbread.

There’s nothing like something you concocted yourself, and the point wasn’t lost on the Astor students. Their teachers had hardly started digging in on the food when the kids began clamoring for seconds.

If you are a commercial fisherman tied up in a price dispute, what do you do with that extra time on your hands?

Wayne Viuhkola, an Astoria bottom fisherman, has had time on his hands since the middle of September. He’s been making like a carpenter part of the time, puttering about his trawl boat and mending nets.

Viuhkola and boat owners like him who make up the Astoria trawl fleet have been idled since the middle of September because of a price dispute with their buyers.

“The weather hasn’t been favorable to fish in this month, but for September and October would have been good months,” Viuhkola said wistfully. He knew he could have made bottom fish money then had the strike settled.

“But, I don’t think we are too far apart, it’s mostly down to technicalities now,” Viuhkola said Friday afternoon when he was puttering about on his trawler, the New Mexico, at its East End Basin moorage in Astoria.

“Dragging is reasonably steady work because of the market conditions, but his type of fishing is hard on men, boats and equipment. We don’t have the glamour of the salmon fishing or the hot season like they had this fall,” Viuhkola pointed out.

No effort will be made to salvage the jet fighter which crashed into the Columbia River Tuesday morning, according to a U.S. Navy spokesman in Seattle.

The plane probably isn’t there.

CPO James McDonough, of the 13th Navy District, said Friday the Navy thinks the plane disintegrated when it hit the water and most of the parts were washed away from the crash scene.

It all started early Saturday morning at Peg and John Christie’s place in Walluski.

A trailer load of apples, 55 gallons of fresh-pressed cider and seven hours later, members of the American Field Service club could go home, stained black hands and all, their outdoor fundraising activity a success.

The cider itself was a success. Just ask the apple washers and cider press operators how many times they interrupted their chores for a refreshing nip.

It’s said that learning to operate an old-fashioned, manual fruit press was a real education for Koichi “Joe” Okamoto, a Japanese exchange student at Astoria High School this year.

75 years ago — 1948

Storms hit the Oregon Coast over the weekend, kept storm warnings flying today, tied up a tanker in the river for 30 hours, and sent the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Balsam through heavy seas to the assistance of a disabled tug and its tow.

The tug was the 125-foot Sea Fox. It called for assistance Sunday night after its towing engines broke down while towing a C-2 cargo vessel with 20 men reported aboard.

Coast Guardsmen at Point Adams reported Monday morning that the Balsam was standing by but was not attempting to tow the Navy craft. Coast Guardsmen said another tug was on its way to take over the Sea Fox’s tow.

WARRENTON – Citizens of this area are counting up damage caused by storms that swept the town during the past four days.

Most of the damage was inflicted Monday night by falling trees.

A large hemlock tree, 3 1/2 feet in diameter, fell and almost completely wrecked a 20-by-15-foot barn on the F.F. Telenga property south of Alder Creek Bridge. There was no stock in the building at the time it was struck.

Eleven men were taken from the tug Neptune by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Balsam today in an operation made extremely hazardous by heavy seas.

The Neptune was rammed in attempting to take over the tow of a C-2 cargo vessel from the tug Sea Fox. The 8000-ton cargo vessel was reported to have broken loose from all towing vessels and was drifting somewhere off the mouth of the Columbia River with 20 men aboard.

Barton Pearson, one of the 11 men removed from the Neptune, was reported to have suffered a heart attack. According to reports, crewmen of the Balsam had been unable to revive him by 12:30 p.m.

Action on the proposal to deepen the Columbia River Bar to 48 feet seems likely to be postponed pending completion of a survey by U.S. Army engineers.

The survey by the engineers is scheduled for next summer, Col. O.E. Walsh, district engineer, had advised U.S. Sen. Guy Cordon.

The Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway put a new diesel-electric locomotive to work Friday, hauling the Portland-Astoria-Seaside passenger train over a line improved by more than $1 million worth of work during the summer and fall.

The new, streamlined, black-and-green, yellow-streaked No. 802 rolled in Friday at noon, hauling the noon passenger train. It continued on to Seaside over the newly-rehabilitated Youngs River Bridge. It returned to Portland in the afternoon.

Efforts to right an overturned floating pile driver belonging to the Palmberg Construction Co., of Astoria, were continuing at Port docks today.

The $12,000 pile driver was counted to be practically a total loss and it was believed only the barge part of the equipment could be saved.

Ten weary, red-eyed survivors from the sunken tug Neptune arrived in Astoria Wednesday night aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Balsam. They walked off the Balsam empty-handed. They’d lost everything except the clothes they were wearing.