10 years ago this week — 2013

Six-year-old Chloe Fletcher clutched her new puzzle outside the Liberty Theatre Saturday, obviously wanting to open it. Spying Santa, she gave the puzzle back to her mother and raced over to the merry elf.

“Yeah, it’s kind of an early Christmas present,” said Angie Fletcher, of Portland. “We love Purple Cow Toys and since it was right across the street from the Sparkles movie, we couldn’t resist.”

With Chloe contentedly ensconced on Santa’s lap, surrounded by Mrs. Claus and a Christmas elf, she began to tell him what she wanted for the holiday, while her father, Carey, took pictures and Angie put cans of food in the barrel, their ticket to see “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” in the Liberty Theatre.

The holiday movie, Santa and his family, along with caroling, the downtown lighting ceremony and discounted prices for downtown businesses are were all part of the Downtown Astoria Sparkles Celebration Saturday afternoon.

Clatsop Community Action Regional Food Bank didn’t get many turkey donations for Thanksgiving.

But by the end of this year, they will have received more than 350,000 pounds of fish, wild game and fresh produce, all part of the burgeoning Food Bank Fresh program, said food bank director Marlin Martin.

“Within two years, over 50% of the food we distribute from this food bank will be fresh,” said Martin.

LONG BEACH, Wash. — Longtime Long Beach Peninsula chef Jimella Lucas has died.

Lucas and her partner, Nanci Main, became nationally known chefs by using the peninsula’s abundance of fresh seafood and produce.

Their restaurants drew perennial visitors to the region and helped create a hub for Pacific Northwest cuisine.

In 1981, Lucas and Main bought The Ark Restaurant in Nahcotta, Washington. They served freshly prepared salmon, sturgeon, scallops and oysters, used cranberries from the region and put wild porcini and chanterelle mushrooms to good use. The restaurant also had a garden that provided vegetables.

Their attention to local and organic menu options made them early pioneers for what would become commonplace at restaurants across the Northwest.

Across Clatsop County, schools are closing, cars are slipping and traffic is backing up for the season’s first snowfall. But nothing serious has been reported.

50 years ago — 1973

HAMMOND — The Northgate may be home for Christmas and it seems like only yesterday when the big ship left.

The reason was an emergency closure at noon Thursday of the king crab fishery in Alaska. Prime closure areas affected were the Adak Island area and the western chain of the Aleutian Islands.

The Northgate belongs to the Point Adams Packing Co. and is the largest floating cannery in the world that exclusively processes king crab.

The vessel measures 338 feet in length, has a 50-foot beam and grosses 4,011 tons. When built in 1945, it was used near the end of World War II as a U.S. Navy refrigerator ship in the Pacific.

There is a gasoline shortage at city of Astoria shops, but it isn’t part of the national gas crisis.

Somewhere along the line, 271 gallons of gas have been lost, stolen or leaked away from a new 2,000-gallon gas tank, city engineer Bruce Clausen said.

The new tank was tested for leaks before it was installed last summer, Clausen said, so he doesn’t think it leaked away.

But city records show that 271 gallons that went into the tank from a supplier’s truck never came out through the gas pumps.

After delays caused by strikes, design changes and arguments over street repaving specifications, another snag — shortage of diesel fuel — threatens to stop or seriously impair the Astoria sewer construction project.

Hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel are required daily to operate trucks and heavy machinery used in the sewer construction project, but contractors are having difficulty getting enough.

The Astoria-Warrrenton Area Chamber of Commerce will consider next Wednesday taking steps to oppose the use of triple truck rigs on U.S. Highway 26 and U.S. Highway 30.

Chamber Manager Roy Hammond said he personally is alarmed at the prospect of the large, long truck rigs traveling on those two highways, particularly at night.

Hammond said he is sympathetic with trying to conserve fuel during the energy crisis, which is why triple rigs are being used, but he said safety should be given top priority.

Highway 30, especially just east of Astoria, is a treacherous road that is narrow and marked by a number of sharp curves, he said.

Triple rigs, if allowed to travel on Highway 30, also would wind up in downtown Astoria, further snarling traffic that already is congested because of sewer construction, Hammond added.

Astoria will apply for $7,500 in federal funding to repair the Astoria Column, the city council decided Monday night.

The city doesn’t have an estimate on what repairs to the cracked column walls will cost, but the council decided to ask for more than the $3,000 recommended by the city Parks and Recreation Board.

The operator of Astoria’s city bus system would like the city to decide quickly who will operate the city-financed bus system starting next July.

Jack Davies, of Pacific Coach Lines, wants to know if he will be the successful bidder before a city interim subsidy runs out in March.

The Astoria City Council has indicated it won’t extend the subsidy for April, May and June because there won’t be any money left in the budget.

Davies is worried about how he is going to bridge that three-month unsubsidized gap — especially if there is no assurance he will be running the bus system come July.

75 years ago — 1948

The delicious aroma of lutefisk reached the nostrils of Oscar Olson as he walked by the Modern Cash grocery on Commercial Street at twilight Tuesday.

A clerk was removing displays from the storefront in preparation for closing for the night.

Olson’s hand went in the lutefisk barrel, grasping two of the wet fish under his coat he headed down the street.

But Olson got no lutefisk.

He was seen by the store’s proprietor, Dick Aho, who gave chase and apprehended Olson and the stolen lutefisk in front of a store on Commercial Street.

City police were summoned. Olson was taken to the city jail and booked on a charge of petty larceny.

The lutefisk was saved by the store’s proprietor to become Exhibit A in the case against Olson.

Last month was one of the coldest Novembers in Astoria weather history, with temperatures averaging around 5 degrees Fahrenheit below what is usual here in that month, official weather records show.

The month also showed an excess of rainfall over the average.

November’s mean maximum temperature was 48.5 degrees, 4.8 below average, and the mean minimum was 36.3 degrees and even 6 degrees below average.

Precipitation totaled 12.94 inches, an excess of 2.10 inches above average.

The month’s highest temperature was 53 degrees on the second, while the lowest was 30 degrees on the sixth.

There were 20 days with measurable rain, equaling the average.

SEASIDE — The local Chamber of Commerce has signed a contract for the exclusive franchise of the Miss Oregon pageant, which will be held here in June 1949.

The Catalina Bathing Suits and Nash Motors, sponsors of the Miss America contest in Atlantic City, signed with the chamber.

Thirty-seven Clatsop County 4-H clubs were presented certificates of achievement for 1948, the county extension office announced today.

To earn certificates, all club members enrolled must complete the required work and submit their 4-H record books to the extension office, the office said.

PORTLAND — Added importance was given to Oregon’s 1949 March of Dimes today by a state board of health prediction that the total number of polio cases in the state in 1948 will be 100% above the figure for the previous year.

Clatsop County awoke today in a coating of ice and snow that turned highways and streets into treacherous skating rinks and piled up cars in a series of minor traffic accidents.

A seagull often stands on the cupola of the old Flavel home, where a heavy iron weathervane was once a landmark for ships from all the ports of the world.

The seagull faces toward the bar, looking out to sea from a viewpoint that no human being now uses.

The Flavel home, once a showplace of the West Coast, is closed to the public, and unless funds are raised to make emergency repairs soon, the mansion may get in irreparable condition, Walter Johnson, president of the Clatsop County Historical Society, said in the course of an inspection tour of the structure this week.