10 years ago this week — 2014

From an early age, John Clemson began collecting all things related to the world of maritime travel while growing up in Coos Bay.

It was a lifelong passion that filled the closets and spare rooms of his homes over the years.

In 2002, he showed up at the Columbia River Maritime Museum with six hand trucks used a half-century ago by longshoremen. He also brought dozens of posters of shipping vessels that had long been scrapped.

Clemson told the museum he had a lot more that they might find interesting at his Beaverton home.

More and more of Clemson’s finds have arrived over the years. The boxes are piling up, each one with an inventory of what’s inside.

“At this point, due to a lack of time and resources, we’ve had to just process it that way,” said Jeff Smith, head curator.

Smith said the museum wasn’t sure of their significance at first, but soon realized that Clemson’s donations — now at about 1,000 different items — document a specific period of time when United States shipping was at its height in the mid-20th century.

“It’s global in scope, it’s local in significance and it’s comprehensive,” Smith said. “If it had a ship on it, John collected it.”

Thousands have died in the “Graveyard of the Pacific.” The Columbia River Bar has claimed people fishing, sailing and conducting business or leisure on the water. And one globally famed sculptor still wants to memorialize them with some panache.

Stanley Wanlass, a famous bronze sculptor behind several installments in the lower Columbia region, recently offered the city of Astoria Seafarers Memorial, an 18-to-25-foot bronze sculpture yet to be built.

“I have a lot of friends who have died at sea, so I thought I would put together a memorial,” said Wanlass, who taught design, figure and portrait drawing at Clatsop Community College from 1979 to 1988 while running his company, Renaissance International Inc., locally.

The memorial depicts a man with three hands pressed to his chest offering himself to God.

The city of Astoria is one step closer to collecting on the Flavel properties.

Blair Henningsgaard, the city’s attorney, has submitted the paperwork for review by the Clatsop County Sheriff’s Office in order to have the properties auctioned off.

Those properties include the Flavel family home on 15th Street and the two commercial properties on the 900 block of Commercial Street.

50 years ago – 1974

There are 14 treaty tribes in the Northwest granted unprecedented fishing rights by a white man, U.S. District Court Judge George H. Boldt, of Tacoma.

Two members of one of those tribes are believed to have embarked upon a course of action to test the state of Oregon’s jurisdiction of the Columbia River.

Why the Columbia River?

Boldt ruled on Feb. 12 that 14 treaty tribes had been granted in the 1850s “far-reaching fishing privileges” by the U.S. government.

He also acknowledged in his landmark decision that it was the white man, not the Indian, who had broken the fishing treaties dating more than 100 years ago.

If there is one thing that unites Astoria’s large Scandinavian population, it’s a good cup of coffee. But the drink was a little bitter this week as restaurants around town began raising the price to 20 cents per cup.

One particularly disgruntled man grunted, “I might as well go to a tavern and drink beer.”

But restaurant owners say they don’t have much choice. The cost of coffee is going up.

They also say coffee drinkers become lost in the euphoria of the brew and linger too long at tables and booths, preventing customers who want to eat full meals from sitting down.

John Merritt operates a machine that can be informally described as a “sniffer.”

It sniffs the air for natural gas and tells, in parts per billion, how much is floating around.

Merritt’s job is to look for leaks in natural gas lines and he has been seen in Clatsop County during the past two weeks creeping along the streets in a specially-made van sporting some odd-looking attachments.

Health Consultants, Inc., a national company, assigns senior consultant Merritt to find leaks in the Northwest Natural Gas System. It takes him a year to check the whole system. Then he starts over.

Astoria police still are looking for more cases of contaminated canned fish cat food, which they believe someone removed illegally from the Astoria landfill and sold.

Police Capt. John Codd said this morning at least three persons in Astoria and two in Warrenton are believed to have quantities of the fish, which they either bought or were given.

KNAPPA — Dirty water, slimy frogs and pretty flowers don’t normally sit side-by-side in your mind’s eye.

But when they came together at the Knappa Science Fair, it seemed only natural to group them together — particularly when they were all part of award-winning displays.

The fair, held Thursday and Friday in the Knappa High School gym, had everything from antique farm implements to dirty water from Bonneville Dam.

Sophomores Katy Nielsen and Sonia Knudsen traveled over “most of Clatsop County” to collect water samples from 29 different locations, ranging from home tap water to Elk Creek at Cannon Beach.

“You’d be surprised what’s in your water,” Nielsen said.

75 years ago — 1949

SEASIDE — Broadway from Holladay Drive to the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway right of way will be widened and all poles removed, it was decided by the city council Monday night.

This work had been anticipated for several months, but no action has been taken prior to this time.

Four votes were thrown out by the Williamsport district election board in Friday night’s election on the grounds that the voters did not reside within the boundaries of the district, it was disclosed Monday.

All four of the votes thrown out were against the annexation of the Williamsport tract to Astoria. Had they been counted, the annexation would have been beaten 22 to 20, instead of winning 20 to 18.

A huge wave, rolling in from a rough sea without advance warning, upset several clam diggers along Clatsop Beach Sunday afternoon and gave them a thorough soaking.

Several diggers reported being knocked off their feet when the big wave rolled in on them, along the Seaside beach.

No one was injured, but a dozen or so diggers had to drive home in wet clothes.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Truman today asked Congress to establish a Columbia River administration, patterned after the “spectacularly successful” Tennessee Valley Authority.

Specifically, Truman asked Congress for legislation which would weld together virtually all federal activities in the Columbia Valley under a central authority.

“This consolidation will provide not only for a balanced program of constructing dams, irrigation works, power transmission lines and other facilities but also for a workable operating plan for using these facilities simultaneously for flood control, navigation, power generation and transmission, fish protection and other purposes,” Truman said.

Astoria and its vicinity had pulled itself back together today after Wednesday’s earthquake-induced shake up.

A good night’s sleep had calmed shattered nerves, and inspection of buildings and their contents about town was proving that damage was the worst ever experienced here.

Personal injuries were practically nonexistent although some people were treated for shock.

Previous noticeable earthquakes were reported here in 1936, 1942 and 1946, and the quakes seem to have increased in severity with the years.

When residential homes began to shake, dozens of women in them figured a household gadget had run amok.

One woman said, “I was always afraid the washing machine would shake the house down. When the quake came, I was certain it had gotten out of whack and was running loose.”

Another Astoria woman said, “I was positive the furnace had finally blown up.”

This was heard from a third: “I was in the living room. My dishwasher was running. I just knew it had torn itself out and was smashing up the kitchen — and all of my new dishes.”

One mother said, “My boys tinker with radios and I thought one of them had finally crossed the wrong wires, or something.”