10 years ago this week — 2014

HAMMOND — The sound of drums and cannon fire bellowed from Fort Stevens State Park Saturday afternoon as Union and Confederate troops battled in a Civil War reenactment.

Smoke from the cannons hung in the air after heavy morning rain offered a rude awakening for the reenactors who stayed overnight in encampments.

Despite the rainy weather Saturday, many participants said the soggy weather added an authentic nature to the annual event, hosted by the nonprofit Northwest Civil War Council.

SEASIDE — A group of children descended upon Sunset Pool in a flurry of activity, transforming the facility into the site of a lighthearted competition featuring the kids’ boats, which covered a range of various shapes, sizes and colors, but all had one important thing in common: They were made of cardboard.

About 15 kids participated in the Cardboard Boat Regatta, organized by the Sunset Empire Park & Recreation District.

WARRENTON — The Oregon Air and Army National Guard completed a weeklong training exercise and evaluation on the new rubble pile installed at Camp Rilea Thursday, testing each unit’s skills in search and rescue, extraction, triage and decontamination.

Known as Vigilant Guard, the training and evaluation happens every other year in various places around the country. Two years ago, some of the units here joined Hawaii guardsmen in Alaska for training.

When the rubble pile was certified by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Aug. 12, plans were underway to hold the major exercise at Camp Rilea. The pile includes concrete blocks, shipping containers, a rappelling anchor at the top of a tower, old cars and subterranean tunnels.

The unit being trained is known as the CERFP, which stands for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive Enhanced Response Force Package. The men and women in this group can respond to anything from a devastating flood to a terrorist attack.

Local and state law enforcement agencies have acquired a wide variety of surplus military gear through the federal Defense Logistics Agency’s “1033 program.”

This is the same program that supplied much of the gear used by heavily armed and armored police who faced off with the citizens in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson this month.

Locally, the Raymond, South Bend, Cosmopolis and Astoria police departments have all submitted requests to the 1033 program, which transfers used military supplies to police agencies at little or no cost.

The Grays Harbor, Wahkiakum, Cowlitz, Lewis and Pacific County sheriff’s offices have all participated, too.

So have the Washington State Patrol, Department of Human Services, the Department of Fish and Wildlife and other state law enforcement agencies, according to MuckRock, a nonprofit organization that files Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of the public.

50 years ago — 1974

Port of Astoria commissioners unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday setting in motion the machinery to issue $35 million worth of tax-free revenue bonds to pay for pollution control equipment at Crown Zellerbach’s pulp mill at Wauna.

If final approval is given to the measure at a later date, it will be the first time the Port of Astoria has issued revenue bonds. However, Port officials are considering issuing revenue bonds for other Port expansion projects.

Revenue bonds, unlike general obligation bonds, are paid by the private corporation which benefits from them, not by taxpayers. Expenses incurred in issuing the bonds also are borne by the private corporation involved.

Have you noticed a funny-looking symbol that looks like a bunch of lines on the food packages you buy at the supermarket? If you have, don’t despair. It is part of a new computerized checkout system that offers several potential benefits to the consumer.

Those funny-looking lines comprise the symbol of the new Universal Product Code, which aims to speed up supermarket checkouts while giving greater efficiency and economy to both the consumer and the food industry.

The symbol itself has a barcode configuration that can be scanned by a machine. It also has a numerical version below the bars which enables a checker to keypunch an item into the system if for some reason the symbol becomes electronically unreadable.

Lower Columbia River salmon fishing adds up to a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

The salmon fishery in this state is the largest on the West Coast. It is Oregon’s premier coastal tourist attraction in the summer months. And it is the commercial industry’s most prolific, gillnet and troll combined.

There’s an untapped marine industry on the Oregon Coast, perhaps not as big on the North Coast, but one that beckons to the tourist and local economy.

At least this is the opinion of Oregon legislator Vern Cook, D- Troutdale, who plans to introduce legislation at the 1975 state legislative session on behalf of the mussel industry.

Cook told The Daily Astorian:

“ … I think we’re beginning to make some headway towards making it possible for the maximum recreational utilization of the lowly mussel … I think there is also a real business factor being neglected by our attitude toward mussels, especially as it relates to the encouragement of recreational activity at the Oregon Coast … “

CLATSOP PLAINS — About 6,000 workers have been affected by cutbacks in the plywood industry of southwest Washington and Northwest Oregon, according to an economist for the Oregon Department of Economic Development.

It will take at least nine months for any change for the better to occur in the situation at nine closed mills, including one at Garibaldi, and 29 whose operations have been curtailed.

At least nine months, perhaps longer.

75 years ago — 1949

SADDLE MOUNTAIN — The highest man in Clatsop County is a Yorkshire Englishman.

Stephen Kronenberg, perched as a fire lookout atop the 3,283-foot peak of Saddle Mountain, is not only the highest man in this part of the county, he’s probably the talkingest young man.

When he gets down to the camp at the foot of the mountain, he does a lot of talking. When sightseers and hikers arrive over the last 300-foot stretch of cabled trail to the peak, they also get a lot of jawing from 21-year-old Stephen.

It’s this talking that surprises you when you first reach the top of the peak after two hours of climbing and puffing.

The broad Yorkshire accents of England seem at once “a bit odd, you know,” up here in the Clatsop County clouds.

Salmon derby fishing Thursday on the Columbia River was the best since the derby began Tuesday, and some observers declared it was the best day’s fishing in several years of the annual Astoria salmon derby.

Boat after boat returned from the fishing grounds with the fine catches. Many a fishing party returned with the limit catch of two fish per angler.

The best fishing was reported in the lower river, below Desdemona Light, and fishermen believed a new element of the fall salmon run might be entering the river.

An estimated 5,000 boatloads of salmon derby fishermen, perhaps the greatest fleet out for any single day in derby history, were scattered along the Columbia estuary all day Sunday.

An equally great fleet was expected to be out today, the final day for derby fishing.

Forest Service firefighters were out in force today checking on reports of fires in Clatsop County forests reported following a lightning storm that hit most of the county Sunday night.

Jewell Guard Station officials said today that reports indicated several fires in Clatsop County forestlands had been started by lightning, but that the location of only one had been reported this morning.

Many a tall tale will come out of the Astoria salmon derby to be carried back to distant localities by word of mouth, but Jay Ogden, of Carlsbad, New Mexico, has one of the “flattest” we’ve heard — and he’s shipping it home to prove it.

Ogden, who came out for last year’s derby, caught two fine salmon in last year’s derby, was snapped by photographers at the weighing-in station.

His picture appeared on several sport promotional folders, but he still had trouble convincing his hometown that he really caught two such fish.

So this year when Ogden arrived with his reel in a beat-up cracker box, and his folding money inside his socks (with his foot in it, too), he was determined to back his catch with evidence.

After a day’s fishing, he came back proudly displaying two salmon, “so big the bottom of the boat passed over them and flattened them out.”

They were big enough, all right, but only about three-fourths of an inch thick, with two great bulging eyes on one side of their heads, “proof of the horrible ordeal they went through.”

So Ogden shipped them home by plane to the boys.

Properly identified, Ogden is a past exalted ruler of the Elks and “salmon” are flounders. But we won’t tell the boys back home that.