10 years ago this week — 2014

Anke Röllinghoff is an English, politics and history teacher from Theodor-Heuss-Realschule in Walldorf, Germany. She’s at once intrigued and disturbed by the preponderance of technology at Astoria High School.

“The overuse of cellphones here is very disturbing,” said Röllinghoff. “I wouldn’t allow it.”

Röllinghoff got her chance to observe the high school while leading a group of 23 exchange students from Walldorf, Astoria’s sister city for the past 51 years. The group started its U.S. tour in Los Angeles, visited Astoria last week, left Friday for Portland and is currently touring around New York City.

One is 16 years removed from active duty life in the U.S. Navy; another is a U.S. Coast Guard air crewman of 27 years, forced into medical retirement because of two rebuilt shoulders; a third is a three-tour veteran of the Iraq war, 90% disabled from degenerative arthritis in his spine.

Over the past 10 years, Clatsop Community College has averaged 480 veteran students a year, from full-time majors to weekend warriors.

They come from every branch of the military, both active and inactive in their duties, from those still enlisted to ones decades away from military life. Regardless of their backgrounds or future goals, the college works to make them all successful students. The college was recently named to Victory Media’s 2014 list of Military Friendly Schools.

It’s not going to fix underlying issues between pedestrians and cars, but the city of Astoria and Oregon Department of Transportation staff hope new and improved highway crossings will help make each more visible when their paths cross.

The city applied for and received a $38,000 grant to restripe, add warning signs to and otherwise improve 12 crosswalks along U.S. Highway 30 between 45th and Eighth streets.

The department’s Bike & Pedestrian Improvement Program grant funded the replacement of traditional parallel-lined crosswalks with continental designs using a thermoplastic melted and fused onto the roadway, instead of paint. The plastic includes reflective beads, making the crossings more visible at night.

Many of the new crosswalks outside the one-way couplet, where the lower speed limit negates their necessity, include elevated yellow warning signs for drivers approaching a crosswalk.

ARCH CAPE — The burning of several slash piles got out of control and created an unknown number of wildland fires covering an estimated 50 to 60 acres between Cannon Beach and Arch Cape, east of U.S. Highway 101 between milepost 34 and 35, Tuesday.

Winds exceeding 40 mph, with gusts over 70, caused the fires to spread between the slash piles, which are on property owned by Stimson Lumber Co., according to the Oregon Department of Forestry.

50 years ago — 1974

“We’re all retired from something or other,” said Martha Heilmann as she busily worked away at the senior citizens’ hobby and craft show held Saturday in Knappa.

Nearly 20 displays were crowded into Knappa’s Lutheran Church as the retirees turned out to bring a little about their hobby to show off their craft wares.

And a happy group they were as the church became increasingly crowded as people stopped to admire the handiwork on display.

Participants in the hobby and craft show are part of a group of retired senior citizens who meet at the church.

The good-natured Mrs. Heilmann sat in the middle of the crowded room bedside her neatly printed sign “Knit one, Purl one,” happily knitting away and chatting about her craft to all who asked questions.

TBR Transit Co.’s new Carpenter GMC bus arrived recently and now is carrying passengers along Astoria’s city transit routes.

The $10,000 bus is brand new and offers passengers a more comfortable ride than in the past, according to Trygve Duoos of TBR. The company is negotiating for the purchase of another similar new bus.

TBR ordered the new bus in April and it arrived Nov. 1. Two used buses provide backup service.

Duoos said bus ridership has been increasing steadily and schedules are more reliable since the end of sewer construction.

WARRENTON — The Warrenton Chamber of Commerce took strong stands in favor of plans for an aluminum plant and for a new county jail at an unusually well-attended meeting Wednesday.

With 25 persons present, the chamber unanimously directed its secretary to write the Department of Environmental Quality in support of AMAX Aluminum and purchase advertising backing the jail bond issue.

To Art Coleman, Seaside is a “half-full bucket.”

“It would be fuller if other guys weren’t looking for a full bucket,” Coleman explained. He was talking about the amount of business he has and the competition he faces.

Coleman is Seaside’s only sign painter and has been for the last seven years or so. His mark on the community is colored in gold, red, blue and black letters, drawn on trucks, windows, signs and billboards.

Those A&W Drive-in signs are his, as are Eve’s Fast Photo signs and the big KSWB on the radio station’s van, the Horseworld signs and the Vern Cook Supply truck.

Coleman is all over Seaside.

The superb photographic skills of National Geographic were focused on the Columbia River recently for an article that appears in the magazine’s December issue.

Pictures include a panoramic view of Puget Island, Washington and an aerial photograph of Longview with its sprawling pulp mills and log rafts.

The pictures accompany an article titled, “Hope and Worries Along the Columbia River, Powerhouse of the Northwest.”

75 years ago — 1949

The commercial utilization of forest products in Clatsop County is, today, one of its major industries. The value of lumber is estimated at $50 million.

The value of the fish packing is estimated at a comparable figure to lumber while agricultural products have an annual total value of $897,523. There are in the county, today, some 240 logging operations and the average log production is 200 million board feet.

The amount paid out for logging labor totals, annually, approximately $4 million, and an additional outlay and other expenses is $2 million, making a total annual expenditure of cash for logging operations in the county approximately $6 million.

There are about 35 sawmills and other wood manufacturing plants in the county ranging in size from 5,000 board feet daily capacity to 250,000 board feet capacity per shift.

Three-quarters of a billion dollars worth of merchant ships moored in the maritime commission basin in Prairie Channel were inspected Friday by members of the Astoria Chamber of Commerce.

Directors and members of the chamber were guests of Capt. E. E. Thorne, maritime commission reserve fleet officials, on a noontime cruise through the fleet and through the new permanent basin now being dredged out.

The chamber party made the trip from the Burnside landing of the maritime commission, traveling on two launches manned by maritime commission staff members.

They found that the reserve fleet now in the temporary Prairie Channel moorage has been growing lately until it now numbers an even 200 craft, valued at upward of $700 million.

Withdrawals of ships from active service into the reserve fleet have been outpacing removal of ships from the basin for service, Capt. Thorne said.

The four lower Snake River dams which are highly objectionable to fishing interests of the Columbia River have a tremendous list of endorsements by Northwest groups and may be pushed through Congress soon, U.S. Rep. Walter Norblad warned local chamber of commerce and other civic officials at a conference here Tuesday evening.

Norblad said he had been successful in fighting any appropriations for these dams at the last session of Congress, but was fearful for the future.

He said he was convinced that the power shortage in the Northwest would be relieved more quickly by rushing McNary and Chief Joseph dams to completion than by building the four Snake River dams, but that pressure for the dams was strong, particularly from U.S. Army engineers, which he called “a powerful agency.”

Norblad said the four Snake River dams would seriously jeopardize and perhaps destroy the Snake River system for fish spawning purposes, thereby eliminating spawning grounds of half the salmon of the Columbia.

The Astor experiment station has obtained a 24-acre tract of tideland on Astoria naval hospital property from the war assets division of the federal government, Superintendent H.B. Howell said Friday.

The experiment station also acquired the gatehouse at the naval hospital on which it had submitted a bid.

The tideland tract is separate from the 54-acre main hospital tract that has been obtained by the city of Astoria for residential construction purposes.