Thank you for your interest in reading The Astorian. Here are a few stories that you might have missed this week:

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Carl “Ole” Gifford loves a challenge. That’s what drew him to the hands-on nature of the Astoria Public Works Department and kept him working for the city for the last 38 years.

A Knappa local, Gifford started his long legacy of giving back to the community by taking a job with the Astoria Parks and Recreation Department.

“I did that for, like, 12 years, something like that,” he said. “But I always wanted to get over to Public Works, because it’s more physical and it’s more my type of work … Over here, it’s a lot more challenging. Every day is different.”

As Gifford began moving up the ranks of the Public Works Department, eventually landing the role of field operations manager, he discovered a knack for navigating the city’s old infrastructure and found a fondness for overcoming unexpected obstacles.

“You start digging in this old ground, you’d be amazed what you find out there,” he said. “Sometimes you dig in, and go, ‘Wow, this is a mess. Why did they do it this way or that way?’ And we go in and clean it up and get it back together.

“We get a lot of water breaks. It’s 1895 in this town, and it’s challenging to fix at times.”

See the story by Jasmine Lewin by clicking here.

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The journey for Tim and Jim Gannaway into the jewelry business began in St. Paul, Minnesota, when they were 5 years old.

According to Jim Gannaway, the twins got in trouble for ruining their father’s screwdrivers. The pair was attempting to chisel agates out of the pavement behind their home. They would collect brightly branded Lake Superior agates throughout their childhood years, learned to polish them and sold them as pendants in high school.

Though the Gannaways always had an interest in agates and craftsmanship, they both went on to become math and science majors in college. Tim went north to attend Bemidji State College for three years before transferring to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for his last year. Jim attended the University of Minnesota, Morris.

“It’s different for us, because we might be twins but we went to college on two ends of the state,” Jim Gannaway said.

Though Tim was a math and science major, he was told by his adviser he would not graduate unless he took some humanities classes.

This is where the Gannaway brothers officially became involved in jewelry making.

“I ended up enrolling in the jewelry class since I was interested in how a lot of it was made,” Tim Gannaway said.

Take a look at the story by Paul Matli by clicking here.

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— Derrick DePledge