10 years ago this week — 2014

Speeding along the Columbia River at upward of 60 or more miles per hour, powerboats were once a thrilling part of the Clatsop County Fair and Astoria Regatta.

At the fair in 1929, Levi Sarajarvi dominated the competition in two races with the Flying Finn, a storied Class B hydroplane powerboat he built that year.

The county fair and Astoria Regatta, which take place over the next two weeks, no longer directly involve the river. The one-of-a-kind Flying Finn and My Girl now serve as a reminder of the exciting, fast-paced spectacle.

Made of mahogany and spruce, Sarajarvi’s boat is now housed in the former Astoria Builders Supply building as part of the Columbia River Maritime Museum’s collection of historic Pacific Northwest boats. The slightly larger Class C boat, My Girl, is also part of the collection.

Salmon fishing does not often bear a strong connection to stifling hunger and homelessness in the community, but Helping Hands’ Clatsop Salmon Classic is out to change that for the second time around.

The classic involves two tournaments aimed at meeting the needs of local people in crisis situations through the regional nonprofit organization Helping Hands. The tournaments take place during the fall salmon season on the Columbia River.

The classic, in its second year, is a fitting fundraiser for Clatsop County because it is a main location for salmon fishing, said Alan Evans, co-founder and executive director of Seaside-based Helping Hands.

“People want to have fun, people love to win money and people love to help, so when you’ve got those three elements involved in it, it’s a win-win for everybody,” he added.

At its worst, Tongue Point Job Corps Center shrank from its peak enrollment of 525 to 357 during an enrollment freeze between January and April 2013. After recent program cuts, it stayed down at 413 students, at the cost of 17 local employees.

Now the center, nearing its 50th anniversary, is doubling its seamanship program and building back up to 473 students. Meanwhile, it’s hiring back 14 of the 17 employees it lost.

SEASIDE — The banks of the Necanicum River were painted silvery white with thousands of dead anchovies Tuesday morning.

“It kind of looks like the apocalypse,” joked Tiffany Boothe, the administrative assistant at Seaside Aquarium.

The occurrence, she assured people, is a natural phenomenon, though.

Every few years, there will be an unusually large school of anchovies that moves from the ocean to the river.

“When they come into the river, it depletes the oxygen,” and thousands of anchovies and a few other fish die, Boothe said. There simply is not enough oxygen for them all.

A plan to kill 16,000 double-crested cormorants on East Sand Island has some residents on the North Coast scratching their heads.

Although still in the proposal phase, the plan drew many to an open house in Astoria last week to ask questions of the federal agencies involved.

“I can’t believe in this day and age we can’t come up with an alternative solution to killing things,” said Tommy Huntington, of Cannon Beach.

The alternative C plan is preferred option of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stem the ravenous consumption of juvenile salmon and steelhead each year. A final decision won’t be reached until after a public comment period and a review process are completed by the end of this year.

50 years ago — 1974

Sprechen sie Deutsch?

Even if you don’t speak German, meet two vacationing couples from Astoria’s sister city, Walldorf, Germany: Wolfgang and Karin Buhl and Hermann and Kathe Herzog.

Walldorf is Astoria’s sister city because John Jacob Astor, the city’s founder, was born there.

Wolfgang Buhl is the only one of the four who speaks English, and said they were enjoying their stay here and seeing a lot of the North Coast area.

Buhl is a grade school teacher in Walldorf and Herzog is a designer of roofs and walls for houses.

Visiting Astoria is almost a family tradition for the Buhl family. In 1966, Jacob Buhl, then a Walldorf town councilman, visited Astoria for the dedication of the Astoria Bridge.

The Pacific Ocean is going to be closed July 31.

That’s right, the Pacific Ocean is going to be closed July 31. But don’t worry, it’s only temporary.

The Oregon National Guard was recently granted a temporary closure of the Pacific Ocean off Camp Rilea for a firing area. The direct surface firing will take place from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and will utilize 50 caliber machine guns.

“ … Ready the cameras. Ready the cameras. Is the camera on top the van set?” director Walter Nodinger, a middle-aged man in a straw hat, asked.

Behind him, a policeman shouted to the extra people huddling around one of the cameras: “Please move to the other side of the road and stay out of the way.”

“Quiet, please. Will everyone please keep still,” a man with a bullhorn said. He said it in a manner that indicated it was an order, not a question.

The crew and actors geared themselves, the crowd quieted and the 35mm film in the cameras started to roll.

Two episodes of the TV series “Movin’ On” are now being filmed in the Seaside and Astoria area, and the third and possibly fourth are scheduled to be shot in August in and around Portland.

The 15-episode series is about the adventures of two independent truck drivers who travel around the West.

The truckers are played by Claude Akins and Frank Converse.

Many who helped defeat the parking lot proposal think there are better ways to enhance downtown business besides building a metered parking lot paid for by assessments against downtown property owners.

In fact, ideas about how to enhance business downtown seem to abound. What hasn’t taken a clear shape yet is the most essential element of downtown development — a positive move forward, which should gain enough public support to become reality.

Though the words “downtown plan” — referring to a comprehensive downtown enhancement program developed by private consultants for the city in 1968 — even crop up in conversations about downtown development, actual concepts under discussion seem to be moving away from that plan.

Undoubtedly, the defeat of the parking lot proposal has contributed to that trend. Improvement of downtown parking was cited as the No. 1 downtown need by the consultants.

75 years ago — 1949

Oregon U.S. Sen. Wayne Morse made special reference to Fort Stevens in a request for information made to Col. Colby M. Meyers, deputy director of installation of the U.S. Air Force, to determine whether Oregon is being discriminated against in favor of Washington state and California in the location of defense installations.

Morse said at a meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee that leaders in Oregon had informed him of the removal of the radar station from Fort Stevens and the refusal on the part of the Air Force to maintain some active installation at Fort Stevens, the “soundness of which are open to question.”

He said that the Air Force seems to be following a policy of restricting its defenses in Oregon.

Refusal of the Port of Astoria Commission to grant the North Pacific Grain Growers sufficient space for the storage of grain to be exported from here means that in the near future the growers association will be forced to pile from 250,000 to 300,000 bushels of grain out in the open, A.E. Sutton, general manager of the association, said today.

The largest freight train to arrive in Astoria since the war pulled into town today with a total of 60 cars in the string.

In the 60-car train were 52 carloads of wheat and seven carloads of barley for export through the Port’s elevator, railroad officials said.

The Astoria Chamber of Commerce today saw the establishment of grain operations at the Port here as the forerunner of a revived shipping industry and possible future industrial developments like importing and exporting.

Executive Secretary Al Hetzel said that the Port had a possible income of $360,000 a year from the full development of the grain business begun by North Pacific Grain Growers.

Hetzel said that the program is important for Astoria because it offers the beginning of a new shipping industry.

“Shippers can use Astoria cheaper than Portland, once the port is developed here,” Hetzel predicted.

“Don’t dim the lights with your underwear,” city firemen warned today after a sound-sleeping occupant of the Siddall Hotel caused excitement for other tenants, and minor work for the firemen, early Saturday morning.

R.E. Catron, of Tongue Point, apparently was unable to locate the light switch when he returned to his room Friday night, firemen said. So he wrapped the lightbulb in either his undershirt or his shorts (the charred fragments are unidentifiable.)

The device successfully dimmed the lights, but other tenants noticed smoke coming out of the room at 2:26 a.m. and called the fire department.

Two trucks answered the call, and eight firemen, several policemen, and an untotalled number of hotel occupants were milling in the room and the hallway at the peak of activity.