10 years ago this week — 2014

When Catherine Fuller’s grandmother received a letter from Steven Spielberg requesting to use her two family homes at the top of the hill on 38th Street, she thought it was a prank. It wasn’t until a check came in the fall of 1984 that she believed and then agreed.

Thirty years later, “The Goonies” cult following doesn’t seem to be diminishing, and the owners are profoundly aware. An estimated 800 visitors per weekend during the summer months trek up the gravel hill to see the iconic homes.

Most snap a quick couple of photos and walk back down, but others have left more lasting impressions on the current residents.

“Mikey said the ‘Truffle Shuffle’ never gets old,” said Fuller, who lives in character Data’s home. “He was wrong.”

People with raised shirts wiggling fat in front of the homes is only one of the daily nuisances that comes with owning one of these homes.

The Astoria School District employs more than 1,100 student technology devices, including computer labs, printers, mobile labs stacked with laptops and other mobile tools teachers use. The district is constantly phasing in and out new and old technology, much of it through donations.

“The goal is that all students have the same level of skills,” said the district’s technology director, Scott Holmstedt, during a presentation at the Astoria School Board’s Wednesday study session on the district’s technology plan.

SEASIDE — While children were busy playing with clay in one room at the Bob Chisholm Community Center, the multilingual music of Acustica World Music filled another, every so often inducing an attendee to break into dance during the Hispanic Heritage Festival in Seaside.

The Lower Columbia Hispanic Council hosted last weekend’s festival, meant to kick off National Hispanic Heritage Month, from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15.

The festival, which was the first of its kind hosted by the council in Seaside, was designed to bring about cultural awareness by both “putting our organization and Hispanics in general out there and show the people some of the positive attributes of the culture,” said Jorge Gutierrez, the council’s executive director.

SKAMOKAWA, Wash. — On Thursday, the Wildlife Center of the North Coast released 21 white pelicans at Vista Park.

These pelicans were admitted to the center as starving chicks, unable to fly or feed themselves. Human disturbance on the pelicans’ nest island, up the Columbia River, is the primary cause for this nest abandonment.

Campers were spending the week of July 4 on this island. When they got too close to the nesting birds, the parents were flushed — they flew off — and the chicks took refuge in the water.

In doing so, the chicks were swept downriver to Astoria, Chinook and Ilwaco, Washington, along the ocean beaches. It is estimated that close to 100 chicks were flushed from their nest island — only 30 of which could be captured.

50 years ago — 1974

The legislative and conservation committee of the Columbia River Fishermen’s Protective Union has told the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers it opposes plans to dredge for black sand in the lower Columbia River estuary.

Bill Puustinen, chairman of the committee, said in a letter to the Corps of Engineers the union “cannot sanction any such dredging or dredge mining until after full facts of the present estuarine study are known, duly considered and understood.”

A Utah firm has asked the Army Corps for a permit to dredge mine as deep as 60 feet in the area north of the 40-foot navigation channel between the Astoria Bridge and Altoona, Washington.

The firm says the dredge mining would cause no more disruption in the estuary than a small fishing boat.

The seasonal tribal custom of Monday Night Football resumed Monday amid the litany of groans by the nation’s wives.

The custom involves the hibernation of husbands in front of their television sets for at least four months to watch every juke step and quarterback sack. Their only fortification is a beer every quarter.

This vigil has been maligned in some quarters, but unfairly. To the men of this country, Monday Night Football is an institution, not to mention a cultural mecca.

Dandy Don is gone, but Frank Gifford is back. So is Muscle Mouth, alias Howard Cosell.

Another blow to those of us with a sweet tooth is the news this week that vending machine candy bars will soon be 20 cents, with little or no change in the size of the bar.

A spokesman for Ross and Raw distributors in Astoria said they have not yet raised the price of candy in their machines but will soon be forced to because of rising costs from their suppliers. The spokesman said he knew of several vending companies which have already changed their machines over to the 20-cent charge.

Several rounds of 22-caliber ammunition recently pummeled Knappa High School, breaking windows and causing more than $100 in damage.

The monetary damage to the building is slight compared to the loss of a life that might have occurred if a bullet had struck someone inside the building, a Clatsop County Sheriff’s Office deputy said.

A shotgun blast recently ripped through a Burlington-Northern sign on Del Moor Road, sending shots precariously close to a county resident’s home.

The above incidents are examples of the ever-increasing indiscriminate shooting occurring in Clatsop County, shooting Clatsop County Sheriff Carl Bondietti would like to see halted.

Columbia River gillnet fishermen remained off the lower Columbia River again today over a price dispute with salmon buyers, but their negotiators met with representatives from the different Astoria area packers this morning.

75 years ago — 1949

A log 10 feet in diameter was floated in Blind Slough at Brownsmead Saturday after being dumped there by the Gnat Creek Logging Co.

Peter McCoy reported that the big tree was dropped two years ago and that the butt was taken to the forestry display at Salem.

The big Douglas fir was cut on the old Larkin and Green logging site. The log dumped Saturday was 16 feet long and contained about 7,000 board feet of lumber.

The Astoria salmon derby is growing too big for its present headquarters at the public landing at the foot of 12th Street, Al Hetzel, Astoria Chamber of Commerce secretary and derby manager, told the chamber directors Friday.

Hetzel recommended that the derby headquarters be shifted next year to the new mooring basin in Uppertown, where he said there would be ample boat accommodations as well as a 5-acre parking lot provided by the county court.

Astoria school kids will find buildings and equipment enlarged, improved, or at least highly polished when they report for classes at 9 o’clock Monday morning.

Most of them bring only a pencil, plus a tablet if convenient, city school superintendent James M. Burgess said Friday.

Low humidity, dry forestlands and a large number of agricultural brush fires were causing Jewell Forest Patrol crews worries today, station officials said.

Officials said farmers had begun getting permits for burning brush and trash on their lands after the recent rains and the fires were all right as long as they were watched and under control.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Warren G. Magnuson, D-Washington, today asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to vote on the maritime commission $25 million with which to repair 1,345 ships in the merchant marine reserve fleet, including 10 at Astoria.

The Washington senator said spending the $25 million would protect a $400 million investment.

He said permitting the reserve fleet to deteriorate further would jeopardize national security.

A dual-control automobile delivered Monday to city school superintendent James M. Burgess will be used this semester in teaching high school students and adults how to drive safely.

“The 18 to 25 age group has a higher traffic accident rate than any other age group,” Robert S. Lovell, assistant manager of Lovell Auto Co., explained as his partner, Neil Morfit, turned over the keys to Burgess.

“We believe that lack of training and experience is the cause, and that by helping correct it we can help make Astoria a safer place to drive.”

The Astoria Automobile Dealers Association selected the Lovell Auto Co. to provide the first training car, a 1949 deluxe Chevrolet.

Wreckage of an airplane identified tentatively by Tongue Point naval authorities as that of a Navy Grumman F-4 Wildcat was brought to the surface Tuesday afternoon by the drag boat Broadway.

Calvin Johnson, skipper of the vessel, said his nets fouled on the wrecked Navy fighter in about 70 fathoms of water while dragging for bottomfish about 11 miles southwest of the Columbia River lightship.