10 years ago this week — 2013

Astoria has a growing reputation as a stopover point for cruise ships, the iconic behemoths that periodically dwarf the Port of Astoria’s offices as their passengers swarm downtown.

Less noticeable are the research vessels and their academic passengers that periodically berth along Pier 1, gracing Astoria with some of the most advanced equipment and knowledgeable academics in the world.

One of those vessels, the research vessel Atlantis operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, departed Astoria Wednesday for a monthlong cruise carrying researchers from the University of Washington and three from Oregon State University.

They are running heat and fluid movement profiles 40 to 100 miles off the Washington coast, indirectly seeking an answer to one of the region’s most burning questions: Where could the next Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake start?

The Columbia River-based U.S. Coast Guard crews responded to three suspected hoax distress calls within several hours last weekend.

The agency estimates that more than four hours of searching cost taxpayers about $8,000.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Nate Littlejohn said the sector responded to five similar calls earlier this summer.

In response to the high number of calls, the U.S. Coast Guard offers a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for making a false distress or hoax call to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Astoria Yacht Club held two days of sail racing to honor the memory of passed sail racers last weekend.

The four-boat fleet completed two races per day and the competition was tight. Wildfire, an Olson 30 owned and sailed by Thor Sorenson and Tom Brownson, was the overall winner of this first Memorial Cup.

Norm Shatto’s Mach One was second, Mike Campbell’s Rattler was third and John Day’s Carra Mia was fourth.

CHINOOK, Wash. — There’s something special about the late summer salmon season at the mouth of the Columbia River, a reason the daily boat count in the lower miles of the big river will swell into the hundreds within a couple of weeks.

“You go out expecting you’ll probably catch a fish, maybe several fish, and you likely will,” said John North, a Columbia River fishery manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The Chinook season opened Thursday and is scheduled through Sept. 1. A big fall Chinook run of 678,600 is forecast to enter the Columbia between now and November.

Though there were plenty of distractions at the Clatsop County Fair Thursday afternoon, Olivia Meik, of Svensen, was focused on what poultry judge Mary Shearer had to say.

With her small cowboy boots resting on an open bleacher below, waiting for her chicken’s turn at the judging table for the Junior Division, Meik listened as Shearer asked 4-H youths about the hens, chickens and roosters they had raised, even going as far as to ask about diet.

It was Meik’s first time showing a chicken in 4-H Poultry, but her black silkie bantam took home a blue ribbon for showmanship and a blue ribbon for confirmation, an award for having ideal features of the breed.

50 years ago — 1973

The Tongue Point Job Corps Center’s enrollment should stay at 400 corpswomen and perhaps rise slightly to 440 corpswomen, the acting national director of Job Corps said Tuesday in Astoria.

Tongue Point’s enrollment ceiling was chopped from 730 corpswomen to 330 as part of the Department of Labor’s squeeze earlier this year to fit into a proposed national Job Corps budget that was $40 million lower than last year.

American Metal Climax may be trying to defuse opposition to its aluminum reduction plant in Warrenton before holding public hearings on the proposal, a man with a reputation for crusading on environmental issues told Clatsop County commissioners Wednesday.

Bob Ziak, a Knappa logger and member of the now relatively inactive Clatsop Environmental Council, said he wanted to be on record as “the number one citizen opposed to the aluminum plant in any form.”

GEARHART — A unique cooperative management corporation formed by four Gearhart condominium associations is now a month old and is looking toward an optimistic future.

The youngest corporation member, the 96-unit Tillamook House condominium, is nearing completion. Paving crews began final work this week on its asphalt parking lot, completing a year’s work on the five-story concrete building.

Sales of one-, two- and three-bedroom units which range from $25,500 to $77,500 already have begun with 10% of the resort condominium already sold, said project manager Terry Smiley.

Beef supplies in Clatsop County grocery stores, restaurants and institutions are holding up, but barely. Next week may bring a different story as shortages in the Pacific Northwest and around the nation worsen.

As beef supplies diminish, more consumers are forced to buy pork, poultry and lamb which is available in adequate supplies, but at prices one meat manager described as “ungodly.”

“We are experiencing shortages now and we expect them to grow worse,” said Dick Maize, owner of Sentry Markets in Warrenton and Gearhart. “I have a feeling our beef supply is going to be extinct.”

WARRENTON — Churches, schools and other underfinanced institutions have been known to rely on all manner of makeshift structures as substitutes for permanent buildings.

Most often, purposely portable units are purchase. But in other cases, trailers are turned into classrooms and Quonset huts linger on as libraries.

Even so, when a caboose becomes a customized classroom for Sunday school, it turns a few heads.

The First Baptist Church of Warrenton’s caboose classroom has been turning heads since the day of its debut in 1969. Rev. Robert Plaep said the old wooden caboose that now sits on a plot just in back of the church once rode the rails not 20 yards away.

He said it belonged to the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway, an outfit that merged with the Burlington Northern Co. some years back.

75 years ago — 1948

Operations ceased at the local Pillsbury-Globe flour mill early Sunday morning as 122 workers of the Local 18, ILWU, went out on strike after four months of unsuccessful negotiating.

The union is asking a 20 cent wage boost over the present scale of $1.29 1/2 an hour. In addition, union officials maintain that the dispute concerns such issues as seniority, grievance procedure, sick leave and vacations.

The walkout was a result of the three-hour meeting held Tuesday morning at which a majority of the workers voted in favor of the strike.

The first steps in a campaign for a federal appropriation to deepen the channel entrance to the Columbia River have been taken and the proposal is now before the Senate public works committee, Al Hetzel, Chamber of Commerce secretary, said Tuesday.

The Columbia River Bar Pilots have urged that the river channel be dredged to a depth of 48 feet, Hetzel said. At present, the channel is dredged to a depth of 40 feet.

Capt C.E. Ash, of the Columbia River Bar Pilots Association, said Tuesday that the bar at the river’s entrance has been gradually building up over a period of a year.

In years past, Capt. Ash said, Peacock Spit had a crook on the end which protected the bar to some extent. That crook has now broken up and the seas are able to wash directly against the bar.

Days of train robbers and $50 rewards for murderers are recalled by old records and “mug” books of the Astoria Police Department.

Despite fire, rot and house cleaning operations, a few of Astoria’s old police records have survived to the present. They offer proof that old timers’ boasts of rip-roaring days when the city was an international port of call are not purely imaginative.

Nor are the exciting days very far in the past. As late as 1926, gambling raids were bringing as many as 30 offenders in a batch before the police department’s bar of justice.

In the late 1900s and the early 1920s, stud and draw poker vied with each other in popularity. Closely following, the blotter reveals, was blackjack, with brief mention from time-to-time of arrests for dice shooting, rummy and fan tan.