Category Archives: Memories

A History of Snow

December 23, 2008 By in Memories, Neighborhood History, Old Photos Tags: , Leave a comment

Winter 1936

Winter 1936, looking north on NE 30th toward intersection with Mason.

Winter 1936, looking north on NE 30th toward intersection with Mason. Click for a larger size image.

Winter 2008

Winter 2008. Looking north on Northeast 30th toward Mason.

Winter 2008, looking north on NE 30th toward Mason. Click for a larger size image.

There’s a great Billy Collins poem called “A History of Weather” that I’ve been thinking about all week. We’ve had a lot of snow here in Portland, not record-breaking, but still more than anyone has seen around these parts for 40 years. Right now we have about 15 inches on the ground and the city has been at a virtual stop for the last couple days. We started to thaw today, but another 4-8 inches of snow are in the forecast for the next couple days.

In the poem, Collins creates a funny, wistful elegy for atmospheres of the past, and contemplates weather as a common human bond across the ages. Contemplating what a weather history poem should include, Collins writes, “There will be a section on the frozen nights of antiquity…” I’ve been thinking about the frozen days and nights of the past, the transforming quiet and joy visited on the kids of this street and neighborhood over the years.

So after shoveling the front walk yesterday, I dug into my Alameda archive and found a picture taken a few doors south of my house in 1936, the year Portland received about 35 inches of snow. The photo has been passed down to me by the family of the little boy who grew up here in the teens and twenties. He was fledged by 1936 (family members were in the house til the late 1950s), but the photo stayed in his family because it depicted remarkable conditions.

Being obsessed with lining up past and present for clues, I prowled around this morning hunting — camera in one hand, old photo in the other — for the original photographer’s footprints, which are not entirely available today due to some landscaping changes down the block.

The big house on the corner (white in 1936, blue today) is the Copenhagen House, built in 1912 by the family of Les Copenhagen. Today’s big beech in the sideyard is just a start of a tree in 1936. Power poles have thinned out a bit, though still an eyesore. The gable end of the house facing the camera up the block can be seen in both images. A little closer in, if you squint at the 1936 image, you can see Walter Morrison out shoveling the front walk of my house. Farther up the block and across the street, today’s yellow Dutch colonial was just a vacant lot. Other vacant lots allow a view off into the distance.

Families in 1936 probably took pictures of their unusual winter weather event, just like we have this week. Unfortunately, most of those images are lost to time. We’re lucky to have this one, 71 years old. Makes you think about the pictures you take, the pictures you save, the pictures you decide to throw. I’m always on the lookout for old pictures of Alameda…

To cap off this entry about the history of snow, thought I’d share a very interesting info-graphic from The Oregonian today that clearly indicates that our predecessors knew a lot more about snow than we do. Check it out:

From The Oregonian, Page 1, 12-23-08

From The Oregonian, Page 1, 12-23-2008. Click for a larger size image.

For more insight and photos on Portland’s winter weather history, check out this post from February 2021 which turns back the clock on ice storms and river ice well into the 1850s.

Memory Fragments | An old man and his dog

March 1, 2008 By in Memories, Research 4 Comments

In the last week, I’ve spoken with three men — three Alameda boys — who grew up in the neighborhood in the 1930s and 1940s. None of them live here any longer, though fragments of memories from their growing up years are crystal clear.

We’ve been concentrating on overlapping memories about a single person and situation. Even though these three were all here, living just a couple blocks from each other, it’s interesting to see what has been remembered and what hasn’t.

Our point of focus has been an elderly man who lived near NE 33rd and Shaver. Our timeframe is the 1930s. This man owned a dog — which is an important part of the memory — and was reportedly quite a character. One of our Alameda boys remembers him as living in an old home in the 33rd Street Woods, which was what everyone called Wilshire Park when it was just a wild patch of trees and brush. Another remembers him living in the big Craftsman (now painted yellow) near 33rd and Shaver, or possibly in a boarded-up house at 39th and Shaver, and that he owned the chunk of land south of Shaver from 33rd to 35th. Maybe he was here before all the commotion of development beginning in about 1910. Those fragments are not particularly clear. The third boy doesn’t remember him at all.

1220-wilshire-park.jpg

Here’s the Sanborn Map from 1924 that shows the 33rd Street Woods (now Wilshire Park). Note the outhouse situated in the northwest corner, and “Campaign Street” (now Skidmore). Marguerite Avenue is now NE 37th. This is a detail from Sanborn panel No. 1220. Click for a larger view.

Here’s the story we’ve been reassembling from memory fragments: Reportedly, this old man used to walk through the neighborhood with his big dog, which one of the boys remembered as a “police-type dog.” He didn’t drive, so when he needed to travel somewhere, he would walk to the end of the streetcar line at NE 29th and Mason and wait for the Broadway Streetcar. Sometimes during these intervals, he would lay down and nap on the grass of the home at 29th and Mason (the turquoise one, which is a special house for other reasons…a subject for a future post).

So — operating from reassembled memory fragments here — as the man slept sprawled out on the front yard, passersby grew concerned for his health and attempted to wake him, prompting the dog to bark and to bite. This apparently happened a good few times…enough that the police knew about the sleeping man and the big dog, and avoided being pulled into the situation. Was he Mr. Volk? Mr. Volkman? Mr Wilshire? His name was in the air, but not something that stuck with these 10-year-old boys.

It’s been an interesting contrast this week. A good portion of my Alameda research centers on what has been documented in black-and-white: building permits, census data, newspaper clippings, plats. The human dimension — the memories and stories — is much more malleable, often more difficult to track down, and way more precious.

Time is of the essence to capture these memories.

Post script: be sure to have a look at this follow-up hand-drawn map provided by one of the “Alameda boys,” along with another story about the old man.