Jim Douglas is a life-long resident of the Woodlawn neighborhood. Born in 1905, Mr. Douglas has witnessed many of the changes in the N.E. Portland area. Mr. Douglas remembers the days when horses and buggies traveled the streets of Portland and raised streetcar trestles crossed the slough. He now lives next to the house in which he was born.
Oral History
Narrator: Jim Douglas
Interviewer: Caseman Thompson
Date: August, 15, 2000
Place: Portland, Oregon – Columbia Slough
Transcription by Caseman Thompson
Edited by Donna Sinclair
CT: Hi, this is Casey Thompson. I am here with Mr. Jim Douglas. Today is August 15, 2000. Our interview is about to begin. I guess just the basic things starting out Jim.
JD: Fine.
CT: The place you were born at-
JD: Born in the house next door in 1905. We moved around at various homes in the neighborhood for a while and my dad secured the property here. Then finally we had this house built for the family in 1910. I’ve lived most of my life here since that time.
In 1908 we moved to Prineville, Oregon and my dad built the county courthouse in Prineville, Oregon. We came back in March 1909 on the Shaniko stage, riding over Grizzly Pass to Shaniko, Oregon, which at that time was a woolgathering center. We had so many sheep in Oregon that the wool was sheered, baled, went to Shaniko. Then, the Union Pacific train came in. That was the end of the line. They picked up the wool and brought it back to Portland for distribution. So, we took the stagecoach in order to get to the railroad. Then we came back to Portland from there.
CT: Do you remember the stagecoach ride Jim?
JD: Oh, yes. I was only four years old, so I had to ride in the stage with my mother and my aunt where everybody else had to walk. The horses couldn’t pull the stage over the mountain. So, the driver walked behind the horses with the lines. My father and my brother and my sister all had to walk along the road. The stage couldn’t pull the load. The horses couldn’t pull the load.
CT: Was that because of the elevation of the pass?
JD: I guess the terrain or something. Yeah, I suppose. I am not sure-So, I rode inside.
CT: So, was that a day trip?
JD: Just a day trip-Yeah-Yeah.
CT: How many horses on a stagecoach?
JD: That I don’t remember. I was only four years old and-I really don’t remember whether it was two or four or six.
CT: Where did you go to school at Jim?
JD: I went to school at the old Woodlawn school, which was Union Avenue and Bryant Street. It had been built in a couple of different stages over the years. They built half of the school at one time and then they built the other half adjoining to where it looked like one solid building, but it had been built in two halves. Then in 1929, they built a new school on Eleventh Street and tore down the Woodlawn School. It just became a parking lot.
CT: Is it a parking lot now?
JD: Yeah, just cars slots. . .
CT: Was that Woodlawn Elementary?
JD: Yes. Elementary only. . . I graduated from there in 1918 and went to Jefferson High. I hate to admit this but I left Jefferson before I finished. Because of my small stature, I wasn’t into athletics. I was into studying and reading. I would go to the library and read the books right down a shelf- How to get iron ore out of the mine, how to make it in to steel, how to fabricate the steel and make a bridge, and I just educated myself reading in the Piedmont Library.
So, I just got a little bit tired of school and it was really kind of prophetic because my father’s health was not good. He was City Engineer for Portland. His health wasn’t good and I was seventeen years old. I was just a senior when I left in 1921. I would have graduated in 1922. My dad wanted me to get back in school I think, so he got me jobs because he was City Engineer in charge of construction work. He got me jobs that would be very difficult to do physically. It did not bother me at all.
I started out as a water boy with a construction crew-a dollar a day-carrying a bucket and a dipper and gave the men a drink whenever they wanted it. Then, my next job was also about a dollar a day working on road construction. They got me to the point where I was finishing the black top pavement in a manner you don’t do today. We put on hot tar, and then sand or screening, crushed rock on top of the hot tar after the pavement went in, so it wouldn’t stick to your tires or anything. When fall came that they laid off anyone that wasn’t a married man that needed to work.
I got a job with General Electric Company. Started out as a bicycle messenger-thirty-four dollars a month. Within three months, they promoted me to be in charge of the mailroom. Within six months, here I was seventeen years old, they put me on a desk with a secretary dictating my letters, and taking orders from the power company and the sawmills and plywood plants and all that. I worked my way up in General Electric Company to being in charge of the order department -stock inventory control. Then, they moved me into a job where I was the manager of the city sales department. I took the graduate electrical engineers from college, put them in my department, and trained them to be salesmen.
CT: Why did you train the electrical engineers to do sales?
JD: Well, every salesman was an electrical engineer. Every salesman for General Electric, he had to be an electrical engineer. . . . You couldn’t take people who did not know electricity and go out and try to talk to electrical engineers. They would look foolish right away. So, they were all graduate engineers and all had maybe a year in some General Electric factory.
Well, supposing they had been in stationed in Fort Wayne, Indiana. They would know all about fractional horsepower motors, but they wouldn’t know anything about turbines, or big generators, or massive transformers, or any of that. They hadn’t been exposed to it. Well, when they came in my department they were exposed to everything.
So, I would get them in my department in the public service building. I would tell them, “Now, your phone has lights and connections to every phone in the department. When the light comes on it shows that there is a call coming in to that person”. I said, “You punch the button and listen and see how that person handles the call.” And after a week I would say, “Okay, the next call is yours.”[laughs] I would say, “I’ll be on the phone to back you up.” See then, when they would go out on the road as a traveling salesman, it didn’t matter what subject the customer would bring up. Any new item or anything like that, they wouldn’t be at a loss or look stupid.
. . . . In my branch of General Electric, it was large material. We sold motors and controllers, steam turbines, diesel locomotives, and large equipment. No appliances. Nothing like that. So, it was a very interesting episode. I worked forty-five and a half years for them.
CT: I want to back-track for just a second Jim. You mentioned when you were in school, you liked to read and study. What were the particular subjects that caught your interest?
JD: I started with college prep course in high school and then changed over to scientific course, so . . . I did weather forecasting, and all kinds of scientific stuff and botany-and it changed to a scientific course. I was always interested in that. At General Electric Company, I was the only inventor in all that office. Two floors in the electric building and in the public service building filled with electrical engineers, yet I was the only one who had patents [laughs].
CT: Did GE-.Do they still have the building downtown or was it located-?
JD: No, no, we moved from there down to Giles Lake. We got seven acres and built a service shop and a warehouse and an office. Built three different things. Then I picked-By that time, I had a little background in real estate too, so I picked the numbers for all the buildings to make it simple. I said, “Okay our office, we are on Twenty-Ninth Street.” I know the way the streets are numbered. “We’ll call this 2929 Twenty-Ninth.”
CT: Who were your mother and father Jim?
JD: My father was James Douglas from Montrose, Scotland. He made five trips across the Atlantic. In those early days, it was all sailing vessels, so it must have been a long time at sea in order to get back there. He was a stonemason. In other words, he built buildings like government buildings, Parliament buildings, and churches-buildings of that type. That is how he happened to build the courthouse at Prineville, Oregon.
My mother was born in Canada, of Scottish ancestry. So, both my father and mother were Scottish. My mother came to Deadwood, South Dakota. She was in Deadwood, South Dakota at the time when Deadwood Dick was -He was the mail carrier kind of. She knew them. She knew all those types of people.
She and her aunt ran a boarding house and hotel for the miners in the gold mines there. They made all the lunch boxes because the men were so deep, they couldn’t come up to the surface for lunch. They stayed down and just worked, but they would eat their lunch. They didn’t dare throw any food out on the ground or they would have rats down in the mine. So, they put all the scraps they didn’t eat back in their lunch box and brought them back.
They would take all the scraps out of the lunch box to clean the lunch box to make the new lunches. The scraps all went to a pig [laughs]. They had one pig just outside the backdoor. It slept on blankets and ate lunches, pie, and cake [laughs]. Pie, and cake, and sandwiches, that is what that pig was fed on.
. . . . So, they did a real job here. My mother was an excellent cook. A good manager. In our life today, a lot of smart women are the managers of the household. The husband goes to work and brings home the money, but the wife, very often they pay the bills and manage the whole thing [laughs]. I have a lot of respect for them.
CT: Who were your grandparents? Do you remember them?
JD: Yeah. Well, my mother’s father, who was my grandparent on the maternal side, lived in Rainy River, Canada. He was a smart Scotsman. He had a farm. He heard that the railroad, probably the Canadian Pacific, was going to come through that area. So, he went to the railroad and told them,” I’ll give you all the ground you need for a station and a roundhouse, or anything you need.” And they picked him up on it. So, they built their roundhouse and railroad station there on his farm. The rest of his farm became a town [laughs]. It was no longer dollar an acre ground.
CT: Did he give it to them or sell it to them?
JD: Oh, I imagine he gave it them. But look what he got from it-He owned the town. So, some day I’ll have to take a trip to Rainy River, Canada and see what their history shows. He owned hotels and a fleet of tugboats on the Great Lakes and everything. Not a penny ever came from that load of money back here. . .
CT: On your dad’s side?
JD: On my dad’s side, I didn’t know anybody there. They were in Scotland. Since then I have known them. We go over there every other year to visit the ones that are there now, the cousins. I have even sent them airplane tickets to fly over here. When they get here, then I fly them to Hawaii. That’s half way around the world. That’s about 12,000 miles.
That’s one little thing that I kind of amuse young children with at times. How fast is the world rotating? They can’t imagine it spinning around. I say, “Its going 1000 miles an hour.” They can’t believe it. I say, ” Its 24,000 miles around at the equator and it’s making a trip every twenty-four hours.” You know, it’s just a simple fact that most people never thought of. But, it makes the children think a little bit that the world is spinning 1000 miles an hour. Has to-to make 24,000 miles in 24 hours.
So, when I’ve flown to Scotland, we are eight hours behind them. They hit the sun first. I take whatever my watch says for time. I add eight hours to it and subtract twelve. That’s what time it is over there. So, I call them at ten o’clock in the morning here-and ten and take away twelve. It gives me the right time there that they’ll be at dinner. See, I know that they are home. The ones that are working are still home.
CT: What was early Woodlawn like?
JD: Well, it was a community of mainly European extract. There was one Afro-American family, just one, and they had been slaves-and that was all. I was the first one in the neighborhood to make radio sets and I taught their son how to make radio sets. All the rest were Europeans, my folks-see my dad was from Scotland and the family across the street were Scottish ancestry. The next family up the street were from Holland. They were all Dutch. The family on the other side of me were Dutch and Belgian. The ones on the other side of me were German and Irish, and that was just the way it was. Then, the corner house was occupied by Captain Henry Vaknockin. He was the last riverboat pilot for ferries across the Willamette River from Russell Street across. It went down somewhere near-below where the St. John’s bridge. I can’t quite remember where it stopped. But, it had two steel cables laying in the river. They had big oak pulleys for the front and back of the ferry that picked up the cable as it ran. Then, the ferry could make the trip and land even in the fog because the cables would guide it. And he was the captain, the last captain. Being a kid on the same block, I could go up to the pilothouse and ride with him [laughs]. So, we would walk from here to Russell and the Willamette River, then get on the ferry and there was never any fare or anything-no cost.
CT: Were a lot of the streets paved?
JD: Not paved at all. It was clay soil and the dust was a foot deep. The normal wind in the summer is from the north. This street is on an angle to where north is right diagonally through. This is north, and northwest is where our summer wind came from. Every time a wagon went by there was a cloud of dust and it would blow towards our house. So to counteract that, my father planted grapevines up the front of our house. They would catch the dust. They would just hang the leaves there and we could wash them off with a hose.
These sidewalks were just kind of gravel sidewalks. Kind of pea gravel, so they were small. You couldn’t turn foot on them. Whenever you came to a crosswalk where water coming downhill had to flow, why there might be planks at that point. But, no pavement at all.
There was no sewer system. Every house had an outhouse. There wasn’t any plumbing in the houses in those early days. There was no toilets in the house. You always had a backdoor leading to the privy. You get your bath on Saturday night in the washtub in the middle of the floor. They just didn’t have bathrooms or anything. Later we finally got a sewer system. Before the sewer system, we had cesspools. Then we could get some inside plumbing and just run it into the cesspools in the backyard. Then, when the sewer went in, you had to connect. So, that is when bathrooms went into the houses.
CT: In earlier times you mention when they had the outer houses. How did you get the fresh water?
JD: That’s right. We had no water system from the city, but there was a plate, ice, and coal company about four blocks over here. They made ice to sell in the summer and they sold coal in the winter-Plate, ice and coal. When, they were making the water or the ice, they had a big deep well. They laid pipelines from their well down the street. We would have a half-inch pipeline come into our house. I would go over and pay the water bill to the plate, ice, and coal company. There was no city water here, so I was raised on well water.
CT: You mentioned the captain who lived down the street. What did the other people do for work Jim?
JD: Well, carpenter-Next door was a carpenter. The man across the street, the Scottish man, he paved streets with what we call Belgium blocks. . . . The cobblestones in the street are called Belgium blocks. Ships from Europe would come to the United States going around the Horn, clear down to South America. No Panama Canal at that time. They would go around the Horn and come here. Their hold was filled with cobblestones to hold the ship down in the water, so they could have more sail up and sail faster. Otherwise, if they were empty, they would be tipped over in the wind and they would have to keep small sail and sail slower.
CT: Like ballast –
JD: That’s what it was, ballast. So, when they unloaded them here, they called them Belgium blocks. They were made so that you could pave with them. So, they could sell the crop, they brought a load of stone here-loaded with wheat to go back. The strange little thing about that, that’s when there were no steamships coming into Portland-Sailing ships. When the ship was loaded with wheat and getting ready to return, it would go out and anchor in the middle of the Willamette River, so the sailors couldn’t jump ship at the last minute and they wouldn’t have a full crew.
CT: So, they would sit right out in the Willamette?
JD: Oh, yeah, just anchor right in the middle of the Willamette River, so the sailors couldn’t get to shore [laughs]. Those early days were different.
The streetcars-we had streetcars of course and the electric building-I don’t know where that was built- That was called the electric building-Broadway and Alder- The northeast corner of Broadway and Alder. And in the basement, we had large alternators in there. I don’t know whether they were alternators or dynamos. I don’t know whether they made direct current or not. But in the basement they had gigantic lead batteries, and they furnished 550 volts to the trolley wires, so the streetcars could run. They all ran on 600 volts direct current as I recall. So, the electric building and all the downtown section was direct current. . . .
The streetcars ran to every area. The Woodlawn cars and the Vancouver cars would come down what was called Union Avenue, now MLK Jr. They would go down Union Avenue and when they got to Columbia Boulevard, the ground was lower there, so they went on an elevated trestle all the way to the Columbia River to where the bridge is today. The track turned around and they could turn around and come back to Portland. There were always two car trains. Higher speed cars. They could move faster. They would go there, then you had to get off the car and take the ferry to get to Vancouver. There was no bridge.
CT: Now for each-Once you got off and got on the ferry would you have to pay an additional toll?
JD: I think it was five cents.
CT: Could you take a horse too- or was it just passengers?
JD: No, you could. They had horse drawn wagons and buggies. Now, it went down Union Avenue or MLK Jr. Boulevard and it got out into the slough bottoms there across the Main Slough. You call it the Columbia Slough now. It got across there and then it turned and went north to the ferry landing. Another bridge came down Vancouver Avenue. That’s why they called it Vancouver Avenue. It was the road to Vancouver. That came down and when it got to Columbia Boulevard, it went on an elevated plank road-elevated for two-way traffic. That’s where the horses and wagons and buggies and an occasional automobile, they went out. They went straight out until they hit the streetcar tracks, and they went parallel side by side to the ferry landing.
CT: And they both met up there?
JD: They both were at the ferry landing, yeah. When the ferry would come across, why the wagons and that would come on. They would come on the wooden elevated road to Vancouver Avenue, then they would come into town that way. The streetcars would continue on over the swampy land. Both those bridges and the railroad tracks were about, I would say fifteen or twenty feet above the ground, because they were no dams on the Columbia River. There was no diking on the Columbia River bank and that whole area flooded twice a year-Spring and summer high rains and water. It flooded. So, this had to be above flood level- See? We would walk the railroad track usually when we were going to the Columbia River to fish or to swim. And when a car would come, here we were way out twenty feet in the air. We would sometimes go over the edge and hang on to a tie and let the car go overhead, or we would run to the nearest water barrel. Every two or three hundred feet there would be a water barrel to put out fires. It was a wooden trestle, so there was a fifty gallon water wooden barrel about every two hundred feet. So, we would hear the car coming and could see them, and we would run to the nearest water barrel and get around and hang on to the barrel as the car went flying by [laughs]. The Columbia River was so clean at that time that when we were swimming in it, if you wanted a drink you just opened your mouth and drank [laughs].
CT: Wow. Oh, here’s one I passed up for you Jim. Let me check my tape. I guess I have a little bit of time left. Are you or have you been married?
JD: I was married for sixty-four years. My wife died ten years ago. We were married in 1927 and she died in 1990.
CT: Sorry to hear that.
JD: I had two children. My daughter is an authority on azbowl Lamaze natural birth control. This is for delivery of babies when you are going into a hospital to have a baby. She teaches them how to breathe, so that they have trouble free delivery. And my son is a real estate broker. So, they have been very successful and my granddaughters are successful too. One is a stockbroker in town. They sent her down to New Orleans to close out a bank when she was twenty-six years old. She is now twenty-seven and she is a stockbroker. My other granddaughter is right now over in Israel studying Jewish law. She is going to law school in Chicago and she is doing a short interlude in Israel.
CT: I’m going to stop this and go ahead and turn it over Jim.
[Begin Side B, Tape 1 of 2]CT: . . . . Where did you meet your wife at Jim?
JD: Well, I have always been an entrepreneur. In my early days, when I was about eighteen, I would put on a dance every month in the local lodge hall. I would hire a five piece orchestra for thirty-five dollars for the night. Then I would design the tickets and have a printer. I would go through the neighborhood selling the tickets, twenty-five cents for girls and seventy-five for boys [laughs]. We’d have the dancehall filled, you know. Then at midnight we’d stop the orchestra and we would go down to the kitchen. Everybody had something to eat. No charge. That was all just thrown in. But, there was one peculiar dance that I’ve never heard of anywhere else. I forget what we called it-the bag dance or what it was-but all the men who didn’t have a partner would stand in the center of the dance floor. Just a big group and the others with partners would be dancing around them. You’d have a paper bag and you would blow it up. You’d see a girl you wanted to dance with. You’d go over and bang that bag on her partner’s back-Just pop the bag-a big bang, then he had to give up the girl no question. So, you got to dance with her [laughs]. It was a lot of fun. It was a neighborhood.
Then also, once a month, I put on a show in the local theater [Woodlawn Theater]. Here I was — seventeen, eighteen years old, and I would rent the theater for the night. In those days, you didn’t talk about having features. You talked about how many reels you had. A reel would run twenty minutes, so a normal six or eight reel for the night was a whole show. I would say I want five extra reels or something like that, so we would put on extra.
. . . . So, we’d get that and then I would also get tickets. Then, what I’d go around the neighborhood talking to people. Just go knock on the door and talk-and say, “Have you had any experience on the stage?” Now and then, I’d find someone who’d say, “Well, I used to play an instrument on the New York stage, but that was a long time ago.”
I’d say, “You are just who I want.” I would put on five acts of vaudeville in addition to the extra reels of film. I filled every seat in the house. There would be people standing in the sidewalk waiting for the second show. The theater manager never could do that. I would have an orchestra playing in the pit. Of course, they just played music and it didn’t match the film, but they [laughs] made music. So, those are some of the early times here and it was a lot of fun.
I ran the dance and the theater so I could raise money to pay for the lodge hall. I was secretary of the Woodlawn athletic club, so I was raising money to pay our rent on our clubroom. All the other fellas in the club, they would be in the clubroom playing cards. Here I was out working on this other stuff, but I enjoy work.
I am a workaholic to where I gave up playing fifty years ago. When I worked at General Electric Company, they knew I loved golf. I played golf at that time. So, every two weeks I would put on Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf in our lunchroom. We had a big lunchroom, which was a demonstration room to put on shows and everything. So, it fit real good-elevated booth and I would set up the camera because when I was running these shows up here, I would be the projectionist to start the show over for the second show. So, I had to be able to run all these carbine arc machines. So, I would put on a golf movie for the people at General Electric Company every two weeks. When I retired from GE they gave me a golf cart and a beautiful leather golf bag and everything. Never been out of the house. I am involved in running three businesses. I don’t have time to play.
CT: Now, you still run the businesses?
JD: Oh, yes. Yes. . . . Greenhouse equipment-Then I’ve had rental real estate with houses to rent in three parts of the city, and building sites and houses in five counties in Oregon and Washington. That’s the second. I’ve had that for sixty years. My biggest business I’ve had for seventy years is the stock market. [talks about stock market investments]
CT: It sounds like you are very active even now-
JD: Oh, yes. I enjoy work. I like work. I tell young people never do less than your best. Never do less than your best. I say, “I’m an egoist”, so when I work if I can’t brag about the job I’ve done I’m mad at myself. I didn’t do my best. Always do your best.
CT: Where do you think that came from-your own high standard?
JD: I don’t know. Maybe my father’s building, because he wasn’t a stonecutter building paving blocks and that sort of stuff. He built buildings that were classic which would never be torn down you might say.
And my mother too-she was able to manage things. She did a wonderful job, so I don’t know just where it came from. [talks about the Scottish side of the family and Socialism]
CT: Why do you think you decided to stay in Portland Jim?
JD: Well, because of my job, General Electric Company. Of course, that held me down. I retired as soon as I could. At age sixty-two, I retired. I was born in 1905 so I retired in 1967. See, while I was at General Electric I had these other businesses on the side. I was taking care of my real estate. I was rebuilding bathrooms and kitchens. Re-plumbing the houses and rewiring them. I was just busy all of the time. There was no incentive to leave town. There was no place that could offer me as much as I was getting here.
CT: Overall, what was your work experience like at General Electric?
JD: My work experience?
CT: Yeah. I mean was it a positive experience for General Electric. Would you do it again do you think?
JD: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I enjoyed it. I was the only one who retired from General Electric where they had two parties for my retirement in the same day. One in the office for all the employees and another at a motel for people from the east and California and Washington and everything all came to that party.
CT: What did you learn about people from working -at any job really?
JD: Well-Just the contacts you know. Always try to be friendly and helpful. If you can help somebody, why-I just can’t pin it down to anything special.
CT: This is kind of a big question here. What major historical events do you recall occurring in Portland, such as building of the St. John’s bridge, World War II or the Depression?
JD: Well, building the St. John’s Bridge-There was a little competition between the St. John’s Bridge and the people in Sellwood for the Sellwood Bridge. So, the different neighborhood committees got together and they said, “Okay, we will vote for the St. John’s Bridge if you later then vote for the Sellwood Bridge. So, its kind of cooperation between them to get the city to do it. That’s the way that those bridges were built. The St. John’s Bridge actually is very artistic, having Gothic arches. Its been written up in international reports on bridges. We’ve had people, engineers here from out of the country come to look at the St. John’s Bridge because of the way it is. So, it’s a little bit famous.
Some of the early days with-like with streetcars, we didn’t have any street cleaning departments in those early days. So, when it snowed- and our weather used be, I think, a lot more severe. When it would snow in the wintertime, the streetcar company would have a streetcar with a rotating broom on the front at an angle. This streetcar would go up the tracks and sweep the snow to one side. Then the automobiles could follow on the tracks because they could get traction. See, they weren’t traveling in the snow.
I remember one time that the streetcar that I was on couldn’t get contact. There was enough snow underneath the wheels. He couldn’t get the electrical contact to make the motors run. He got off of the streetcar and put his switch iron where you turn the switches with it. He rammed it between the rail and the wheel and got contact. The car started to go and he jumped back on the car.
Another thing is, the old Counsel Crest cars-when they would come down Vista Avenue, if they ever got loose and ran away, it would kill everybody in that car probably. No telling where the car would end up. All over town was always two-man crew, a motorman and a conductor. The conductor would have to run down to the front of the car and jump off and go ahead and throw a switch, so the car wouldn’t be derailed while it still hadn’t gathered speed. When the car passed that switch, he would jump on the back steps and run through the car and do it again. He had to do it four times or more coming down Vista Avenue.
CT: Four times?
JD: Yes. So, the car wouldn’t run away and go off the bank somewhere. That’s the way that car used to run. There was an amusement park up on top-Council Crest Amusement Park. It was like a Jantzen Beach. Had merry go-rounds and all that. They had a flume that went all the way around and you could go for twenty-five cents. Get on a boat and the water was running through the flume. The boat would carry you all the way around the mountain top [laughs]. It was a regular amusement park there.
One thing I used to do is – I had guns. I would go down to the slough bottoms and practice shooting. I was pretty good with a rifle. I was so small when people would see me going down the street with a rifle and a pistol and a bandoleer of shells, they thought-a little kid playing cops and robbers. I had enough to hold up any bank in town [laughs]. I would go down and shoot cans and things at the slough and practice. So, I was pretty good. I understand shooting. So, I would go to the concession at Council Crest Park where they had cork guns-little guns that would shoot a cork, and all different kinds of ornaments and things on a shelf behind. If you could shoot it down, you got it. You had to pay and get say, maybe three corks for twenty-five cents. And if you could shoot anything down, see-Well, I knew enough about shooting. Here I was four foot tall. I would go up and buy my corks and I would pick up any gun. I didn’t care. I would shoot first and watch where the cork landed, so I knew whether that gun was shooting right, left, high or low and I’d compensate. I just could clean the shelves [laughs]. I would stand around with a sack full of all the stuff I’d won. The people trying to sell the idea to other people would say, “Look at this little kid. Look at all the stuff he got. Look at all he got.” But, I could shoot it down, because I understood. . . the guns would never shoot straight, but they’d have a peculiarity to where they would consistently shoot right, left, high or low. I would compensate for it, then I could knock it down.
Then, when it was horse and buggy, hardly any automobiles. Very, very few automobiles and everything was delivered to you by a wagon. . . Every neighborhood had to have local stores. Just two blocks up the street we had two fish markets, two meat markets, and about three grocery stores, and a doctor, and a dentist, and a druggist. It was a little city of its own. You could jump in a car today and go ten miles to see your doctor. You couldn’t do it then. It wasn’t convenient. You could do it, but it wasn’t convenient because you would have to go by streetcar.
CT: Since you had your own community here, has it changed over the years as far as the feeling of community?
JD: Oh, yeah. It changes. So many more houses have been built you know. This house I have next door here, now I got that when they put in I-5. They took out eight-hundred houses as I recall and I was over there and bought this at auction and moved it here. . . . Moved it from over in Piedmont district right over here.
. . . . This was an open lot. Every year we dug a garden with a shovel by hand. See, there was no entertainment. No radio and no television. It was just work and a picnic was your only entertainment that you could have. So, down on the sloughs here they had boats for rent and they actually served lunches. You could go down and have lunch, then you could rent a boat and row your lady friend on the slough. The boats were all tin boats-tin covered, so if they got a leak, he’d just solder it shut. Where if it had been wooden boats, an injury would’ve meant carpenter work or something he couldn’t do.
CT: Were they wooden boats covered with tin?
JD: Yeah-Yeah. And the wood didn’t have to be good. It just had to be structurally sound enough, then just put tin on it and solder the joints. Nothing to it. Real simple.
[phone rings and JD talks a bit about his daughter visiting]CT: . . . . Have you seen a change in ethnicity in Woodlawn?
JD: Yes. Now, I would say-I would say we have thirty to forty percent Black now. Where before, we had one family total-in my childhood. . . .
CT: Did you have a Woodlawn police? I read something about a Woodlawn police officer.
JD: It was just an officer that was assigned to the area. He just walked the streets on foot. . . .
CT: Did he have a gun?
JD: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. But, he didn’t have a horse or anything else. Then they had call-boxes, so that he could report-so the station knew he was on the job. He would go up and he would open up the box with a key and turn the crank. That would give them a signal. Then, he would just shout his name. He would say, “Patton”, and close the box up. He just walked down the streets, but it kept the neighborhood [safe]. We would leave our doors open at night. In the early days, just have a screen on it to keep the flies out, because in those days with no sewer system and no garbage pick up or anything you fed all your kitchen garbage to your chickens. Everyone had chickens to get eggs.
CT: In the backyard?
JD: Oh yeah. In the backyard, I had chickens, ducks and rabbits. You fed all your scraps to your animals. Then, you had to buy grain to to supplement it too. But anything you that you couldn’t feed them, cans and bottles, they went down the toilet. The outhouse. . . . And when it filled up, you covered it over and dug another hole. In fact, I remember years ago a fellow was coming through the neighborhood knowing that all these houses had outhouses. He wanted to go into the backyard with a sharp steel rod and probe for the outhouses, because he wanted to dig up those old bottles that were antiques. In those days they didn’t blow a bottle with a machine. They would blow the body of the bottle and blow the neck. Then, they would fuse the two together. Those were valuable bottles. So, he was going through trying to find out where he could dig in old outhouses in order to get the bottles [laughs]. But, that’s the way he’d find them-with that rod. . . .
CT: Going out late at night, if you had to the use the restroom it may have been kind of chilly. . .
JD: Yeah-You bet, especially if there is snow or ice on the ground. And there is no heat. In those days too, toilet paper wasn’t too common. So, very often that is where the Montgomery Ward catalog hung.
CT: Oh!
JD: [laughs] Tear the thin sheets out of the catalog for toilet paper. They used to laugh about it say, “Yeah, get down to the furniture section there-lost his sheets.” [laughs]
CT: Read it at the same time-
JD: Yeah.
CT: Do you remember you mentioned public bathing in the Columbia Slough?
JD: Oh, yeah, at night on a warm day, there would be maybe fifteen to twenty kids down there. No one owned a bathing suit. You just didn’t have bathing suits. There would be some adults down there. Now and then a few working men would come down and they’d swim in the water for a while. Then, they would take a bar of soap and a towel and they would take a bath. They would take their bath and get all dried off and go back home. So, they had their bath for the day. Maybe they worked in a dusty atmosphere or something – but we’d all go down to the slough and swim. We didn’t swim in the main slough which you call Columbia Slough. We swam in the slough this side [Woodlawn side] of that. It was all springwater from up Columbia Boulevard-on up Columbia Boulevard direction past Sixtieth probably. Those were all dairy farms up in that area. The water would come down and then it went into the Columbia Slough right down here. Just before it would get to MLK Jr. Boulevard it turned in and there was a lake there too. It came down into that lake. They called that Renee’s Lake because of a family named Renee-R-E-N-double E-had a house up on Columbia Boulevard. They had a farm behind their house down to the water. That was Renee’s so we called that Renee’s Lake. We used to swim in there. The water would come down to Rene’s Lake and then into the main slough. We know that it was fed by underwater springs because when you are swimming all of the sudden you would get that cold blast coming up. See, it was entirely different water than the water you were swimming in and there it was right out in the middle.
CT: Is Renee’s Lake-that still exists?
JD: I don’t think so. I think it’s just all been filled in. With the dikes and dams, you don’t have to put up with lakes anymore. See, that water now is confined between the dikes. So, a lot of the places that used to flood every year, don’t flood. The golf courses down there, they flooded out every year when they were just farmland, vacant land.
CT: Mostly dairy farms or-
JD: Dairy farms, yeah. That’s all, just dairy farms-and there was a pig ranch down there too where they raised hogs.
CT: Vegetable gardens or anything like that?
JD: Well, some. There was some gardens-.Yeah, there was some of that. On this side of Columbia Boulevard there was quite a bit of gardening. On that side, it was some horticultural where they raised tree crops to sell.
CT: Tree crops?
JD: Shrubbery. They raised that some and there was some farming down there. We didn’t pay much attention to that.
CT: Do you remember different forms of transportation on the slough itself?
JD: Yes. In the early days that I remember, the boats were mainly converted lifeboats from World War I-lifeboats. When the war was over, they dismantled a lot of those ships. They didn’t need them. They are obsolete ships. So, they had the lifeboats, then they’d put an automobile engine in them.
CT: In the back of the boat?
JD: Oh, no. Well, just in near the stern, but a whole automobile engine. The lifeboat would be as long as this room-to carry twenty or thirty people. Then, they would just put in some four-cylinder engine taken out of a car. Then, they had the rowboats and canoes. With the boathouse down there, they could rent boats out or canoes and you could canoe up the river. Go out to Main Stone. Go almost to the Columbia River in part of that. Now, by the time that I was courting my wife, you could go right out the slough into the Columbia River. They cut a dike open and the Columbia River water came in, went through the [inaudible] down then into the main slough, then into the Willamette River, then into the Columbia and in as much as farther up stream the level was higher than here. There was flow all the time. I’ve talked to them about that and they say, ” Yeah, but the tide would come in and kind of reverse that.” Well, there is about two or three feet of tide from the ocean-
[Side A, Tape 2 of 2]CT: About three foot of tide from the ocean-high and low tide-
JD: Every six hours you know, its one way or the other. It’s high or low. I was aware of the tide because I’d be swimming in the river and I’d go across relatively shallow water and maybe by the time that I got through swimming, coming back the water was deep. You know, a lot deeper than it was and so I’d have to swim across an area that I had previously waded across.
Then, of course down here near where the ferry landing was they had the amusement park before there was any Jantzen Beach. Before, Jantzen made his first million or two maybe. Anyway, it was-they called it Columbia Beach and it was an amusement park. They had Ferris wheels and all the concessions. They also had a movie studio. They made movies like Max Senate bathing beauty movies. All the girls had their faces painted yellow. I imagine that was so the camera would pick up the right color. I imagine that was for color correction. They would be out there and of course in those days the women wore bathing suits clear down over their knees. They had kind of pantaloons on. They made those kind of funny movies down there on the beach.
CT: The concessions and everything, did they have those year round or is it just during the summer time?
JD: I think it was mainly in the summertime, yeah. Because, when the high water would come, why it would darn near flood the amusement park out, too. That was-so then that thing got wiped out. I think that is called Horseman’s Moorage now, where the park was.
CT: Do you remember any commercial traffic on the slough?
JD: No. No, there was no place to go. It was kind of trapped. It could come right from Columbia Country Club down that slough, down the main slough, which you call the Columbia Slough, and then into the Willamette. There was no traffic there.
[tells a story about going back to school]CT: . . . . Was there a railroad that went to Vancouver? There’s a freight railroad-
JD: Well, the Union Pacific was built right down here. Just down at the bottom of the hill. Just six blocks to the railroad from here. When it was built, the superintendent of the railroad lived in the corner house where later Captain Harry Vaknockin lived. That was where the superintendent of the railroad lived. It’s a big three-story house. It’s the biggest house in the whole neighborhood.
CT: And that’s before the Captain lived there?
JD: That’s right, before the Captain lived there. My understanding was that the superintendent of the railroad lived there and his associate lived in the house next door. When the railroad was done, why he was off into the blue to his next job I guess. That’s when Vaknockins came in.
CT: Now, it looks like up the street there used to be a railroad grounds. I have a map of the Woodlawn area here. This map is dated 1899 and I guess we are on this side of the street.
JD: We are right here. I own those four lots there.
CT: These four right here?
JD: Yeah.
CT: The railroad grounds-remember it when it was a railroad here?
JD: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. The streetcars to Vancouver-the early streetcars to Vancouver came right in here. Over-there is no such thing as Scots Streets. These streets-those names aren’t there and I don’t remember when they were even. Let me see though. Columbia Avenue-
CT: Maybe an updated one-Maybe not.
JD: Well, lets get back to this-Vancouver Railway Company, it came right up Union Avenue, Wynona, why that street is here. Lenore’s okay, and Morton.
CT: I know some of these have been changed.
JD: Oh, yeah.
CT:So, these are probably old names.
JD: There is nothing like this Rockwell and Scott-and Haslo is not here along with Manzanita and Magnolia-Madrona, that’s a street we had in my childhood. Right up here, this is what is now Dekum, and right in here was a railroad yards. Going up the street on the next block over, just before you get to Dekum, there was a hotel in there. That is where the railroad men used to stay. It had poolrooms in the basement, but then it had bedrooms up above, and a dining room.
CT: Right across the street from the railroad grounds?
JD: From the railroad grounds. That’s where the streetcars were. Then when they abandoned that railroad, they had a whole bunch of obsolete cars-horse cars that they put in the vacant ground there near where the box factory is today. They put these old horse cars there and they burned them all down. Boy, they had this beautiful woodwork in them. You know, varnished woodwork. They just burned them down to get the scrap metal. They had brass wheels to put the brakes on and that. Then, all the cast iron wheels underneath. . .
CT: You said horse cars-
JD: I think they were horse cars.
CT: Like pulled by horses?
JD: Yeah, pulled by horses.
CT: Instead of electric?
JD: Instead of electric, yes. So, they were obsolete. They were a lot smaller for horses to pull them. so, they burned all those down. The streetcar track used to go down Madrona and it went right straight down and out on a little elevated walkway there, which is Eighth Street. It went down that elevated walkway on the railroad track to go to Vancouver. Then later it moved over to Union Avenue. That straightened it out, but it used to go down that other street first. Of course, I’m talking way back when I was a pretty young kid. I imagine I was maybe seven or eight years old when a lot of that happened. So, I don’t remember too much. But, we used to play in those cars that were just parked. The streetcars were just racked up side by side before they burned them.
CT: The railroad grounds became a fire station later on?
JD: Well, the fire station was a volunteer fire station. Just a two-wheel cart with a hose on it. Volunteers in the neighborhood, when they would ring the bell, why you’d put on your pants and run up there to grab on and pull that hose cart wherever the fire was. Of course, the houses were lit with kerosene lamps.
CT: At night?
JD: Oh, yes. There was no electricity.
CT: It is hard for me to kind of really understand-get a picture of what-
JD: Now, here in our ceilings, we have pipes up there because we had combination gas and electric put in. The fixture kind of went up like this, and the electric light hung down, and the gaslight was up. So, you could have a gas light or electric. The pipes-so when I had refinished everything, I took the pipes and shoved them up and turned them. So, they are still up there. They’re still in the ceiling [laughs]. It was gas and electricity and that was it. We had kerosene lamps and you know when it came time to go to bed, you would undress by the stove to keep warm, get your nightgown on, get your kerosene lamp lit, and go up the stairs, crawl in bed. Maybe have a hot water bottle in the bed for your feet. See, just think of the potential for fire when everybody in the house had a flame-those kerosene lamps right and left.
CT: I brought some pictures of the neighborhood from awhile back. I got them from the Oregon Historical Society. I made photocopies of them so they’re not real good. Maybe it might just kind of-
JD: Yeah, fine.
CT: -if you recognize the area or what maybe you were looking at-And I will label these pictures so I can say A or B for the tape recorder. Now, that may be a little different area of town, but-.
JD: Yeah, that’s Alberta and the streetcar tracks. This is over-
CT: I’m not familiar with that one.
JD: I can’t recall that one.
CT: This one here, that’s maybe another Alberta shot.
JD: I bet that house is still standing, but I really don’t know where that is.
CT: I guess that this is some area of the slough that lets off when the slough overflows. Is that-
JD: Well, I don’t know. That’s got a kind of a dike there too. I don’t remember ever seeing anything like that down there.
CT: On the back of this picture it says Sullivan’s Gulch and it’s a Hooverville.
JD: Oh, yes.
CT: What’s-
JD: Sullivan’s Gulch is the road from MLK Jr. Boulevard out I-84. You know where the freeway goes out there? That was Sullivan’s Gulch and that was a railroad. This was-they called it Hooverville. Hoover was president and this was a depression. So, these are the fellows that just lived there. They had no jobs or anything. They’d just come out there and just camped right in there. They didn’t pay rent or anything. They just, anything they could get they’d move in.
CT: And maybe work jobs on the side?
JD: And work jobs. Whatever work they could get, yes.
CT: Remember any changes during the depression?
JD: That’s where that was-I remember all that.
CT: Oh, you remembered all-
JD: Oh, yes. I remember that yeah. Those were all transients that lived in there. People with no ties.
CT: They kind of dress a little-
JD: Oh, no-just about as well as they could, you know-just work clothes.
CT: You remember any changes around the depression around here? I mean say like how people worked or –
JD: No. No, I don’t really remember anything like that. What size shoe do you have?
CT: This is a ten-ten and half.
JD: I was thinking some of these shoes I’ve got out here-you take a look and if any of them will fit you, they are yours. They are good. You know, it is a shame to just give them to someone you don’t know at all.
CT: Yeah, sure. That’s Woodlawn Theater. That’s kind of a new picture so-
JD: That’s it, the old Woodlawn Theater and this is Tamishanty next door. A fellow ran that. He had a book rental store and a soda fountain and lunches. He had everything he could cram in that little thing there.
CT: That little area there?
JD: In that little-It’s still there. It is only about eight or ten feet wide altogether. Yeah, that’s the old Woodlawn Theater. This is the projection room up in here.
CT: In the top area?
JD: Yeah.
CT: Okay Jim, what advie would you give to a young person just starting to work?
JD: Well, learn all you can about the job and always do your best. Always do your best. Otherwise, you would generate a reputation whispered between the other employees-you are taking advantage. You take off time whenever you can on any excuse. Always do your best.
CT: Do you consider yourself successful?
JD: Have I been successful?
CT: Yeah. That’s a pretty open interpretation.
JD: For anybody that started work for a dollar a day, and I never knew when I made my first million. And after that, they come easy. I can tell you how to be a millionaire. No trouble. You have to have one ability…self-control. You buy what you need, but don’t buy everything you see and everything you’d like. Buy what you need. I have never owned a new car. I have two Cadillacs and a Chrysler right now-Imperial. I have never owned a new car. I buy a quality used car. A high quality, show room type, for half price and put the balance in the stock market and the market buys my next car. Very simple.
CT: But self-control is the primary-
JD: Self-control. Self-control. If you have self-control, and have aspirations to get ahead. With your spare money, you don’t want to leave it in the bank. Invest it. When you invest in the stock market and you are a beginner, only invest in companies that you have a lot of faith in. Now, one of the best companies in the entire world is General Electric. That has split twelve to one in the last five years. You just make money hand over fist, but you have to hold onto your money. Invest it. Don’t spend it.
CT: Sounds like good advice.
JD: Yeah, well, its worked for me.
CT: What we have here are two forms. One is a deed of gift agreement to give a copy of this tape to the Oregon Historical Society. The back one is consent form so that the information on the tape-what they will try to do is take certain excerpts that you’ve said and put it on a website, so-
JD: It doesn’t make any difference to me. I can sign these up.
CT: That completes your interview Jim. I appreciate it.
