Narrator: Victor Nelson 
Interviewer: Donna Sinclair 
Date:February 7, 2,000 
Place:Portland, Oregon – Columbia Slough

Transcribed by Donna Sinclair

Victor Nelson, born April 12, 1930, in Portland, Oregon. A property owner in Kenton most of his life. His parents owned property in Kenton also. Went to Kenton Grade School. Owned a company, Kenton Machine Works, which has been in the family since 1923. Grew up in a house on Denver and Farragut �� the family owns the property, but Mr. Nelson no longer lives in Kenton. The Kenton Machine Works serviced almost all the industries along Columbia Boulevard, from Union Avenue to St. Johns. Most of the industries backed onto the Columbia Slough, mainly packing houses, slaughter houses, hog farms, shingle mills, saw mills. Mr. Nelson recalls playing on the slough as a child and watching Vanport workers as they were bussed through Kenton. His father was an active member of the Kenton Businessmen’s Club in the 1950s and the Kenton Machine Works held the contract to build the Paul Bunyan statue for the Oregon Centennial in 1959. Mr. Nelson discusses the deterioration and revitalization of Kenton.

[Begin Side A, Tape 1 of 1]

VN: Denver was the main street through Kenton. Kenton in the thirties and forties was like a community in itself. It had its own theater, it had its bakery, had three or four grocery stores. Had a repair shop, had a hardware store. It was a self-sufficient community, which took care of all the needs of the people in the area. Also we had a streetcar that went down the center of the streets, and then went downtown. . .

DS: Can you describe how the physical landscape has changed around here?

VN: Actually, there has not been much change in the Kenton district in this, let’s say, sixty years. There’s been some changes of course, in the people that occupy the stores. In other words, all these individuals like the bakery and the meat market and the small grocery stores and the barber shops and the drugstores that were populating [Kenton] have gone now and have not been replaced. They’ve been replaced more or less by industrial type renters. It’s starting to be revitalized now. I noticed in the last three to five years, I think the biggest thing that helped Kenton out was the refurbishing of the Kenton Hotel, and its restaurant. That was a kind of building block. So now we’re seeing antique stores move in. We’re seeing pretty near most occupancy of the buildings where a lot of them were boarded up and more or less storehouses, are now starting to become viable businesses. . .

DS: What about in the slough? Did you fish or swim or anything like that in the slough when you were a kid?

VN: Well you really couldn’t. Really that’s probably been the biggest improvement of north Portland, has been the slough area. The Kenton Machine Works was a machine shop, a neighborhood machine shop, just like the rest of them really. The bakery was a neighborhood bakery and the drugstore was in the neighborhood, and we serviced almost all the industries along Columbia Boulevard. . . some of them dependent upon the slough for source, like the shingle mills and the sawmills down there, used the slough for their log rafts coming up. . .

In those days actually the Columbia Slough was an open sewer. Even the city sewage actually went into the Columbia Slough. So it was not swimmable. The only fishing that was done down there was carp. And basically, that was fished not by people from the Portland area, but also Vanport, which was started on the property about 1942. Brought in a lot of other people from other parts of the country, particularly the south. And they could be seen fishing along the side, and they were fishing for carp. Which was what they fished for in the south. But here nobody did. . .

Those industries that were a detriment to the slough now all have gone away. No more packing plants or slaughterhouses along Columbia Boulevard. And the shingle mills are long gone, which, they put a lot of residue into the slough.

DS: Can you describe what it looked like?. . .

VN: I tell you what, when I was a kid we used to go down there all the time, make the little rafts and raft and raft out on it, and I don’t know that our parents realized we were doing this. But it was so bad that you could almost walk across the slough. It was that polluted. It was really terrible, especially from the hog farms and so forth that bordered it. But I don’t think there was anything that could have compared with how bad it was. And of course, it was log rafts, and you can almost you know, we’d climb out on those things. And I don’t remember falling in or, but I think we, we didn’t know any better. It was just one of these things that kids do. . . and all the neighborhood kids did it. It wasn’t something that I did alone. You know, you’d nail up a raft and float across and so forth. But it was so polluted that you wouldn’t think of that today. I don’t know of anybody that ever got hurt, and there was no sickness, there was no nothing from that standpoint. But the cleanup has been quite a few years. I remember a lot of our customers, the reason they’re not down there is because they couldn’t meet the EPA’s restrictions. And then of course they put a sewage system in, where that was the only source where it was direct outflow of sewage in there. Now we’ve got a sewage treatment plant, down toward St. Johns, Portsmouth area. . . but it was a mainstay for industries to be along the slough area, especially those that needed it for supply of their logs and so-forth. . .

DS: Can you tell me what that [the Livestock Expo.] was like?

VN: . . . We’d stay all day, we’d be there all day long. We’d ride our bicycles from here, and that was called the PI, Pacific International Livestock, and that was big time because. And that was in the fall, and all the counties had big county fairs and they were just finishing their county fairs, because the county fairs usually are in August and September and so on, and I think that was October they had that. So they brought huge exhibits, and there was a lot of, and since it was the PI, it was the northwest rather than just Oregon and Portland area. And so there would be lots of cowboys and lots of cattle and lots of county exhibits and wheat growers and all that, and it was an all day, all week affair. We used to spend all day down there. . . and I’m talking about being subteen ages, you know, eleven, twelve, thirteen, like that. And we used to walk around in the cattle area and people, the cowboys, you know from Montana are very friendly. They let you even ride the cattle, jump in there and ride around, and things like that. And then they had the big horse show was really one of the top events there and it was pretty top quality horse show, with a lot of pageantry. . . they had a rodeo every evening, 8:00. It was a big rodeo. Now we see rodeos and we go to all of the rodeos, like at Mollala, we go to St. Paul, we go up to Joseph, Pendleton, and they were, it was equally as good as any of the big rodeos now. It was like Pendleton Roundup. . .

[a lot of commercial exhibits, similar to today’s fairs, entertainment connected with the horse show and the rodeo. No fast food, maybe some corn, hot dogs]

There was quite a famous place next door. It was called the Red Steer Caf��, and it was right next door to the PI building. And that was kind of the place where all of the, I’ll call ��em cowboys and ranchers and everything congregated next door. And of course, that was a steak house, very famous for many, many years. Of course they had the entertainment. . . I think half of the people that came to PI from those states came there on account of the Red Steer Caf�� [laughs].

DS: I wanted to ask you about whether or not you remembered Vanport being built and how things changed during that period.

VN: Yes, Vanport, since we were real close here. Vanport was built relatively quickly. I used to ride through Vanport when the people were still living there. That would be prior to the flood in ’48, when we would go down to the river and of course then, we got through with the slough, why we would go over to the river, the Columbia River, or the Columbia Slough next to there, and play along the waterfront there. And old sawmills and, you know how kids do. So we had to ride through Vanport. . . There was a lot of activity in Vanport at that time. Now being up here, we could see the workers that worked in the shipyards. They had busses that would come from Vanport, ��cause most people didn’t have cars. Most of them came out on trains and if the cars were, they were old cars like Model As. But they had regular busses that brought the shipyard workers, the Oregon Shipyard and Vancouver Shipyard. And they used to come up Denver Avenue here and turn in front of our shop. And there’d be all the big trailers where people. And there were so many workers that the busses weren’t busses like we see now, where you ride into, they were actually a truck pulling a trailer. And the people were in there and they didn’t have seats, they had, they were called standies. So that the people who were in there, it was so tight that they, so you had a kind of a bar or seat that you kind of stand and sit on. And there were people like that and just, packed in there. And they’d come around the corner because they couldn’t make the turn, they’d come around the shop and go around here and then go down on Columbia Boulevard, and then out to St. Johns and that way. . . so that showed that there was a lot of people down there and a lot of people who moved, and it was all really concentrated on the shipyard work. . .

[tells a personal story about going out to Jantzen Beach with his friends, something they did every Friday night. They had midget auto races. After the races, their car was parked by the roller coaster and they went by a fun house. There was a big barrel in it. He went in it and broke his collarbone. This was at twelve o’clock on a Friday night. He went to Emmanuel Hospital, but it was understaffed so he went home, and returned the next day to have an operation (Saturday). The flood was the following day, so he missed it because he was in the hospital for the following two weeks]

VN: So, my parents lived on Denver Avenue and they had people camping in their front yard because my folks would bring out food and water and so forth. And they had Lombard blocked off so people couldn’t go down here to the Kenton area. There was a lot of sightseers wanting to see the big flood and so forth. . .

[A couple of his friends were involved in assisting with the evacuation]

DS: What did it look like when you came back?

VN: It was just nothing but trash, and just wreckage, just like a hurricane or a tornado had gone through there because the buildings all washed up to the dike here and smashed against each other, and there was just wood all over. A lot of submerged cars because people got in a traffic jam and they couldn’t get out of there, and so they had to leave their cars and jump out so, it was pretty [?]. Then after the water went down, then it was really mass wreckage �� wood all over everything and all the houses were floating because they just got up and floated over and then banged into each other and they were two story houses. . . [his friends who helped with the clean-up found food still set up on tables] [Kenton is a little higher than the Vanport area]

The water was just about to the dikes. Now we had good dikes all along the Columbia River, all along in front of the PI building and the Swift & Company, and all that, had a good dike. And it was holding out the water, although the water was up, so really the water was higher than the land down there. But what happened was, there was a dike that went along the other side of Vanport, and it actually was a railroad fill. . . had been built many, many years before. And what that was, was a trestle, that went from the St. Johns area over to the bridge in the old days. A wooden trestle that they carried the railroad on. Well then the railroad wanted to support that better so they made a fill out of it instead of a trestle. They took rail cars out and dumped the dirt on both sides, and they made a railroad fill. . . this trestle was inside this fill. . .inside the dike. So what happened is the water went around and it was up against this dike and it started permeating the dike. Well then when it got into this trestle it was all wood inside there, rotten wood, and so it went through there and gave way. . .

[DS asks about community involvement. His father was involved in the Kenton Businessmen’s Club during the 1950s.]

VN: The Kenton Businessmen who decided for the Centennial, which was 1959, the Oregon Centennial, and it was held at the PI building, and also in that area where they had a lot of; it was a mini-World’s Fair. It was for several months, and there was all the countries, like China and India and Germany, all had their booths. . . [outdoor activities held where the Portland International Raceway is now] Since this was the main street. If you wanted to go to Seattle in those days, you had to come up Interstate Avenue. That was Highway 99 to Vancouver. And so almost all the traffic from California, from Portland, and every thing, from Seattle, all went on Interstate Avenue here. That’s why you see so many motels and there’s restaurants. It was a very active street. So the Kenton Businessmen decided that they wanted to have some show of effort, so they built Paul Bunyan statue that’s out in front here. Well, Paul Bunyan was designed by my dad, and we built it here in Kenton Machine Works shop. And we had a lot of volunteer workers, the iron workers and the welders and so forth, and they bent all the iron and then we hauled it out and stuck it up, and the plaster’s union apprentices plastered it for us. Now that was supposed to have been up there for six months. We had a six months permit. The state owned the little piece of property there. After the Centennial closed down, why the state came to us and said, we’d like to keep it up a little longer, we’re going to make it an information booth for tourists. . . then after they built I-5, they moved the information booth down to Jantzen Beach, they didn’t need it so they took that down. And it just kind of stayed there. Well, we’ve kind of maintained Paul Bunyan. . .

DS: Your family has?

VN: No, a few, like the bank employees and our employees and my dad, and he’d have it painted. . . now the Kenton Neighborhood Association has taken over the maintenance and they’ve done a lot of work, they’ve done some planning and they did the brickwork on that and they’ve painted. And, in fact I just got the signs last week, because we’re putting up a sign because nobody really knows why Paul Bunyan is standing there. So I have a sign showing a little bit of the history, why Paul Bunyan’s there, and then the sign on the back side is all the contributors, who originally contributed to it. Most of the businesses are no longer here, and then the people that have given money in an effort to recondition Paul Bunyan. So he was up there for six months, but now he’s been up there forty years. And as substantial as he is, because I know how he’s built, he could be there another hundred years. . . Now we’re concerned because Interstate Light Rail, it was okayed the other day and it’s coming up Interstate. And there’s some conversation that he might have to be moved. And, of course the Kenton area doesn’t want him moved, so that’s going to be a contentious.

DS: Where would he be moved to?

VN: Well, we’ve heard they’re going to move him down to Columbia Boulevard, which would be very inappropriate. There’s no historical reason why. . .or they’re talking about moving him over to Kenton Park, which would be more appropriate, but then we’re also, maybe in negotiating, maybe we can just move him over a little bit out of the way. . .

[the Kenton business man’s group was very active in the 1940s and 1950s, and they met every Thursday. As those businesses closed down, there was a loss of interest in the community. They became absentee business owners, second generation owners. Not much interest and people became less active in the community]

VN: There was a severe deterioration of Kenton. . . it got really, not a good name from the standpoint that there was a lot of taverns in Kenton. In fact, during the war, because we had so many war workers around here, from where I lived on Denver Avenue, I counted thirteen taverns within walking distance. We had a tavern and club, there was two or three nightclubs in Portland, one of which is the Kenton Club, is still there. But Tiny’s Tavern on the corner there was the largest alcohol purveyor in the state of Oregon just because of the locality of the shipyard workers and so forth. So we had a lot a trafficking from Vancouver, because in those days they had a blue law in Vancouver where they close at midnight, where we were open until 1:30 at the taverns and 2:30 at the nightclubs. So Kenton went downhill in a hurry with the closing of the businesses. And we had a bad reputation of a lot of drunks on the street. But that’s all changing. It’s really been revitalized, and we’ve been able to get rid of that type of substandard housing. The low-cost apartments that they had in the old hotels, and there’s a concentrated effort now. . .

. . . I attend quite a few more meetings now, the Kenton Neighborhood Association and North Portland Business Association, because there’s groups that are trying to do things. And we are able to get projects done, and there’s more funding now than there was before. The funding was all out of everybody’s pocket, the business man’s pocket. Now you get grants to fund some of the projects that you have. And we support like, Friends of the Trees and some other things like that. . .

. . . [cost of housing rising quickly in Kenton. Was a working class neighborhood. A twenty year period when the houses in Kenton were really inexpensive. Younger people are moving into the neighborhood. They are purchasing starter homes closer to the city.] [End Side A, Begin Side B, Tape 1 of 1]

VN: [talks about the Kenton Action Plan, promotion of multi-family housing, some new housing, owning a home versus renting. Sold his company to the employees five years ago. He now works for them, doing machine sales, travels to California, Vancouver B.C., has more time now to participate in Kenton activities. It’s hard to work full time, live away from the area and still participate]

. . .In the early days, the thirties or forties or fifties, everybody that lived here, worked here. Nobody worked on the other part of the city, which now is easy commuting with the freeways, or you can live here and work at Intel in Hillsboro. In those days that was unheard of. How are you going to get out there in the streetcar? Most of the people I know on our street, most of the people walked to work. They all were employed along Columbia Boulevard. If they weren’t employed by the packing houses and the slaughter houses and the sawmills, there was Beal Tank & Pipe, Steel Fabricating Company, truck builder. There was Malarkey, M&M Woodworking that built tanks and all that, so they had opportunity here for whatever their skills were to work here. . .

[They are trying to make it possible and inviting enough for people to work in Kenton, rather than purchasing houses in Gresham or Vancouver]

DS: Are there are lot of people who have houses in Vancouver and work here?

VN: Oh, almost, see I had. At one time I had over 200 employees, and I’d say out of that 150 of them lived in Vancouver. The company is down now to about thirty employees, and out of that I would say, almost all of them live in Vancouver. Because it’s very easy access to Vancouver. . . .

DS: So did the demise of Kenton, we’ll call it, affect your business?

VN: No. Well, it did. It affected our, Kenton Machine Works Business, because we were a neighborhood machine shop. . . that was our entire business. It took care of this business for twenty-five, thirty years. When I joined the company, why, we could see that there was less and less business, that the businesses were moving away. So then we expanded and we were starting to do work in St. Johns, and then we were starting to do work Linnton, and then I was the first person, because I was doing some engineering work for them. I was the first person to do any work across the Willamette River. And so, we happened to be doing work in Beaverton for a new company. Then we started to do work for companies, because we were in the plywood machinery business. We started doing work in Eugene and then Coos Bay, and then, first thing you know we’re doing work in Tacoma, and. . . towards the last twenty years almost all of our work was east of the Mississippi. We have not done any work locally here, except for a few of the old customers that know about us and that we can do the work for, but we don’t do any work locally.

DS: What kinds of work do you?

VN: The company now that I sold to the employees are now concentrating on the corrugated box industry, a special line of equipment, rather than do a lot of. We did repair work, we did building machinery, so we did everything, welding and machinery building and that type of thing. But now today, you have to specialize, you have to find a niche that you can serve. . . [talks about various jobs they are getting from out of town. They’d rather do the jobs locally]

. . . a lot of our competitors are no longer in business. The machine shops are like a dying breed. Not because there isn’t a need, because you don’t really have the people. There isn’t, you know, you don’t have the skilled craftsmen anymore that you used to have that could do anything. In other words, if you were a job shop, like you were servicing all these industries, they’d call up and they’d say, “We’ve got a break down,” or “We got a shaft that’s broken off,” or “We need somebody to come down.” Well, you’d go out and look in the plant and [ask] who can best do the job and we’d put ��em in a pick-up truck and send them down there. So we had really good people, good mechanics, they could do anything, they could fix anything. . . [talks about specialization in the labor market today, lack of training for mechanics]

. . .Nobody wants to be a mechanic anymore. They want to be a stockbroker or they want to be in the Internet or they want to work for Intel, they don’t want to be a welder or that type, they don’t want to be an auto mechanic. All these trades �� they don’t want to be a plumber, climb under somebody’s house. . .

[This has happened over the last twenty-five years. In the 40s and 50s, they had an apprenticeship program. Worked closely with the local community colleges to train machinists. It was a three or four year program. Talks a bit about the demise of the machine industry. Recaps Kenton’s history.]

DS: Did you ride on it [the streetcar]?

VN: No, that was before my time. But then we had a streetcar that stopped right out here in front of our shop, that went downtown. It was a regular streetcar that you’d see now. And yes, I rode on that when I was a kid. And then of course, by the time I went to high school they had what they call trackless trolleys, that were the trolley busses, and they took over from the streetcars.

DS: What did those look like?

VN: Oh, they were big busses, they were really neat, and we should have kept them. They still have them in the Seattle area. But they do, they run with a trolley, just like the streetcars would, but then they could go anywhere they wanted to, and they were like a bus. And they were very big, very fast, very clean. And so I rode to high school, we didn’t have school busses in those days, you took public transportation and you rode from here downtown, you transferred to Sandy Boulevard. . . but that was a good form or transportation. Quiet, no pollution, no gas engines, no nothing. . .

DS: Do you have any closing thoughts?

VN: . . . I would say again, I see great hopes for the Kenton and north Portland area. . . I support the Light Rail, because it’s bringing back the transportation that we had many, many years ago that I thought was successful. . . [talks about the expense of light rail. It will impact Kenton more than most Portland areas, including St. Johns, Union. Will limit businesses and parking further south on Interstate. The business area in Kenton should benefit because there will be a transit station in Kenton. Pressure from the neighborhood association insured the transit station. The industrial properties, including the machine shop, will probably be converted to multi-family dwellings under urban renewal.] [End of Interview]