Ronald Bunn owns property adjacent to the Whitaker Ponds. He has lived at this location for the past 48 years and retired from Oregon Printing Plates in Portland. He is an avid gardener and has viewed the increase in urbanization and commercial development near Whitaker Ponds.

Oral History

Narrator: Ronald Bunn
Interviewer: Geoff Wetherell
Date: August 15, 2000
Place: Portland, Oregon
Transcription: Patrick McGinnis
Edited by Donna Sinclair

GW: This interview is going to concentrate on Mr. Bunn’s experiences living along the Columbia Slough and especially in the Whitaker Ponds area. This interview is for Portland State University’s Columbia Slough Project. And, this interview is taking place in Mr. Bunn’s home.

GW: Where were you born?

RB: I was born in Sparks, Nebraska. I don’t even know if it’s still in existence. I talked to a person one time that was from the area, and he said, yes it was. I think it’s a gas station and a grocery store now.

GW: When were you born?

RB: , April 11, 1929.

GW: How did you and your family come to this area and when did you come here?

RB: We came here in, in 1944. We lived in Rapid City, South Dakota and my dad had gone to Denver to work in the Remington arms plant during the war as a metallurgist — they made so much ammunition that they would probably never use it up, and, so they closed it down right in the middle of the war. And we moved to Portland where he worked in the shipyards.

GW: In what areas of Portland have you resided?

RB: Well, we lived in a housing project when we first came here – Guild’s Lake Project which is out Northwest Portland – no longer in existence, of course. But as soon as we could find a house, why we moved out of there and moved to the Lents area. I lived there until I got married. At first we lived in Southeast Portland and then when we acquired this property in 1951, why we’ve lived here ever since.

GW: What was, what was your father’s occupation when you moved to Portland.?

RB: (coughs) Well, he worked in the shipyards as a carpenter putting insulation on the ships, which was asbestos, by the way, and he later suffered very much from asbestosis.

GW: What made you decide to move to the Whitaker Ponds area?

RB: Well, my father not only being a carpenter and so on, was a minister and he was pasturing a small church down in this area. And first we acquired the property — he was thinking that he would build a home for himself. And then as the airport expanded and moved, many of the people out along Elrod Road that went to this church, they moved to another area and they didn’t need the property, so I bought it.

GW: Did the ponds themselves have anything to with your decision?

RB: Well, we liked the area here because we like to garden, and of course the soil is real good for gardening. And the houses all around the area, most of them had gardens and greenhouses, and so on, and it interested us and we’ve enjoyed that aspect of it very much.

GW: Can you describe a little bit about what the Whitaker Ponds looked like when you first moved here?

RB: Well, not much different than they look now. Of course things have been added around them such as the little league ball fields. But they were about the same shape. There has been some [changes]. Over at the other end of it somebody bought the farm that was over there and there was a big knoll on it, and they took a tractor and pushed pushed the dirt into the [pond?]. They expanded their land a little bit at the price of cutting down on the size of the pond. But otherwise, it’s pretty much the same except for the things around it.

GW: , can you describe the wildlife that was in the area when you first moved here?

RB: Well, there were, of course, , opossum (laughs). There were raccoons, and pheasant, and a lot of different kinds of birds — ducks and water fowl of different kinds would come in on the lake. And of course behind us when they had the cabbage and cauliflower and all this, why the ducks would come in and graze through the fields. Apparently they had to have water. They’d fly back down to the pond and it would just be continual flights going from the water to the fields – that was very interesting. But, then it was animals. I don’t even know what they were. I would run into them every once and a while — little, I can’t even tell you exactly what they look like because at night you wouldn’t always know, but different kinds of little animals scurrying around — quite a lot of water fowl.

GW: You talked about the cabbage and cauliflower at the farm. Can you talk a lot more about that and maybe who ran it?

RB: Well, where the industry is up here now up on Columbia Boulevard there were three homes up there. One of them, obviously, must have an original home. It had a barn and so on. They would lease the property out for different ones to farm it. I can’t remember all the names, but Mr. Stoley, who lived down on Crystal Lane, used to come up and some years he farmed it, and then people farmed it – I don’t know their names. The Okazaki’s that lived up on Columbia Boulevard had a farm near the golf course on Columbia Boulevard, on beyond Cully. They leased it, I think and would raise cauliflower and cabbage, and squash. And it was really nice when they were harvesting — they would sometimes bring us down these great big cabbages and you could thump em. They were just as hard as could be, and you could eat them — it was like eating an apple. They were really good.

GW: And did they sell their produce as part of their subsistence, or was it just kind of a side sort of thing?

RB: Oh no, it was a business, it was a business. The whole family worked at it. On a given day they’d come in with the big trucks, and from their farm just a mile away or less, unload tractors. And in one day they would be running big disks over the property, and I’d go to work in the morning and it would be all weeds. And I’d come home at night and it was completely plowed and disked and ready to plant. Then they had a machine that they would pull it, the women usually would have boxes or bags of plants. And, and as the wheels turned around, why they would take these plants and put them in the wheel and it automatically planted them in the ground. And I don’t know how they did it, but it seemed like the next day or so it would always rain. But then they sold their produce on the market.

GW: Umm, what did you do for a living?

RB: I was a photo engraver.

GW: And what does that entail?

RB: Well, I made engravings for printing, for the letter press process. As the years went by, as letter-press became less used, why then I made things for the litho, lithography. Instead of sending out engravings I’d send out the negatives for ads to magazines or newspapers. In some cases I’d send out a photo print. We termed called them veloxes of the ads. And then they would, again, they’d be copied at the magazine or the newspaper, and usually printed. In later years litho, where in years gone by they, printed letter-press which would require engravings.

GW: And what was the business called, and it is it still in operation today?

RB: Originally I started out with American Engraving Company in 1944 as a delivery boy. I started my apprenticeship when I was nineteen years of age and I worked 28 years with them. When the employer passed away the business was sold to Oregon Printing Plates. We closed down American Engraving Company and I went to work at Oregon Printing Plates doing many of the same accounts as I had always done. But it was a larger company which also had big printing presses, and so a lot of the work that was done was sent down stairs and was printed down stairs for brochures and for various people: Jantzen and Nike and hundreds of other companies and so on. Most of my work was printed somewhere else. I was in that department and I still did a lot of engraving for the packaging industry. There was a process where they mold the engravings for printing on poly-bags, such as frozen food bags and this type of thing. And they’d make engravings, and then they would mold the engraving and from that they would make rubber, and rubber wraps around the cylinder and prints on the poly and it prints much better than the metal or litho on the poly – nice. Even the vegetables that you see, that shows the vegetables on the bag, are printed from rubber — like giant rubber stamps. But now they have what they call photo-polymer. A polymer that’s light-sensitive and you expose on to it and when you develop it everything washes away but the image, and that replaces the rubber. After six years I don’t know if they’ve changed completely to it, but I think they still use the rubber for some of their more technical things, but we’re getting off the subject here.

GW: Where were those businesses located?

RB: In downtown Portland.

GW: And, were they along any waterways or anything?

RB: Well, the last one was at Ninth and Couch, so it was that far from the Willamette.

GW: , What kinds of people did you work with at Oregon Printing Plates?

RB: Well, (pauses) a lot different types of people, personalities, and so on. Some had degrees and some, like me, just high school. But it was pretty much dependent upon your abilities, your work ethics, and your ability to perform the jobs that we had which involved photography and what we, the term we used, stripping — imposition of negatives to fit the layouts of ads, or printing brochures, or setting it up for printing a book.

GW: Were you familiar with Vanport at all?

RB: Yes, of course I lived here at the time. I remember the day — my wife Florence and I were celebrating our first anniversary of our first date on Memorial Day. And we were actually in St. John’s in a malt shop having some ice cream and the lights went out. Of course we didn’t know why. And we’d been driving around overlooking the Willamette, looking at how wide it was because of the flooding. Anyway, we found out later that Vanport had flooded and the dike had broken and that’s the reason the lights went out – had something to do with the power lines.

GW: You mentioned earlier something about, when you came here how you noticed some evidence of the flooding, even up by Whitaker Ponds?

RB: Yes, well of course all of the houses where we live right now, there was sixteen foot of water. And on the back there was a very little house, and it floated up, but it was held down by the gas pipe. And the house that was on the front when we acquired this property had been torn down and the lumber was there, piled there. In fact, I used some of it to build the very first part of this house, along with other lumber. But buildings were moved all around. In fact, the building that was on this property ended up on the next property, and it became McGregor’s Blacksmith Shop which is torn down now.

GW: Do you remember the Jantzen Beach amusement park?

RB: Oh yes.

GW: Can you describe it a little bit?

RB: Well, of course it had all kinds of rides, ones that you would expect, typical rides. It had a car race track for midget racers. And, my boss and I used to go out there quite often and atch the midget cars race. I think the first time I remember going there, just during the Second World War, why you didn’t travel around very much but every where you went you went on a bus. And the shipyards, whenever they launched a ship or some special deals they’d have parties, celebrations like for the workers. I think one time we went to Jantzen Beach for one of the celebrations and that was the first time I saw Jantzen Beach. But of course there was a big swimming pool and all the rides and of course [the game where you] throw the ball, try to knock down the pins and and win the booby prize and stuff.

GW: What are some, some of your favorite memories about Whitaker Ponds and the Columbia Slough?

RB: Well, I think raising my family down here was kind of like being in the country, and my kids could run and explore, just like if we lived out in the country. And having a fairly large lot, why the kids hoop and hollerin, I didn’t have to worry about bothering the neighbors that much, And we enjoyed seeing the animals, birds and the different things that you see in a more of a wild situation.

GW: When you first moved to the Whitaker Ponds area, what did the area look like in terms of water quality and population density around the area?

RB: Well, there wasn’t (pause) the density. Of course most of the people had larger lots or half acre to an acre. And then of course some had four or five acres and so on, even some cattle and horses. It seemed like most of the girls in the area had horses. And the guys didn’t seem as interested in horses. There were like the motorcycles and cars and stuff.

I guess as far as the quality of the water, we used to let the kids, well the boy especially, it was hard to keep him out of it, and the neighbor boys, used to swim in it. They used to say that they could walk in different places and they could tell where the springs were because the cold water would be coming, it would be real cold there. But one of the boys stepped on a broken bottle and got a cut, and he got a bad infection, so we told the kids they couldn’t go in there any more. I’m not sure but what they still did it on occasion. Back then I remember a, I think it was a Model T Roadster was setting up there along the edge of the bank. And, obviously, people had used it to dump stuff. And I don’t know how many years it took it to disappear – rust completely away. It was interesting. On occasion we’d take a rubber raft and, and go out there and just row around, and then of course you see things. I remember laying in the rubber raft kind of, and all of a sudden there’s a splash beside me and a big old carp is looking me right in the eye. That was . . . kind of an interesting experience.

GW: Did you ever fish or do anything like that in the ponds or the slough?

RB: We did some, yes. The kids would fish and catch maybe a carp or, there were other, I guess you call them pan fish, perch or blue gill. A friend of mine went over there one day fishing and caught a trout. And I don’t know how it got there or anything about it, but it looked like a trout to me and [he] swore it was a trout.

GW: About how long ago was that?

RB: Oh, that was probably (pause) maybe forty years ago.

GW: Was the industry already developing at that time or in the area?

RB: Well, (pause) not too much, not too much. Before we went into the city there was industry starting along Columbia Boulevard and so on. And, when we were in the county, not in the [city] — they grandfathered this area down here, and it was difficult for anybody to come down here and get started with a business. One man bought some property over here, a concrete contractor I guess you would say. And I don’t know why, but the had extra property and they sold it to him and he had his forms and all of that. And for as long as we were in the county he had to come to all of us and get us to sign in order for him to stay there another year. And, I think he had to do that ever year.

But, there was a drive, first get into the Portland school district. And we voted to do that because we had our own school district down here – the Whitaker school. And we paid tuition to go to the different high schools, once the kids were out of Whitaker. And, there was a drive to build their own school along with the Columbia district, which is to the west of us. And, that didn’t work out and the people did vote to go into the school district. Then the next thing was to go into the city. And when we went into the city, of course, everybody thought they were going to get sidewalks and all sorts of things. . . But one thing we did get was, all of the sudden I realized that when I checked my taxes that I had to go commercial. And, it wasn’t long and there were businesses, and so on, up and down our street. Before that the county commissioner’s wouldn’t allow it – we were grandfathered.

GW: , you mentioned the concrete business. What other kind of businesses have developed around the area?

RB: Well, down in our particular area here, one of the problems has been there is no sewer. And so there’s a moratorium on building any buildings below a certain point here on this side of Columbia Boulevard where you have to put in septic tanks. In other words, there’s no more new homes can go in down here. No businesses could go in this particular area, that require septic tanks. There are some exceptions to that. The business across the street put in an office and two times we’ve been supposed to have the sewer. I even got the notice about fifteen years ago that the sewer was going in on a five-year plan, and it just never ever happened. And, then just about three years ago there were special meetings that we had that the was going to come through, and it never did. So, for example, the company across the street, in order to have the office, they had to put in a big tank. And, it has an alarm on it and when it fills to a certain point the alarm goes off and the lights blink and whatever. And he has to call and they come and pump it. But that’s made it so that most of the businesses [are], for example, across the street is trucking where they just park trucks and drive them in and out. And then next to it is the auto-parts place. And, it had a house on it, and so the house has a restroom, and so that’s the exception, you see. And, most of the land right down this street on down is just that type of businesses.

GW: And this building right over here to the side of you, what do they do over there?

RB: They work on the big rollers for paper manufacturing. Big flat-bed trucks come in and unload these big rollers and . . . I have never gone up and visited the place, but my understanding is that they have big lathes and they put these rollers and I believe, turn them, take a little bit off of them to give them a nice finish on them so they can continue using this. They’re giant big rollers. There’s three plants up there that even do the blades for guillotines, sharpening of them, and I don’t even know what all they do.

GW: We talked a little bit earlier about using the ponds as, you know, fishing, swimming and things like that. Do you know of any instances where the businesses around use the ponds for anything. Maybe some of the farmers used irrigation?

RB: Yes, when they farm. For example, a field out behind, when they farmed it, why they had their big pumps. A big pump that they had set up and run the aluminum pipe with the sprinklers, and so on, all up through the field they would water from the water in the Whitaker Pond. And, I’ve noticed that when there used to be farms all through here, why they would water out of Whitaker Ponds or the slough.

GW: How have you seen your neighbors using the ponds and, , and, and the slough and those resources since you’ve been here?

RB: Well, I think mostly they just saw it as a place where they observe the wildlife and, all of the plants and trees and things that grew around it, and so on. And, occasionally. . . I know the Krueger family had a little boat and the kids or someone would occasionally row out on it. And the people who used to have three big white geese, they would swim around on it, and when he fed them, why he would usually wait until they got clear to the other end of the lake and he’d go out with his can of feed and start banging on it. And then boy they’d come, they’d fly about two or three feet above the water, heading in to get food. And so I think it was . . . something just to observe. One time there was a club that had radio-controlled race boats. They had races out there with the little race boats, and that was only one summer, I think. It was amazing how much noise those little things could make. I don’t know how many of them would run at once, but at least three or four of them would be running at one time. And they’d control them just like they do the radio controlled model airplanes. It was quite interesting.

GW: Umm, you talked a little bit earlier about Whitaker school, could you tell me a little a bit about how it came in to existence and how it ceased to exist?

RB: Well, our children went to Whitaker school. At the time they were going to it they had a big fire and the main building burned down. There was an extension on the school that they built newer, and they managed to keep it from burning. And then they built a new school. And the children went to other schools for a year or so while they were doing that. But there used to, at sixtieth and Columbia Boulevard there were some apartments, or the building had been made into apartments, that had been the original Whitaker school, the old timers tell me. I met a lady that lived in Southeast Portland. I just happened to meet her, and she went to that school and was telling me all about it. In fact her parents farmed right across the street from it, and she went to that school.

So there was a school at sixtieth and Columbia Boulevard — the original Whitaker school. It was a land grant school. Then as we went into Portland school district, why, eventually they moved the Whitaker school up to what was Adam’s High School on forty-second. They’d had Adam’s High School where one of our daughters went. And then they closed it down and they moved Whitaker school up there. The Whitaker school on Columbia Boulevard is now used by the police department for a training area.

GW: Umm, how, how have the Columbia Slough and Whitaker Ponds changed since you’ve arrived, just generally?

RB: Well, I know just a part of the Whitaker Ponds that we live near. The field behind me, when it was being farmed by the Okazaki’s — it’s kind of a rolling, it’s a side hill but it’s a rolling side hill and the upper part of it there was kind of a valley, a lower section that ran off toward forty-second. And it, it was kind of a, oh a swale that went off and it was a culvert under forty-second and it ran down and went through the culvert. And, it was kind of like a dry creek bed most of the time, but it ran off and ran over to about forty-forth or something like that and went into the slough. And, one day I had noticed that a house had been moved in, right into the middle of that swale on forty-seventh. It was jacked up in the air, and then they blocked up around it, and then they filled in the area around the house. Well, they filled in this swale. Well, that’s what drained the upper part of that field. And we had a big rain storm and Okazaki’s formed a lake over the top of their cabbage and they lost most of their cabbage crop on that section of the field. And, so to solve the problem the city put in a storm sewer to drain the upper part of the field and run it down into the lake which solved that problem. But, what has happened since is Columbia Boulevard was widened to four lanes. A section of Columbia Boulevard right there also runs right into that slough. And, a section as the industry has built up, why the water off the parking lots, and so on, runs into this storm sewer and runs directly into Whitaker Pond.

I noticed one day looking out the back window, and our house is real close to that, I noticed a pond forming out behind my house, what’s now the bio-swale. And, I looked and little springs, little fountains were shooting up out of the ground. And, I went out and there’s a man-hole out there and it had blown the cover off the man-hole and it was like shooting up, kind of had the looks of an atomic bomb, water. I ran down to the lake to see if it was plugged, and the water it was shooting out like a rooster-tail right into the lake, oh twenty, thirty feet. And I called the city and they said that it was too small a pipe to handle it – they kept adding too much stuff to it. I would every so often have to go out and put the cover back on this manhole and find all sorts of things around it, cigarette butts and all sorts of things. And, so, obviously, anything off of Columbia Boulevard and these parking lots, and so on, was running into the pond.

Of course, the metro has taken over and, and put the green space here, why there’s a man comes every so often and parks near my yard and goes over and does tests on it. And he talks to me once in a while, and just knowing that he gets tests that show fecal matter and so on. Because the drain that comes down through here is made up just of the short concrete pipes that just push together. And, of course, if there’s any drain fields, or so on, from the various houses and businesses down the line, from their septic tanks or cesspools, septic tanks mostly. I suppose it gets in the ground water and gets into the pipe and goes down to the lake. Now they have the bio-swale, which is not hitched up yet. They’re supposed to this summer put in a grease separator out here, and then the water will run through the bio-swale before it goes into the lake and should take care of all that. But, , just my observation, I would say that the lake wasn’t near as clean as it used to be. Not that it was clean in years gone by, but when they start running the storm sewers into it, why I’m sure that doesn’t help it.

GW: You mentioned the bio-swale. Have you noticed any other changes more recently around the area? People using the ponds for different uses than they used to?

RB: Well, the metro program here — not only are they doing a lot of work over there to. . . Just recently they’ve been building observation, for example, a big raft like that sits out in the water and has an opening in it where the kids come down from the schools. They come down with their teachers and they go out and they dip things out of the slough and watch the little, little, little buggy things (laughs), and take notes as part of their school projects. There will be maybe twenty, thirty kids walking down the street. And I’ll see them over there and they walk all through with note pads checking on the various types of plants and so on. I think metro’s got a really great idea with what they’re doing and what their plans are for the future for Whitaker Ponds. And, they’ve planted hundreds, probably thousands of trees and plants of various kinds, native to the area. As time goes by, it should be a really great place to come and observe and wildlife and trees and plants and so on.

GW: Is that something that you think is positive, more people like that coming to your neighborhood?

RB: Well I think it’s positive if they can control it. In other words it’s organized to where the people know where to walk and not to walk. Some of the things I’ve observed so far, I stopped some kid from riding a motor bike through the bio-swale, and explained to him what it was, and so on. Oh, and he didn’t realize, he just thought he was out in the country and that was the thing to do. Sometimes people are just walking through, and I think that eventually they will have it organized where you walk in certain areas and not in others.

GW: You described to the kid what the bio-swale was. Could you, , do a little of that right now?

RB: Well, my understanding is, this was just flat, flat land out here and they come and made these big potholes. And with a little kind of a dam in between each of them which they put a big thick plastic like material that apparently is porous that the water can go through, over top of it. And then they piled big rocks in on top of that. And apparently there will be a grease separator that will take up to the rate of one inch of rain a day which is for Oregon a fair amount of rain. Through the bio-swale. If it rains harder than that, then it will bypass and go into the lake like it does now. They put a new two-foot, pipe in, and so it’s taking the water very well now. It will go from one pond to the other, and then into a holding pond, and then from there into the lake. So, it, and plants that live on oils and the kind of stuff that will be coming through the storm sewer have been planted all through this bio-swale. So, by the time the water goes into the lake it should be fairly clean. But, that’s not completed, yet.

GW: Umm, could you please describe your relationship and your encounters with Metro?

RB: Well, my first encounter with Metro as far as this was, they had meetings at the Whitaker school to tell us what their plans were. And of course I noticed that on the map it showed that our property was part of it. I asked, “What’s this mean?”

And they said, “Well this is a voluntary thing and we’re not pressuring anyone to sell their property, but we would hope that you’re. . .” The lady told me at that time that they would probably like to have our property. Well, they would contact me and so on. And I guess to make a long story short, there was several different people did contact me as if they wanted the property. And then I wouldn’t hear and I check, and, “Well no we don’t” Finally I got a call from one of the ladies and said they did want our property. And, this is over a period of several years. And, of course, I didn’t know what to do. So she came out and talked to us and said that really all they wanted was just a portion of the property, but they’d buy the whole thing and then get rid of what they didn’t want. . . But then finally, I don’t how long a time went by but she called and said that they only wanted the rental property which was, , a two bedroom house, a thousand square feet, and a seventy by, , two hundred and ten piece of property which is commercial property. And, leaving me with a hundred thirty by two hundred and ten on the house that we live in. And, I had previously told them that I wouldn’t sell that property unless I got extra money because it would depreciate the value of the rest of our property, as far as commercial is concerned. But when she called she said they just wanted the rental and that they would just give me an x amount of money for it, and that all the money they had available for that. And I told them I couldn’t do it. And, I don’t think she was real pleased about it, but I just couldn’t do that because I was [wasn’t?] willing to pay taxes. I thought it was a good thing to have the Whitaker Ponds and I’m willing do my part, but I couldn’t do it. And so that’s the last I heard of them. It was three times they wanted it and three times they didn’t. The only problem is I was in a state of, not doing anything with my property. And I’ve been playing catch up. I spent most of last summer working on the rental, fixing it inside and out, and this year I’ve been trying to do what I can on this property to get it back in shape because my real estate friend said don’t spend any money. And, so, in five years or so you get behind. But, other than I think that’s a good project. What’s scary for me is the fact that this road out here, forty-seventh, has a forty-five mile an hour spend limit on it. And I watch twenty, thirty kids with a couple of teachers walking down it many a times, and there’s trucks turning in and out and cars whizzing by and I really would like to see forty-seventh avenue with sidewalks or something so these kids will have access to this. And, there’s no good access from down here. You can come down forty-second and curve around and come over a viaduct, which even one kid walking down there is hard to see as you come around the curve. And then the next place is up at sixtieth, and going the other direction is thirty-third. There’s hardly any way of getting down here that’s good for pedestrians. And, I think something they need to address is having a way down here so the kids aren’t walking right along the edge of the street.

GW: You mentioned that you thought that the, that the establishment of green space around the slough and the ponds was a, was a good idea. Do you think it will be successful?

RB: Well, I think so because the big problem in the past is there were industries, and so on, that were right along the edge of the slough. Not far from here was an oil-reprocessing place. I think they did things that at the time they built it, they thought were safe. They had a holding pond that was lined with clay, but it was a not many feet from the slough. In the process of reprocessing the oil, and I don’t understand that exactly, but sometimes it created bad odors around here and a number of us in the area complained about it, and we had meetings and so on, but nothing really happened. But now this property is on the national cleanup list — they no longer have it there because of endangering the sloughs and so on. So those kinds of things are happening.

People used to dump slaughter house [debris] and down the road used to dump their stuff and it would run into the sloughs. And, I think those things are being stopped. I think as bad as they look sometimes — a lot of algae grows and that looks really bad — but the ducks really scoop it up, so I guess it isn’t too bad. Maybe that’s healthy when it does that, I don’t know. But I think the future is better. However, the Port of Portland wants to expand the airport in twenty years, and they talk about it coming clear up to Columbia Boulevard and that would be going right over top of what is now the Whitaker Ponds Green Space.

GW: What is your least favorite aspect of living near near the ponds?

RB: Least favorite. Well, I’ve been here so long, the ponds have just been here [the entire] forty-eight years, and it’s just part of our life to live down here. I don’t think of the ponds as being bad at all. Industry and all the traffic is what I would consider a problem, but not the ponds.

GW: And, alternatively, what is your favorite aspect of living near the ponds?

RB: Well, just to see wildlife and just to be like I’m out in the country but still I’m pretty much in the middle of the city.

GW: What do you see maybe ten years down the road for this area, Whitaker Ponds? How do you envision it ten years from now?

RB: Well, if Metro can keep the plan that they have going forward and not be overruled by other government entities, Port of Portland or someone else, I believe the city is involved in this now. . . I really feel it’s a great thing and I like to see these types of things all around the city, keeping us from turning everything into asphalt and concrete. And then where do you go to green space if you do that. You’ve got to go way off someplace and I think it’s great that the city has a forest and all these things right within the city and I hope that we can keep it that way.

GW: Is there anything you’d like to add about living along the slough or the ponds?

RB: Well, it’s an interesting life and there are a lot people that probably know a lot more about the sloughs and stuff than I do. . . But I just observe life and the things that go on around them and I like that. Sometimes things don’t look so good as you get a mixture of the sloughs and industry and everything all together. And, some people are not too careful about industry and about where they dump stuff and, but otherwise, why I like it.

GW: Okay, well thank you very much.

[Interview Ends]