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Growing Up On Jefferson Street, set 10

“A Day InTthe City” and “Dime Vacations”

Dear Marilyn,

Here is a story about going to Portland to visit the Rippers. Oris Ripper, Dad’s oldest sister, married Percy Ripper in Echo, Oregon when she was 14. They had 3 sons: Gilbert or Gib, Jack, and Bernie. Gib was a mystery to me, having some sort of serious disease and whom I can not recall meeting; Jack was ten years my senior and became speaker of the Oregon house and a very self important kind of guy; Bernie was 8 years my senior and years later we have become good friends. You will recall that Percy was an interesting character and Bernie has a bit of his old man in him, but basically he is a caring, principled guy. This trip was somewhere between 1939 and 1941, I think. As I recall, our car at the start of The War was a beige 1934 Plymouth Four Door sedan. A 7 year old car was about par for our family. By the time of this particular trip the Rippers lived in a house boat on the Willamette River.

I may be collapsing several trips into one, but what the heck. No one will remember except Bernie, and anyway it is the gestalt that makes for good memories. Oris was a salt of the earth sort of gal, and Percy was a dapper, sharped tongued scrapper who as you have noted, could lay down a few colorful remarks here and there. He was full of big ideas but his implementation varied. But, read on.

A Day in the City
by
Jack Loughary

A long row of house boats were permanently moored to the Willamette River dock and supporting piling. The Ripper’s, as I recall, had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a large living room and a sort of storage laundry room near the dock side. The river front of the floating platform consisted of a deck that ran the width of the “property”. One could dive into the Willamette river, fish and tie a boat to the dock.

The first thing to greet one on entering the house boat was an electric one armed bandit that Percy had acquired one from a fraternal lodge or former night club, I suppose. The machine was lit with colored lights, and more important it worked. I’m sure it was for Perce’s amusement, but he never passed up an opportunity to invite a guest to have a pull or two. It may have covered his gasoline bill each month.

Oris Loughary Ripper ran a comfortable household. Percy was a labor union official. By this time their 3 sons were on their own and Oris and Percy were the only regular occupants of the house boat, except Bernie might have been hanging out weekends. Years later, when Bernie and I had become good friends, he confided in me that he may have been close enough to local juvenile delinquents to see the whites of their eyes. His story, not mine.

Mildred Loughary Tando, the youngest of the three Loughary sisters lived in Portland and Margaret Loughary Hessman the next to the youngest of the Loughary siblings who later served in the Waves lived down the Willamette Valley in Sweet Home. The three Loughary women had a close and supporting relationship.

On the first night of our visit you and I were asleep when I suppose at about 10:00 p.m the two younger Loughary sisters who had been out on the town with their husbands, stopped by the Rippers to pay their respects to Mom and Dad. Mildred’s husband, Jack Tondo, was a wiry, handsome fellow, quiet and calm. Archie Hessman, Margaret's husband, was out going and I’ve been told boisterous and full enough of himself that Jack Tando’s calm manner provided a welcome equilibrium.

They came to the bedroom accompanied by Mom, Dad, and the Rippers. The lights were flipped on and we were showered with great amounts of well wishes and favorable comments regarding how handsome and (in your case) cute we were. I don’t know that we knew what to make of these essentially unknown night visitors, but I assume that our response was sufficient in that Archie soon presented each of us with a couple silver dollars! We were smart and willing enough to repeat what ever it was that we had performed so successfully if we just had a clue, but I think the funds had run out and they soon left for more entertaining venues.

The next morning I had an opportunity to accompany Percy to down town Portland. As we drove north into the city I was amazed at the number of cross streets, grids of traffic and tall buildings. This was clearly a far cry from the Eugene we had left the day before. I suppose this was the first time in my life that I had seen let along be close to an Asian, but soon we were in the midst of Portland’s China Town. This was quite an education, and probably the first time I had been inside a laundry, Chinese or any kind. Actually, the concept of a laundry where people brought their clothes to be washed was beyond my awareness. No, Uncle Percy explained patiently, in big cities many people have their clothes washed and ironed at laundries.

It occurred to me that he didn’t have dirty clothes with him and when I asked him about that he agreed with my observation and explained that he needed to see a man about a business matter. Made sense to me, so in we went through the laundry door, up a set of stairs and into a dimly lit room where a Chinese man, I supposed because the Sign over the door read Chinese Laundry, sat on a stool at a high table with a pen and stacks of small pieces of paper.

Uncle Percy produced a similar piece of paper from his wallet and gave it to the Chinaman who in turn made a mark on it and put it in a drawer, and then drew several US currency bills from another drawer and handed them to Uncle Percy. Without a word nor a smile between the two, we turned and left the room, descended the stairs and out the door on to the sidewalk. I wanted to ask a general question, but knew intuitively that it would be inappropriate and perhaps even unwelcome.

Nevertheless, the visit to the Chinese Laundry had made a lasting impression and some time later I asked Dad if there had been more to it than I understood. “Well”, he answered, “You probably had a trip with your uncle Percy to a Chinese lottery.” I didn’t have a clue, so he enlightened me about the mysteries of Chinese lotteries, noting that it wasn’t much different than playing cards for money, which I understood of course because Grandad had taken me several times to McCall’s Pool Hall in Stanfield for a soda, where I saw lots of guys playing cards for money.

That afternoon Percy and Oris took all of us to Jantzen Beach, one of the two amusement parks in Portland. We took some tame rides before Uncle Percy invited me to ride the Big Dipper with him. You would have been around 7 and not old enough to ride the Big Dipper, so you remained on the ground with the non-participating adults and watched. The Big Dipper was a true roller coaster, as they called them in those days, and a very forbidding looking contraption. I was a gutless kid when it came to experiencing physical terror, and to this day cannot understand why I accepted the invitation, but I did.

Uncle Percy bought the tickets for us and perhaps others in the party, but really I think that I was the only one dumb enough to go. Uncle Percy, apparently a veteran roller coaster, insisted that we sit in the front seat of the car and we did. As soon as the attendant had strapped us in, the car began a long slow assent to the top of the first slope which was seeming to be taller than the pictures of New York sky scrapers I had seen in magazines. As the car reached the peak, the track became level for less than a second before plunging nearly straight down, then veering to the left and then to the right again and again, working its way up to another peak before taking a second power nose dive. This went on for what seemed an hour but was probably no more than 5 minutes. Nevertheless, by the time we were into the first dive and until the car pulled in to the exit ramp, I was shouting as loud as I could, “GET ME OFF THIS GOD DAMN THING! GET ME OFF THIS GOD DAMN THING.”

It must have been quite a show for the relatives and others on the ground because by the time we pulled up to the ramp Mom, Dad, Aunt Oris and whoever else was along were bent over in tears and laughter. I don’t believe fear for me was an issue; it was essentially that those adults were totally unaware of the extent to which a that a ten year old’s vocabulary could develop.

There were other high points of the several visits to the Rippers including outings to Washington Park, the Portland Zoo, and the center of the city including the Meier and Frank department store. If not high points, then certainly unique adventures that took us into a world larger than the small and limited arena that was the seat of our daily lives. I do think that there was a great advantage to us growing up in a university town, and whether that was do to our parents’ planning or simply happenstance is unknown to me. I believe that mother’s living in Eugene, Portland and even Bellingham contributed to a growing interest in a larger society. But that is something for another letter.

With in the context of “Its All Relative” and after writing this piece, I continue to be impressed with the influence that the Portland Loughary/Ripper group had at least conceptually on my pre- adult years. Perhaps it was as much a matter of exclusion as anything else. I thought we Lougharys in Eugene were missing out on something. The lifestyle of the Portland group, while less than fantastic, was my first glimpse at life in the fast lane in which the Portland Ripper/Loughary branch of the clan appeared to travel.

Love from one growing up small-town kid to another,

Jack

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Dear Jack,

Travel was highly treasured when we were growing up. We seemed to do as much or more vacationing as others in the neighborhood. Perhaps that was due to our parents’ ability to squeeze a bit more out of a dime than many other people. This story chronicles our holiday adventures and concludes with our grand tour or the west.

THIN DIME VACATIONS
by
Marilyn Loughary Kok

One of the delights of my childhood was the occurrence of our annual summer vacation. Being members of the upper-lower class, or was it the lower-middle class, severely limited many expenditures on the non-necessities of life. Our family did own their own home, my brother and I had separate bedrooms of our own, and Sunday dinner was usually pot roast or fried chicken.

It’s true that many thing we considered treats were easily includable in our parents budget. Ice-cream cones, Hershey’s chocolate bars and a bottle of Coca Cola could each be purchased for a nickel. In fact, it was possible to have a hamburger, milkshake and attend a move matinee for under 50 cents. I can remember when comic books went from a nickel to a dime which brought great distraught to the local kids on the block.

Until the advent of World War II there were few ways for kids to earn pocket money. Paper boys, produce pickers, and child care were about the only jobs that were readily available. Thus most kids either worked for relatives or had more time for leisure activities and less money to spend in doing them.

Mother did see to it that we were exposed to some of the finer things of life. I was enrolled in tap dancing until my tap teacher moved to the perceived safety of the Midwest soon after the war began. Piano lessons began for me when I was 9 or ten under the tutorship of the Sisters of St. Mary’s. We made weekly trips to the local public library where she gently steered me to books that stretched my mind and teased my imagination. Every Spring she and Dad sat down and planned a vacation that would be a change of scenery for them and a place of new experiences for Jack and me.

Sea Scents and Freshwater Lakes

In my early school years we spent our week outings at two small freshwater lakes a few miles from the Oregon beach. Both Woahink and Sutton Lakes were reported to contain a variety of fish. Dad had two friends who had cabins along their shores and were willing to let him use them for a small fee. A small rowboat was provided for rowing across the lakes and trolling for the elusive wide-mouth bass and blue-gill perch that supposedly lived there. While Dad was on duty doing the rowing, Mom was letting her line drift out the back of the boat, and Jack and I had the job of bailing the ever present water that constantly leaked onto the wooden floor.

Both cabins were very crude, with hand-pumped water, outhouses and roughing-it facilities. In those early years we had nothing like sleeping bags to roll up in at night. Instead Mom always brought a supply of blankets and sheets along with a weeks supply of food. I don’t mean boxes of packaged food and snacks, but, rather boxes of flour, eggs, bacon, bread that required preparing and cooking before eating. The other major item that came with the cabin was a large mosquito population. For Dad, mosquitoes meant enemy. He would chase those little bugs morning and night, whacking the air with a folded newspaper or fly swatter. He had a litany of words that he recited throughout their pursuit that he must have thought would deter their attacks. In the end, we all were covered with dozens of pink, itching welts.

The days were filled with the scent of cedar and fir forests and a haze of burning campfire smoke. The lakes were shallow enough for shore-side wading and searching for crayfish. Fishing and chopping wood were assigned to Dad, while Mom had the cooking, sweeping and cleaning tasks. She had a phobia about dirt and I think these trips were not high on her favorite places to visit list. But, because World War II had closed many of the beaches to holiday travelers, these lakes in the woods were an alternative way of getting away from the familiar routines of home.

Captain Jack Country

Most memorable was a walk through the caverns of the Oregon Caves. We were first suited up in overalls that were meant to keep us dry as we explored deep into the mountain side. I had my first look at stalactites and stalagmites that covered the walls of the eerie dark holes. Blackness where absolutely nothing was visible, had the effect of causing dizziness and disorientation. Vast caverns of emptiness existing below the earth opened my eyes to the realization of how much there was in the world to explore.

Yellowstone or Bust

In 1946, we took our first two week holiday that began with an introduction to our birthplace of the twin towns of Omak and Okanogan, Washington. Our parents had moved to Eugene in 1937, and thus I had no memories of this North central Washington area. Omak is located on the edge of a large Native American Reservation. It was the main supply center for all their commodities and services. This was my first exposure to a non-white community and was just the kind of fuel upon which my imagination thrived. I recall that Jack and I attended a movie one afternoon and we were the only “white” people in the audience.

In Priest River, Idaho, we made a short stop to visit my Dad’s brother Cliff, and his wife Hazel , my favorite aunt. Hazel was a Native American who Cliff met and married while he lived in the Pendleton area. She had a sweet and welcoming manner and treated me more as a person than as a child.

We drove south through Montana and eventually arrived in Butte, Montana. This was a town like none I have ever seen. Mountains of coal leavings stared back. Black dust was everywhere. Few trees and fewer flowers graced the city streets. My first look at a bleak landscape that, as far as I could tell, offered nothing that might attract human habitation. It had all the trappings of a city in Hell to my young eye.

We headed the car southeast toward the goal of our journey, Yellowstone National Park. I had no idea of all the natural wonders that we would come upon in this fantasy land of nature. I remember that we rented two one-room cabins at Old Faithful Village, one for Dad and Jack and one for Mom and me. Each room had a double bed. and table with lamp. Bathroom facilities were in another building. Because the animals of the park could freely wander anywhere at night, there were no midnight trips to the restrooms. We could hear the bears making visits to all the garbage cans and that was as close as wanted to get to them. None of the Loughary family was brave enough to chance facing a large furry bear by flashlight.

We rolled on south to Salt Lake City where we were introduced to the land of Mormonism. All who went to the Mormon Tabernacle to hear its famous choir in concert, were also given an indoctrination tour of the trials that the Mormon pioneers suffered on their trek west to the valley of the Great Salt Lake. The streets of the city were wide and kept spotlessly clean. Its restaurants served no alcohol (but customers could bring their own bottle if they chose). The tables in most restaurants we visited had some sort of Mormon literature on them. It seemed clear that this was one state which had made little effort to separate itself from the church. Ever since the 19 th century miracle of having been saved by the appearance of seagulls, here was a state where their god was all powerful.

With great relief we headed north toward home. We all drew a large breath as we entered Idaho and aimed the car toward the Snake River and the land of ducks and beavers, feeling something like Lewis and Clark must have experienced as they returned to their familiar sights of the east. We had been to some great places to visit, but were glad to call our feet webbed.

Quack, Quack, Quack, your travelin’ sister,

Marilyn

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