Memories

Send in your photos of memorable places in Bend and be sure to take a look at the History page. This next picture is for the girls. How many of you remember these? Who still has yours? This picture is of mine, still in perfect condition.

Claypool’s Furniture Store gave these away to senior girls, hoping they would buy a real cedar chest from them. Symons Jewelry on Wall Street also gave away a sterling silver teaspoon to each senior girl who wanted to start collecting sterling silver place settings. I remember I chose Silver Iris and I wish I had it now. Look at the current price on Ebay below.

Who remembers this contraption? And do you remember we had spot lights on the cars? Before the movie, they would show dots and you would try to touch them with your spot light? Kind of a pre-PacMan thing.

Many of us have fond memories of fishing off the bridge, skipping rocks, trying to catch crawdads and hunting for night crawlers with flashlights to use as our fishing bait. After seventh grade, all of us from Kenwood walked to school over this bridge for two years while we attended the old high school. I never heard of any of us jumping off the bridge. It was dangerous back then, not so now. Bend was a wonderful place to grow up.

You can see the foot bridge in the lower center (west) of the picture above. The lot just to the left of the west end of the foot bridge is now named Pageant Park. That is where the floats were built and staged for the Water Pageant. The floats were built on 10 ‘ x 10’ (or larger) wooden platforms on top of empty oil barrels. Originally, people swan or rowed boats to pull the floats. Later, a boom (walkway) of railroad ties led all the way from here, the starting point, to the wide area of the river by Newport Bridge for the people to walk on while pulling the floats. The day after each pageant, you could see the floats being pulled back to their starting point at this park. Each year, the arch was a different design. A contractor family friend of ours built the arch for several years. He would use our house 1/2 block away as his home base. One year, my dad sponsored and performed on a barbershop quartet float.

The top two pictures above show Marshall School, but Kenwood also had three quonset huts set up in the open area in the center of the school. Board walkways led from the main building into the classrooms. My second grade classroom was set up perfectly for a classroom with plenty of room for all of the activities. I don’t remember thinking it was anything unusual. History of the quonset hut (Wikipedia).

Here are some favorite old businesses you will remember.

My dad’s real estate office was in the dark building where the old car is parked. The address was 135 Oregon Avenue and phone number was 32. There was an ice cream shop in one of the neighboring shops. Wasn’t it called the Smoke Shop? (If so, it was weird.) Magill Drugs was on the same site of the street, but other side of the alley and Cashman’s was on the far corner. The subterranean club that was the Copper Room was across the street from dad’s office and JC Penney’s was across from the bank on Wall Street.

When I was researching historic buildings in Bend, I learned that the name of the Capitol Theater now belongs to the former Copper Room, now named the Capitol Bar. The dark building in the picture has been torn down now and there’s a bank parking lot there. The cross street (dirt) shown in the picture is Wall Street where it crosses Oregon Avenue. It makes me wonder how old that bank is.

I found a blog page on the bhsclassof58.org site and it’s worth reading and looking around at Bob Lanzarotta’s site. Once you get to the site, search (Control f) for Lanz Blog. Class of ’58 members took monthly turns writing the blog. It was a great idea, but I think it’s too late for us. If you want a blog and will help write it, let me know. His blog has some great, funny memories of pranks the class of ’58 guys did in high school. It’s fun to hear the names of people from the class ahead of us knowing the people and places.

We used to love to climb on this. (See proof in next picture.) It has been removed and there is a smaller version in another location in the park. It has a fence around it, so kids can’t climb on it now like we used to.

That’s me, Sandra Larson, at about 10 o’clock. You can see that it was on top of the hill behind Mirror Pond. This one was bigger than the one that is near there now. If you look closely, you can see that the wooden wheels were constructed in eight sections, each with two spokes. Metal treads were attached to the wooden wheels for traction and this rig was used to pull logs. Does anyone know what pulled the log skidder?

Comment from Russ Young:

Back in high school, we used to drive in a loop, probably on Friday nights. We’d drive through town, down under the overpass, making as much noise as we could, circle around through the Midget Drive-In on South 3rd Street, and then around again. Sometimes we would pick up a girl or two. I remember two girls in the rumbleseat of Chuck Grant’s blue ’36 Ford Coupe. Eventually, we would all end up at the drive-in. Such memories!

In this picture, probably taken in the 50’s, judging by the cars, you can see the Capitol Theater. I remember seeing Bambi here and also the Birdman of Alcatraz. They actually had the real convict there, signing autographs. I hope someone else remembers this, so I don’t feel like I am losing it. I was first relieved to read that the Capitol Theater had not been torn down and is on the historical preservation registry, but later learned that it had in fact been torn down and all that remains is the plaque somewhere and the memories. The name is now used for the bar that used to be the Copper Room on Oregon Avenue, Capitol Bar. This link leads to an interesting story of the Capitol Theater.

Brandis Drug Store was right across Wall street. Below is a picture of Dick Brandis. I think I see an ashtray on the counter. Did people smoke in the stores back then?

To the left of Brandis Drug Store was Wonser’s Dry Cleaning business. It always had the front door open and I remember the smell of the cleaning products. Down to the right was what we called the “dime store, ten cents store and five and dime.” Was it Newberrys or Woolworths? My first real job was behind the candy counter there and the first night I dreamed of shoveling mountains of candy. I remember they even sold a few birds in the back of the store.

JC Penney’s was on the far right corner. I know you all remember the wire system with pulleys they had that took a little cup with the payment up to the office. This was called a ‘cash carrier‘ and there are many variations and improvements. Below is an example.