The Person Who Welcomed Me to Portland

Driving up and down SE Belmont yesterday (I killed some time going all the way up to Mount Tabor Park), I couldn't help think about how there used to be a streetcar line that ran along that street back in the old days.

The reason I know this is because my friend Adam, a Portland native, once told me this many years ago. If there is one person who has done more to introduce me to this town, and its culture and history it is surely he.

From him I learned early on such basic how to pronounce "Couch" and "Glisan" correctly, as well the background on the historical figures after whom thse streets are named. I learned that the old-timers not only still call I-84 the Banfield highway, or just the Banfield for short., but they even call I-5 the Baldock for similar reasons.

From him I learned about the hidden less-than-glamorous, less-than-romantic aspects of Portland history---the real Portland. I got to hear about the Portland before the onslaught of the hipsters. Actually I even got to see some of that.

When visiting in the early Nineties, and while walking around downtown, I marveled out how "undiscovered" Portland seemed, as a unique urban environment among American cities. The main reason was that the downtown had never "died," as so many urban cores had, throughout the country, throughout the late 1960s and up through the 1980s. The reasons for that are complex, and reflect many local peculiarities, above and beyond the famous ones such as the Urban Growth Boundary that so many cite (somewhat erroneously) as the source of this uniqueness.

Adam and I became friends during my last two semesters at Willamette, while working on the campus newspaper together. Then for years after I left Oregon, while living in Austin, I used to come up here once or twice a year to visit and steep in Portland culture (American Express had those wonderful free flight vouchers for student members back in the day). I learned far more about Portland during the years after Willamette than during.

For my friend, the erstwhile Belmont streetcar line actually has a personal connection. His great-grandfather Ben-Hur Lampman was a well-known newspaper editor for the Oregonian for many years, and also once the poet laureate of Oregon. Among his books about Portland history is one about the Belmont streetcar line. I stumbled across some of his books when I was perusing the shelves at the Heritage Room at the Lewis and Clark library this summer. His daughter-in-law, my friend's grandmother, became a noted author of children's books, including this classic.

So meeting my friend when I did, at the tail end of my Oregon college experience, was like stumbling into Oregon royalty of a sorts. At least, that's how I thought of it.

Adam's mother, who is from the Lampman line, was probably the second-most important person in terms of making me feel welcome in this place, during her life. She treated me almost as a member of the family, like her own sons. She was always touting up the rich history of this place in a way that made me feel like I could belong here in more than a passing way.  Their homes in West Linn and Lake Oswego, where I was fortunate enough to be invited several times, felt like opulent  palaces of the quiet but colorful bounty that this state affords those who can find a way to savor it.

Yesterday Adam's brother posted this wonderful video that a teenager in Portland made about his hometown in 1971. It's got some awesome classic old footage. I don't recognize any of the places in it, other than the Rose garden. I wasn't here back then. But I'm lucky enough to know folks who were.