Horse Hunting

When I was little, on summer weekends my father would take me to farm or house auctions where we would watch the action and sometimes my father would buy a box of miscellaneous junk that the auctioneer had assembled from stuff he didn't think would sell separately.  Almost always, the box sold for a quarter, and after we returned home and investigated the contents, we would find more than a quarter in loose change.  I have no idea what caused my father to buy one box rather than another, but often the boxes contained a jar of buttons that Dad would give to my mother for her "button collection," which would irritate her because she didn't have a button collection, just a collection of jars of buttons that he had given her, in part, I think, because he knew it annoyed her.  She was a nurse; she didn't sew, didn't cook particularly well, and wasn't terrible interested in "keeping house."

I remember those auctions with fondness.  They were one of the few activities we engaged in together that did not include competition.  They had an air of treasure hunt about them that we both enjoyed.  You never knew what marvelous stuff you might find.  I still go to auctions, estate sales, garage and yard sales, always on the lookout for something I didn't know I wanted, still enjoy the action even when I'm not buying.  I especially enjoy high end auctions and antique shows where museum quality items are for sale that I can touch and examine, unlike the items in museums.

For more than 30 years Deb and I have gone almost every six weeks or so to an auction in Portland and watched some fascinating stuff go on the block: jewelry, animal mounts, tall case clocks, art work, antiques of all kinds.  Perhaps the strangest was a giraffe mounted as if it were half out of the wall, its front legs down, its head up, at least 20 feet tall.  I mention it because Deb and I talked to a friend who had been under bidder on the giraffe.  He was at the auction looking to buy a standing Russian Grizzly (From Russia's Kamchatka peninsula, Russian far east, 1996.  Height including stand: 7'8").  He had been the under bidder for the bear at the same auction several years before when it sold for more than he had allotted.

I'm not sure if the recession is over, but there were more people attending than I have ever seen; the crew kept setting up more chairs, people lined the walls and crowded the back, a couple even took chairs from the next night's auction to sit on.  It could be, of course, that times are tough enough that people were there, like us, looking for bargains.  We were particularly interested in a carousel horse from the Jantzen Beach amusement park, a merry-go-round that Deb had ridden many times as a child.  She may even have ridden this very horse.  I've always been attracted to carousel animals, but they rarely come on the market, and when they do, they usually demand high prices.

The catalogue listed this one as "VINTAGE CARVED AND PAINTED WOOD CAROUSEL HORSE ON STAND, C.W. Parker Co., Leavenworth, Kansas, c. 1920's, an original inside row jumper from the 1921 Parker Carousel, Jantzen Beach Amusement Park, Portland, Oregon.  Provenance: Property of John Bauld, retired Jantzen Beach Amusement Park employee.  Length - 69.5 inches."

We were hoping that, given the economy, it might go cheap.  The Rolls went high but the bear went for half its low estimate.  We had hopes.  The bidding started low, then stalled at a nice price and I thought we were going to get a bargain, but a phone bidder from the East Coast took up the bidding.  Later, we were told he was concerned about shipping costs so he dropped out.  We won the horse for less than the low estimate.

The horse is made up of blocks of wood glued together, carved and painted.  Glass reflectors are set in the saddle and harness, with one replaced by plastic.  A metal plate has been bolted to the belly to provide a secure rest for the pegs on the stand.  Most surprising, however: the four shoes are iron, "C W Parker Leavenworth" cast onto them, and a date that I can't quite make out.  I talked with the consignor by phone.  He said that in the carousel workshop on Hayden Island there were a number of extra animals lying around.  During one reconditioning, the superintendent gave animals to some of the employees.  He said he built the stand for this horse but he did not paint it or touch it up.

Information about the carousel is available on the internet.  One source says the merry-go-round was built in 1904 for the St. Louis World's Fair.  Some of the hand carved horses were made by inmates of the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Another says: "The Jantzen Beach SuperCenter Merry-Go-Round was designed and built in 1921 at the C.W. Parker Amusement Company in Leavenworth, Kansas.  It was one of the only four 'superior style' machines Parker built.  This large, four abreast machine was constructed as a 'park model' rather than the more commonly manufactured portable machines built for the traveling carnivals.  The horses are some of the most elaborate ever carved by the Parker Company and many are unique, one of a kind animals.  This 72-horse Merry-Go-Round operated at the Venice Beach, California Pier from 1921 until 1927.  It survived a major fire and was put into storage until1928 when it was shipped to Jantzen Beach Amusement Park, where it operated for 42 years.  The park was razed in 1970 to accommodate building the Jantzen Beach Shopping Center.  At that time it was refurbished and rebuilt for its debut in the Center, which opened in September 1972.  After operating for 22 years inside the shopping center, the Merry-Go-Round underwent a thorough $500,000 restoration in 1995 and was relocated to become the 'center piece' of the new Jantzen Beach SuperCenter." (Source: Jantzen Beach SuperCenter website, 2006)

A third source says:  Legend has it that there are a couple ghost children in the center of the carousel. "Have you seen the children?  It is a boy and a girl.  They play in the center of the merry-go-round.... inside, behind the door.  They seem happy and full of spirit but every so often they turn and gaze, as if looking for their mother.  Have you seen them?"

A Ghostly Evening

We were looking to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our wedding when we found a website for the Columbia Gorge Hotel which had something that piqued our interest, under Events: a night researching paranormal activity including entering parts of the hotel not open to the public.

We knew nothing about the IPRG (even what the initials stood for--International Paranormal Reporting Group), but it sounded like fun, especially exploring "the darkest corners of the hotel."  It definitely would be something we had not done before.

We left the ranch Saturday morning, stopped at Troutdale antique malls, drove historic Route 30 up the gorge, a highway constructed between 1913 and 1922--the first in the U.S. designed primarily for scenic purposes.

We stopped at Crown Point to look at Vista House, not yet open for the season

but we could look through the glass doors to see what we were missing,

and we still had the vista.  The weather was typical Oregon sunshine: misty rain, clouds and fog but we could see for miles.

The road was nice: narrow, curvy, up and down, trees crowding and overhanging, stone wall on the outside, not much traffic.  We stopped at some of the falls such as Horsetail, but skipped Multnomah since we had been there recently.

We arrived at the hotel about 3:30.  The site at the top of the 208-foot Wah Gwin Gwin falls has had a hotel on it since 1904 (a multi-million dollar restoration began in 1977), but for 25 years it was a retirement home run by Neighbors of Woodcraft so there were probably a number of incidents to provide fodder for the IPRG investigation.

From the outside, the complex looked interesting: stucco walls, Spanish tile roofs, tower topped with octagonal room, a garden in front with paths and winding stream, in the back the falls and the cliff overlooking the Columbia.

We checked in and rode an old fashioned cage elevator operated by the bellboy.  The long halls seemed like a set from The Shining.

In our room we found on the bed instead of chocolates "A Ghostly Getaway" schedule and The Everything Ghost Hunting Book by Melissa Martin Ellis.

In the four hours until the "meet & greet" we explored the grounds, photographed the ducks and in the lounge relaxed with cocktails and cheese and crackers, then at six in "Simon's Cliff House" (the name of the hotel restaurant) we started a scrumptious supper: a bottle of Columbia Gorge Hotel label champagne, a lovely brie en croute to start, seared sushi grade tuna for Deb, lobster ravioli for me, and for dessert I had a tiramisu cake and Deb a chocolate cupcake with chocolate syrup.  Yum.

At 8 in the Benson Ballroom, we found IPRG members in black tee-shirts with their logo, and others like ourselves there for the hunt.  The leaders distributed flyers and explained the protocol for the evening.  There were four areas in the hotel to investigate, four groups each with two IPRG members would spend an hour in each area, everyone had to have buddy and for safety no one was to go anywhere without the buddy.  Equipment included infra-red cameras, audio recorders sensitive enough "to record a gnat fart" (according to one member), and electro-magnetic field readers that also indicated temperature.  One member of each group was chosen to document the time and nature of each event experienced which later would be compared to electronic data for verification.  The IPRG investigators stressed that their procedures were scientific.

Our first assignment was room 330 (down the hall from the room we were staying in).  At brunch next morning, we were told that one of the two investors who started the refurbishing in '77 had stayed in 330 and found his suitcases moved from the bed to block the door from the inside when no one else was in the deserted hotel.  He left and never returned.  (We had not been informed to prevent our being influenced, we were told, part of the "double blind scientific" procedure.)  Eight of us--Mike and Jules (the IPRG investigators) and six tagalongs--crowded into the darkened room, and told to sit or stand quietly to get accustomed to the surrounding.  Enough light came through the blinds that I could make out shapes.  After fifteen minutes, or so, Mike began explaining to the dark why were were there and that we were no threat, and then he began asking questions, waiting after each for an answer which he hoped would later be found on the super sensitive recorder, questions such as: "Why are you staying here?  Do you like it here?  Do you know who the president is?  Please knock on the wall."  No answer that I could hear.  Then a tagalong said he though he saw a shadow standing next to another.  The recorder wrote the time and observation on the event log.  Another said he thought he saw a light by the foot of another.  I saw a spark, which I said looked like static electricity.  The event was recorded.  A tagalong said she thought the bed moved.  The event was recorded.

After an hour, we moved to our next assignment, which had once been a swimming pool but was now filled in to become the ballroom, to sit in the dark and repeat the procedure.

Again there were no discernible answers to the questions.  Deb took the EMF reader and checked the walls.  It spiked at one point (on the other side a circuit breaker box).  Our third assignment was what Mike called the dungeon, a part of the basement used for storage.  As we trooped toward it, we passed a walk-in cooler where, Mike told us, bodies were kept during the retirement house days.  Most interesting to me in the dungeon was what looked like two large hammered copper cooking pots, but the in dark I couldn't be sure.  The photos, because of the flash, show more than I could see but missed the pots.

About midnight I was ready to call it quits (and later learned that Deb was of the same mind) even though the next assignment was the attic.  Then Jules said we would make a stop in the tower, which I wanted to see.  The next day we learned that in the hotel's earlier heyday, a reluctant bride in her gown had thrown herself off the tower and later a "lady in white" from time to time was seen walking the parapet.  In the dark, we wound round and round the stairs

but could not see much except for an interesting light fixture at the top that no one sees because the stairway is locked.

The part of the attic we explored was long, narrow, and cold, filled with stored stuff, but as free of spirit life as the rest of the evening.

Bed felt good.

Sunday morning, we ate a lovely seven course brunch and listened as IPRG members provided back stories for the investigation.  Tagalongs told of their experiences: shadows seen, lights in the dark, bed movement, cold spots.

We drove the Interstate home, and stopped at Bonneville dam to see the fish ladders.  There were no fish.  This time of year the ladders are closed for maintenance.

Bavarian Weekend

Bob and Debbie invited us to a long weekend at their time-share in Leavenworth, WA, picked us up about 8 Wednesday morning, weather overcast and foggy.  At the Santiam rest stop north of Albany, we ran by the decommissioned B-1 bomber being transported from Tucson to the Boeing plant in Renton.  It was the largest load ever on I-5--29 feet wide, 146 feet long--so it traveled only at night to minimize disruption, but the canvas-wrapped fuselage parked beside the pavement created disruption of its own.  We drove off at the next exit, turned back, stopped, and along with many others, got out to photograph the rare sight.

Our next stop was at the concrete replica Stonehenge commissioned by Sam Hill in 1918 at the Quaker community he tried to establish on the Columbia in the early 1900s.  The community failed, the Stonehenge was turned into a WWI memorial.

We headed north, still under cloudy skies and were captivated by a lenticular formation with Mt. Adams in the distance.

We arrived in Leavenworth after dark and found the time-share.  The next morning, I enjoyed the view from the balcony.

The forecast called for rain the next day, so we took in the fish hatchery.  Exhibits in the main building included a black bear that Bob decided to wrestle (with the help of some photo editing).

We hiked a trail by Icicle Creek where, according to the lady in the hatchery office, local Indians had some years before planted salmon given to them by the hatchery and now in season fish from platforms for salmon that had returned.  We could see this year's returnees in the creek, two to three feet long, a few quite red, some with white fins and tail, most still dark. 

 We also saw small birds; the walk was pleasant, the trail paved, level, and included signs identifying plants, birds, and animals in the area.

The town boomed in the first half of the 20th century, sustained by logging and the Great Northern Railway, but fell on hard times.  Then in 1958, after visiting Solvang, CA, owners of a business on Front Street talked other business owners into converting the town into a Bavarian village theme park.

Now the town is booming again: most of the stores, restaurants, and buildings are pseudo Bavarian, the only industry is tourists, of which there seem to be a few, and prices are Miami Beach.

We ate a lot of wurst and schnitzel, red cabbage, and some fine strudel.

The most interesting attraction was the nutcracker museum, opened only in 1995, now with some 6,000 nutcrackers, ranging from prehistoric to modern, with many from the 18th and 19th centuries.

We drove 12 miles to Cashmere, home to the Aplets & Cotlets factory, which we toured. 

In the attached store, free samples were available--we sampled freely.  Yum.  Fresh aplets and cotlets are not like what you get locally.  We buzzed in sugar high until lunch at a barbecue behind a lovely bronze pig.

Two large antique malls, filled mostly with the usual castoffs, took much of the day.  I found an 1880s meat press, a small cast iron device for extracting a few ounces of meat juice for babies and invalids who could not easily chew.

Sunday we started back, with a long stop at Maryhill Museum, which houses perhaps the largest collection in the U.S.--some 80 pieces--of life-time casts of Auguste Rodin sculpture, as well as a hodgepodge of items accumulated by Sam Hill and friends, and extensive displays of Native American artifacts.

Among the Rodin items are number of plaster casts, working models that he used in deciding on the final form of bronze casts.

The plaster Thinker is signed in pencil, a gift from Rodin to Loïe Fuller, a pioneer of modern dance in Paris and friend to both Rodin and Sam Hill.

Soon enough, we were back on the road and not long after were at home greeting cats and dog.

A nice weekend.

A Different Kind of Travel

About the first of October, I went to some garage and estate sales and one antique sale to see if something might jump out at me. At the antique sale--the advertisement in the paper was under "Antiques" instead of "Garage Sales"--was a collection of old pewter and a model ship hull with a tangle of string and pieces of what had been masts and yardarms.  The lady tending the sale told me that the ship was ivory and had belonged to her mother.  She was reducing the amount of her stuff, and had asked her son if he wanted anything.  He wanted the ship, and as she lifted it from the mantel, she dropped it.  It shattered.

Now her son did not want it, so she was selling the remains.  She assured me that all the pieces were there.  I doubted it: shattered masts, broken yardarms, minuscule beads, lines so fragile they disintegrated at a touch.  I took the collection home to study, and decided that I needed to remove the lines, start from scratch.  I did not think to take a photo until after I had cleared most of the lines, I'm sorry to say.  I started trying to figure out how the pieces fit together and how to fix them  Regular glue did not hold, super glue failed; finally at a bead store I stumbled on "Crafter's Pick," a multi-purpose glue that worked.

I put the masts together and fit them and found that my problems were just beginning.  I spent hours searching the Internet to find directions for rigging square riggers.

Along the way, I discovered that the model was probably not ivory at all but bone and baleen, similar to models made in the early 1800s by French prisoners in the long wars between England and France, models now sold at Christie's and Sotheby's.  Using the remains of the rigging and patterns from the Internet, I managed a facsimile of an 18th century three-masted square rigger with 32 guns on two decks.

The lines are silk thread ranging from .35 mm for foot lines to .60 mm for shrouds.  The main mast is just over 12 inches above the keel, the hull is about 9 inches long by 3 inches at the beam.

In all, I spent some 50 hours stringing lines, I have no idea how much time I spent traveling the net looking for answers.

The Allure of Very Spendy Cars

The Portland Art Museum started sending notices last winter about this summer's featured show of sixteen interesting automobiles made throughout the Western world from the 1930s to the '60s, an exhibition shown only at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, where it originated, and in Portland.

The cars were not the only expensive item on the menu: enticement was increased with the promise of an evening with Jay Leno, first set at $35, then at $100, because, I was told when I called for an explanation, Jay had agreed to spend time in the gallery with a limited number of real aficionados for a special "hoods-up" viewing.  I bit, bought two tickets, and when Deb was needed in Huntsville, I found a friend also interested in cars.  Then I got an email from the Morgan Owners Club that the museum had invited local car clubs to show their best cars on the park blocks each Saturday; this day was reserved for the Brits so we drove up early, found parking around the corner, and wandered the street among some very nice British iron,

including a TC,

a Morgan three-wheeler, and Jags, Rolls, Sprites, four-wheel Morgans, and others.

The real attraction, however, was inside, and in we went where we found spectacular vehicles on pedestals in the main galleries, including the 1957 XK-SS Jaguar once owned by Steve McQueen.

I was taken with the '37 Bugatti 57S Atalante,

but each vehicle was fascinating: the 1930 green Bentley "Blue Train Special,"

 the '31 Duesenberg (hood ornament shown here),

the '39 Talbot-Lago.

The crowd inside was not as thick as outside--I was able to get clear shots--and we looked our fill, then left for other errands and Dim Sum at Fong Chong's.  We returned for the 6 p.m. hoods-up, and waited outside for the museum to reopen.

We had "Preferred Tickets," but when the gates opened we discovered there were "super-preferred" guests already inside, crowded around Mr Leno.

I had imagined that Leno might go from car to car and say a little about each for our edification; he wandered among the vehicles, all right, primarily posing with people for photos.

He looked tired and perhaps a little harried but was gracious and generous; I doubt he saw much of the cars. The hoods were up--but the "aficionados" were more involved in souvenir photos.

I took a number of engines shots: I found them as lovely and as interesting as the cars.

After studying all the cars again, I broke down and joined the tourists: I bought the catalogue. Ken Gross, the author, and Leno graciously signed it.

We trouped next door to the third floor Kridel Ballroom where our tickets got us seats beyond the first aisle about 30 rows from the stage, not close but closer than the $35 seats that started some 50 rows farther back.  After the obligatory back patting and thank yous, Ken Gross and Jay Leno walked on stage, sat in upholstered chairs at a tea table, and with Gross prompting, Leno talked cars for almost an hour and a half, funny story after funny story.

He admitted that he had some 123 cars in his collection [probably not counting motorcycles], but asked the women if they would rather have their husbands come home reeking of transmission fluid or cheap perfume.

He described the Pebble Beach concours as a show where millionaires compete with billionaires and have a chance of winning.  He told of driving his McLaren F1 [about $970,000 new in 1992, $4 million at the last auction] to a car show and getting out to go to the bathroom or something, returning to find two LA gang bangers eyeing the car.

They had ratty hair, gang tattoos on their necks, one had tear drops tattooed down from his eyes.  Leno said he thought, "Oh, oh, this could be trouble." Then one of them said, "This is Gordon Murray's design, isn't it?" and Leno thought, "They know something about the car, I've prejudged them."  They talked about the car, and then, to make up for his first judgment, Leno offered them a ride.

The driver sits in the middle in a McLaren, and after the two bruisers got in, one on each side, Leno began to think that maybe this was not such a good idea.  One of them suggested that they drive into the hills where, with less traffic, they could get a better ride.  At this point, Leno is beginning to sweat, because there would be fewer people too.

He drives above Malibu on a road with a long tunnel where he opens it up to really hear the exhaust roar.  They leave the tunnel doing about 125 and at the other side sits a police car.

Its lights come on and the siren screams.  Leno thinks, "Oh no, here I am with two gang bangers; who would believe me when I say I don't know them?  The cop's going to run a check on them and they'll turn out to be drug dealers, we'll all be arrested and the McLaren will be towed to the impound lot."  He stops the McLaren about half a mile down the road, the squad car pulls in behind, the cop walks up, knocks on the window, and says, "What do you think you're doing?"  The two gang bangers pull out police badges and say, "It's all right, we're undercover."  Leno sags in relief.  He asks, "Why didn't you let me know?" and the cops say, "We don't usually tell people."

An enjoyable afternoon and evening.