HOM: Portland II

As usual, I inadvertently added to the legend of Handcock. I looked up Nancy, a distant (4th?) cousin of mine on the Handcock side who was a few years older than I. We got together for a visit and she drove me all over Portland showing me the usual tourist places. I reciprocated by taking her aboard and showing her around the boat. Nancy was quite pretty. The next day, Chief Morgan asked me who my good looking date was. When I told him it was my cousin, he said it figured... I guess it was no wonder some of the guys thought I was a Mormon. Nancy & I went down to Coos Bay and looked up Bill Shires, my old room mate from NNC, for a quick visit and I got my first look at the Oregon Coast. It was quite a pretty drive and it was fun to visit & reminisce with her. ... And, after all, she was a "Kissin' Cousin". A year or so after this, she got involved in the Scientology movement and I lost track of her. Portland, by the way, was a great place to be a sailor. Drivers would make U-turns to give you a ride if you were hitch-hiking. Folks would buy sailors meals and drinks and in general treated them like royalty. It was quite nice. Even on out-of-the-way Swan Island, it was no problem to get a ride downtown. I had one odd experience -- a polite older Asian gentleman that struck up a conversation with me when I was downtown. It was enjoyable, but when I tried to end it, he didn't want to, to the point that he tried climbing with me into the taxi I'd called. When the taxi driver threw him out, the facade of "Niceness" cracked and he cussed both of us out quite thoroughly. I guess he was a scammer of some type and the taxi guy knew him. The taxi guy was a little odd, too. He spent the ride back to Swan Island telling me all about the advantages of vitamin C. "I'm 45, and since I started taking a max dosage of it every day, I can run faster, fight harder and F____ longer than I could when I was 20!" He didn't charge me for the ride, I guess I earned it by listening to him. Not all the fruits and nuts were in California. We had an addition to the crew come aboard while we were in the dry dock on Swan Island, an Interior Communications Electrician named Jim Dopp. In an accolade to the "It's a small, small world" theme, Dopp was from Kalispell. His Dad owned a service station on the SE corner of First Ave. West & Third Street, just a couple of blocks down from this store, which was a chain saw shop in those days. (Side Note. I bought my first chain saw, a McCulloch, here in this building. The McCulloch ads at the time had a song that ran "You're in luck when you get a McCulloch". Vic Bjornrud changed it a bit when he spotted my new saw: "You get F___ed when you get a McCulloch". He rated them same as he did Ford cars, "Junk".) One of the more humorous events of the Showboat tours happened to one of the younger seamen. He was stationed at the bottom of the ladder leading up to the bridge to give folks a hand with the steps if they needed one. An attractive thirty-something lady in slacks stopped about half way up the ladder, looked back down at the seaman, and commented "I bet you wish I was wearing a skirt! That was the first time I ever saw a sailor blush! TBC (Me) (Home)