All About Me

Every once in awhile I will post something about me. Who I am, where I'm from, what's happened in my life, etc. Here is the first installment.

I was born and raised in the northeast section of Portland, Oregon. As any child does, I simply accepted where I was growing up without much thought or anything to compare it to. We lived in the city until I was 8 years old and then moved out "to the sticks" near the Columbia River where my parents were able to buy a house. It was small, but it was ours and the lot was large enough for a huge garden each summer. This gave me my first real, conscious comparison of living in a place that was a little different then what I was used to. We went from city sidewalks, paved streets and a large school to no sidewalks, gravel roads and a small school. From walking to school to taking a big yellow bus and from a classroom of 30+ to a class size of 20. I like both the city and the country and value both experiences.

There was a certain freedom and innocence to living out there in the late 50's & early 60's. Even though we were on the outskirts of Portland there was still a lot of wide open space with farms, bean fields and pasture and only a little bit of industrial and some scattered housing. The city busses didn't even come out that far. My grandparents bought my brother and I each a bike and we put many miles on them over the next few years. Although my father was very strict we had a certain amount of freedom to play and walk and ride our bikes around the area, in part because both our parents worked full time. I was a latch key kid before they had that term :-)

When I was 12 we drove to Oklahoma to visit my father's family and that drive gave me my first experience traveling through country that was very different from Oregon. Oh my, the water was terrible, some of the states were mile after mile of desert and sagebrush, others were mile after mile of hot windy prairie, what they called rivers looked like a creek to me and where were the mountains and trees? Of course, as I've gotten older I've realized that every area has a beauty of it's own, but as a 12 year old I was more than happy to get back to Oregon. I enjoyed visiting the relatives and seeing the sites along the way, but felt Nevada, Utah and Kansas left something to be desired. It didn't help that it was the end of August-first of September when we went.

At 16 my parents seperated and at 17 my mother, brother and I moved back into Portland near the high school I attended (there was no high school where we were so they bussed us into Portland). It was back to the city which as a teenager was great. I was now near my school and friends and could walk or take a bus wherever I wanted to go. My mother was having a hard time with me as we fought a lot and I was becoming very rebellious. I hated the seperation and impending divorce and blamed her for it. It took a while longer for my dad to fall off his pedestal. Now how did I get from talking about Oregon to talking about my parents? Enough of that for now, maybe more at a later time. By the way, there were 21 in my 8th grade graduating class and they bussed us to a high school of 2800 kids. There was no one I new in any of my classes my freshman year. Luckily I make friends pretty easily. There were 13 high schools in Portland in the 60's and they were all large. Had to educate all us baby boomers don't you know. Now they've closed some and combined some and they're still half the size they were back then. Meanwhile communities like the one I live in are expanding and the schools are bursting at the seams.