An Oregon Story
Guy Maynard, Editor

Raymond had the thickest fingers I ever saw, muscled and callused, worked to a machined hardness, worn to a leathery shine. Fingers formed by a lifetime of wrenches and winches, of hammers and handsaws, of building and fixing and getting by in the lush and rugged country where the South Umpqua River starts to flatten out after its rush down from the mountains. Yet those oversized fingers could nestle a quarter-inch nut and guide it around fans and manifolds and whathaveyou into the godawfulest crook of an engine and thread it on the barest tip of the bolt where it needed to be. And that, of course, after our young and nimble fingers had failed a dozen times. Raymond, smiling, patient, encouraging, would wait as we tried and cursed and declared the impossibility of getting that particular nut on that stupid misplaced bolt—and then, matter-of-factly, do it.

Raymond Spore was into his seventies when we met him. We were a common early-’70s story, a bunch of long-haired kids from the East looking for a place to create new lives in the wild and open West. We landed in the South Umpqua town of Tiller, about sixteen miles upriver from Days Creek, where Raymond lived. He dropped by to say hello to the early settlers of our group. My friend, Bruce Gordon, who still lives on the South Umpqua, bought a white ’52 Chevy pickup from him and a remarkable friendship was born.

I don’t know when Raymond got to Days Creek. Delbert “Deb” Moore, who lives not far from Raymond’s old place, recalls “driving a nail or two into the Days Creek Store with Raymond Spore back in 1942.” Raymond ran the store and the gas station, which were next to his house near where Highway 227 takes a quick southwest turn to a bridge over the river.

When my wife, Shelley (always, for some reason, “Shirley” to Raymond), and I got to Tiller in 1971, Raymond had sold the store, his first wife, Leona, had died, his children were off on their own. We bought a red ’52 Chevy pickup from him (at least three other friends bought Raymondmobiles—you couldn’t beat the lifetime warranty). His small house, hand built in seven days, surrounded by an assortment of sheds full of every imaginable tool and auto part and canned good, was a regular stop on our trips to town (Canyonville or, for big trips, Roseburg). Often some sort of car repair was involved—Raymond was a graduate of the first class of the Ford auto repair school—but we always spent some time in his small, smoke-flavored living room, visiting. He served instant coffee with evaporated milk in hard plastic cups, sat in his rocker, his little old dog Queenie curled at his feet, and we talked.

Raymond died in 1975. He had remarried and moved into Myrtle Creek. Shelley and I had left Tiller after a year and a half, tried to go back East but realized how deeply Oregon had gotten into us, and wove our way back to Eugene. We visited with Raymond a few times after our return. Our son was born in 1976 and we used a C for his first name for Shelley’s grandfather Carl, and his middle initial was R for Raymond. We never did attach a name to that initial, but we have a Rachel and Raswan among the offspring of our Tiller cohort.

In our early Tiller days, most locals didn’t like us. The post office routinely opened and examined our mail. We were harassed and hassled by law enforcement and civilians alike. But Raymond welcomed us, helped us, tried to shelter us from the onslaught of our ignorance and naïveté about country life. He was our bridge to this wondrous but hard place called Oregon. He was our friend.

Happy 150 years of statehood, Oregon.

Web Extra!
Click here to see photos of Raymond.

I find the treatment of cellular technology in the article about the Kim Family’s ordeal [“Everywhere is Here,” Winter 2008] one-sided and poorly informed. The author, Lisa Polito, apparently set out to write a piece regarding the false sense of security cellular technology has given us. Plenty of speculation and blame is laid at the feet of a false faith in technology, but we see no actual evidence that the Kims continued as a result of their faith in cellular telephone communication. She asserts that “[t]hey never turned back because they had all-wheel drive and cell phones.”

Likewise, Polito doesn’t explore the reason the Mount Hood climbers she mentions were so confident. Again, she fails to provide any evidence. Polito has no grounds to infer that “cellular overconfidence” was fatal in the two cases she examines.

As a former colleague of Noah Pugsley, the “resourceful if unauthorized cell phone engineer,” I’m disappointed by her dismissive treatment of him. Noah is nothing short of a hero and has been recognized as such. Were it not for the technology Polito seemingly reviles, Noah could have never traced the Kims’ cell phone pings, and the search likely would never have been focused on the correct geographical area. James Kim’s death is a tragedy, but Katie’s and her children’s survival is a testament to what the technology can do to save lives.

Indeed, the dedicated men and women of search-and-rescue organizations throughout the country use wireless technology as the backbone of their communications efforts.

Kevin Griffith ’02
Portland

I can relate to the issues raised in the story about James Kim and Bear Camp Road [“Everywhere is Here”]. I have been across that road.  My family and I took it in summer 2003 going from Gold Beach back to our home in Central Point. Why?  It was on the map, and it looked like the fastest way.  Fortunately it was summer, and we could see the large portions where the road disintegrated down the side of the mountain. It was a slow drive back.

The road re-entered our lives again in summer 2008 on a trip from Nevada to Oregon Caves National Monument. The map from Google said the fastest route was straight across from Phoenix, through Jacksonville, to Oregon Caves. The directions didn’t mention that it involved a dirt road several thousand feet up on the side of a mountain. We eventually backed down the road, like the Kims. Then we went back to a store we’d seen at an intersection marked on our map at Williams. I asked directions, and the owner told me the story of the Kims and Bear Camp Road. Fortunately he put us on a paved road over the mountain, which was perfect in the summer.

Thanks for the reminder about wisdom, caution, and the limits of technology.

Lou Bubala, J.D. ’04
Washoe Valley, Nevada

The article about the tragic events of the Kim family [“Everywhere is Here”] omits one very important fact. James Kim drove around, or lifted and went under, a barrier installed by the Forest Service to stop people from driving up Bear Camp Road. To lay any blame on the searchers’ timeliness or the Forest Service is ridiculous based on this fact alone.

I’ve been involved in outdoor activities since my school days at Oregon in the early ’60s, and it’s my opinion that the Kims made some irrational decisions based on a lack of understanding of what it takes to survive in the wilderness. The story brings to mind a similar event that happened in the early ’60s when a couple and their baby got stuck in the snow and after a day or so attempted to walk to safety. When finally found, they were in some cover under a large log in a sort of cave.  The woman, who was nursing her baby, used up so much energy, she died from hypothermia, but the man and the baby survived.

You should print an article about wilderness survival, especially to remind folks that, should they get lost, be sure to stay with the car. It is the best place for safety and keeping as warm as possible. We never travel in the Oregon mountain passes in the winter without supplies to last a couple of days in the car, especially extra water. A couple of sleeping bags in the trunk or back seat may make the difference in surviving if stuck in a winter storm someplace.

Kenneth E. Ehlers ’65
Sisters

Thomas Hager’s “Thin Air, Fat People” [UpFront, Winter 2008] was stunning in its optimism. Hager tells us that world famine is no longer a worry thanks to chemical fertilizers, and we need only improve food distribution and everyone can be fat, literally. Population will peak mid-century and all is well. To thank petroleum-based fertilizer for allowing human population to grow geometrically to the point where humans are pushing many vertebrate species to extinction is hardly a point of reassurance. Perhaps we won’t have famine to worry about but other problems are rushing in. Just before the economic crisis hit in November, world food prices were skyrocketing, largely because high oil prices were making food distribution and fabricating chemical fertilizers from petroleum expensive.

The runoff from nitrogen fertilizers is creating huge marine dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, off Oregon, and elsewhere, and these fertilizers kill necessary microbes in soil and fill rivers with algae. Producing and transporting nitrogen fertilizer contributes to global warming. The answer is not to celebrate petroleum fertilizers but to move away from them rapidly toward organic, ecologically sustainable, locally based agriculture. This would help restore rivers and oceans and make people healthier. Even so, population is far too high, and our ecological problems and pandemics will take their toll well before Hager's natural population declines take place.

Tom Ribe, M.S. ’90
Santa Fe, New Mexico

In “Slithy Toves Gimbling in the Gyre” [UpFront, Winter 2008], about “the patch” in the Pacific Ocean where all the plastic accumulates, you seem to express concern for our environment. Then in “Delight of the Duckie” [Old Oregon] you show 63,000 duckies being dumped in the river, which ends up in the Pacific! While for a good cause, there’s no chance all those many thousands of duckies get pulled out of the river, and they are bound to end up in the aforementioned patch. So, what are the priorities being displayed here?

Angela Perstein ’84
Seattle, Washington

Editor’s note: Organizers of the Great Rotary Duck Race tell us that between a “catch” at the finish line and 150 volunteers in the water and on shore, all ducks are removed from the river.

Recent extensive research reveals that everything attributed to Alaby Blivet ’63 was actually done by a classmate of the same name.

Chuck Chicks, M.A. ’56, Ph.D. ’60
Sunnyvale, California

CORRECTIONS

We owe Phil Hansen ’67, J.D. ’70, a triple apology. In “Better Late” (Old Oregon, Winter 2008), we misidentified the cannery where he worked. It should have been Diamond A, though he found some humor in our hearing it as “dime-a-day”—“the cannery didn’t pay that well, now that I think about it.” We also were wrong with his finish in the 1967 Pac-8 championship steeplechase. He finished fourth as attested to by his place on the left of the medal stand in the photograph above. Finally, in his letter to the editor, we got the name of his teammate Bruce Mortenson ’66 wrong. We owe him.

The Great Rotary Duck Race (“The Delight of the Duckie” Old Oregon, Winter 2008) is organized by the United Rotary Clubs, which includes eleven clubs representing Springfield, Cottage Grove, and Fern Ridge, as well as Eugene.