Portland Walking Tour Tales, 2019 . . . part 2

Further tales from my banner year of more than one hundred walking tours in 2019.

MARCH 25

Partly because the weather was so gorgeous yesterday, I found myself herding an unusually large tour group of 16 guests in on a Sunday afternoon!

Four individuals (two separate couples) were visiting from London . . . a trio from Grand Rapids was scouting the University of Portland for the daughter (who all but admitted she didn’t have any other college choices when I asked; and that getting to live in Portland was a good portion of the appeal) . . . a couple had come down from Seattle, another from Vancouver BC . . . I didn’t catch where the male half of a pair of late arrivals was from, but the woman told me she was from Somalia . . . and I had a Salem resident and a couple who relocated to Portland a couple months ago from LA.

Long ago, I fell into the habit of employing the Yiddish term “mishegoss” to refer to the uproar that resulted from the kidnapping of the bear cub from the “Animals in Pools” bronzes along SW Yamhill between Sixth and Fifth.

Nearly two hours later, after I’d formally concluded the tour, the woman from Seattle shared that she had had to translate that term for her husband who’s Norwegian, so not a “member of the tribe.” I had to inform them that I’m not a Jew either, but my Catholic-bred wife became one back in 1997, and I’ve attended synogogue services with her so many times that I know many of the Hebrew prayers . . . and refer to myself as a non-practicing atheist.

APRIL 9

As often happens, there were some first-time-ever incidents on today’s tour — the biggest one was that the Pioneer Square weather beacon underwent testing at the unusual hour of 10:15, just when I was showing it to my tour group . . . so they got to hear the horn fanfare, view the spray cloud of mist, and watch the tower shuffle through the sun-face, the grey heron, AND the dark-grey dragon!

APRIL 13

This afternoon I was assigned to lead a tour of brand-new admittees to Lewis and Clark Law School — some of whom intend to come, others who had not committed, so a walking tour of downtown was one way the law school hoped to entice the latter to attend.

I leaned on everything I know about the courthouses: from the Hollywood film “Men of Honor” and episodes of “Leverage” and “Grimm” shot in the all-wood courtrooms of the 1933 Gus Solomon Courthouse, to the Prohibition-era booze poured into “the grates of what they THOUGHT was the sewer system” in the courtyard of the county courthouse, and the roof garden atop of the Mark O. Hatfield US Courthouse.

Several young women were visiting from Seattle, Minnesota, and Colorado, but the most interesting guest may have been a very tall, rugged young man (I would have placed him in his early 30s, perhaps) with a cowboy hat and beard who said he was from Fields, Oregon. Where? Harney County. (Wikipedia says population 120!) Of course he nodded knowingly (as did several other guests) when I mentioned the Malheur Wildlife Preserve occupation and the Bundys.

He also mentioned as we were walking back to the square for them to catch their bus back to Lewis and Clark that he applied to a LOT of law schools — 18, I believe — and had been accepted to 7, so he had not made up his mind where he planned to go in the fall. I’d sure love to have heard more of his story.

APRIL 20

A double-header today: two tours that totaled 27 guests altogether (28, if you count the non-paying kid in the stroller).

The afternoon group included a mother and daughter from Shizuoka (the daughter a med student in Kobe who’s doing a two-week course at OHSU), and a couple who live in work in the Netherlands, but he’s a native Macedonian who works as a data scientist for a telecom and she’s Polish and teaches philosophy at the university level.

The astonishing thing was that the Polish woman turned to the Japanese pair to greet them in their native tongue. Turns out her father had served in the diplomatic corps in Tokyo!

MAY 12

I had only two guests on my tour this morning, but we had a lovely time.

They were a young couple on a brief visit from Indiana. Since she works at a Starbucks and he at a grocery store back home, they were not the typical retirees, conventioneers, business travelers, international tourists, or parents scouting a college I typically get as guests.

They had come by train, having boarded on Wednesday and arrived Friday (by coach! — so they hadn’t gotten much sleep on the journey), but she said she had “always” wanted to visit. Fortunately, they had upgraded to a sleeper for the return home starting tonight.

Their youth and mobility, plus the quiet, low-traffic Sunday streets, meant I was able to use my “inside voice” for much of the route, instead of having to yell repeatedly over buses, light-rail trains, delivery trucks, and other ambient noise.
The woman punctuated many of my stories with popping eyes and verbal expressions of wonder and delight. I took special pleasure in pointing out that the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” had been banned by the governor in their home state back in 1964. (Below is the building that prompts me to talk about the Kingsmen and “Louie Louie.”)

Since they were young and traveling on the cheap, I half expected little or no tip, but at the end of the tour she said her mind was pretty much made up that she was going to move here someday . . . and he pulled out his billfold and handed me a twenty.

The cherry on top was that after the tour was all over, they mentioned their next stop was the Oregon Zoo, and they would probably Uber it. I told them they could get their a lot cheaper via MAX, and mentioned the zoo had just gotten in a new Red Panda. That’s his favorite animal, the young woman said of her companion.

MAY 16

A theme of this afternoon’s tour was marriage.

My guests were a lovely young couple from Sydney, Australia at the start of their four-week honeymoon in the Pacific Northwest (with Seattle, Vancouver, Banff, and Jasper coming up) . . . plus a trio of youthful female friends in town from Georgia and South Carolina for a wedding in the western burbs on Saturday.

Of course I mentioned my own wife several times; in particular, how I first laid eyes on her in the tearoom of the Heathman 28 years ago.

Professionally, the newlyweds were a project manager and an actuary, and the trio of Southerners consisted of a massage therapist, a speech therapist, and an electrician.

At the “Allow Me” umbrella man statue early on, I gave them my usual spiel about the unusual nature of Oregon rain, and by golly, it started to sprinkle an hour and a half later, as we approached Chapman Square. The Australian woman took out and raised an umbrella, and one of the Southern gals pulled up her hood, but the three others proceeded through the trees bare-headed, and by the time we got to Mill Ends Park 15 minutes later, the misty drops had stopped.

The rain was just like you said it would be, the southern trio marveled.

[Note: My colleague Brick told me the trio of gals from Georgia and South Carolina took his Beyond Bizarre ghost tour later that evening, and they were still raving about my Best of Portland tour: It was the best walking tour they’d ever been on, they told him; we learned more in two hours than we would have in a month of classroom study!]

MAY 21

This morning I purposely took extra time to complete the walking tour — with the approval of my guest.

Yep, I had only one, but he was perfect: had nowhere to be until 4 p.m., was on a two-and-a-half month tour of the U.S. (with possible swings through Europe and Southeast Asia after), has been taking as many local tours as possible along the way, is expressly checking out potential places to move away from his native LA where he’d just sold his house, and — the topper — is a free-lance architectural and urban design consultant.

You’d never guess any of this to look at him. He’s very youthful, smiles easily, and repeatedly murmured “sure, sure, sure” as I explained details of art, architecture, and urban design.

And though he was totally open about where he’d ultimately resettle from Larchmont Village — the neighborhood just north of Wilshire, east of La Brea, and south of Hollywood and Paramount Studios (he even checked out Klamath Falls “because it was a red dot on the way” of his Amtrak route) — he said more than once he was feeling spoiled by Portland, as if there might be no need to check out the later planned stops on his continental tour (which include Seattle, Vegas, Florida, and the Atlantic seaboard at least up to Boston).

I mention protests early on my tours — and sure enough, we passed droves of people headed to the rally against abortion-bans in Terry Schrunk Plaza. When we spotted yet another gathering with picket signs outside Senator Merkley’s office in the World Trade Center, he said, “I feel like you arranged all this just for me to spoil me.” (Above, Electric Avenue, with ten outlets along SW Salmon, just outside Senator Merkley’s office.)

Several other lovely coincidences piled on. One of my standard jokes at Mill Ends Park is the potential danger of the park being wiped out by a Camry — whereupon my guest remarked, “I just gave my Camry to my niece!”
Minutes later, when the tour ended, he topped me a twenty. I have a feeling he may be back. . . .

Go to Portland Walking Tour Tales, 2019, part 1

See an introduction to My Work as a Portland Walking Tour Guide (with some of my best stories from 2014-2016)